Bigger Picture Moment: Don't Blink

Once upon a time, there was a tiny baby girl.  She was born a bit early, and her mom couldn't quite understand how something that came in such a tiny package could consume all of her thoughts.  All of her time.  All of her love.

But the tiny baby girl grew, as babies are wont to do, and the mom got engulfed in life.  The living of it got all wrapped around the loving in it, and it became one, sweet, clumsy mess.  The mom prepared nutritious meals (for the most part...) and put away clean laundry (sometimes) and navigated tantrums and difficulties with grace (almost never).  The life was slow.  The naps were regulated.  The tiny baby girl was joined by a tiny baby sister, and they created double the life: more of everything.  Including the messy clumsiness of living. 

The days were stacked, one upon the other, and they blended together at times so that the mom could no longer see what the tiny baby girl used to look like.  She only saw right now. 

She saw: dancing and crying and dressing and pretending and reading and coloring and negotiating and mandating and singing and smiling and loving and screaming and laughing and learning and cooking and running and leaping and sledding and traveling and friending and sweeping and sistering and arguing and kissing. 

(She saw lots of kissing.)

Until one day, the mom woke up and found herself to be surrounded by a different now.  In this now, her belly was large with a growing baby brother and the tiny baby sister produced sentences and paragraphs of emotion and detail and conversation. 

And the tiny baby girl that started it all?  The tiny baby girl who set her mom into the motion of living and stacking and clumsy loving?

That tiny baby girl was nowhere to be found.  Overnight, in the middle of the living, the tiny baby girl sprouted and bloomed and stretched herself to the moonlight. 

So that when the sun rose, her skin glowed with knowledge and pride and readiness.  Her face shone with independence.  Her heart sang made-up songs that only she knew the words to, and which would carry her across the land of tomorrow.

And her legs -- those wee-tiny, squishy, flailing things that used to be bundled safely in a pink swaddling blanket -- carried her down the street to kindergarten.

And the mom cried at the time that had melted away.  But rejoiced that she'd lived it, and would keep on living it, until she wakes up another day to find...

What? 

Only time will tell.

We're seeing the Bigger Picture through simple moments -- moments that force us to stop and take notice of the ways our worlds are important, meaningful, and beautiful. Please join Hyacynth at Undercover Mother today! Grab the button, link up, and then read a few others to encourage them as they walk this journey of intentional living.