Chasing The Light

My daughters are about to hit double digits!

I've considered this milestone birthday for sometime and wondered how I might make it special and memorable for them.

Perhaps I'm really trying to make it most memorable for myself!

It's all going so quickly, rather cliche I know, but far too true not to say.

I want to mark this 10th birthday because it's the last one they'll ever have.

My baby girls will only turn 10 once!

They're so excited to grow up.

I'm holding onto every moment, wishing I could pause and rewind a bit.

In my effort to pause their little lives, I took them into the hills to capture some photos of them.

In desperate pursuit of the "golden hour," we devoured our dinner and took off for the hills.

As we started our hike, I feared we missed it.  

A hiker on the trail passing us by simply said, "chasing the light!"

Yes, I was chasing more than light.

I was chasing my little girls that were quickly on the trail to teendom 

and then college and marriage and...

I needed to run faster.

Out of breath and increasingly disappointed,

 I ran even faster to capture the fleeing bits of gold.

And just when I thought we'd missed it, I turned around to find my girls putting flowers in each other's hair.

All too soon this life scene between sisters will repeat,

 perhaps with doing each other's hair for prom or their wedding, 

and even more then, I want to be on the trail with them, chasing the light that is their lives.

Little Girls

These little girls are my greatest source of 

fond memories and joy!

And conviction!

I'm sure I've said this before, but having twins was one of the best gifts I've ever been given.

And twin girls at that! - the greatest!

2 little girls.

These little girls daily give me flash backs to when I was a little girl.

They are like me in so many ways!

When they play with their baby dolls, I remember changing my baby dolls into jammies before I went to bed, tucking them into their blanket and putting them to sleep with a kiss.

My little girls still do the same!

From swimming, ballet, writing books, drawing, dolls, dressing up, watching me put on my make-up or cook - they remind me daily of the little girl I once was and all those fun things I too once did.

It's like a magic time machine when you have kids!  They blast you back all the time.

But these little girls also bring conviction into my life daily.

They are so much like me - not just in the fun little girl ways, but also in my ugly ways.

Seeing them daily, the things that are less than kind, constantly leave me reeling in the fact that they've learned a lot of that from me.

I know that my example to them speaks louder than any words and as I dream for the women I pray they become, I am convicted that I must first be that woman.

I'm impatient.

I'm task focused which means sometimes I forget about the people involved in the task.

I scowl.

I yell.

I'm ungrateful.

Oh I know this is nothing new - as mothers and parents we see 

the good and bad of ourselves in our children.

But I do think there is something unique about a mother daughter relationship.

I don't see my junk as much in my son.  

(He gets his stuff from his daddy!  Let's just be honest!)

Children are a gift from God - a beautiful refining tool that cuts us to the deepest parts and eradicates our ugly sin so that God can be glorified and we can become more like Him as they become more like us!