Does it ever occur to you when you wake up each morning, that you might be the luckiest person in the world…and not even know it…??

One warm May afternoon, during my grade ten English class…our teacher assigned us the task of describing Utopia…and could it even be possible given everyone’s differing ideals of perfection.  Would it include endless wealth?  Never aging?  Tropical beaches?  I think in a lot of ways…I’ve never really stopped thinking about this question…thinking about what a ‘perfect life’ would really look like…

Last Monday, my husband started his thirty-seven week parental leave.  For the next eight and a half months, we get to be home as a family of four…an enormous blessing that, even now…ten days into it, we’re still trying to wrap our brains around.  This morning, I woke up after the most amazing sleep {something that – with two small children – is generally the exception and not the rule!}.  Down the hall, I could hear Avery giggling in her crib while my husband was reading to Hudson.  Having slept with our windows open last night for the first time this year, I could hear the birds singing and the melting snow trickling down the gutters.  After the four of us went out for a glorious morning run, Hudson played with some friends while I went to a yoga class and Steve did our grocery shopping for the week.  Now, as I write this, both kids are sleeping {three cheers for coordinated nap times!} and my husband is relaxing on our deck.  Later today, I’ll begin editing two photo shoots that make me smile just thinking about them.  This will likely be followed by spaghetti and running through a few spring puddles before we all curl up in bed…watch Finding Nemo, and then wake up to start it all over again.

This life…right here, right now…is by no means glamorous or fancy.  It’s a life of countless trips to the park…endless boxes of Cheerios…and far less sleep than we’ve ever known.  But this life – as we know it – could be the most perfect life.  I say this because, this life…could also be over tomorrow…

If time has taught me anything…if having children has taught me anything…if witnessing life has taught me anything…it’s that nothing lasts forever.  Not wealth.  Not youth.  Not even tropical beaches.  It’s perhaps the cruelest reality of life but it is also just that…reality.  It may hit a year from now, a week from now or ten minutes from now.  But it will happen.  You know it.  I know it.  And so we are left with only right now…we are left with our lives as we know it.  We are left with lives that – if we actually gave them half a chance – could be the most perfect that they’ve ever been.

This means that one of two things is likely occurring at this moment; we’re either living {and loving} what is currently right before us, or we’re waiting…waiting for something better…waiting for something bigger…waiting for something that may never come.

YOU…could be the luckiest person in the world…and not even know it.  YOU…could have the most perfect life…and not even recognize it.

Those spring puddles…those little laughs…those quiet mornings…{yes…even those sleepless nights!}…those could be perfect moments.

And those moments are life…as we know it…