Henceforth, Amy's favorite color is no longer pink. It is red, to match her new dress. Her favorite letter is now R (rather than A, M, Y, or S). On the drive to take Sarah to school on Wednesday, Amy belted out a song about all of this. I loved looking in the mirror to see her with her eyes closed and her mouth open wide as she joyfully sang as loudly as she could. Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, our little gym-uniform-lover decided to start the day half an hour early and be dressed and ready to eat at the time she is normally being a light bandit and turning off every light we turn on.
On the drive to school another morning Amy said she had a bite on her neck that was itching. She said, “I think I know how I got it. It was at recess and I think there was a bug that saw me and I didn’t see the bug. It might have been a mosquito.”
Over the past few weeks I have changed how I do dinners and desserts for the girls. I used to always let them have a treat in the morning (as long as they had a veggie first). They would rarely get an evening treat. Now they sometimes have a morning treat (after a veggie) and basically always get an evening treat if they do a good job with dinner. I am not giving them choices anymore as to what is for dinner. It always includes one or two veggies and those vary. Before implementing this change I realized that we were basically down to each child eating one kind of veggie and they weren’t the same. Amy ate frozen peas (still frozen) and Sarah ate dilly carrots. Now they are eating more variety with less complaint. We even had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup one night! Sometimes doing things so normal feels incredible.
Amy’s school had a fall festival. For part of it there was a concert of students playing various instruments. Both of my girls immediately sat down and listened and clapped after each song. Are these my children? I was rather stunned. After a few songs Sarah wanted to stand and wanted me to leave (she always wants me out of the room when she watches tv shows too). Still, I hadn’t anticipated how much they would like the concert and attend to it with no prompting on my part.
I love how Amy moves through the world. She is so delighted to see her classmates outside of class. It is as if she has discovered a treasure each time. When I take her to school in the morning they all greet each other with joy and they say goodbye at the end all of their own accord. I love how Sarah moves through the world, delightedly using a person’s name and then telling them something, such as that the next day is Wednesday and she can wear gym clothes!
About soup: there is a woman who cooks delicious soup with local ingredients and sells it to people in the neighborhood! All I have to do is order it online and then pick it up on a nearby porch on a designated day. I have known about this option for a year but didn’t try it because I make my own soup. Yes, but. This is so awesome to pay someone else to make soup for me! Lots of different kinds of soup! Delicious soup! This is changing my life!
On an only slightly more profound note than this amazing soup discovery...
I experienced grace this week more deeply than ever before. I could feel that grace, love, and wellness were there for me and all I had to do was accept them. I didn’t have to change or become better first. Grace comes from letting go, letting in, letting be. I felt like I had taken my broken imperfect self to God’s workshop and God said, “oh we just need to do a little of this and a little of that to help you feel better.” And there was grace just waiting for me. It was like standing in the surf and having the water move really far back so I could see. Then the water rushed back a couple days later and I felt like I had been knocked over by a wave and I couldn’t tell how to get back to the air. I cried about everything. Carl held me and listened while I poured out every detail. Sometimes it can feel as if all the little details that may usually be of small concern build together into the wave that knocks me down. I am feeling better today, though I’m still struggling a bit with who I am and how I am in the world.
I think when we lose the sense of grace it is like searching for the pencil that we stuck behind our ear. We are carrying it with us the whole time.
I hate losing my pencil!
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