Life, As It Is Now

Hi there. Remember me? I'm sorry for leaving you hanging for so long without a post. Judging from notes I've received, some of you have been concerned, or wondered if something catastrophic happened to me or the baby. All is well in that department. Baby is still safe inside and we are still looking forward to the day she joins us on the outside.

This week has been intense. There is simply no other word for it. Intense from a parenting perspective. Intense from an adult-ing perspective. Intense from a health perspective (stomach bug at 38 weeks? Sign me up! Wait, no...stop...). And intense from a "baby could be here any day and, that's right, I have 6 other kids to keep up with" perspective. A lot of it I won't be getting into here, which is why I found myself a little speechless when being consumed with life over here. Some of it just comes across as too negative, and that is really not my vision for this space. So I'm left with one word with which to describe it all. Intense. This week was intense.

Still, in the midst of every intense time? Every day when I can't get out of bed, every day that doesn't go the way that I'd want it to, not in a million years? There are still, always, small glimpses of grace. Spring comes slowly here in Michigan and the lilacs in my yard are finally opening up. Watching my oldest son play basketball with his Dad right out my kitchen window after dinner. Rosie's hair reacts delightfully to the humidity (which I ordinarily can't stand) and she runs around with Shirley Temple-caliber curls that just slay me. My second son teaches himself to ride a two wheeler in our driveway. Listening to the happy shrieks of a pack of kids playing out in the first thunderstorm of the season. Friends who text and offer help when I need it, who stand by my side when my legs are trembling in fear, who show me again and again the face of Jesus.

I think it over as we come upon a week of this intensity, and realize what I've just described is just this: life. Always a mash up of the intense and the sweet. The hard, the holy, the hardly-hanging-on. It's a richness that simply wouldn't be possible if everything was saccharine sweetness. There's depth to just this: a life rife with opportunities to grow in grace and humility, to be a blessing, receive a blessing, to shed tears of both joy and fear. This is life. This is good.

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