Time Doth Sweetly Softly Glide....

....When There's Love at Home. So how does time glide at a home with six kids and a sick and cranky mom, you might ask? Well not so sweetly, and not so softly, but hopefully with just as much love.

Well....

It's been a summer to remember for me. Not for all the things we did, more for all the things we didn't do. Remember my commitment not to travel? Well, I kept it, but it made these last nine weeks of school break seem like somewhat of an eternity to me. My husband had his fortieth birthday last week (I so relish these three weeks of time before my birthday when I can say that my husband is SEVEN years older than I), but when I dusted off the camera to take some pictures of the cake and festivities, I found that the last time I'd used it was right around the fourth of July.

Here he is...in a few years I know I'm going to be really glad I married someone older than me...thus far, he seems not to age too much.


So, we didn't accomplish much this summer in terms of projects or trips or any of the other ways I usually measure accomplishments. In fact, I spent a good portion of my time just trying to keep afloat, trying to keep the house from falling down around me and keeping some sense of orderliness about it. I learned a good deal this summer about what is "good enough". Not a phrase that I used to use with any positive connotation. I spent a good two weeks at a pity party to which the only invitees were myself and several batches of Chex Mix Muddy Buddies. (It's not a good name for them by the way...they are not your buddies....just about the farthest thing from it.) I had some good words from a friend who said, "you just can't give up hope...when you give up hope, you start to despair". And she was right....I was falling down into this tunnel of despair....I was despairing that I would never feel good again...that there would never be a day where taking my first few steps each day weren't agony, that my kids would always remember me as a woman who sat in bed all day eating muddy buddies, as a woman who was always too tired to play with them.

So I'm taking small steps. I'm getting up every day and combing my hair...I dress my children. I feed them. I try to find something fun for us to do every few days. I tell them that I love them. I celebrate these small things and think not that it's "good enough", but just that it's ENOUGH. Because it is enough...and not just good enough. It really is enough.

I won't pretend that I'm not totally, thoroughly,completely and over-the-moon excited that school starts in two days. I am, and them some. But now that it's almost over, there's a part of me that wishes we could squeeze in one more trip to the water park, or one more lunch at the park, or one more birthday party for dad. But in the end, that's how it goes with most things, we learn to be happy with what we did get, we learn to enjoy it in the moment we have it,and realize, for the most part, it is good. And it is enough.