In the Quiet

It's Sunday night. Both children are asleep and Joel is upstairs doing the dishes. To say that this past weekend has been busy would be an understatement. It's come and gone all too quickly and was hot on the heels of well, rather an average week. 

While I could make a list of everything that went wrong last week (and believe me, there was so much that did) a few things went right and that is what I'm focussing on as I finally have some time to sit by myself in the quiet. If you ever find yourself thinking our life must be so sweet and idyllic, let me be the first to tell you that it doesn't always resemble the pictures or stories shared in this space. 

You'll never see pictures of the art installation Leo made with his own 'paint', or the sheets stripped from beds because he was up sick one night. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. While I won't be sharing pictures of my tears when it all felt too much, don't think for a second that they didn't happen either.

Although we experienced our first lousy week as a family of four (to date), because we shared it together it's somehow already remembered with a tired smile in my memory.

A poem of Wendell Berry's comes to mind:

IV

How little I know in my widest 

waking, held here by the making

of days, days of work, days,

fewer, of rest, suffering myself

to be made by days that

cannot be helped, or changed or stopped,

and so I wait to be changed,

by work, by rest, by what

I know into what I know not.  

Already I'm breathing easier. What about you?