Mornings are easier now. I don’t load up a mini-van full of 5, 4, 3, 2 . . . 1 boys for a mad drop-off dash to 1, 2, 3 different schools. Half the mornings, I make a skillet full of sausage and eggs with either toast or biscuits for the ones heading off to work, college or high school. Other mornings, well, there’s chocolate chip granola bars in one of three cookie jars (One has granola bars, another chocolate chips, and the robust, yellow chef cookie jar is full of dog biscuits: know your cookie jar before grabbing and going – LOL).
“Have an exciting day,” a voice says over the phone.
“Exciting is over-rated,” I reply. With five boys, excitement conjures words like commotion (wrestling at the drop of a hat), instigation (“Mom, he touched me), drama (“If I don’t eat now, I’m going to die” drama), adventure (owls, snakes and turtles tales), passions (heart passions, emotional passions, hobby passions, temper passions), humor (note: the chances of five people in a car being in the mood for any kind of humor at the same time? Not often!), goal-tending (and I don’t mean soccer goals), dropping off, picking up and arriving fully equipped (which includes water bottles that often get left behind), finding the car keys, and general hullabaloo.
Excitement overload leaves little time for savoring the good stuff – with family, my husband or God. Surviving is not savoring. Morning grab-and-go-God-moments were standard fare for, well, ever, it seems like. The excitement is thinning out as my nest empties out.
After 32 years of mothering 5 boys, the daily is changing. The idea of getting up at 5 a.m. for an extra hour just about makes me shudder. I’d rather stay up until 1 a.m. to find the good stuff with God. But there’s been a change. One of those changes is an extra hour dropped into my daily. The grab and go is becoming sit and savor.
Not always, but more and more, I am learning how to fit into this more roomy morning hour.
This new, seemingly still hour has been refreshing to my soul.
Whether on my porch, or in a chair by the window, I settle into this quiet that feels like plain woven muslin. One of my sons recently finished the chronological bible in a year – and I thought I’d try it.
. . . . and the chaos of the daily seems held off, if just for 15, 30 or 60 minutes.
The chaos that’s held off? It’s held off by the one I invite into this space – who draws near to me because I draw near to him.
This still space in my daily has become a place of peace where I have room not to just realize contentment, but to allow this contentment to unfurl without it being crowded out.
He wraps this peace that feels like plain woven muslin close about me and gives me time . . . time to vintage the blessings he gives me daily, to sort out what he says to me in those blessings, to let the things of Him redeem my day before I’m in the midst of it, to thank him for all he’s done.
Sitting on the porch as the morning comes along – or by the window where I can see the garden, he wraps me in this peace and offers me a long, refreshing drink of his living water. This peace isn’t binding or restricting. It’s liberating yet protective, comforting yet stretching – like a plain woven muslin blanket.
When I invite him, he brings that peace with him that calms the seas,
that makes me think I can walk on water if he’s beside me,
he brings me the peace that withstands the I-don’t-have-enoughness-to-do-what-needs-doing:
like the wedding host who didn’t have enough wine,
the apostles who had nothing to eat but needed enough to feed 5,000,
or the widow who had only one jar of oil and no means for more –
He generously brings his peace, so much of it, that though I don’t have enough within me to be enough for the day on my own – He does. He doesn’t just provide more than enough, either. He has such an ever-lasting supply, that he overfills my soul – overfills it so much that it spills over into the space around me, into the people around me, and the chaos and excitement trying to creep upon me.
Sometimes the only thing separating us from the Spring of Living Water are those doors either we have constructed or doors others have constructed. Either way, we find ourselves separated from what our souls need to survive. The only way to take down those doors separating us from those living waters Christ offers us is to ask him to remove those doors – and he will. Once we have drunk deeply of what he offers so freely, we need to make sure we neither rebuild walls to separate us from him again and that we, ourselves, don’t use doors to God’s Spring House to keep others out ~ Blue Cotton Memory
Oh, yes! There are changes at the blue cotton house, sweet, supposed-to-be changes. It’s a part of my boys growing up. It’s a part of my growing up, too, though I’ve been at it longer than my boys. They would say I was being silly. That I was already grown up. But you and I, we know we are still children to what God knows. Yet, when I invite God into the changes, He brings grace into them and redeems the change.
What changes are you experiencing? How are you sharing those changes with God?
“But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a fount of water springing up to eternal life.” ~ John 4: 14
Such a beautiful post…it is amazing how, as our lives change, our God stays ever the same.
I am so busy in the life with young teen now and looking forward to the slowing and savoring. A young momma I were talking and she was saying how she was so busy with a two year old, and I just smiled. Back then I felt less busy. But I know life goes in seasons, and this season will pass. And I will probably miss it when it has passed by.
I miss the kind of busy with the littles. It’s a kind of busy that always made room for a nap 🙂 That’s what I love about rainy days and snow days – everything stops, everyone’s home – and life just slows down. Every season has a different kind of busy and a different kind of refreshing! Wishing you God’s Shalom in this season you are in!
I’m in that slowing season of life too, Maryleigh. At least slow in that I can take that deep breath with God, instead of huffing and puffing through a long day as a mom on the go! 😉 My times with God are, my husband will attest, the best part of my day and becoming richer and richer the older I get. So it’s nice to know I’m not the only one who feels this way. I do really miss being in the active mom stage of life, but I’m also really enjoying being a mom from afar as well. I don’t think I’ll want to be a grandma from afar, mind you! But that stage is taking its sweet old time getting around to my neck-of-the-woods! Love your heart, dear friend!
The silver lining, Beth! That’s what it is – the silver lining to growing older!
Maryleigh, I feel like I’m right there on your porch, catching up on life over a cup of tea. I hear your season, I hear your reflections. And there’s some kind of hopeful anticipation, too …
So good to visit together once again.
Blessings on you. And yours!