one day it will be still

I’ve become the mom so caught up in the busy.

So caught up in checking off the next thing on the list. Of mumbling okays and uh-huhs and not really looking. Of telling them to be quieter without realizing that they are happy and loving life. Of seeing the messes and telling them to pick it up without realizing it was their magic. Of paying more attention to their homework then listening to their hearts.

I just have lost me in motherhood a bit. I lost it in trying to keep up with everything. And in the keeping up I missed the simple.

Oh I love them.

I know, just like you love yours. It’s a love that can’t be described. It’s a love of staying up late for them and praying over them and wishing and hoping. It’s a love of tears falling and hopes dashed and dreams given up. It’s a love of losing self just a bit only to discover that the best way to love is to find one’s self again.

And yet there is the mundane. The normal. The day after day after day after day.

Of sandwiches made with mustard and honey roasted turkey and sliced in half. Or grapes washed and picked off of stems. Of folding socks and finding socks. Of driving to school and waving good bye and picking up and waving hello.

The mundane sometimes chips at the core of me.

Just make it to bedtime I’ll think. Then I can have quiet.

But what if chasing quiet and harmony isn’t the journey to be embraced?

What if instead we simply started to be grateful that this is the chapter that we are living right now?

And instead of trying to change it we learn to love it.

Because we know it will not happen again.

What if, in fact, we are to exist in this tension of loving with everything and existing in just a bit of chaos and unknown?

What if you and I are to be broken by the day to day struggles simply so that we realize that we are worth fighting for ourselves again?

What if right now was exactly the moment when we decide to stop pretending to live and really live?

The sidelines of life aren’t where we should exist.

Life is vibrant. And living in vibrancy means living with the knowledge that sometimes they’ll yell or be loud. And sometimes there will be struggles. And tears. And toys knocked over. And days where we don’t know what to do next.

And it is in that crazy that we mother.

Because instead of wishing for it to be quiet we instead are grateful for the gift of noise.

Because one day it will be still.

And I just have this feeling that sometimes we’ll miss it.

(or at least most of it…)

And we’ll look back and say remember when.

Remember when.

We’re in the midst of creating that when right now.

Embrace it.

~Rachel