Pausing to Delight

We walked through the door of our home, after our last family fling of the summer… and our first family vacation with three kids (more on that fun adventure later, though I will say it was a good one), to clean floors and an empty laundry floor!!!! Yes, that elicits multiple exclamation points. What? Your laundry room floor isn’t littered with dirty clothing? Mine either. Except for about seven days out of the week, something we’re working on changing.

I turned the corner from the hall and walked into our shiny kitchen with a cleaned out sink and loaded dishwasher. The only thing not in it’s place was the suitcase from our trip to Michigan earlier that week I hadn’t had the chance to empty yet.

Sounds like a dream right? It’s all thanks to my mama (and probably daddy too, who I’m sure my mama wrangled into helping her out) who stayed with us to watch the older siblings for a few days while we took Skylar to Michigan, and then sent us off on our little vacay… and then enjoyed their last couple days in Florida cleaning up after our family of five. (Again, thank you mama!!) 

This clean-house situation is something my Type-A personality strives for, something I used to have before husband and children came on the scene. It’s all part of the job, and I wouldn’t change my job title of wife and mother for anything, even though some days it seems like all I do is walk around the house cleaning up mess after mess. Though my kids are learning to clean up after themselves and they do a pretty good job when I ask them to… it still seems like sometimes all of my day’s minutes are spent on picking up or asking my kids to.

Something I’ve been adjusting in my own life lately is not spending the rest of those minutes on hurrying my kids around. Though I really do try and be present in their lives, crouching down to their height for conversations and stories or taking advantage of everyday moments like cooking or home projects as a chance to do something together, I found that I was the type of mama who used the word “hurry” in her vocabulary far too often.

My sweet friend Shannon wrote an article on this recently as part of her Mothering with HeART e-course, of which I was privileged to be a contributor, and I kept revisiting her words in my head ever since reading them. Why was I always rushing? What made me want to hurry? Yes, there are certain occasions that we shouldn’t be late for, but I should plan ahead better or allow my children more time to get prepared to leave.

“These kids know something. When you let them lead the way and set the pace, everyone and everything just seems a bit more peaceful.” -Shannon Kinney, from her e-course essay.

Recently, I came across another article with the very same theme, and if you haven’t had the privilege of reading this Huff Post article by Rachel Macy Stafford, go do it now… but then come back 😉

Back to this little family vacay we were able to enjoy, (With very little money out of pocket I might add… hotel booked with rewards points, a bag of food for poolside/park snacks and in room breakfasts and theme park tickets from friends, thank you Jeremy and Mindi!) we were so done with rushing, and made a decision to stop. We stopped hurrying the kids along for no reason and let them set the pace, even when we returned to Universal Studios for the evening parade and fell under a huge rainstorm as we waited… at first we wanted to rush them out of there, but then just took our sweet time slinging Skylar to my chest, and letting Brayden and Aliyah share the stroller and an umbrella. Instead of them feeling our frantic bolt for the exit, they were relaxed enough to enjoy the plight even in the midst of the parade they’d been waiting for being cancelled. They laughed, they played, they felt the raindrops and in it all, they reminded us to dance in the rain. It’s just how we roll now. Or at least, we’re trying to.

“Pausing to delight in the simple joys of everyday life is the only way to truly live.” -Rachel Macy Stafford, from her aforementioned article.

Yes! I hope you take the time to dance in the rain this week with your loved ones, whether real or metaphorically. I hope you grasp at the chance to pause and delight in the simple joys of our everyday life… because the chance will present itself, life is so full of these precious opportunities, it’s up to us to be ready to embrace them. Hopefully without rushing or trying to hurry ourselves through.