These were the photos on my camera at the end of the day yesterday.These, for whatever reason, were the things that caught my eye well enough when my camera was in reach that I took a photograph. A day. Our life. SO MUCH within and around that. I'm guessing that I'm not the only one who sometimes wakes up in the morning as my brain starts running through the list of the day and the tasks ahead and the places we need to be and the logistics (oh, the logistics!) of just how to make it all work....and thinks that evening is a long-away and distant goal. Or, who, at the end of that day, looks back and says, Really? Really we fit all of that into a day?? In our best of moments, that's when we laugh together, Steve and I. Because it's crazy, really, just how much we fit in a day (all of us - me, you...). Here in our world, right now, there's a lot going on. I suppose this has been a slow realization this academic school year for us - as Calvin started school, Papa went back to work, and the littles are not so little and their list of activities equally not so little. And it isn't even that any one of us is overdoing it, really. Singly, it all feels good and balanced - a few special things that we love. Work we love. A school we love. Activities we love. Not too much for any one person....but collective, put together in a family of seven (plus Gram, with her own adventures!), it sure is a lot going on. And it's all a shift, of course, a really big shift from the days when we lingered at home and didn't pay attention to the clock except the one in our hearts or heads that told us it was time to nap, or time to snack with the little beings around us. We are, as a family, in a different season of life than that one, to be sure. And I know I've talked about this here before, so forgive me for being on that same train, but well, I'm still really on that train right now (and I'm guessing some of you are too). And I often need to remind myself - or I want to remind myself - that my work in this season is to be the peacekeeper. Not in the way of keeping fighting siblings off each other (although there's plenty of that too), or taming temper tantrums, but in the way of keeping the spirit of home alive and healthy. In noticing when each of us needs to slow down and take a break, and helping to make sure we're able to do that. In making sure that there are moments of quiet - both individually and as a family - in our full and busy days. And in being able to - and help my kids be able to - slow down the rush of the world around us and be still. And challenging though that task may be (so tempting it is to catch the tail of the flurry around us and anxiously follow it into chaos!), I do think it might just be the most important work I do as a Mama.
Friends, as we all begin the weekend ahead, I hope for tiny, but important moments of peace and stillness for you as well. Amidst all the fullness of our days!