Emily P. Freeman, who is one of the best voices I know on reflection, encourages her listeners to occasionally pause and write out glimpses into their current days. What do my days look like these days, you ask? You didn’t but I’ll tell you some of them anyways.
These are the days of our whole family being at home all the day long.
These are the days of bouncing around a fussy baby while simultaneously trying to teach a first grader and a preschooler.
These are the days of so much spit up.
These are the days of waking up every other hour.
These are the days of listening to my kids play together for hours on end.
These are the days of finding notes around the house from my son, telling me how much he loves me.
These are the days of embracing a messy house.
These are the days of learning how to be gentle with myself.
While navigating through a worldwide pandemic, attempting to homeschool for the first time, and re-remembering how to care for a newborn baby, I’d be lying if I said that most of our days are smooth-sailing or even moderately turbulent. The truth is there are a whole lot of days where I feel like I’m just desperately clinging to my sanity while simultaneously trying to provide a space for my kids where they feel nurtured and safe…a grabbing my air mask and hoping that there’s another few hanging around somewhere for my family…kind of situation. And in the midst of some of the worst days - when I can tune my eyes to see it, there is so much beauty all around. My son asking my daughter if she’d like him to read to her when she couldn’t go back to sleep. My daughter crawling into my bed in the morning and asking if I can snuggle with her. Holding my baby’s tiny little toes in the palm of my hand and taking a deep, sweet breath of her newborn baby smell.
These days are so incredibly fleeting. I know this. I also know that even on my worst days where I’m left daydreaming about the day that I send my kids back to school…I will look back and mourn the loss of having them home. And what haunts me most days is thinking about how many hours I will have wasted focusing on how hard or miserable it all is rather than tuning my eyes to search for the beauty. Embracing the hard as a part of a bigger picture that is chaotic and messy, but also one that is filled with so much beauty that it can take my breath away when I take it all in.
Here’s what my hope is for this season…for myself and for all of us navigating our own hard in very profound ways. May we leave the laundry, forget about the dishes piled in the sink, pour ourselves a cup of coffee with a generous amount of cream (and maybe a little maple syrup), and be seekers of beauty. And when it all goes up in flames, may we be relentlessly gentle with ourselves and find the beauty even in the midst of the blazing fire.