Warmth

 Cold hands and Saturday morning in the sunshine. It started with a chilly and happy cat being let inside. Chickens who had managed their way out of the coop and partway out of our yard. One in the nesting box laying her 5th egg. I will soon be interrupted by a 7 year old indignant at finding herself alone in a cold bed even though she will be exceedingly happy she wasn't lifted out of it to get ready for school. The breeze cuts through me Florida winter style though it is only November. By Thanksgiving next week it will be 80+ degrees again. My coffee is getting cold beside me.

This morning waking up before my alarm on a 4H day which isn't early but still always has us rushing out the door. I am so tired, even on the weekends. This stage of life? I can't explain, but it isn't physical tiredness so much as the desire to close my eyes just a little bit longer. Close my mind to all the incessant details and demands. Back in bed with the cold cat now growing warm with a purr. Thinking how at different parts of my life I get to know different sides of God. He isn't different but there is so much to Him. 

Reading a book about how to help my anxious child navigate and grow. First they need support. They need to know you believe that this is hard even if it makes no sense. Then, they need to know that you believe they can cope with the hardness of it all. If they don't have your support and compassion they will not move forward. If you don't believe that they can do it they will be stuck. When my daughter was a baby I snapped a picture of her, a few weeks old in a bathing suit on a towel at the beach doing tummy time. She was struggling to lift her head, strain on her face, eyebrows raised. I found the perfect caption: "life is tough, my darling, but so are you." 

I have been saying this to her every morning as we struggle to get out the door and hearing God say the same thing to me. We're in the middle right now, leaving that little kid stage. This stage is full of school help and friends and driving all around town. The ways that have been discovered for parents to help anxious kids are the was God has been coaxing His children from hiding in closets from the beginning. "I see you. This is hard. We can do this. Life is tough my darling, but so are you." I borrow His strength. Absorb its calm confidence. I have learned not to be ashamed or deny my own high sensitivity, and am teaching my children to do the same. We are who God has made us to be. He will use it. We can grow.

Thanksgiving approaches, and what am I most thankful for this year? 2024 has left its scars and I am not sorry to watch it go. Some of it doesn't seem real. This morning when I woke up I found myself tip toeing across the house. Some things take a long time to heal. But God is patient. He is not finished.

I try to keep juggling the balls in the air, knowing "restore" cannot happen without rest. Wondering how to truly quiet myself. Some days I push against rest because it feels like work. Thinking, working through, feeling, takes an energy I don't think I have. There is a place for the escaping kind of rest that seems to accomplish nothing. But it never really restores. And that is what I need right now.

A week of school off to reset. No having to relearn chemistry. No wanting to stab my eye with a pen when helping an unmotivated middle schooler write an essay. No pushing a crying 7 year old through the gate with my heart in my throat. 

There is a fresh egg in the nesting box. My hands are numb. Coffee like ice in my cup. Kids to get ready for 4H and still I sit here. Knowing I won't succumb to the numbness. It is better to feel the cold. It is what makes the sun's warmth so inviting. 

Life. When I got inside the day will start. I will fight the battle in my head of not enough. Trying to figure out how to spread the finite all over the infinite. But here for a few moments I absorb the infinite sky. The way the wind can blow through my tree and the neighbors' at the same time. A thousand years passing like the memory of yesterday to God.

Reading to the kids from the Bible at night. Not every night. Some nights I am too tired or one of the kids are too tired or it is just too late. It is always short because of short attention spans and fatigue. "If you have two coats, and you see someone with none, give them one." 

Maybe that is enough for this day. Life is tough for us all.The best we can do today is love. Overlooking offense and remembering abundance. Giving that one coat of patience and compassion to the struggling kid who seems to have none. Remembering that one is enough. When you give your one coat, you find the warmth of another which is so much more insulating than a layer of fabric.