It must be nice....

I was chatting with a friend the other day about family and life, when they said to me, 

“It must be nice to have children that grow up to be good people.”

Those words swept over me like a surge in the calm waters of the gulf I live on, not disturbing me, but almost moving through and around me at the same time.

“It must be nice to have children that grow up to be good people.”

  

It kept reverberating in my head as so many of the moments in my children’s lives flashed in my minds eye with each wave.  The conversation moved on, but the gentle waves kept coming,

“It must be nice to have children that grow up to be good people.”

It is.

I am proud of them.

They are good people.

I am proud to point to each and every one of them and tell others about them.  I can’t imagine ever feeling different about them, even when they irritate the hell out of me on occasion.
I have more than a handful , but short of the dozen that supposedly would have made them less expensive.  And each one of them could not be more different than each of the others. 

The only thing I would change in their collective lives if I could, would be to remove pain and sorrow.

Some say, “But how would they know true joy without suffering?”
My answer to them would be "I did not have to lose a daughter, to know and appreciate the joy of having her siblings in my life".

One needs not suffer lack, to be satisfied with enough.  One needs not suffer pain, to experience bliss. Nor sorrow, to be filled with happiness.  One simply needs to be a good person.

“It must be nice to have children that grow up to be good people.”

It is.

REB