fridays are the hardest

After school started in July and I had something else to focus on all week, Friday evening became the most difficult time of day for me. It was like the pressure that had built all week could finally escape. I could think about spending the weekend enjoying my baby's kicks and not having to worry about the next 10 minutes and how to keep nineteen 6 year olds busy and out of trouble. But enjoying the kicks also meant acknowledging the imminent count down to the last kick...

It hasn't gotten much easier. I *love* my job. I am working hard and seeing it pay off in the students academic growth. I work with a fantastic administration and couldn't have chosen better co-workers. I look forward to Friday and the break that it provides in my week but I also dread Friday and the time to really miss Sammy.

Tonight it was a simple thought about my niece. I spent the first week of March (and Sammy's 5 month day) in Colorado with my family. I got to squeeze, cuddle, talk silly to, and make crazy faces at Isabel. I also cried with her a couple times. I swear she couldn't be a more perfect baby. So beautiful, expressive, and wonderfully chubby (I'm waiting for the photographic proof of the time we spent together and will probably share it here). I thought about calling my sister in law tonight and about how the conversation would go...how she would tell me about all the things Isabel was learning and what a good girl she is, how she *finally* gave in to sleep for the evening. I pictured my SIL peeking in on her while she slept. After all those thoughts, it hit. The there-should-be-a-wonderfully-chubby-boy-sleeping-in-MY-house-tonight sock to the gut.

And so I sit here tonight longing. Thinking of my baby boy worshiping in the arms of the King and yearning for the day when I get to hold him and worship with him.

"If you cling to your life you will lose it; but if you give it up for me, you will find it."

Matthew 10:39