Thursday Morning

Not many words to share the last week or so. Change has been afoot in the house, as we have painted and assembled and dusted and sorted and nearly finished a true Big Boy room. Sam's toddler bed went away, carried off to bless some other little boy who is vacating his crib for a new little sister. Here, Sam is now the Captain of the bottom bunk, brother right overhead, and as pleased with himself as can be. ("No more babyish bed, Mommy.") And Joshua roosts overhead, with a reading lamp and his treasured buddies-- so many stuffed animals I have lost count.

John did the vast majority of work on the room, and it is a good combination of looking great-- three camel colored walls with an accent wall in navy-- and working well. There is much more space for play and just being than before.

Of course, in true "if you give a mouse a cookie" fashion, this touched off a chain reaction of cleaning and organizing that will be with us in fits and starts for the rest of the summer. Here I have to be careful-- I am an all-or-nothing girl, and I am apt to work and work until I fall over, or get really unpleasant to live with, for the sake of being done. I am seeking to separate my projects into bite-sized pieces, leaving lots of room around them for lazy reading, cooking with the boys, playtimes and do-nothing times. I am not good at that.

We are reading the Little House books aloud-- nearly finished with Little House on the Prairie, and the boys have their usual library goodies. I have a stack of my own I am working through, and pillowcases to embroider for the boys' new nests. It helps me so much, to carefully calibrate the pace of our days, to have those sorts of things built in, that really cannot be hurried or rushed through, that I am forced to slow down and savor. The boys are my teachers here-- they are so much better, as many children are, at being in the moment they are living in.

I know this is a recurring theme in my posts, but I struggle so with it, and suspect I am not alone. Even though I am a stay at home mom, and being unable to drive, most days I am truly, physically, at home, I so often have to stop myself to ask what I am rushing toward. And then, if the answer is to get through my work, to be able to stop, is how I spend my stopped time really recreation? Is it "re-creating" me for homelife, wifehood, mommying? Or would I be nourished more fully to slow myself down IN my work, to drink deeply of the bread making, the cleaning, the reading, the play?

It is that sort of life, even more so than being here to care for the children and not having a paying job, that is truly counter cultural. To deliberately do things in such a way that there is "less to show for" a day. To accept, once and for all, the the Witness of my days only wants a heart yielded to where I am called. To be willing to be quiet, within. To still the interior chatter, and take off the masks I wear.

My mind rebels-- oh, how I want to be seen as capable, creative, strong, busy, industrious, interested in and passionate about the "right" things. . . on and on. These are all good and well, but in such a light they become commodities to be measured by, to replace the ones of money and professional status that I have abandoned.

Instead, to desire that when others look at my life, they see only its Author. . . the One Who has called me to this place and time, and by His hand makes this life a sacrament to linger over, dishwater and dough, shoes to tie and boo-boos to kiss, pages to read and pictures to draw, morning and evening, steady on. . .