Sometimes you just have to love God’s sense of humor and appreciate that it’s always filled with a purpose.  When my baby boy, my last child, left for college, I couldn’t help but look up and shake my head when He sent me four newborn boys to photograph in the two weeks prior.  That was a rarity for me quite frankly and I was like, really?! 

I walked into the home of one of these precious baby boys and the tired but silly happy parents greeted me with all five pounds of him, small enough to hold in one hand.  He was tiny but mighty having entered the world quite early but now all snuggled in his place and along for the journey he knew nothing about, nor did his parents.  

After snuggling and taking photos and laughing at so much pee and poop coming from such a teeny body, I was on my way home, and of course, began to think of the irony of timing.  This young couple just brought this tiny boy home while my boy is at home packing to leave for school. I cried the rest of the way thinking how I wish I could switch places.

For those with children, we all remember the day or two after our babies were born.  We’d just endured physical agony to get them here, a pain that magically disappears almost immediately upon their first breath.  Oh, the power of that first breath, it can change the world and it does ours. We snuggle with them, feed them, love watching friends and family ooh and ahh and take pictures of them, and then finally, at last, it’s time to head home.

Just the act of taking them through that door into home is a memory usually caught on film in some way, and everything changes.  That first day is the blank page in a new journal, empty, crisp and clean, waiting to be written on, and you write about that first day so proud and telling yourself you’re going to write every day… yeah, okay.  Then, in an instant, you turn the page and it looks like a three-year-old took their crayons to it.  After that, you better hang on because game on!  Some pages have spilt milk, tears, the sound of laughter, and love you didn’t know existed. You stay up nights feeding them, rocking them, praying for one night’s sleep at times, and then what seems a few days later, you’re up nights waiting on them to come home, perhaps praying for one night’s sleep again.  In between, somehow, you take them to their ballgames in their little britches and helmets that are way too big and you just think, “life can’t get any better than this” and then it does because more special moments come over and over and over.  In the midst of it all, you snuggle, as long as they let you, you feed them, you take them home, day in and day out, in a whirlwind, but you do take them home.  Lord knows if we could count how many times we take them home. 

Every day is like riding a roller coaster but you’re so busy you forget you’re on it until you reach the top of a big hill and suddenly, before you can take in enough air, down you go so fast it’s hard to see the view.  They’re asking if they have enough to shave one day and the next they’re trimming their beard. The roller coaster takes sharp turns, goes up and down a lot of emotional hills, and then you see the end of the ride ahead and you want to go another round, just one more.  Instead, you’ve used up that ticket and you’re looking at the one to graduation. You watch them walk across the stage, you watch family and friends ooh and aah over them and take photos, and then you take them home… again. 

There are days you want to grab them and say let’s jump back on, let’s ride that one again, and you can’t, so you pack the car and take them to their new home and settle them in.  For some reason, they’re often a little kinder that day, intuition that someone (the lady that birthed them) is struggling. You look at their new room knowing it’s the last time it’ll be clean for four years (or maybe that’s just mine!) and you head to the car.  You drive away a mess and see them in the rearview mirror skipping away.  You drive home thinking about their blank pages waiting on their pen, not yours.  Some will look like a three year old took their crayons to it, those might be the really fun ones, and some will have spilt milk (or probably beer), some will have stuff you don’t want to know, but as long as there are a lot with joy and laughter and new best friends, oh, and lots of smart stuff, you just don’t care.  Maybe they’ll sneak in word in really tiny print about missing their Mama too… yeah, okay.  They’ll be off filling up pages while we’re at home wondering what they’re doing, if they’re safe, and kind of missing that 2 a.m. squeaky cry. 

If I could come up with a potion for new parents to truly grasp the preciousness of time and the speed with which it all happens, I’d be rich a million times over.  But I can’t.  All I can do is encourage you to buy lots of crayons, don’t worry if the pages get a little messy, get down in the floor, make messes, hug all you can, even when they don’t want to hug, especially when they don’t want to hug, and when they do come home, make them glad they did.