Category: JOY in 2012

If my tendency is to begin these posts with descriptive images about the quiet hum of family life,  then tonight is different.  A wonderful week, an even better weekend, yet the children got louder, busier, more wild as the night progressed until we reached a full-volume cacophony long before bedtime.  Gratefully it was equal parts humor and tears, conversation and craziness, wrestling and watching.  But cacophony is what it is:  a discordant mixture of sounds, jarring to hear, and we had plenty of that going on.  At last they were all in bed and the quiet didn’t descend in a gentle blanket slowly creeping over us; it disappeared as things do when the power goes out:  suddenly, completely.

And so here we are, down to only twelve weeks left in the year.  I recognized in myself this week a stress underlying everything I did, and after some fairly detached self-observation, discovered that it was largely related to nothing more than the change in the calendar.  I was worried because the end of the year is approaching must faster than I’d like.  The sentence “too much is still undone” has been replaying in my mind to the pace of a freight train gaining speed.  I actually reached the point this week when I acknowledged to myself that yes, I do indeed love fall and all the slowing down, sheltering in, cozy living it conjures in our minds and hearts.   But the first thought that followed those lovely images was this:  I don’t deserve it.  Ridiculous, and yet it was my first thought.   I guess in my heart all those lovely fall rituals come when the work is done, and this year I feel like I can’t slow my pace just because the earth grows colder for there is “too much yet undone”.

I suppose some of these feelings come naturally with the week that also brings a descent in temperatures and a clear change in the air.  Regardless of how much I want to hang onto later sunsets and warmer temperatures (please just until soccer/lacrosse seasons end?) the day will come when my leaf, too, will drop and I’ll find myself  snuggled up with a mug of hot chocolate and loving it.  My heart is just behind the timeline a bit.  I’ve no concerns about it catching up.

It was a week of hard work and traditions.  Traditions that ground us as a family, that make my children feel like all is well with the world because mom made the cinnamon rolls she always makes on Sunday morning for General Conference, and so forth.  It makes me happy to do it, knowing they count on it.  Small steps forward here and there, lots of focus on various skills which certain children need help with.  We ate well, played hard, folded laundry, did homework and so forth.  Friday night found me in the freezing wind with jackets too light for the weather, watching our two daughters play soccer at the same time on two fields immediately adjacent to one another.  I had to write that, of course, because it’s the only time it will happen and when there’s also a playground, well, what more can you ask for?  {I almost asked for that cup of hot chocolate on the way home as my toes thawed.}

I visited a friend this week who lives an hour away.  Because she works full-time, I had to go on a day she wasn’t working.  It turned out that her day off fell on the day when it’s hardest for me to lose housekeeping time but I felt like I should go anyway.  I’m not sorry I went; indeed I’m certain it was the right thing to do, but I was right about the house.  I never caught up.   Time with a faraway friend is worth a dirty house any week, though, don’t you think?  Enjoyable conversations with a fellow soccer mom while sitting on the sidelines together were also a bright spot.

The overwhelming feeling of my heart right now is simple and deep.  I want to be better.  Please help me be better.  I will work harder.  I will love more.   This desire to improve, this yearning for more is steady and strong, keeping time with my physical heart.  I am teary-eyed, a little overwhelmed, and yet amazed at the simple but powerful knowledge that I know where to look for the help that I need.  I know why I can hope for such help.  So the please becomes a prayer and a commitment and I close the day with a certain knowledge that I am not alone.  I am a daughter of God.  I am raising his children.  Things will work out.  Life is good.

Happy October!

Jennifer

The fan hums consistently as it pulls the cool air in through open windows.  Outside there are the faraway sounds of cars passing, sounding farther away than they really are.  The moon rises slowly in the sky, framed for the moment between branches on a pine tree.  The house is mostly quiet but for the muffled sounds of little girls playing but trying to hide it.  I wonder why I describe these moments of quiet so often in these posts.  Perhaps it’s because pausing to notice and share them is such a luxury in my day to day life.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve always enjoyed quiet but never really knew it until quiet had been almost entirely erased from my life.  Perhaps it grounds me, helping me to savor the life I have even at the end of days that I didn’t love.  Maybe I just love searching for the right words.

Regardless, here I am again, and in the brief moments it took to type those sentences, the scene has already changed.  Suddenly two girls are in my room, one professing her ultimate goal of sleeping on my floor and the other jealous of the idea, using a plastic hanger as an imaginary bow to shoot arrows of air at her sister.   I mind the interruption, and yet I don’t.  It’s my life!  Suddenly I’m grateful that I write at all, knowing that this stage will pass before I am ready and one day I’ll be swimming in quiet and wishing for the stampede once more.

I’m not sure how to judge the week.  It was a good week.  Nothing too crazy happened, and I like weeks like that.  I feel good about the things I did this week, but my heart wasn’t in a lot of it.  Every day I had things I “felt” like doing, things that are good but which ran counter to what needed to be done.  I’m happy to say that I stuck with my duties and so things hummed along rather nicely.   My favorite quote from James Lehman was my banner this week:  “We don’t feel our way to better behavior, we behave our way to better feelings.”

My little one has been potty training this week.  THAT is reason enough to stay home and forgo any urges to leave the house!   My daughters scored some awesome goals in their soccer games.  We read books, drew pictures, played with friends, picked vegetables from our garden, tried new recipes, shared favorite treats with friends, joked and laughed and worked.

I had hoped to have the entire house whipped into shape by today.  I made great progress but there are areas which have gone untouched and areas that obviously didn’t work like I wanted because they’re already back to a state of chaos.  But I’m working at it and that’s enough.  We had some small setbacks which tempted me to be discouraged but I was able to keep things in perspective and not let it phase me.  I was tempted to think that I’m not learning anything but again I didn’t go there.  Behavior, not feelings.  So I got back to work.  So many skills to teach, so many hugs to give, so much work to do, and I’m thrilled to be here doing it.  Really, in many ways, that is joy.  Being able to do your own work.  What a lucky girl I am!

Jennifer

Here, we are, another Sunday night, another week gone.  The air is cooler, the sun rises later each morning, and our outdoor evening activities end earlier.  It was a productive week, yielding success in many small projects around the house.  I cleaned out cupboards that aren’t any fun, like the cleaning cupboard, the medicine cupboard, and so forth.  It feels good, though, to be digging out in those little problem areas that bug you when you’re in too big a rush to stop and fix it.

The week was also full of  activities.  Parent/Teacher conferences at two different schools, practices, games, social commitments.  I’m so grateful that we’re making this all work.  Yesterday my awesome husband took over all the games for the day, taking the whole family with him to Tooele to give me several hours alone at home.  I did a deep cleaning on all the bathrooms and wow, did it feel good!

My parents came to town this weekend and we had a great day today.  My sister came down from Logan and we all went to my brother’s house in Spanish Fork to celebrate the blessing of his baby.   A really great night.  We’re still in the thick of it tonight, so I’m going to be brief here.  There’s much more I’d like to write, but it is enough to say that this week I felt joy, lots of it, for lots of reasons.  More than once tears of gratitude pricked at my eyes, tears of laughter were wiped from my cheeks, and smiles were abundant.  We turned the music up loud, danced and sang to our favorite songs, spent peaceful minutes quietly reading together in the same room.  We ate good food, shared conversations, prayed together, joked together.  In short, we were a family, and it was awesome!

Have a great week!
Jennifer