7:38 A.M. - Sunday, Mar. 13, 2005
step-by-step manuals?????
Over 30 years ago, someone placed a precious tiny person in my arms. I looked into those eyes and realized I was a mother, my husband and I new parents. This was not a shock as I had almost nine months to anticipate this moment. I had a head full of all the perfect and correct ways to raise a child. I listened to everyone that would give advice, some with little ones, some with older ones, and some that choose for various reasons never to have a child to rear. No matter if a person has a child or not their input is welcome, we all have had the experience of being reared, this in my heart gives us all front roll seats.

All the information I had carefully filed in my mind became scrambled when this baby opened her eyes and let out a cry. Nothing I had been told worked to silence her screams, from this day on I started my very own manual on how to raise kids.

Four years later a new gift from heaven was placed in my arms. This time I was so very confident. I had a self-written manual in my head that I had been working on for four years. All the information I had carefully filed in my mind became scrambled when this baby opened his eyes and let out a cry. Nothing I had tried before worked to silence his screams.

I begin to rewrite the manual, editing, erasing, ripping out pages and tossing them in the trash. I spent a record amount of money on white out. I made it day by day over the next four years until another beautiful girl child was placed in my arms. The manual in my mind was in shambles, entries marked out, tears spilled over the years left smudges of ink leaving no visible words.

I removed her blanket and looked under it, I searched the little portable bed she was brought to me in and I could find nothing. Where was the manual that should come with each child born to us? Where are all the correct answers? Here I sat gazing with such love at a tiny little miracle from God, and HE failed to send the set of instructions.

I wondered why after eight years of intrusting me with such precious gifts of life and the Lord knowing I was still clueless why he failed to send those set step-by-step manuals. I could not imagine our Lord allowing me to continue to bungle another life. Now where would HE have placed that manual?

One night I was sitting at home looking into three pairs of eyes as I told a made up fairy tale. Little eyes all fixed on my every word my every movement. The light danced within their eyes, the love filled the room�I understood.

There is no how to raise kids book. Not one with all the answers, we parents is work in progress. We never know it all. Every day, every situation plays out differently; no hard-core facts can fix it all, or make it better.

I believe each of us is born with a "how to" manual within our hearts. Only our Lord and we hold the key. We cannot read it all at once, and with each child, the rules change.

If today, someone would place a tiny new birth within my arms I think I would almost hear the click, click of the rewriting of the manual of life. The only thing that would never change would be the love felt for one of Gods greatest gifts to us.

Life.

Sandyz

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