My friend sent me this quote last night:
“I don’t want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.
I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.
I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children.
I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone’s garden.
I want to be there with children’s sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.
I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.”
I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.
I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children.
I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone’s garden.
I want to be there with children’s sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.
I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.”
This lovely, poignant quote made me recall being a little girl and dreaming of this:
and imagining this:
I would cuddle and love my baby doll, not because someone told me that motherhood was wonderful, but because this woman showed me:
What I could not have known was how much motherhood would change me, alter the world as I knew it, increase my capacity to love, provide me with a glimpse of the depth of God’s love for me, and teach me the true joy found in the every day, small, intangible things.
Like this girl making us crazy by getting out of bed repeatedly last night, but then secretly delighting us when she emerged as a “fairy” at about 9 pm.
Or this little guy, who I like to call our “alarmist”
His favorite words are “Uh-Oh!” and “Oh! No!”
Or how an “Ella-ism” can brighten my day.
Yesterday as we arrived home from church, she uttered this classic:
“I can’t wait until I’m big, so I can put people in time out.”
Or the way this curious fellow can get into scrapes and go from
cloudy to grinning in an instant.
Yes, this really is living!
That was truly beautiful!
Sister Hinckley is the best! Thanks for passing this quote along.
we dreamed alike as children! I loved your post. and your photos are sooo cute!
I love your preggo photo, but they are all beautiful. Wonderful sentiments, beautifully expressed. I agree completely!
That is such an awesome quote. Thanks for sharing!
Wonderful pictures! Hearing all these things make me so excited to become a parent!!