I interviewed Arlene Mulder, the Mayor of Arlington Heights, IL, yesterday.  She is an interesting and very pleasant woman and we had a lovely time talking about her life and how she got into public service as well as the yummy things she grew on her farm back when she was a kid.  What struck me the most was her statement of, "I have had the perfect life."

The perfect life.

Now from talking to her, I found out about things that someone might think she would want to change.  She might have wanted work as a teacher longer before she bacame a mayor.  She might want to live closer to her grandkids right now.  There are lots of things we can think she might have wanted to change.

To make her life better.

But she even said, "I wouldn't have changed a thing."

I would not change a thing.

What a testimony to the trust in a plan higher than ours.  And what a contentment that God put her where she was supposed to be every step of the way.  And for a mom...

what a freedom to know that every choice is not ours to make.

And more importantly, the choices that our children make are just that ...their choices.

Oh, we need to pray.  And we need to train, and we need to love on them like crazy, but we also need to let go.

And fall into the grace that God loves these children more than we ever could with an all consuming love.

And maybe, at the end of our life, whether we look back and think it was the perfect life or find that there were many things we would change, the most important thing will be to know that pretty soon, we will look into the eyes of one who lost His life for our love and we will hear,

"Well done, my good and faithful servant."

This parenting things takes work.  It takes time.  But today, while we are living in the MOMent, I want to also live in the future and look forward to what these little lives will do for Jesus.

Because His perfect life is yet to come!