Hard.

I was talking to a family member earlier about how badly I used to let other’s negative opinions of my family size get to me.  I told her that only recently have I woken up and realized what a waste of time it was to ever let it affect me at all…because the bottom line is that we’re happy.  We love our kids.  We know how blessed we are.  And the kids are happy too.

I told her that one of the arguments I’ve heard against us having a large family is that “it’s too hard.”  This always baffles me how this can be an argument against something.  Aren’t the best things in life “hard”?

Seriously.  If people gave up when something got hard, no one would finish school.  Run a marathon.  Start a business.  Get married.  This list could go on and on.  Personally, if I was afraid of “hard”, I would have never joined the Navy, and I would have missed out on so much.  As hard as it was to leave home at 19 to go to boot camp, it led to some of the absolute best times of my life. I gained friends that I will have forever and I learned lessons that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

If I was afraid of “hard”, I would have never gotten married.  Anyone that knows anything about marriage knows that it can be hard sometimes.  But you work through the hard, and it leads to something that is better and better every time.  Yes, marriage is hard.  But it’s worth it.

Obviously, if I was afraid of “hard”, I wouldn’t have kids.  None at all.  Because any parent knows that even having just one child is hard.  I remember how tired I felt as a new mother to my first baby.  I felt like a zombie and I had no idea what I was doing.  My baby had colic and would cry for hours at night while I held her, pacing around the house.  It was so hard.  I was so exhausted.  And I would do it again in a second, because she has been so worth it all.

As have all of our children.  We are tired most of the time, and our house is always a mess.  It takes forever to go anywhere.  Sometimes they are sick and it gets even harder.  Sometimes they fight.  But….sometimes they dance around the living room for no reason at all.  They sing at dinner.  They take turns playing peek-a-boo with the youngest and all laugh.  They tell me “I love you” every single day.  When I’m really lucky one of them will fall asleep on me, and it’s one of the best feelings in the world.  Yes, it’s hard sometimes.  But it’s worth it.

If I was afraid of “hard”, I wouldn’t have written a book. I wouldn’t have continued to pursue having it published after all of the rejection letters I received.   I wouldn’t be writing my second book.  Yet I did finish a book, and am having it published.  And I am writing a second book.  And I will pursue publishing again.

It’s going to be hard.  But that doesn’t scare me.  I read somewhere that if you have two roads to take, you should choose the more difficult road, because it will yield the greatest reward.  I believe that to be true.

Until next time…