I was two days from delivering sweet baby Amelia when I sat down at my kitchen table and started this blog. Now over 250 posts later, it’s getting a new look and a more narrowed focus.
If one can narrow randomness.
Thanks for joining me on this journey, for commenting on my musings, for helping me find faith in myself and this gift. I enjoy telling you about our lives. I hope you enjoy reading about them.
Some of my favorites…
Sometimes we are spinning out of control and don’t even know it. On Monday I took my big girls to the park (because winter is never coming to Georgia) and despite the plethera of expensive slides and monkey bars and rock climbing walls, all they wanted to play on was the Merry Go Round. Probably the same one that’s been in parks since I was a kid.
Around and around they went. Them and the other five kids who were there. “Faster, faster!” Shrieked Madelynne. “Slower, slower!” Echoed Annabelle. Can you tell how they are different?
They seemed in perfect control. They would jump off and take turns spinning and jump back on. They would lean over the bars and lift up their legs and make mommy holler, “DON’T DO THAT!” They were happy as can be, wind in their hair, flying through the air. Unrestrained.
Then I made them get off and stumble to the car so we could go home and start supper and on the way home Madelynne threw up in a McDonald’s bag.
“At least I had something to catch it in,” she says mournfully collapsing on the living room floor because she was way too muddy for furniture.
And I thought, what a picture of life. Sometimes we’re spinning way too fast and way too much. We feel like we’re in control, enjoying the ride, laughing.
Then we lose that momentum and everything catches up to us and suddenly we don’t feel so good anymore. And I remember, that’s why we should slow down.
Just slow. Just watch. Just breathe.
Enjoy the ride but know when to get off.
Sometimes on Monday I like to link up with Carissa over at lowercase letters. But today is Tuesday. Monday passed me by in a blur of strep throat and dishes and wrinkled shirts.
So I’m linking her to me today because I love this post. And it’s so timely for me right now. Joshua will be starting a new job in a couple of weeks, yay! He’ll be working closer to home which means more time and less gasoline charges. Hopefully we’ll go from sinking financially to treading water.
Which should be enough blessing. Like Carissa said, I’m not promised a savings account.
But too often I want to focus on my wants. Which I often mistake as needs.
As in, I need a bigger house. With a wrap-around porch and gorgeous views.
And doesn’t baby Gus need a nursery and a nice crib and some decor that Amelia likes too?
Or how about I need this outfit for next fall. It says “I may have 4 kids but I’m still cool and put together”, right?
But do I really need any of that to be happy? And if that item is intrinsically tied to my happiness, won’t I crumble when it falls apart?
Everyday of living within my means is a struggle for me spiritually, emotionally, physically. I think I make it harder than it needs to be. No, we don’t have any discretionary income.
But we do have Family Friday Night Pizza.
No, I can’t hire an awesome cake decorator for Amelia’s birthday.
But I can bake out of love. I’m thinking a version of this….
As we end a month of resolutions and resets, a month that seems to give permission to start over, and approach a month devoted to those people we love the most and those causes that touch us all, I pray I will be reminded that my sins are white as snow and He will clothe me more beautifully than any lily in the field.
The irony of this post is that I only have about ten minutes to work on it because it’s almost after school time and while sometimes they are content to watch a movie or play with their dollhouses or color and let me work, the reality is that too often I get interrupted and lose my train of thought.
Sort of like right now.
For the past couple of days I have been trying to find enough time when my mind was clear and my kids were occupied and my husband was not home to write this post. But it’s hard to find that extra time in a day cluttered with errands and commitments and phone calls from “paid area solicitors” and dishes and laundry and email and did I mention I subbed two full days this week?
On Tuesday night when I was hyperventilating a little bit because I hadn’t folded the girls clothes and I hadn’t followed my own chore schedule and I hadn’t had a bath and I was just so tired and I wanted to blog but my mind was too frazzled—it hit me. I shared a tip with my MOPS girls the other Friday that I hadn’t been following myself.
Life needs margin. As in white space. Extra time. Decompression. A few moments every day to breathe. And I had overbooked myself this week and was rapidly spiraling downward into perfectionist-induced meltdown.
Insert margin. I just needed some time to be mindless. To chop vegetables or fold towels or sweep a floor or read a few pages of a book or write a blog. Just a bit of time when I didn’t feel so compressed by my not-so-need- to-do list. Time when no one was pulling on me or at me.
Then today I opened my well -worn copy of this book and read these words:
As workers for God we have to learn to make room for God – to give God “elbow room.” We calculate and estimate, and say that this and that will happen, and we forget to make room for God to come in as He chooses.
This is a great idea from Gypsy Mama. Now let’s see if I can write uninterrupted for five minutes. It’s supposed to be more stream-of-consciousness than edited and perfected posting.
Because I ever have time for editing and perfecting.
Here goes….
The first Friday of the New Year. The topic is roar…
Roaring for what exactly? And how? Amelia likes to roar. Especially when she’s strapped in the grocery buggy for longer than thirty minutes and the line is long and she’s bored. Then she starts roaring. So I say, Amelia are you a tiger? And she says in that sweet little almost-two lisp, Yesh.
Then we pretend to be an elephant, a pig, a cow, a duck, a chicken, an owl (with flapping arms and hoo-hoo) and a lion (which is basically a tiger again). It’s adorable and makes me feel like a roaring mama. Fended off that tantrum, that’s right.
Sometimes she roars and chases her sisters around the house. They squeal and run and climb in and under the kitchen table and make lots of noise that I sometimes get annoyed by. So then I roar like a mean mama. And they get in trouble for—for what? For being kids? For having fun? For distracting me from something that can’t possible be as important as they are?
Their daddy roars with them too. He chases them all around the house and they play and play. Always right before bedtime. And I’m usually in the kitchen wiping down the table and wishing I had the courage to roar just for the fun of it. Just to hear my own voice and their laughter.
ROARRRRRR……I’ll work on it.
Lindsey P. Brackett 