The Roller Coaster That is a Family

This past few months have been so difficult for me.  Health challenges, my own anxieties weighing on me, activities, a busy husband, and kids needing so much from their tired and overwhelmed mama.  Sometimes you just feel like you move from one crisis to another without a break in between.  And all the while looking forward to some balance in your life that doesn't come in nice, neat, even stages as you want it to.

Instead all you get are little moments.

Like when your three-year-old pretends to be a kitten.  How could I have forgotten when my other kids did that??  It's the pretend-to-be-an-animal phase.  So much fun.  And suddenly I get more cooperation from that little kitten that I am patting on the head than the stubborn toddler that preceded her.

And that symphony, oh that sound at night of those croaking frogs out in the pond. My favorite sound.

I have to make a choice.

A choice to cling to those moments, or let myself get completely overwhelmed by the other stuff.

Sometimes I do, truly get overwhelmed instead.

But then I miss more moments.  Because the best ones always come when you are completely overwhelmed.

One of these was last night:

Quite a picture we were (wish someone had taken one). Me, lying on my bed, with one pair of hands on my belly, then another boy coming in, and another. Six hands all over my belly waiting, oh so patiently waiting, for that baby kick that never manages to come while you are waiting. And me, silently listening to the entertaining dialogue of three fascinated boys:

 Did you feel anything?
 No. 
 Anything yet?
 No. 
 Wait, I felt something! (Then a frenzy) Where? Where? Where?
 Gotcha!!!


Oh those boys of mine.  How I love them so much!!

And how I needed that moment to cling to.