Growing Pains

Do you remember as a kid feeling those unexplainable aches in your legs?

The ones that your mom would tell you were

growing pains?

I've been feeling them again. Not the stretching, aching muscles in my legs...just in my heart. 

There was a time in my life when I really didn't know if I was going to find the right guy and end up married. 

I didn't know if I'd ever have children of my own. 

It was a time where I was ready to give up on the dating scene, go back to school, and eventually settle into a little loft apartment somewhere in the city....doing my thing. 

But it was never my heart's desire. 

That has always been defined by getting married and being a mama.

Miracle of miracles....it happened!

God gives has given me way more than I deserve. That's why I can claim that today is sweeter.

Because I'm living out my sweetest dreams, friends. 

But this is also real life. 

I did not marry a perfect man. He did not marry a perfect woman.

We do not have a perfect little boy. (close though, wink*)

And for the last few weeks I have been feeling those growing pains deep in my heart. 

I've mentioned before that I feel emotions really deeply...sometimes so deep that I don't know what it is I'm feeling way down in there. It takes me awhile to go mining into the cavern of my soul, and bring those things up into the light. 

That's where I've been. 

I'm feeling the pain of a growing marriage. We fight and make-up more than I thought possible sometimes. 

And it has me longing for the simpler, unassuming days of courtship where everything Josh did made him superman in my eyes. (Well, almost everything!)

Now it seems he comes home to far more expectations, and far less appreciation. 

We are struggling to sacrifice, to give, to let go of baggage and expectations. 

You know. All that stuff you pack up into the suitcase of life along the way and come lugging into 

the house you're building together. 

We are being fused into one. Kicking and screaming at times...

And because neither of us like who we are in those moments of 

ahem...intense fellowship...we are struggling to grow. To communicate more. 

To be who God wants us to be. 

Sometimes I just sit and watch Blake. I see him building towers, and vroooming with his cars and trucks.

I see him eating waffles for breakfast, and picking up his toy microphone to yell

"Nan--yoooo"

because his daddy taught him to yell just like Nacho Libre. 

(Now that just thrills my heart...)

What I see most is my little boy growing up....fast, really fast. 

And my heart hurts.

I packed away Blake's summer clothes today. For good this time.

See, I have this routine for packing away his things, each time he grows out of them.

First, I take them out of his dresser and they sit on top for a few weeks. 

Then after that they'll make their way into a Rubbermaid, and they'll sit in his closet for awhile. 

Eventually I inevitably have to take them down to the storage shelves in our basement.

This kills me.  Everytime. 

I'm a weepy mess for at least 20 minutes, and once more can not for the life of me 

figure out where time went. How he got so big. 

My heart just aches...

knowing that all too soon he will be grown.

I'm sure there's lots of parents out there that think 18 can't come soon enough.

I don't feel that way....I wish it would never come. 

I wish I could stop time right here, and Blake would stay my little boy forever. 

The boy who likes to show off his belly. And rake leaves with mommy.

And have pushing fights with his reflection...

Sometimes growing hurts.

But it also always brings something new. 

Sometimes growing isn't what we thought it would be.

But it also can be everything that we needed it be.

Sometimes growing seems to take a really long time.

But it also goes so much faster than we thought possible. 

I'm learning to cherish both kinds of growing...

the kind that makes me a better wife, a better mommy,

and the kind

that leaves me searching for a brick to put on that little guy's head.