Children - God's Greatest Gifts

With my sweetheart and my new grandson Liam

I used to wonder why older couples were always telling me to enjoy my children while they were home because before long they’d be gone. I thought those people were senile and just forgot all the hard parts. I knew being a mother was exhausting and figured old people could afford to be sentimental because they didn’t have to deal with the day to day mess and stress of life with small children any more.

It didn’t occur to me that those wiser parents had already experienced what I was going through and actually missed it when it was over.


When we’re young parents and can’t see the end from the beginning, the ability to have children is often taken so casually. We have no idea that loving or not loving this child will affect thousands of people for generations. We don’t understand what we’ve been given. Mostly we see what we seem to be giving up.
Yet, as the years go by, we realize that our opportunity to love a child is God’s greatest gift to us.

Once I read about the last hours of a famous author. On his deathbed a reporter asked him if he was content surrounded by all the prize-winning books he’d written. The author turned to the reporter and replied that if he had it to do over again, each one of those books would be a dearly loved child and grandchild.

Today I am surrounded by dearly loved children and grandchildren.  I am not famous and I have not written a prize winning book.  But this I know . . . this man knew what he was talking about.  At the end of our life it does not matter so much what we have done  . . . but who we have loved.