The Good Ole Days

Earlier on Face Book I saw a couple of pictures of some of my best friends from High School and I missed those guys and those times... I even thought "whoa those were the good ole days." You always hear people, especially old people say that. And seeing as I am approaching 30 ( 52 days from now) I guess it is age appropriate for me to have those thoughts. Haha! But the more I sat there and thought about it the more I remembered about those "good ole days". I don't know if God made our brains to remember the good things first or if that is just my tendency, but I quickly remembered all the fun we had skipping school to "go run errands" for our teacher, roller blading on Sunday afternoons, and spending countless hours at one anothers' houses, so much so our parents might have forgotten who kids were really their own. Life was easier then and less complicated and my memory wants me to remember it that way.

But was it really any better than now? During those "good ole days" my little brother had a serious and almost fatal bout with cancer, which forced me to spend a lot of my senior year of high school doing things that most kids don't have to worry about. Worrying about my mom, dad and step mom getting along in the same hospital room, worrying about my brother who did technically die at least once who lost all his hair and most of his friends (it is hard to explain to 8th graders that cancer is not contagious) worrying about my mom and our finances when she had to take so much time off work to stay at the hospital, and worrying about if I should even go off to college.

During those "good ole days" my best friend since 3rd grade and I grew apart and I don't know why, it was weird and awkward and hard.

During those "good ole days" I wasn't near as close to God as I am now, I was a baby and was still just drinking milk.

During those "good ole days" my car actually got keyed in the church parking lot a couple weeks after a fresh, purple paint job. Not every car in the lot was keyed, mine and a couple others were specially chosen for it.

I guess it wasn't all good, huh? And isn't that how it always is? Good mixed with bad. Beautiful mixed with ugly. Easy mixed with hard. And I wonder how many years it will take before I am looking back at pictures from this interesting, trying, frustrating stage of life and calling this the "good ole days" because we all know I will remember the good in this time first too. I will remember how Raegan is so cute in her desire to be a mermaid, and Hadley is so beautiful and amazingly cool and athletic (which is shocking seeing as she is my child, and all of you who knew me as a child know I was none of those things) and Caed has the perfect haircut to match her inner sassy pixie and she is praying and talking about accepting Christ. Beautiful moments, great memories, I guess I am living the "good ole days" right now!!

POSIBILITIES!

As I watch and listen to my three girls play I am struck by how imaginative and energetic they are concerning the possibilities that they will have in life. Raegan, the 3 year old, whole heartedly believes that she is going to grow up to be a mermaid. She thinks on her 4th birthday, which is just weeks away, she will grow fins and find a flounder friend. We went to get haircuts this weekend and she wanted hers dyed RED! It has never occurred to her that it is impossible for a little girl, no matter how much she loves to swim, to turn into a real live mermaid. My older girls are getting too big to believe in turning into mermaids, which is kinda sad, but they still have big dreams and are not willing to settle for a normal boring life. I think that it is horrible that they know it is impossible to turn into a mermaid or a pixie or an animal, but what is worse is that they will probably eventually grow up like most of the world to believe that almost everything is impossible and out of reach and they will except less than God's crazy best for their selves.

My husband and I are trying to raise them knowing that they CAN do anything but they are MADE to do something, and discovering what that is will help them find and fulfill their God given purpose. The frustrating part is as much as I believe that I sometimes have a hard time discerning what it is in my own life. I feel like I know what I am supposed to be doing only to have that change or not work out. I want to believe that God is working the good in every situation, but the "grown up" in me is pessimistic and gets impatient and frustrated. If only I could believe that if God would get the glory from my being a mermaid He could and would make that happen, if I could believe that then I could believe that God can, will and is doing impossible things in my life! Maybe that is why the Bible tells us that we must be like little children, because when they hear the Bible say that with Christ nothing is impossible they really believe that and don't but limitations on what "nothing " and "impossible" mean.