THREE

Life is messy and full. Full of excitement and to-do lists and messy with love and grace.
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Arguing about doing homework.  Driving to soccer. and to gym. and back to soccer. and then through the drive thru. Wishing my husband shared my faith. Looking at the sad face of a C- test score. Walking around vacation towns taking in the salty air. Washing leotards 2 hours past bedtime so they're ready tomorrow. Driving home crying my eyes out to worship songs. Taking videos of first swims and first dives. Getting brave to pray out loud. Cleaning scraped knees. Teaching we and the during bedtime reading. Frozen yogurt rewards. Learning about God's character. Supporting friends in need. Flying across the country to be with your sister in the hospital. Understanding what 91 feels like through the words of your grandmother. Measuring your kids' height on the wall. Wishing it would slow down. Watching God's glory reveal itself in the day to day. Meeting friends for coffee. Wishing for more time for an evening gym class. Buying bubble gum machines for anniversary presents. Saying the wrong thing and humbling yourself with apologies. Breakfasts in bed. Replacing headlights that go out way too often. Buying soccer balls and water bottles the right color. Tricking cauliflower and broccoli into new creations. Lugging a camera to capture the perfect shot of your kids. Having your pride revealed and stripped. Watching funny tv shows night after night with your husband. Sharing Christ with friends and being rejected. Picking up legos. Taking your dog for walks. Joining a bible study and pouring your heart out. Planning more vacations than you have sick days, hoping you don't get sick in December because camping on a beach in July with your family is more important. Arts and crafts. Learning forgiveness through work relationships. Letting people help you in your time of need. Realizing your sassy daughter is smarter than both you and your husband-she shows it daily with school drop off alone. Trying to eat right and less and workout more and harder. Praising clean rooms. Making time for your love and getting out of the house together. Forgetting to shut the hall door before leaving the house and coming home to 6 stuffed animals soggy under the dining room table. Praying over my kids as they sleep, kissing their cheeks as many times as I want because they aren't awake to say, Aww, mom, enough. Designing a couch that had 32 choices. Hanging up patio lights and smelling new roses growing in the front yard. Buying a new truck and selling a jet ski and volunteering at church on Sundays and spending some services out in the lobby. Alien drawings on the fridge. Rupturing ear drums and forcing flu shots on screaming kids. Being afraid to enter new rooms alone; reassuring my son of the same. Supervising science experiments (not for school, mind you) and painting pink toes. Head snuggles on fever days. Letting your kids stay up late on Friday nights. Playdates with neighbor kids. Trips to Ikea with my mom. Texting bible verses to friends to cheer them up.

with all that, I don't have time to drink! 

I kid, of course, because really, I made time before and if I really wanted to drink again I would make the time. But go through all this and not feel it all? Not live it all? Not be there for it all? Not invest in it all? Well that would be a tragedy. It's been three years today that I have filled my life with good stuff. Not the bad stuff I thought would make everything better.

Three years.