Best and Hardest

Lately I wonder why I never fully knew that raising a daughter would be one of the best and hardest things that we’d ever get to do in life.

Our daughter was the best baby.  She didn’t cry much and she was always happy.  Even when she would wake up from a nap, she never really cried to be picked up.  She was so content and so sweet and we couldn’t have been happier.

And as she grew, I think she always sensed how much we adored having her as our little girl.  Sure those toddler and preschool years came with their challenges, but again, it was mostly easy with our darling Ellee girl.  My biggest challenges were trying to get her to wear a pair of jeans in the winter so she wouldn’t freeze (she pretty much chose to wear dresses every single day of her life up through second grade) or getting her to let me braid her hair once in awhile.

She’s been our gift from the day she was born.  She’s smart and funny and she loves to laugh.  She has her own sense of style and will parade around town in a ridiculously fancy dress just for the fun of it.  She brings joy to so many people and having her in our lives has been the very best thing we could have hoped for.  She exudes kindness and has always had friends wherever she goes.  She loves to help and overall she is just incredible.

But lately, there are these moments that are just hard.  And they are a kind of new hard, because our little girl, is really not so little these days.  Sure, nine years old still seems small to me, but in her world, it’s not really small at all.  She’s starting to learn that life is hard sometimes.  She’s starting to have to make more choices between doing what’s easy or doing what’s best.  She’s dealing with new and more emotions and sometimes it’s just hard.

And as her Mom, I have to admit that the struggle is real.  And even though I know struggle is good for our kids because it strengthens, it’s still hard to work through at times.

Being Ellee’s mom is one of the best and one of the hardest things that I’ll ever do.  But it’s a job that I’ll embrace because our daughter is a gift.  And I want her to know that no matter how hard things are, that we are right there with her.  We will whisper true and beautiful things in between the tears and we will continue to tell her about what’s most important in life.

Hard things are good things.  And it’s funny, because in many ways I was writing this to encourage myself to help our daughter get through the tough times.  But I’m realizing that the words are true for me too.  Raising a beautiful and strong and kind daughter these days is not an easy task.  But it’s something worthwhile and something well worth working and putting effort towards.  We need to have daughters that will have beautiful hearts.  We need to raise daughters to be kind to others and to be kind to themselves.  And most of all, we want to raise our daughter to love God and to know how much He loves her and how amazing the plan that He has for her life is.  And even though this may be hard, it will be one of the best things that we can do.