Just Taking a Look Around

Do you ever have the feeling that you've had your head in a hole in the ground most of the time and every so often you lift your head up and realize that life is going on around you?

I sometimes wonder whose life this is that I'm living.

I'm facing the realization that my oldest child is turning 16 next week. Ugh! How did this happen? How did she get this old? I am grateful that she and I have always been the best of friends.

When Z and I started school together, six months after we were married, I went along with Z's idea that we wait to have children until after we graduated. Not long after moving to Monmouth, Z was given the assignment to home teach a young couple who'd just moved into the ward. I was assigned to be his companion.

We grew to love Mark and Kati so much! They became our best friends, and we chose to be with them every chance we could. Kati was pregnant with their first child. We had a lot of fun finding things for their baby and anticipating his birth.

I have a hard time accepting the idea that this wasn't in God's plan for Z and me. Why would I be assigned to be Z's home teaching companion? I have little doubt that this was all laid out. In getting excited for their baby, it became clear that we could have the same thing happen to us. This had honestly never been a thought in my mind before this.

Mark and Kati moved shortly after Levi was born, but we got to enjoy their first few weeks of parenthood before they left sometime around Christmas.

The idea that we NEEDED to have a child grew and grew. By spring break, and our first anniversary, we were going to be parents! Q was born November 11th (11/11) at 2:22pm. And, our lives have never been the same.

Q was born while Z and I were in college down at Western Oregon University. Z had been accepted into the School of Education and was doing his student teaching when she was very little. The thing we understood about the Beaverton School District is the fact that they, more often than not, hire their own, so Z wanted to do his student teaching (at least part of it) in the Beaverton area, while I stayed in Monmouth.

When she was five months old, Z was also called into the bishopric of the young single adult ward. This kept us apart on Sunday's too. Our church building was under construction to make it into a stake center, so I was going to church with Q in Dallas, Oregon, and Z was going to church in West Salem with the YSA ward.

Well, at that point in time, my life would have been extremely lonely. It was such a blessing to have Q as my little companion. She gave me someone to focus on.

So, here I am now preparing to watch my daughter turn sixteen. I remember sixteen. It was a hard time. Q doesn't seem to have the hang ups I did at that age. She is fairly level-headed and happy in her own skin. She is confident and enjoys every day.

It's just scary to think that the day is coming, sooner than I expected, that the next time I pull my head up out of the hole I seem to live in, that she'll be setting off for college, so I'm not going to think about that....I'm just going to enjoy sixteen and love every minute I have her around.