Love Songs

I thought I was going to bed.  I was in bed, contacts out and everything.  The kids are still and perfect in their sleep.  The house is quiet except for the dishwasher and the lullabies wafting from their room.  I can hear them from my bed.  They are the source of my sleeplessness. 

When we first had children, I came across a CD called "Lullabies For a Peaceful Sleep."  It is part of our memories now.  We still listen to it.  It is one of the sounds of love.  There are so many songs on this album that talk about how mom and dad will be there through the night, no matter what.  Songs that scared the living crap out of me as a new mom.  How do you live up to such a romantic, godly standard?  The task seemed so daunting at the time but of course I was trying to wrap my head around years at a time instead of days, moments.  I cried them to sleep many nights, rocking and hoping that I could do what the songs said, pledging that I would do my best and that, above all, they would know that they were loved. 

I'm sure my angst was magnified partly due to wicked hormones and lack of sleep but what I wanted most was to be able to somehow infuse them with love with every tilt of the rocker and every breath exhaled.  In the dark, alone with this life that I had been given to try not to screw up royally, it seemed like 18 was light years away.  Eighteen months might as well have been a fairy tale as well.  But I'm measuring things differently now.  The rocking chair doesn't get used much for rocking to sleep anymore.  More often than not, it's a pirate ship.  In a little over a year my first one will go off to kindergarten.  He's beginning to tell time and add and spell.  My three year old makes his own stories and songs at the top of his lungs and my youngest will be two this fall.  She thinks she's all grown up of course. 

It's much too soon to be crying over the first day of school but I know that after the first one, the air will be let out of the balloon and the world we've inflated here at home, that seems so much bigger than life, will fly away and we'll be waiting to see where it will land.

Will they remember these lullabies the way I do?  Or will it be a memory of waging war and finding excuses to keep bedtime from coming?  I know I can't make them love me.  My little lady says "I love you" now before I do when I lay her down.  I know that one day it's possible that she will hate me.  And as much as they may one day doubt their love for me, I hope they never doubt my love for them.  Sometimes it's the best we can do.  To make sure that the ones we love know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we love them.  I know there is One who went beyond a shadow of a doubt for me.