My oldest baby turned ten years old this week. Double digits. A whole decade. Two whole hands. Milestone birthdays like this really make you sit back and reflect. 

In some respects, it seems like it has been forever, but in others it seems like such a short time.  

A lot has happened over the ten years she has been on this Earth to say the least.  

I was a baby myself when I had her. Just a mere 22 years old. I definitely thought I was grown, but in all reality, I had just moved out of my parents’ house months prior to having her and I was absolutely clueless (although you could not tell me that then).  

I did not know anything about being an adult much less being responsible for a whole human being, but we made it out okay.  

But we did a lot of learning together – growing up together. 

She taught me responsibility, selflessness and what true love was. She also taught me how to survive with someone yelling at you for hours on end in the middle of the night with about two hours of good sleep over the course of a week’s time.  

It’s weird because all the things she taught me then, I am attempting to teach her now. Minus the no sleep thing – a girl needs her beauty rest.  

Most of all becoming her mother allowed me to feel and comprehend God’s love for me on a much deeper level.  

My girls did and will never have to do anything to earn my love and there is nothing they can do that would ever make me take it away. It is unconditional. Just like God’s love for me. I did not do a single thing to deserve His love and I most definitely do things every day that I am sure displease Him, but I know He still loves me and will forgive me.  

You may think that being a mother for a decade with three children, I might have this parenting thing down by now. I do not think that will ever happen. There will always be things to learn. Things will change, and troubled waters will be navigated, but we will sort through them together.  

So, here is to ten years of learning and loving.  

Happy Birthday Emmi Lou!

(Paige Nash is a wife, mother, publisher of Bienville Parish Journal and Claiborne Parish Journal and a digital journalist for Webster Parish Journal.)