LUCKY?

For the hundredth time this year, I had to hear it. 

"You are SOOOO lucky. You don't know how lucky you are that your girls get good grades." 

I've learned to bite my tongue but I won't hold my fingers from the keypad tonight.

Luck? Are you saying their grades are LUCK? 

Luck like a lottery ticket? A lucky penny? Like finding a twenty dollar bill on the curb?

It's not luck. It's hard work. The hardest there is.

It's the kind of work that we've been working at since birth.

Reading BOOKS instead of CAPTIONS. Painting ABCs instead of DVDs. Playing BOARD games instead of VIDEO.

It's not luck.

We counted steps each time we climbed. We'd count them backward on the way down.

We sang rhymes and made them up. M-I-R-A-N-D-A That spells Panda's name. A-V-E-R-Y That spells Avery's name.

We'd count how high til the blocks collapsed, named every critter and creature on every walk, and hunted for ABCs on every ride.

It was not luck.

The homework papers, the study guides, the handmade projects; those were just the warmup to our nights. Once the papers were done and the glue had dried, they'd fight over which books to read and which side of my lap to sit on til we agreed on all of them and Mommy made room for two.

Schoolwork before sports and homework before fun.

Books before a movie and stories before snacks.

This had nothing to do with luck.

"You are SO lucky that you GOT smart girls." I was told.

God didn't GIVE us smart girls. He gave us the parts to make them. That's all.

It's not luck that your child takes her times about things. The teacher tells you "she never finishes in the time I give her." That's only because you told her good things take time.

It's not luck that her teachers tell us "she is conscientious, goes above and beyond, participates in class and gives her best effort." We told her you have to work for what you want. Don't sit the bench. Get out there and swing.

It's not luck when your little girl has set up a blanket on a sofa and has wrapped herself in a good book pleading with you to come sit with her and "read it with me, Mommy" like it was the air she breathed.

Good grades have nothing to do with luck.

And neither does God.

It took him seven days to create his masterpiece.

It'll take us a lifetime to create ours.

And we don't need luck if we have anything to do with it. Luck doesn't grow on green clovers in this house. And it doesn't come from a scratch ticket or a rabbit's tail or a coin we find on a curb.

The only thing that makes us lucky is that we were given this chance at all. And we are putting all our "money" down on the "table" for this one. (: