Heart

When everyone has left your house and you sit on your couch with aching feet but a happy heart

you know that some good memories were made. You know that amidst all the crap, there is good.

The vision of the kids laughing hysterically as they passed the pumpkin to one another
 (think hot potato except with a pumpkin) will forever be ingrained in my mind. 

Because the heart of it all, it's them. They are the heart of life...they keep us alive.

Some of the carved jack-o'-lanterns

All the carvers...proud of their creations.

My crazy mom doing the Monster Mash

Blurry but I love it.

And my favorite part... Hot Pumpkin...

The Winner!

I sit here typing with a sleepy 3 year old in my lap who's

stroking my hair and apologizing because she just told me that my ponytail

wasn't pretty and that I wasn't a girl anymore. She was mad at me for telling her to go to bed...

Then she felt guilty for being mean to me.

All she really wanted was to be held.

And so I held her.

And I kissed her hair and cried warm tears of the deep love I feel bubbling up in my heart. 

I feel like this was the culmination of a really stressful few weeks

I go through so many emotions on any given day that sometimes,

it all catches up to me and the release is so beautiful. Soul-shaking.

I find pain beautiful.

There's something so poetic about feeling pain. Forcing you to grow, to get stronger...

To look inside and dare yourself to be better.

“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”

~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

All you can really hope for is to have someone you can share that pain with.

Someone who gets it. Who can help you to work through it.

To help you to see past it to what you really have, which makes it all that much more beautiful

because then not only have you grown, you've made a connection.

And it doesn't get much better than that.

I go to bed tonight with a full heart and a feeling that there are some amazing things to come...