Lots of navel gazing going on here. On the surface, that’s about what you’d expect for someone with six mouths to feed. A part time job, seven toilets, dust bunnies, and nary a housekeeper in sight. Bins and bins of laundry, lined up like little children, waiting for my attention.
Yet God is supplying ways to be more than a mom-slash-caretaker, and one is to enjoy the satisfaction of true friendship. I awoke yesterday with the intent to stop the self-centered pattern of my morning. To be deliberate in leading my thoughts past the packing of lunches and the desperate search for a missing shoe. Instead, to guide my mind to friends the Lord has been gracious enough to open up paths for relationship. So satisfying how the day unfolded: morning prayer for a dear friend in a difficult situation, a gift of reading quietly delivered, a phone call to someone going through a major life transition. This is not my original to do list: I needed to be folding laundry, fetching groceries, organizing Valentine’s supplies, scrubbing toilets.
This day was devoted to acts good for the soul.
Even the four year old got a rare chance to play with a sweet friend after preschool. Twirls in pretty dresses, oversized bows blowing in the wind, holding hands they ran. Absent of cares, satisfied to live in the moment, enjoying each other so well that their pure pleasure spilled out in giggles, piercing shrieks of joy, and whispered secrets in make believe castles.
Yesterday reminded me to reach beyond my cocoon of domestic issues and little people management (my specialty) and make the hours more meaningful by connecting with those in my life. To reach out and invest coveted time in friends. It was a day of reassurance that I can be the hands and feet of Jesus to those placed in my life. As the Irish proverb goes: In the shelter of one other, the people live. I am part of that shelter.
The Lord is teaching me the simple lesson that I will find satisfaction in life when there is less navel-gazing and more hand-holding. Not when laundry is done, but when relationships are tended to with attentiveness rather than left piled in a bin, languishing.
The day wound down, and the little one snuggled into her four-poster bed with her beloved pink pillow. “What is a play date, Mommy?” she asked.
“What do you think it is?”
“I think it’s a celebration of friends. Just like today.”
That is how I would describe my day, too.
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