Remember when your issues and your inability to cope seemed like the most enormous problems in our life? Well, maybe you don't remember that. I, however, do remember it. Somehow, though, I don't remember it quite as vividly anymore.
Remember when I used to tell people that at least your brother was an easy baby? I did. And he was.
Remember when there wasn't a daycare in town that was equipped to handle your issues and we went through, like, four of them in order to find a place that you could cope with and that could cope with you? Man, that sucked.
I downloaded a ton of pictures to a stick to put in the digital frame and I love how nearly every picture taken of you captures not the raging little girl so tormented by her issues, but a beautiful, smiling, curly-haired girl, sturdy and strong, loving her life. The more time passes, the more that is the you I remember from those times. I think that's a good thing, how time eases painful memories the more of it that goes by. It helps us keep the past in the past and lets us love today.
You take my breath away with how grown up you are becoming, the connections you are making about life, this world, your friends, our family.
Its funny how life changes, how things that are true one day evolve and change and the truths of those truths dissipate and become something else. My faith is buoyed by the constant affirmation that redemption is available for all of us. I see it all the time, every day, in you, in me, in people I meet. People whose lives today weren't what they were a year or a decade past. In essence, still the same person, but doing thing differently, leading a changed life.
Maybe in a year, three years, ten, your problems will be larger, true. But maybe they won't. You're such an incredible joy to me -- and no matter what, whether we're struggling again or soaring, I will love you with all my heart.
