35

So many days this past year I went to bed with a heart so full that I fell asleep thinking, “This was the best day of my life.”  Most of these days may appear suspiciously ordinary on the outside.  One was in the summer.  My babes and I had gone hiking and after taking in amazing views of the city we stopped at an ice cream parlor. Bellies full, we drove home.  The kiddos were obsessed with Katy Perry’s “Firework” so I let them play it on repeat.  We drove with windows down and sang at the top of our lungs.  Another was more recent, our first snow day.  I had made chicken and dumplings the day before as a culinary prayer that we would wake up to a world blanketed in white and a school day canceled.  It worked.  My only tasks that day were playing in fluffy snow, putting kiddos into warm layers (and back out again), and making hot chocolate.  When Alan pulled safely into the driveway that I had attempted to shovel, safe and sound, that was another answered prayer.

Last Friday I ended up in the middle of a four lane highway aiding in CPR on a bicyclist that had been hit by a car.  After I realized that we were not going to save him I began to pray that he had a good life and that his life had contained many precious moments.

I am only 35 but I think that this is the key to it all.  It’s being filled up by these every day joys.  It’s going to bed happy because three wee people are safe and sound, warm in their beds.  It’s singing at the top of your lungs when you want to sing.  It’s warm soup at the end of a cold day of play. It’s running behind a little girl and letting go when she has her balance and watching her pedal on her own.  It’s standing in the wings while your daughter plays her violin on stage. It’s hearing your son tell his sister how much he loves her.  It’s sewing into the night with the best of friends. Its realizing that every step that you have taken in life, the good ones and the ones that have at times appeared to be mistakes have brought you to here and now and knowing that you wouldn’t change a thing.