what might have been helpful information
Birthdays and raising teens have a way of making sure that the only thing you really know is that you don't know anything. I've got some of both going on right now, and I've never been more sure that I have no clue what I'm doing. When I had 3, 4, 5, 6 little ones, I just wanted someone to tell me how to make it work. No one ever did. No matter how many books I bought or blogs I read or people I talked to, no one ever said, here's the secret to this whole thing. Oh, sure, there were tidbits to try and the like. There was a lot of having older siblings help out. The problem was that I didn't have anyone of a truly helpful age to help out. But now I get it. So if you're in the throws of littles, all I can tell you is I get it, but now I have a teenager and even if at one point I thought I had this figured out, I can now definitively say that I was wrong. So wrong. I am utterly clueless. In a few years (or maybe decades) I'll look back and think, man I wish I'd known that this wasn't a big deal or that this was a big deal or that I should never have worn that. I don't know if hindsight is 20/20, but it is usually a little clearer. So here are some of the things that I wish I'd known a little earlier.
I wish I'd learned to appreciate my body for the beautiful blessing it is. I wish I'd been more thankful for the stretch marks and the eternal baby belly that resides around my abdomen, testifying to the lives that have grown within me. I wish I'd realized that my chin was a gift, genetically given by my grandmother. I wish that when I'd looked into the mirror and seen sagging eyes, overcome with exhaustion, that I would have seen love and sacrifice made for hungry babies and scared toddlers. I wish I'd seen my mother's hands in my own earlier and appreciated the reminders of her caring for me even when we were miles apart.
I wish I'd understood that very rarely will you have more time in the future, or at least if you do that it wouldn't come for a very long time. I wish I hadn't put things off. I wish I'd invested in habits earlier in my life so that at this point I wouldn't be trying to create new habits in the midst of pouring into 9 other people. No matter what stage of life you're in, it always seems busy. I wish I'd understood that, if something's important, it's worth doing now.
I wish I'd trusted God a whole lot more and hadn't tried to control things and manipulate my life so that it would go the way I thought it should. I wish I'd been able to grasp that His plan was way better than my own and that He was completely competent to work out the details. I'm so thankful for God's perfect patience!
I wish I'd known that I didn't have to be somebody else or do it all. I wish I'd seen that I was gifted in certain areas and not others and known that it was OK. I've spent years trying to look like, clean like, cook like, sing like, parent like, sound like, dress like somebody else. I wish I'd known that being me was exactly who I was supposed to be.
