This morning I was born. My mother struggled with birth until dawn. I went home in her arms. I cried. I slept. My eyes focused on her beautiful, ephemeral face, familiar somehow though I had never seen it before.

While she was getting pancakes on the table, I bounced on my sister’s knee. I listened to the piano. I grabbed a stack of fat crayons and began to scribble on the walls. By the time we sat down to eat, my hair had grown long and brown with thick bangs framing my face. I spilled my orange juice on my pretty dress and went to change into shorts and a t-shirt, put on my backpack, and go to school.

After breakfast, I learned how to read and make letters and numbers. I made a thousand laps around the playground. I made friends and watched them change. I changed. My hair grew longer and my bangs grew out. I filled a dozen journals. I took piano lessons and learned the guitar. I made a few quick trips to the ocean and back. My brothers and sisters went to college and got married. I learned about algebra and chemistry and wars and governments and how to write stories and essays and how to choose words carefully to say exactly what I mean. I was done with high school by noon.

At lunch, time stopped for a split-second when I met the man I would marry. He was carrying a guitar. His voice struck a chord somewhere deep within me. He asked me to sing. We wrote a hundred love songs while we finished up our chocolate cake.

We got married right after lunch, and I spent an hour or so driving back and forth to grad school and work, filling more journals, making music, planning our future. At 1:30, I graduated and we bought a house. I spent the rest of the afternoon having children. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 times we dropped everything, rushed to the hospital, and I became the mother in another child’s story.

Now it is 4:00, and I am just about to have my cup of tea. It is nice to sit down for a few minutes before a busy evening of raising eight children into adulthood, attending their weddings, and babysitting their children. Not to mention dinner prep, clean up, and the book I am hoping to write today.

I honestly don’t know how I am going to get it all done before this day is through.

As the steam rises from my cup, I take in the fragrance. I drink the tea down like a shot of hope. And I linger, for one long, suspended moment-in-time, in the grace that brought me this far.

If you’d like to watch my read aloud video of this video, you can see it on my Facebook page here:

This post is an excerpt from the book I am currently knee-deep writing. I have set a goal to finish by December of this year. If my writing resonates with you and you want to help me reach my goal, I’d love for consider joining my inner circle on Patreon. This is where your support can change my life. Find out more by clicking below.