My current goal is to write something 30 minutes a day. Lately, I’ve been making a list of topics I want to put down on “paper” and the list has gotten rather long. But this morning I’ve got plumbers in my basement making an ungodly sound. And I have a 9-year-old home with a cold, sitting across the room looking at my high school yearbooks (something that would make anyone just a tad nervous) so the mental space I’m able to give to this exercise is somewhat limited for this Monday morning. So it is the trivial (or is it) that comes to mind most as I sit here—the scenes from yesterday.
We had a genuinely restful Sabbath day. Let’s just say when we made our kids change out of pajamas to go for a family walk around 3 pm people cried and gnashed their teeth as though we were asking them to walk over hot coals. In the end, the hot coals might have been welcomed because it was quite cold (we are still very much Texans at heart) and very gross and gray. But singing the 12 Days of Christmas at the top of our lungs definitely helped warm us up and I would *like* to say everyone was in a good mood when we got home…. instead I won’t make up tales, but I will focus on the positive which is how my kids do enjoy spending time together 90 percent of the time and that is a joy to witness.
I also must admit that even with delights like German Christmas Markets literally 5 minutes from your door, the “unique experience of living in Europe” is almost utterly lost on my kids right now. ALL they want to do is go to Texas to see family. It’s pretty much all they talk about and all they think about. But, I think the older I get I’ve learned it’s worth leaning into. After all, it is people that will matter in the end. It is the relationships my kids have with each other that will carry them through all these growing-up years. Our home, in all its messiness and imperfection, will be their safe space. Siblings, no matter how much they annoy you, will be satisfying in their predictability of character when everyone else in the world seems so utterly out of control. The thought of your Papa and Spicey’s house will be the salve at the end of a long season. And it will be the thought of cuddling with your Nana that will be the comfort when life feels heavy in the way that life does when hormones are hitting their hardest. It is the idea of endlessly playing with your cousins and having countless people to listen to you talk that helps in those moments of boredom that only a child can have.
It’s been cloudy and grey for 5 days straight. (I was just gifted a journal that has a little check-box at the top regarding the weather which is mildly helpful and depressing at the same time) and it is a reminder of the state of the world. The Sun is under all those clouds somewhere. But oh, how grey and cloudy it is. Such is this world my kids are in. How thankful I am they have a family where they may return and be loved and cuddled, little bits of light in all those clouds.