Thoughts While My Toddler Is Sitting On Me*

I am about to be 40 and, I’ll admit, I’m going into it with a little more anxiety than I hoped I would.

I was playing with my daughter this weekend and doing the math in my head. In 20 years, when she’s 23, I will be 60. 23 is awfully young, and will I still be around then? I think so, but maybe not. She’ll still need her mommy; how can I help her as much as I want to help her?

Then I think, Sahara, you just have to stick around until 70 or 80, when she’ll be 43.  But now that I am here, I know that 40 doesn’t feel that old. I have been lucky enough to still have my mother after 40 years, and probably will for a while more. I want Wee One to have that, too.

I believe in life after death. I might even believe in reincarnation, but at the very least, if we aren’t reincarnated, our spirits join God’s. When we get there we find it is warm and loving and fulfilling and we have all the answers (or the questions just don’t matter anymore.)

I also believe in angels and the spirits watching over us, and so I was thinking: if I die while WO is young, am I going to be watching over her and frustrated/upset because I can’t help her? Or maybe, and this is what I’m hoping, that I won’t feel upset because I’ll know the Greater Picture, the picture that God has created, and I’ll know how she’ll fit – whether I help her or not.

And I hope, when all is said and done, that we are all together.

What do you think?

* And by sit, I don’t mean sitting in my lap like a cherub. I mean I was laying on my side and she was on my shoulders because then she could reach across the coffee table with her fishing pole.