To everything there is a season

Caleb wearing one of the gowns he wore as a baby

Last night, all four of my children took baths and showers. I didn't start the water. I didn't wash their hair. And I didn't have to dry anyone off, or find them pajamas. I only clipped thirty fingernails because my eldest clips her own now. This morning, I woke to the pleasant sounds of happy children getting their own breakfast. Later, they will make their own beds, brush their own teeth and hair, and get into clothes they picked from their drawers. I won't have to help them with their shoes or shoelaces, and I won't have to buckle them in to their carseats.

When I was drowning in diapers and nursing someone every hour, I never dreamed of this day. I had no idea that it would only take four years to come. It's an everyday miracle, the growing of children, the way they surprise you each day with something new. Yesterday, my Amelia had to show me that she can finally reach the tap in the kitchen sink. And take all her pills with minimal supervision.

I want to encourage you, younger mothers. The season you are in is so short! A few years, and you will be amazed at how much easier life is. The backbreaking season of hauling babies and toddlers and doing everything for them will soon be over. You might even wake up in your bed alone in the morning and actually long for the touch of little hands around your neck! As impossible as it may seem, you will look back on the work of today with fondness as one of the most beautiful seasons of your life.

I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God. (Ecclesiastes 3:10-13)