No Time Like the Present

I sit down for my early morning read/pray/write. The dog immediately wants out. Then the coffee needs turning down. Then I see the power cord the kids left out and have to put it away. The cat jumps up in my lap, bringing with her a pair of kneading paws and the strong smell of cat gas. Thankfully, the stench is short lived. I remember five things I should've finished yesterday instead of what I actually did: going to bed at 8pm. I can't find it in myself to feel guilty about any of them. I get up to refill my coffee cup. Another cat comes to join me. There's a brief moment when I wait to see if WW3 will break out between the two felines. I remember something else that needs doing, just a quick something, so I think I'll knock it off my list before I get back to work. Turns out that it's not a quick something. The dog wants back in. I hear the kids stirring upstairs, the creak of the floorboards giving me fair warning that time is running out.

My word for last year was "present" but still I struggle with actually being where I'm supposed to be, shepherding my time well. I'm on and off my phone and computer all day, reading a novel while I cook, juggling conversations and laundry and school books, going from one thing to the next and back again in the blink of an eye.

Some of this is the inevitable consequence of having five kids at home with me. Some of it is a choice to not prioritize well. Some of it is knowing that the time is short and every second must be used. And it's easy for me to allow in guilt over what did or did not get done, but just as easy for me to choose instead to say thank you.

To say thank you for the insane cats and the demanding dog and the sunlight seeping in over the frost and through my window. To say thank you for the cup of coffee and the husband who left me a note and a fully charged computer. To say thank you for still glowing embers in the fireplace and the ferocious sounds of a herd of children waking up and the time, however scattered, to read truth and pray encouragement and write a few words that might be what someone else needs to hear (or just that I need to hear).

And I find that, in the thanksgiving, I am present in a new way. Not in a single-minded zen state of calm, but in a way that stabilizes and softens and slows. And often, too, one that welcomes in laughter before the kids tumble down the stairs and into morning hugs.