Last week my 19 year old daughter gave me a present.  Well, she gave me a clue that led to a scavenger hunt, collecting more children as we went along!  I had quite an entourage by the time I got to the end!  

The story is a bit funny, so I'll back up a few days.  I have been wanting the book , "Passionate Housewives, Desperate for God", and even had it in my Amazon.com shopping cart.  I was waiting to see if another daughter was going to order and we could combine orders for free shipping.   That daughter decided not to order, and I had thought about just going ahead and getting it.   But I didn't think I did.  Then I get an e-mail from Amazon saying my order had been shipped!  Boy, I thought I was a major scatterbrain for sure to not remember going ahead with the order, but nothing would surprise me around here!

Therefore I was quite relieved to find out it was my daughter that had ordered it and not me!  Whew!  I'm not as scatterbrained as I thought!

As much as I wanted the book and am thoroughly enjoying reading it, the greater gift that was in that box is priceless.  Absolutely priceless.  And I'm going to share it with you.  Remember, especially you younger mommies, it will be worth every ounce of investment (prayers, sweat and tears) that you put into those little ones.  They will rise and call you blessed, and even though you know you weren't the perfect mommy, things like this will warm your heart.  More than all the awards I won in high school (including being valedictorian of my class) that are now in a box somewhere, more than any praise by any one else outside our family, more than anything the world can offer, these sweet, priceless gifts my children give me from time to time mean the most.

So, here is Leah's rendition of  "I'd Rather" by Meredith Gray (She tweaked the first stanza, dropped a stanza, used one other original one--the fifth in this poem--and she wrote the rest).

I'd Rather

I'd rather be a mommy

than anyone on earth,

Raising up a child or more

of unpretentious birth.