a family

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2012/03/i-saw-someone-today.html

I love things like this.

Loving Lilly, living with Lilly, being Lilly's mommy, raising this beautiful girl, is the easiest thing I've ever done. The most natural. It's the one thing in my life that I've never questioned, that has always made sense to me. She made Jon and I a daddy and a mommy, she made us a family.

She makes us prioritize. And I don't mean by teaching and therapies and thinking about the bigger picture. But because of her, we sit and laugh. We plan - from vacations to the theatre to doing anything that inspires us to make the most out of each day, each moment. Appreciating each other and all the little things.

We go to plays, we go to the movies, we go to restaurants, we go to Disney World and Europe and all over New Zealand and the US, to the beach, anywhere, because we love it - and it's what families do - but also to show others that life doesn't change. It's not hard. It's not hard to take a baby which God has given to a marriage and love it and just live life. It's not that everything is always easy 100% of the time, but debating with a 5 year old over bedtime is certainly not unusual, and the hugs she gives me once she's ready for bed are priceless. It's worth it, she's worth it, and no one should be defining the worth - or the worthiness to live - of a child anyway.

When she was born, I didn't know what exactly to do with the hopes and dreams I had of a typically developing child. But knowing her, loving her, watching all that she is and can be, my dreams are somehow bigger, grander. She can move mountains, she can influence, she can touch many lives; and she makes so many people so very happy. I can be frustrated with the ordinary momness of life moments, and then she'll do a complicated puzzle without any help - something I questioned even recently whether she'd be able to do - and suddenly I'm so proud in a way that I never had experienced pre-Lilly.

She makes us happy, and we make her happy, and thank God we exist together, as a family.