This is Julianna's first year of girl's camp and our Young Women's president asked me months ago if I would go. I sorta hemmed and hawed hoping that they would be able to find other leaders. Pretty much just ignored the issue. A few days ago I was asked - again about girls camp. They are still short leaders and still need me to go.
So after hoping that the entire situation would resolve itself without me saying yes or no either way, (really I'm not normally so flaky) I had give them a firm decision last Sunday. I finally said yes. Why was this such a big deal?
One word : Bella.....
I have to leave her for an entire week and that will mean she will be truly independent of me for the first time ever. I mean, we've left her over night but not a solid 24 hours. It feels like a big deal to me. Like the beginning of the end of the baby chapter in my life. It feels like I'm committed to being out of babies. Who knew that something as harmless as a girls camp could bring on so much emotion. I'm ripping off my Bella bandaid.
After explaining some of my feelings to a friend in the ward she sent me this quote the other day. It moved me to see my feelings expressed so well:
"A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out.
You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.
But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that's love by a different name.
She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away.
So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams.
You heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down."
.Barbara Kingsolver.
Amen.
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