Karen,
You will never know what a blessing her family has been to me, and how much closer we all have become. It took awhile in my life for my "maternal" instincts to kick in, and they did, just after her twins were born. The then-5-year-old was much too precocious for my taste, and we were like oil and water, LOL.
But, after the twins came, something inside me "clicked," and I found myself wanting to be around all the kids a lot, so they'd know who I was, before they got too old to care who I was. And, as God would have it, my becoming a beloved part of their lives BEFORE they needed me, made it all the easier to care for them. It was the difference between them running "toward" Auntie Linda when I walked through the door vs. running "away" from a stranger they didn't know!
I knew I had arrived, the day she called me to baby sit (before she got sick), and I dropped the shovel, the hose, the rake, the dirt, the veggie seedlings, everything I was up to my elbows with in my garden -- because I wanted to go be with the kids more than I wanted to play in my veggie garden!
But, God!
