In the Still

With two energetic children just out of toddlerhood, every day is noisy and fast with many things going unfinished and stress and whining often grinding me down to someone I would never consent to becoming. Then, when I've climbed the mountain of laundry and dishes and demanding tasks, it comes. A quiet, a pause, a stillness like a rising ocean's swell before the wave forms and just like when the waves used to lift my child's body up so that I felt like I was weightless and free, I am. Free and weightless, wish-less and grateful. Drawing in my breath and being made new and stronger. I want that still to be with me every day though so much secures its prevention. I know that much of it is my own self-produced desperation. I want things, I want checkmarks, I want experiences, I want security, I want to know the future, I want joy, I want wealth, I want prestige, I want everything the world has to offer. But, truly, I just want to be loved, the way God loves, and know it. I feel it most when someone loves me when I absolutely don't deserve it. When my little girl gathers miniature blooms from our yard's weeds and says she brought me a present, "It's these flowers. Because I love you." After I have been nothing but a selfish grouch for hours. That love surprises me again when my son pushes his feet against mine just for the pleasure of the pressure when he's telling me about his day or asking "why?" questions. Meanwhile I'm being a freakshow about homework or cleanliness before and after. But between my commands and roughness, he looks at me with soft eyes of love and sees the real me. As I write this, it has been the most beautiful, still, indigo dusk with a quiet rippled only by my gentle tapping and the computer motor's purring. In many places on the earth, this is an impossibility. But maybe not. I hope every single creation is able to be in the still.