I guess last week I took an accidental hiatus from writing.

And from responding in a timely manner to my emails.

I’ve felt a lot like I’ve been swimming underwater and the struggle to “get it all done” has been overwhelming.

This is the song a lot of people are singing, I know.

Life is full of all the things and the list of people who can do All The Things for you is short.  In fact, my list usually feels like there is just one name on it.  My own.

I’m guessing this is not an incredibly unique feeling that I am describing.

Maybe we’re all carrying too much on our shoulders.

Maybe we all need to breathe more purposefully and walk more slowly and focus more intentionally.

Drink more water and sleep a little longer and hug your kids a little more often.

Tonight, in Target, Otto asked me to race him down an aisle.  I looked at his face.  It’s really cute.  And it’s looking nothing like a baby and everything like a boy.  I set my bag down.  He looked surprised but pleased.  And I raced my eight year old son.  Him in flip flops, me in cowboy boots.  We ran fast and loud and it was a legitimate tie at the end.

I laughed because it was funny and I laughed because it was fun.  And because I haven’t laughed all that much this past week.

I have a lot of spinning plates.  Plates careening and crashing all around it feels like some days.  Homeschool.  Work.  Broken and busted relationships.  Mothering.  Healthy and healing relationships.

My friend and I talked briefly about that last night.  Her spinning plates.  My spinning plates. The fact that we both feel as if the plates we’ve got going currently are all essentials.  We’ve laid down or let tumble all the ones we could.  Offered up unnecessary ones and let friends and family hold the plates whenever we could.  But what’s left, the plates still spinning, are kind of the non-negotiable ones.  And they’re wearing us out.

Yet, simultaneously, they’re the plates we’re called to spin – right now for right here.

I’ve watched this friend.  I’ve seen her plates all turning in concentric circles and I see that it is a lot.  And I’ve thought how she’s doing a great job, a noble job, of the spinning she’s being asked to do right now.  It’s not the same spinning she was asked to do six months ago or two years back.  It won’t be the same spinning she’ll be doing by next summer and certainly not by this time next year.  She thinks it looks like a mess, but I think she’s beautiful.  I think her work looks like the gentlest labor of love and it looks like art and it looks difficult but worthy and I think she is rocking it, spinning her orbs.

And this post has gotten away from me a little, like my plates can sometimes do.

Yesterday’s teaching at church was about work – and doing the work in front of you.  Not having idle hands.  Not being busy and looking busy but actually being unproductive in any valuable sense.  I was drawn to the idea that in all my spinning, I was forgetting my primary focus.  My first job.  My current biggest plate – the education of my children.  This briefest of windows where I am leading and guiding and instructing and walking alongside and that it actually is a privilege that I want.  A privilege I picked.

When you’re needing a lesson, everything can be your teacher.  My son in Target who just wants to run where you’re supposed to walk.  My chance encounter and a few minutes with a sweet friend.  A sermon.

All a bunch of little lessons I’ve been needing to hear.

To do the work in front of me right now.  To spin the plates in my hands, hoping that even when they look like a mess to me, if I am spinning them for the right purpose at the right time, they might just spin their way into something beautiful.

 

 

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