In The Twinkle of an Eye

This Monday, August 21st, our family drove to our home town of Casper Wyoming to witness with the nation a total solar eclipse.  It was phenomenal!  It literally is something you can't describe to someone who hasn't seen it.  It was breathtaking and spiritual.  It made you feel so small and yet so significant.  It was absolutely incredible.  As I watched this magnificent event happen, I couldn't help but cry.  It was that powerful of a feeling.  To be looking at the Sun, and to be seeing the moon and to see the whole Earth change for those brief moments.  The total eclipse lasted for only a little over 2 minutes.  It came, and it went and the moment was over just like that.

Well, that is exactly how I feel today.

There is another moment in my life, that is over, just like that. 

Today is a day I've thought about for many, many years.  It's been an anticipated day of excitement and fulfillment and yet sadness and contemplation.  Today is the day all four of my children went to school, leaving me home alone for the first time in 12 years.  And just like the eclipse, I feel like those 12 years came and went without me even realizing how fast time was moving.  It's almost like a dream.  Of course I have great memories with my children and will continue to make memories and have wonderful times with them, but those past 12 years that we've had together, with them as babies and toddlers and stay-at-home children are past.

I'm so proud of my children.  I'm so happy to be a mom.  I am proud of what I've accomplished and what my husband and I have accomplished thus far in raising our children.  We have learned so much and grown so much and are so blessed from their sweet spirits and personalities.  I'm so excited for the future and what it holds.

I will, however, always look back on these years as the most amazing, phenomenal, incredible experience I could have ever had.  (Just like the eclipse.)  What a blessing to have had these two experiences so close together.  Experiences that were beyond words incredible, and left me a far better person than I was before.