A Spring of Joy

I have found myself very emotional the last few days, but most of all when I watch Asher and see how much he’s grown up, and I realize that he’s on the verge of beginning to understand life–the good and the bad.

Today while I was nursing Micah and Brian was fixing lunch, Asher found his yellow balloon (leftover from some balloons Micah had gotten from my parents). Once full of helium and floating all through the house, the balloon was now nothing but a deflated image of what it once was. Asher picked it up and kept trying to make it go “up high”, but it would only sag hopelessly to the floor. He kept looking at me and saying, “Moon, broke”. I explained to him that it was broken and had no more air like his blue one that broke a few days ago. Then he went to the trash can and started looking for the “Blue moon, broke”. Honestly, I had to turn my chair around so he wouldn’t see me and say, “Mommy, sad…crying”.

Later that day, he was talking about his friend, Kara, who used to babysit him. Miss Buracker (who is now Mrs. Marsh) moved to Kentucky right after Micah was born. Asher was looking for her last night…talking about “Buck”. When I told him that Buck had gone away with Mr. Marsh, he just kept saying, “Buck…come…home.” I had no idea how to explain that she couldn’t come home, and he didn’t understand why she couldn’t come see him. I told Brian that these times are the hardest of my days, when I see how sad things make him, but can’t make him understand that it’s okay.

Fortunately, it’s not just sad things that Asher is beginning to understand. My favorite part of today was when Asher sat down for lunch, and about half way through eating his yogurt, he looked up, sighed, and said, “Ashes happy…eat yogurt.” Such a sweet boy!

When he picks up his guitar and pick and says, “Mommy, sing!”, it just makes my day! Last night I asked him what he wanted to sing, and he started to strum and sing, “Jesus loves…for the Bible” (that’s Asher’s translation of Jesus Loves Me). It makes my heart glad that that’s his favorite song to sing, and what’s even better is when he runs back to his room to grab his Bible, crying, “Bible…Bible…Bible” the whole way. What a joy it is to watch him love the things we love…it makes his growing up even more fun!