ACCOMPLISHMENTS-by Heidi McLaughlin
Posted: June 12, 2023
It’s true. As we get older we accumulate more experience and wisdom and see life through different lenses. Clearer insight comes after years of struggling, disappointments, victories, success and failures. We work so hard to get to that place of “we did it”. Everything we’ve worked for so hard has finally come to fruition. That should ultimately satisfy us.
But there’s always more isn’t there?
I’ll finally be happy when I pay off the mortgage, get my children into a good school, get that promotion at work, have a hefty retirement fund and the granite countertops. As an author and speaker it’s always about the next big speaking engagement, next book contract, next trip and writer’s conference. It’s about making the right connections, social media numbers and book sales. This has been my life for over 20 years and it’s been a super, exciting ride of hard work but also much joy and many accomplishments.
But eventually, the next big success is nothing more than the ice-cream flavour of the week.
My most important, greatest joy and accomplishment is right under my nose. My children that God gave me as a gift. A gift that needed to be nurtured, trained, disciplined, prayed for and enjoyed. I call it an accomplishment because at times it was hard work. The teenage years had their struggles and angst. The years of praying for my daughter’s infertility and my son when his first marriage fell apart had me daily on my knees. The grief we all suffered after the death of both my beloved husbands, and my children lost their two fathers.
I call it an accomplishment because we’ve all worked hard.
I look back and see my children as my hardest work of prayer but also my greatest joy. I’ve always loved my children passionately and wholeheartedly. In fact I call them “my heartbeats walking around the outside of my body.” If I never wrote another book, never had another speaking engagement or a big successful project, I would still consider myself the most successful and accomplished woman on planet earth because of my amazing children.
They are my love, my joy and my legacy.
As I observe the coming and goings in their life my heart overflows with wow moments. Wow God, you let me be their mother.
Wow God, they have taken what I’ve taught them and raised the bar. Wow God they are so generous, kind and wonderful parents. Wow God, we all really like being together. Wow God, I get to see the people You created fulfill their magnificent potential.
Wow God. Thank you.
