snow day & embracing all of life right now.

 When school is cancelled ON A Friday because there is a huge snow storm AND  your husband has already been gone for 4 days you might cry. Well, at I least I might did.  Y’all I was not feeling it.  I was feeling exhausted with winter, with keeping up with 4 kid’s needs & schedules, and with all the pre-adoptive paperwork & meetings (which I am so grateful for but also a part time job right now). I was feeling pretty run down.

But friends, I tried to like winter: I rallied (& drank a double shot latte) and we danced, we created works of art, and then we went sledding (with 2 van fulls of kids).  These days of chubby hands & front tooth gaps are slipping away and yet at the same time I struggle with finding myself wishing them away some days.  I know my tendency as an ennegram 7 to live in the future but I want to practice being more present in the right now.  

This day was a good reminder for me that choosing to embrace the right now is a gift.  Sledding with friends and neighbors was a blast. But after sledding for an hour I realized after texting another parent of a kid with us that my phone was missing. I immediately knew it must have fallen in the snow somewhere on the hill. Ugh. Moments like this remind me how scattered I am, something I hate about myself.  Everyone helped us search and eventually the fabulous Joy found it!!  But I was still beating myself up about it,  always feel like such an idiot and that takes me to dark and twisty places sometimes.  I just hate when I am reminded how much of a mess I am.  I feel like not enough a lot lately and this stupid phone lost on a sledding hill was just another reminder. Those voices, “you cannot get it together ever!” “you are so irresponsible!” Annikah talked back to me and I lost it at her, I choose to get rid of my icky feelings by pushing them on her. Yes, she was in the wrong too but I was taking out my un-forgiveness of myself out on her.  It took me a few hours to fully realize this and go to her to ask forgiveness.  We worked through it and we were present to each other.  It takes a lot of time this vulnerable parenting gig. And it can be exhausting but I also sense these are the moments of truly embracing lifer right now.  The fun of painting together and speeding down a hill together with freezing drops of ice on our noses AND the moments spent sitting on the couch crying because we are broken and hurt each other.  My kids will never have a Mama who can meet all of their needs, heck they won’t have one that can even go an entire day without a moment of crazy but they do have one who says I am sorry a lot.  A mama who knows her own limits and brokenness and can say I’m sorry and remind them of the message of Jesus. I am praying that is freeing and transforming for me & my kids.  I am asking for the courage to always point to God who loves them more than Jason and I ever could.  The trust to speak to them what i have found true in my life, that God will meet them in everything they go through and be enough.  Even when it is hard. No, especially then.  I can only consistently point to Him.
  
The day did not go quite as I envisioned it that morning but turns out I did practice being present and for that I am grateful.