One of the greatest joys of motherhood is when your adult child texts and asks how you cooked a dish they loved in their childhood. In an instant, you travel back to the kitchen of their youth. The sounds of their little feet running through the kitchen and hugging your legs as you do the dishes. The smell of the chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven and the look on their faces when their nose leads them to your side. The sight of the top of their head as they read or talk on the phone with a friend.
Priceless memories come flooding back at the simplest of requests. This week it was how long to bake the homemade chicken pot pie I used to make. After I gave her the recipe, I added that I made a couple great pasta dishes last week if she’d like to have those as well. When my phone dinged, I picked it up and smiled.
“Those sound great!”
I raised my first child as I was growing up myself. How she got through my ineptitude, I’ll never know…other than the fact that she has good genes and great grandmas. I was way too much Chicken Little and far to little Eleanor Roosevelt. I think the one thing I stressed the most to her was to believe in herself and trust her gut. She has turned into one of the strongest and most level headed women I’ve ever known. She is her dad’s daughter. Her sister is my clone.
Whenever Daughter #1 is faced with a trying situation…one that would make me crumble in a puddle of anxiety, she just seems to glide through it calm and steady. I asked her once how she does that. She said it was simple. She just doesn’t have the bandwidth to freak out about every little thing. She doesn’t borrow tomorrow’s worry. She gauges what she can do about it in the moment, she sees that it’s done in the moment, then she’ll re-evaluate as needed.
Amazing!
I actually have learned a lot from her in the last couple of years. WWJD has a double meaning for me. What would Jesus do? And…What would J**** do? Convenient that their names both start with J and have five letters. Lately, I’ve taken to thinking those two questions before I head down a spiral of anxiety and it’s really paying off.
You’ve heard me talk about my dear friend, Gail. Well, last night Gail texted me and said there was a fire nearby…they could see flames. BIG flames. As the reports came in, it turned out to be the fiery train derailment that occurred in East Palestine, Ohio around 9:00PM Eastern Time. This happened about a mile from their house. We chatted back and forth throughout the evening till quite late. Every time my tummy would start to feel the vaguest sensation of butterflies, I would remind myself not to borrow tomorrow’s worries and deal with what I could do something about.
The only thing I could do was listen, love, and pray that God would protect my friends. I was so grateful to learn yesterday morning that no one had been injured, and it didn’t look like there was any immediate health threat to the populace. We seem to go on cruise control, don’t we? We never know when the boat is going to be rocked and threaten to spill us out into chaos. Thank God things weren’t any worse.
I spent yesterday working on this project and had some major break throughs. Sometimes I just have to let a process marinate in my head for a time then all of a sudden, it clicks and all the pieces start to fall into place. When it did, I wanted to stand up and do the happy dance. Instead, I made a big pot of spaghetti and celebrated over a yummy dinner with Mr. FixIt!
Today, I’m taking the day off to rest. We’ll watch church online, have a nice brunch, and I’ll knit while Mr. FixIt watches TV and naps gently in his Big Red Chair. The past three mornings have been sunny and gorgeous. Let’s hope we get a fourth!
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“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.”
Hebrews 4:9-10 NIV
#Rest, #Sabbath, #Wisdom