I became a mother for the first time thirty-three years ago today. I’m not going down the how-did-that-happen-so-quickly path. It happens. My daughter had some issues early on, some that had a diagnosis, and some that didn’t. Developmental delay was thrown around a lot so we’ll go with that.
I was thanking God for allowing me to be her mother and while I was talking with God, I said “I don’t know why she had to go through a lot of the things she went through. It was hard as a parent, as a mother. Those times were difficult.”
And then I heard myself pray with gratitude because of those things. Those things made her uniquely who she was and is.
We all have those things in life. Things we get to choose to be grateful for. That doesn’t me we have to like them. That doesn’t mean we have to be glad we went through them, it just means that we are grateful for all the experiences we have. It means we’ve lived and are living despite maybe even because of the things we go through.
There were things to be grieved (aren’t there always) because of the developmental delay. It affected her speech so I didn’t always know what she wanted, needed, or was trying to tell me. I missed that with her, but I had other things.
She was an easygoing child and she still is. She was caring and giving and nurturing and she still is. The hard things have a way of weaving themselves into the things that make us who we are, the persons God created us to be.
We get to choose to be grateful.
For the things we like.
For the things, we don’t.
For the things we asked for and for those we didn’t.
For the hard things, the painful things, and the joys too.
Life is a mixture of all the moments.
That’s who we are because that’s who He is.
And for that I am grateful.