3 am life questions with my little girl

It's 3 am.  I feel the air pressure in the room change as a little one sneaks in.  My eyes are still closed as our oldest girl, just 4, appears on my side of the bed, but I feel the brush of her small hand on my arm.
"Did you have a bad dream?" I say, the usual cause of her appearance in my room at this hour.
"No. I just need your help."
"Help with what?"
"I need to you to help me pray to ask Jesus in my heart."
Confused, I ask her what she said again.
She repeats, "I need you to help me pray to have Jesus in my heart.  I want to go to heaven to be with God."

My mind races, fully awake now, trying to scramble around and process what I've just heard.  This is my 4 year old.  It's 3 am.  The ramifications of this question are deep and life-changing.  I hold her close in my arms and tell her, "I will help you.  Let's talk about it when the sun comes up."
I want to be fully present for this moment.  I wonder silently if this is the right choice, but I can't talk to her rationally at 3am about the choice she wants to make and I really want to be able to.

This is my girl of deep questions.  In the last month I've gotten the following, usually at 6:30am when she first wakes up:

"Mama, how do I know what is truth?"
"Mama, can two girls get married?"
"Mama, how does a baby get inside of you?" (She actually asked this one at age 3, but now she wants more details.)

The list goes on and on.  She desperately wants to grasp the world around her.  Not HOW things work, but why.  Mostly interpersonal relationships.  She recently held a fellow mom friend of mine captive with her questions for more than thirty minutes.  The questions were all about my friend's parents and grandparents, divorce, death and on and on.  This girl cuts from, "My favorite colors are pink and purple," straight to, "my baby sister died.  Is your mama dead?"  It's kind of rattling.  It keeps me on my toes.  I am grateful for the job of helping to shepherd this little deep well of a heart.  I pray for the knowledge and understanding to do so.

We give Thanks (a recap of November thankfulness)

For first bike rides.

For tea time with Gramma Net.

For fancy hats.

For family Rock Band.

For biker hubby and his mini biker gang.

For terrible family photos.

For three generations of these crazy men (and men to be).

For my girl and her girly self, which allows me to be more of my girly self.

For fancy hairdoos.

For snuggly little boys.

For little boys who still sleep like babies (bum in the air!)

For grubby little feet.

For night hikes

 

and for PIE!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thoughts on 36

The fall frost has finally come to our maple trees and they gave up the last of their gold speckled leaves this week.  The Christmas music is already playing because, why not.  Especially when the biggest girl requests Ella Fitzgerald Christmas music.  How can I resist her excellent taste?  Through some herculean effort on the part of myself and the children yesterday the house is, dare I say, clean.  At least the downstairs part.  No movement from the youngest yet.  I'm just 16 weeks along yesterday.  It should be soon now.  Being still enough to feel it rarely happens.  In fact, most days I forget until someone asks me how this pregnancy is going.  I am consumed with 4 year old imagination and nearly 2 year old darling chubby curiosity.  They are contentedly cutting up paper at the table and I'm not going to protest if they accidentally move on to the vinyl tablecloth.  Quiet moments of reflection are too precious to sweat that stuff.

Thirty-six sounds old to me.  Edging closer to 40 which is some mental 'over the hill' lie I've swallowed over the years.  I'm sure I'll look back at 80 and laugh at my youthful folly, knowing I had more than half of my life left to enjoy.  It doesn't feel old though.  Even though the midwives handle me with care and do extra tests now that I am of 'advanced maternal age.'  (Isn't that a lovely term?)  In some ways, looking back over the years, I've been waiting for something big to happen.  To 'become' something.  A famous singer?  A widely read mommy blogger?  I'm not sure what it is I am waiting for.  Recently I was reading about Moses and was struck by the fact that God didn't choose him when he was in his prime, adopted son and royalty to Egypt.  Nope.  He chose him when he was 80 years old.  A fugitive, hiding in the desert and a shepherd.  The strong days long past.  Just like Abraham and Sarah.  90 years old and pregnant!! Talk about advanced maternal age!

Somewhere in my lifetime I absorbed the message that only the young have anything to offer the world.  They are the innovators, the imaginative, the world changers.  But God has wildly different ideas about when people have the best to offer.  He doesn't look at their age, their youth, their beauty.  He looks at their hearts.  And mine has been, to say the least, being molded and changed through pain and fire and loss for some time now. 

I see glimpses of progress in my heart.  I am (mostly) no longer discontent with my life.  I love my husband through his imperfections (most days).  God's love is finally breaking through to my selfish heart.  I still have days when I resent being home with these lovelies, even though I chose this life with them and wouldn't trade it.  It can be lonely, thankless, and filled with far too many bodily fluids, but here I am.  I have an amazing community of friends and loved ones to help me through those days.  And I am realizing that this isn't the be all end all, just because I didn't 'become' in my youth.  I did 'become', even though it isn't flashy.  And I will be whatever it is I am called to, maybe at 36, maybe at 40, maybe at 90.  For today I am really enjoying the journey.  Happy birthday to me.