The Day After the Snow Day

The three older kids have been put on the bus and the baby is still sleeping. The house is warm, and it is quiet. My focus for November was supposed to be, appropriately, "Thankful", and yet I've not done a great job at pausing to think of things I am thankful for. It's been so busy-- photo sessions and rehearsals and church callings and visits and lunchdates and flu shots and even a snow day. It's been challenged by upsets in the routine. By fresh things to worry about. By colds and coughing coming from various rooms in the house. 

But right now, the day-after-the-snow-day, with the older kids dressed, fed, combed, bundled, and sent off to school and the little bundle of energy and opinions still slowly stirring to the morning light in her room... with only the sound of the dishwasher and the furnace quietly in the background, I am taking a very intentional moment to pause and say, "this moment is a gift, and I am at peace." I am feeling the calm of the in-between. And I am thankful. I am the MOST thankful for the life in between the calm--- those crazy kids, that steadfast husband, the friends and the family and the adventures and the life experiences-- but this morning I am also profoundly grateful for the pauses in between, when there is enough space to reflect and remember. If not for these beautiful pauses, I'm afraid my life would just keep sweeping me along and I wouldn't be able to say, as I whipped past another experience, thing or person, "that was amazing! I'm so lucky! Hooray for this adventure/humorous mishap/life lesson!" Perhaps that's a skill I need to work on-- to be able to grab those realizations in the middle of the frenzy-- but that's a hard one. And I'm not there yet. 

So for today, I am relishing this sunny, quiet, peaceful morning pause. And with it, all the hard stuff and the crazy stuff and the good stuff I've been experiencing all this month are settling into focus and I am able to say THANK YOU to all of it. I am thankful for it, every bit. "Life is brutal. But it's also beautiful. Brutiful, I call it. Life's brutal and beautiful are woven together so tightly they can't be separated...So now I embrace both, and I live well and hard and real..." -Glennon Doyle Melton 

Happy second-half-of November. I hear a Larkin beginning to squawk, so this moment is nearly done. Time to get back to work. 

♥