The Hard Won Moments

You know the times you catch that wild kid of yours laying down on the front porch with a bug in his hand that he’s watching, engrossed, and being still,

your teenager walking up through the front yard in some sparkling light , off in her own thoughts somewhere, completely unaware of how pretty she is?

You think about a really good night with your husband and the kids’ birthdays coming up and how you craned your neck trying to see all the colors of the sunrise this morning. You remember a friend telling you how something you said brightened her day, or how that “Help me, God” prayer really did get answered.

Moments like those- and for only a moment- you see your life like you’re standing way back on a far hill looking over at it, and it really is a beautiful thing.

Yeah I’ve rolled my eyes at the over-the-top perfect families of social media and the lengths those moms must go to to make things look that way. Maybe I’ve added my own photos of how badly we do things or what a hot mess we are to try in vain to balance it all out.

We all have our pasts, our ugly side and our anxieties, our dysfunctions, our propensities and our messes, and all the rest.

But we have the good moments too, the ones that stop our ever busy thoughts for just a moment. They’re authentic and they’re the spontaneous birth of years and years of the undoing and the remaking of a soul by One “who is closer than a brother”.

Those are the ones to take the photos of, to write down, to think on at night as we go to bed.

Those are the hard won moments of life,

all the rest is just the work that it takes to get there.