Mentor's Moments

Unplanned Baby

Summer is over, and sun-tanned kids are returning to school with excitement, eager to be with their friends every day, because after three months it’s boring being home. Toddlers have grown, and they have acquired new skills: they can walk, or swim, and they know how to pester their older brother or sister far better! Mom has new challenges, and after the “rest” of the summer, she’s eager to put some order and schedule back in her life. My “baby” is 23, and somehow my year still runs from September to June, vacation, September to June.

If only we had the same eagerness to learn, the same daring to try. It is so true that our children teach us far more than we ever teach them. I recently spent the day with one of our former “Teens for Life” leaders. She is 27 now, hardly the bouncing teenager I once knew just a few years ago. She and her husband have a baby girl—a little unplanned, she hadn’t planned to take time off teaching so soon, and the budget is difficult with student loans still to pay, but how welcome Hannah was. She took her first step yesterday; life will never be the same for her or for her parents! She will never know her arrival upset anything. Indeed, her tiny little life made her parents’ lives so full and meaning-full.

And that is really what it is all about. Other lives collide with ours: our children’s our friends’, our coworkers’, or our neighbors’. It’s no accident. I’m glad my life collided with yours. I’m so glad you just “happened” into this MOPS group. May I make your life somehow a little more full of meaning, as I know you and your precious Moppet(s) will make mine, We want to be here for you. Together, let’s sail into a great year.

Charlotte Snead

Mentor Mom

September 2000