I love new beginnings. I also love Anne Of Green Gables. “‘Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?'” That little redhead had a lot of good sense.
2013 starts off a year of transitions for me and I am pausing to take a bit of a break and restructure our days so that there is better balance, with the scales weighted heavily on home and motherhood and family and less on internet.
I spent four months reading The Mission of Motherhood: Touching Your Child’s Heart for Eternity by Sally Clarkson. Four months, y’all. I can read a book in an afternoon but it was so weighty that I read it in small increments, stopping to ponder and absorb the great amount of truths I found in it. Then I’d hop on the counter while Jeff cut carrots for salads and fill the kitchen with chatter of my heart’s desires and how to connect them to our daily life.
The answer was always less time here and more time here, in the rooms that are absent of a keyboard.
“But I love to write” I would say, brow furrowed in frustration. Because also, I am so lucky to be able to.
I just need to better balance.
Which means making some changes, setting different goals, transitioning to new routines.
Because now I have a two year old and that means my days are filled with painting and learning letters and gymnastics and trying to keep her from splitting her head open (again.) With attempting to get glitter off of the couch and digging playdough out of the crevices in the table and trying to persuade her to eat a bite of something, ANYTHING. With an extra load of laundry because bibs no longer cut it and only one stretch of naptime (if I’m lucky.)
These are the days that years of infertility made feel like a distant dream and now I am living in them, with the knowledge that as a one child family, they will never come again. These are the days of your children’s childhood that people tell you to enjoy, because it goes by so fast.
For every thing there is a season and I don’t want to miss this one behind a screen.
So I stepped down from a few online commitments. I took on less assignments for the new year. I set some social media limits. I gave myself permission to not do Project Life. I said no to a design team offer. And I decided to write more, although perhaps a little less for this particular space and a little lot more to ink the pages of that book I’ve never been brave enough to attempt.
Today I just wanted to embrace the idea of starting fresh, and the goal of making 2013 something beautiful by experience rather than obsessive documentation. Because for me, this is where my heart’s desire leads.
Happy New Year ♥ ♥ ♥
“Great is His faithfulness; His mercies are new every morning” – Lamentations 3:23
(p.s. I’m not totally disappearing, just definitely posting less. I’d miss y’all too much!)
