To My Benjamin

Dear Benjamin,

Yesterday was 78 months together.
We are all kind of sick.

This morning you made pancakes with Victor, complete with butterscotch chips, sneezes, and sad, fussy baby.

This is the stuff of life together.

Thank you for bending to your load, for studying Greek vocab while you fold laundry and give Victor a neb treatment.

Thank you for sitting in the Lazyboy in Victor's room, working by the glow of your computer screen, while he goes to sleep.

Thank you for getting up in the chilly mornings, trying to avoid the squeaky boards, and seeking God while everyone else sleeps.

Thank you for coming home from a long day of class and work, and dropping your arms full of bags to pick up an armful of boys.

Thank you for taking the jogging stroller with you on runs, for delighting in the trees, the hills, the bumps, the eagles, the fresh morning air along with our sons.

Our life is full of Legos and laptops, crunched Cheerios, church meetings, doctor visits, interrupted sleep, boogers, baths, discipline and storybooks, papers and finals, snuggles, and giggles. It is a rich, full, exhausting, wonderful place to be.

Thank you for being there with me.

I love you.