Musing

I'm having a true loaves and fishes day - way too much to do - but I genuinely have faith that somehow I'll get it done. But I want to take a minutes to get these words down. Auntie Sarah posted a lovely article on Facebook from the New York times about how important it is that we mean what we say and say what we mean when it comes to parenting and family relationships. This got me thinking about yesterday.

For no real reason, I spent a lot of yesterday feeling like I was swinging at an easy pitch and missing by a hair each time. I felt like I knew what to say, but I just wasn't articulating myself well, like I knew the dance steps but just kept landing on everyone's toes. Some days are just like that.

Everyone seemed to need just a hair more attention than I had capacity for, seemed to have just one more story to tell or bit of homework than I had time to manage. The biggest thing that I noticed by the end of the day was that we weren't listening to each other. You were all talking over each other, interrupting with your own exploit or question of the day.  I realized that I've not been very focused lately and as always that cascades down the family.

So we're going to have a reboot - it started this morning when I said that we all need to work harder to take care of our own things.  I said that it was time to get rid of what we don't need - because the things in our lives were starting to cast a shadow over the people in our lives.

And I mean it. I'm loading more and more stuff up from the house and banishing it to the garage where we can send it to someone who needs a warm coat (why does everyone have three spring jackets?) or nice boots (really, we have 3 pairs of toddler boots and 4 snow suits for Thomas).

So I'm hoping little by little to get back to focusing on what matters. I need to clear away the clutter so it doesn't feel like were all just treading water in a sea of clothes, books and broken toys. The visual clutter sometimes actually seems like noise - and right now it feels like we're shouting.

I want my life to say the right things. So I mean what I say, we're going to work hard to simplify right now. I'm going to hold you all to these standards, and when we falter (which we will), we'll work together to pick ourselves up.

I do work hard to align my words and actions.  Sometimes I falter and sometimes I fail, but I know that if you can trust my words when I give you consequences, you'll also believe my words when you need advice.