Wednesday July 16th

You will be happy to hear that I got up and vacuumed my house first thing this morning.  Yes, I knew you would be so proud of me.  Thank you, I'm pretty proud of myself, too.
I also completed all but one of the things on my to do list today.  That is also very impressive.  (And that last thing wasn't so important.  I can do it tomorrow without any problems.) 
One of the things on my list was to renew my drivers license and...  wait for it....

take Liesl to get her license! Aaaaahhh! When did I get so old?  But I keep reminding myself that it's a blessing.  I now have someone I can send on errands.  There is now another driver that can fetch and deliver children.  This will be a good thing.  Sigh.

But wait.  Wasn't she just born?  Wasn't I just barely holding her in a fuzzy pink blanket as we snuggled, just the two of us, in our basement apartment?  Wasn't she just barely dressing up as a princess every single day and dancing around the house wearing every piece of jewelry she could find?  I'm sure she just barely started school.  I'm still not used to getting up early to get her off in the mornings, so it can't have started very long ago.  What happened?  She can't drive a car, she's a little girl!!!

But neither would I want to keep her from fulfilling her true potential.  I wouldn't want to keep her from progressing just so I could have her home and little and cute all the time.  I want her to be able to have all the joy and sorrow and gain all the wisdom she came here to get.  But I don't want her to grow up and go away, either. 

I am sure Heavenly Father feels the same when he sends his children to earth.  He knows they'll have pain and sorrow, and they'll never be quite the same as when they left.  But he sends us, anyway, because He loves us and wants us to become all He knows we can be.  So I can try to follow His example, and be proud of the beautiful young lady Liesl is becoming.  I can be excited for her and all that lies ahead in her life.  But just for tonight, I can mourn the loss of my little princess and the days when she was happy to just dance around the living room.  I know that God gave us the opportunity to be parents so that we could gain some small understanding of how much He loves us and how much He has given us in providing these opportunities on earth.  I am grateful for the chance to be a mother, to see my kids grow, and even for the tears I'm crying tonight because my baby girl is going to drive away.  I'm grateful that my Father in Heaven loved me enough to let me go for a while and experience all these things for myself, and I hope we'll all get the opportunity to go back and dress up and dance in His living room again.