Watching my children unfold is like opening the best present ever imagined.

They zig and they zag and sometimes it feels like there isn’t room enough in me to hold worry and love.  The stretch that is parenting is excruciating beauty. And, it has grown me more fully than any other adventure.

What I am loving on this day is our children’s humor and tenderness.  We have gotten to that stage in life together where parents and their foibles are fair game for the art of the roast.  Our children pick up the pieces of goofy and fine that their parents are and have at with gusto.  This is a good thing.

It’s a good thing because in the house I grew up in, it was fully against the unwritten rule of family to move into the honesty that goes with good roasting.  We had a family joke (or was it a joke?) that if our mother told us to jump in front of a car then by golly we ought jump.

I’m seeing a different dynamic with my children.  While sometimes I WISH I could command and jumping (not in front of cars but in the directions I think are best) would happen without question, I seem to have participated in parenting children who are willing to check in with their parents on questions of direction but are not driven by parental commands.

This is good.

And, I think that the more mature their parents are becoming (please God I hope this is so) and the more we as parents are able to take ourselves less darn seriously, the more room there is for flat-out great fun at our expense.

I really like our children.  They are, each one of them, seeking to use the good that they are to build good around them.  They have a network of good people who hold and challenge them, and best of all, they are appreciative of the gift that is good loving.

I don’t get my mother mitts on them near often enough, but I watch their exploits via Facebook and texts and phone conversations and they make me laugh and they make me know that miracles are real.

God knows what they will come up with next in the living of their days.  What I know is that they are solidly fine, funny, and unique creatures who somehow came my way.

Amazing, that.