Hi friends,
I’m writing this early on a Saturday morning, up because one of my kids has a stomach bug — the second person in our family this week to spend the night miserably vomiting in the bathroom. January is a weird time for me. As much as it seems like it should be a fresh start, I always feel like I’m dragging myself through the first weeks of the new year. I usually take a social media break during the Christmas season, and getting back to posting and reflecting feels especially hard. I’m still not in a good rhythm yet. I wonder if you feel that way too?
Most of my days have been filled with writing and revising the book manuscript I’m stitching together for Brazos Press. I love this process, the intensity of knowing what I need to get down next, the flow that magically arrives when I am in the middle of the writing process and time moves like silk, the struggle to make something coherent and beautiful of an idea that was once just in my mind. But when I’m in this process I feel a little separate from the rest of life. It’s harder to see friends. I have to force myself to make space to go outside or exercise. And the hours that slip past when I’m writing sometimes ask to be filled with something more substantive, something physical. I have a babysitter for Ace most afternoons when he gets home from school so I can squeeze a little more work time out of the afternoon hours, but the other day, after a few days where I could see that he was missing me, I took the afternoon off work and gave my time to him instead.
We cracked a couple of eggs in a bowl and whisked oil and water into the gluten free pumpkin bread mix I’d been saving for a moment we would bake together. Ace is a pro at stirring, and when his brother called me for help upstairs, I looked at Ace and willed him to keep going. “Buddy, keep mixing it. I’ll be right back.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that I came back to find Ace, still standing on his stool at the counter, with our bowl of batter upside down on the floor, oozy pumpkin goop all over the old hardwood floor. He was dangling the whisk in front of his eyes, watching it move like a clock hand. Ace loves to watch things tiktok in front of his face, and he doesn’t love things on tables. Not the mail before it’s been opened, or coffee table books, or candles that sit in the middle as decor. And over time I’ve learned that if he’s left alone with a cluttered table, he’s going to fix it, and probably not in the way I find most productive. I had just hoped he’d be attached enough to the batter to keep that particular bowl on the counter. I could say I should’ve known better, but I think I always live in a hopeful sort of acceptance, hanging on to the idea that someday he will be able to keep that bowl on the counter, and when that day comes I’ll be glad I gave him the opportunity.
All that to say, we always have opportunities to do something new, to be flexible, to look for what we need. Maybe I’ve needed a longer break from social media than I first thought. And maybe the book-writing-process is just something I have to give myself to, even if it steals time and energy from other parts of my life. And maybe our best intentions (intentional time together through pumpkin bread!) don’t quite turn out like we’d hoped. But what is good and beautiful is the time we give to each other, not the product.
I thought of that as Ace helped me clean up the mess, licking his fingers from time to time while we scooped the batter into the trash and invited Richmond the dog to join our clean up crew.
We talk a lot about inefficiency around here, and if parenthood has taught me anything, it's that love is almost always inefficient. We love each other through play, through moments and experiences, through conversation and touch. And that can’t be contained in our calendars or in our to-do lists. I’m grateful for that lesson. And I think it's a lesson that extends beyond our closest relationships and into our spirituality. The connection we have to the divine can’t be determined by how many prayers we pray, how well we internalize teachings, or how quickly our old habits die and new virtues shine through. Just like every relationship, the experience of finding spiritual nourishment and transformation happens in fits and starts, flow and moments of sweet connection, good intentions, and batter on the floor.
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