Everything that happens is either a blessing, which is also a lesson, or a lesson which is also a blessing.

If we allow our one-and-a-half year old to "help" us fold laundry he will learn something about buttons, zippers, snaps, where things go, the physical properties of cloth, what happens when you drop it, how easy or hard it is to carry compared with everything else he has ever carried, what clean clothes smell like, how a big towel can turn into a small bundle, how the small bundle you just folded can turn into a big towel again, plus any songs we care to sing or stories or related or unrelated facts we care to pass on.

We do not have to get our children to learn; only to allow and encourage them in their learning. We do not have to dictate what they should learn; only to discern and respond to what it is that they are learning. Such responsiveness is at once the most educational and the most loving.

We can see that the baby is as much an instrument of nourishment to us, as we are for him.

The gain is not the having of children; it is the discovery of love and how to be loving.

Parenthood always comes as a shock. Postpartum blues? Postpartum panic is more like it. We set out to have a baby; what we get is a total take-over of our lives.

The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it.