Living Water

General Conference helped this weekend. It gave me an opportunity to be still. To listen. To focus. To remember. I remembered a little bit why I care. I remembered a little bit why it's important to try. It feels nice. It feels better.

For one of the sessions, we went outside. My daughter is sick, so we didn't join the rest of the family at my parents' house for the Sunday sessions, and I'm glad. I love my family. I love the children running around and their little voices ringing out and the mamas whispering to them to behave and the dads softly snoring. I love that, but I needed to not be in it today. I needed only my kids and me, outside on the lawn in the sunshine. 

The sun shined today. It feels like it hasn't shined in years, but it shined today, and I felt it and pulled it around me and let it hold me.

We listened to one of the conference sessions outside in the sunshine. While I listened, I watched. I watched the ants crawling and exploring. I watched the birds playing in the treetops and picking at each other for territory. I watched the wind rustle the blades of grass. Most of all, I watched my son in his sandbox, meticulously creating his ditches and organizing his rocks and sticks that are not ditches and rocks and sticks but rivers and villages and castles and kingdoms and worlds. He's fifteen years old but also five years old, and I'm glad.

My cup was filled just a little bit today. I was fed with living water, and my thirst feels slightly quenched. Enough that I can care again, at least for a while. I still have lots of work to do. I still need to figure out how to fill my cup to overflowing so I have more to give to others, but today helped.

I'm grateful.




Sandbox


I once heard a fairytale about a mother

who loved her child so much

she locked him up in a necklace around her neck

so he could never grow and never leave her

it seemed so cruel

until I blinked and my son

became so long he was bigger than the monkey bars ladder

became so wise he was teaching his friends

became so strong he held his mother instead of her holding him

and the world wanted to take him from the sandbox

and teach him how it's cruel

and I could not stop it or protect him 

and then I understood.

Contemplation and Creation


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feasting

Image
I'm on a quest, of late. I've been delving into the depths of doctrine and discovering myself inside of it. (Nice alliteration there, eh? Just didn't want you to miss it.) That is my quest, to find me. I want to know as much as I can about who I was before and what I am to become. This quest is filling up many of those pieces of me that sat empty for so long from mere spiritual and emotional exhaustion. Now that I am awakening, I am studying the doctrines of the gospel, searching the scriptures, reading the words of the modern day prophets with a hunger that I haven't felt before. It's like feasting in a banquet hall. Everyone else is there, too. We all have this delectable feast before us, and it fascinates me how so many of us still just nibble at the edges when there is so much there to fill us. So many others scrounge around on the floor, licking up crumbs that others have dropped when all we need to do is look up and make the effort to feed ourselves. I under
Read more

Save Me a Seat

He didn't save me a seat at the table. For me, that's when it really started. For him, I guess it had been going on for months before that with him feeling pressured into things he wasn't ready for with the engagement and the wedding plans. I thought simply allowing him more time would be enough. I thought we were still trying to work things out as a couple but taking a time out to think and heal and reorient. I feel like such an idiot. I felt so humiliated that night when he didn't save me a seat in front of all of our coworkers who still thought we were engaged. We had talked about not making it awkward for everyone and very first thing, he didn't save me a seat. Then, we talked and resolved it and I thought we were reconciling. I started wearing the ring again. He went on his solo trip and thought about things and came home ready to commit and set a date. Then two days later he got stuck in his head again and started making up stories about how I don't give h
Read more

She is Me

Image
Too many bad days in a row. He's been on the attack too many days in a row. He demands too much. He expects everything from everyone and recognizes the boundaries and feelings of no one. The kids have learned they have a choice. They've learned they have a voice. They are making themselves heard. He doesn't like it. "It's my turn and I'm in charge," he texted me. The kids don't care if he thinks he's in charge. They protect themselves. It makes him mad. I'm proud of them, but it's hard on me. I'm used to giving in to him to calm him down. I'm used to doing whatever it takes to make him happy and make him go away. It wears me out. Even though it's good for them to stand up for themselves, a tiny piece of me wants them to give in and just go stay with him so he'll stop. They're right to stand firm in their boundaries and what they feel is safe. I will never take that from them for my own superficial facade of peace. Thei
Read more