My children are why I know there isn't a God.

It's so warm and I feel like I'm sending out my leaves too early. There is no way this isn't spring. I'm alive all over with energy and ideas. I'm ready to start planting seeds and working the soil.

My girls and I, we've fallen into a comfortable way with pajamas until lunch time and tickling the baby. My big girl is an amazing thing. She is Big Sister with so much patience and grace and maturity. She would rather die than make her baby cry. I feel sometimes like I'm witnessing something impossible. She is so brave and kind and selfless.

I almost started to cry writing that description of her. Now, I'm feeling an overwhelming urge for you to know the truth about my daughters. They are impossible in their beauty. They are so gentle and patient with one another and with me.

Louisey is one year old, so when she needs her cuppie she needs it NOW. That's just the way the world is when you're one. But, she also shares me with knowledge and understanding. She is confident with my love. She knows that I will love her sister and that my love doesn't diminish when I give it away. There will always be love left for her. She's a baby and she knows that.

They live their lives as little people who believe the world to be a fair and kind place. Because of them, I almost believe the world to be a fair and kind place. There are people dying, we're killing people. We eat without knowing what we're doing. We are like oil in the ocean. We can't see, but we're running anyway. There is evil like a smokestack. Because of how kind my daughters are to one another, I believe the world is made up of things that are good.

Because we're out there. We're nestled into little beds in cold rooms. We're squinting against the sun all winter. We're shooing away the diamonds in the snow. We're holding our babies tight, aren't we? We're out there and we're making it in a world so full of fear that there's a hole in the sky. We live here and we love our sons and daughters. We duck our heads against manipulation and poisoning and we love our sons and daughters.

The world is big and the world is bad, but we make our own lives, don't we? We make our own lives and we love one another and protect one another and I'm so proud of us for all we do, even when we're set up to fail. We're set up to be afraid, to feel powerless and to listen to skeletons and research. We're all set up to live without having lived, and so many people will die that way. They'll die and wonder with their last breath, "What did I do?"

But, we're here, too. We love our babies and we seek warmth and light. We make things with our hands, we build cities with our words. We have nothing and we send everything we have into the world. We lace our love together in patterns that blanket everything. My daughters are shining examples of purity in a world where nothing is sacred. Every breath they take brings me one step closer to dying with this on my lips: "I know what I have done and life was beautiful."

My little ones are why I know there isn't a God. How could there be? Nobody gave them to me, nobody allowed me to love them. We fought for one another, through wastelands of tainted biology and a desperate love for their father so bloody and true it could have killed us. How much I love them is something I do of my own volition. It is something I worked for while the world slept. It is something I forged out of living bone. My love for them is where I meet my maker. My love for them is why the trees grow. The moon hangs in the sky to watch how sweetly they sleep. The sun comes up to illuminate the golden strands of their hair. They are everything. Nobody gave them permission to save the world. They are the world. They just did it because they are everything and I love them that way.

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