Almost 9 years ago, now, I was helping paint a nursery. The color we were painting was pink. And the nursery was for my first (and still only) grandchild.
The baby was due smack dab in the middle of a cruise we'd booked long before we knew of her impending arrival. My baby daughter wanted to take a graduation trip with her senior class but images of lost students on similar trips from news programs batted around in my head. Her dad and I promised to take her on a trip of her own if she would forego the class trip.
All that to say, there wasn't much getting out of the cruise. So, as we painted, I implored my grandchild-to-be's other grandmother to do the impossible.
"Please don't let me become a grandmother and not be there." said I, as if she could keep that from happening.
"You don't even know how bad that would be," she replied. She went on to tell me that something "happened" in her "heart" unlike anything she had experienced before when her first (and at that time only) grandchild was born. At the time, I wondered how this could be. I'd experienced some pretty amazing things in my life and it was hard to imagine anything better than those experiences. Maybe things equal to them, but an altogether new thing?! I didn't think that was possible.
Fast forward a few weeks. We arrived back from the cruise in time for me to experience precisely what had been described to me. Indeed, something happened in my hard unlike anything I had felt before.
In the hospital where my grandbaby was born, Brahm's lullaby is played over the speaker when a new little one enters the world. We listened for the music as we waited, knowing the time was soon to come. When it began to play, we all rushed from the waiting room to the nursery to witness her first appearance there.
I heard her cry before I saw her. I knew it was our baby. My heart told me so. It was the cry of my future. I knew it just as surely as I can recall the voices of my past... my grandparents, aunts and uncles. My daddy's. And something happened in my heart that has never happened before.
Now comes my own piece of the story. The part no body told me (or if they did, I wasn't paying attention.) This is what I want my friend to know, even as her heart is full (that's what she told me)
probably to bursting (that's what I know.)
Here is is, Shari! If no one else tells you or if they do and you don't see how it could be true, I'm telling you from experience: IT GETS BETTER!
It gets better all the time. I know you don't see how right now. Just as I doubted the heart thing being true when my grandbaby's Mimi told me about it, you may doubt whether it could get better. But I'm telling you it does.
This is the one thing in my life that has lived up to it's hype. Besides Jesus (Who you know I love beyond all else and who exceeds all else for me) this is the thing. Better than Christmas morning or a dream vacation or a Sunday afternoon nap. Better than a long letter in the mail or a pedicure. This is the thing that is better than you can imagine.
My grandbaby is eight now. And I must tell you that I have enjoyed virtually ever second I've ever spent with her. I went to her dance recital last Saturday night and had feelings quite similar to those of that first day. At her third grade awards assembly, where she got a reading, math and spelling award, my heart tried to burst (does that sound familiar?!)
But it also tried to burst when I watch her swing in my front yard and when she practices gymnastics and when she helps her granddad wash my car.
It happens when I watch her spread blackberry jam on toast and paint a wooden "W" for her aunt and when I watch her sleep.
I intended to run to the card shop to pick out some cute card to commemorate this occasion but I decided I could not find a card to convey all I wanted to say much less one big enough to write it all down for you. So this blog post is for you. We'll compare notes later.
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