I didn't want to stay home this morning. It felt like my head would explode under the pressure of the work piling up undone at the office. But slowly, as I've gone through the simple motions of a day with the kids, I have entered into their rhythm and found myself in the middle of that most surprising grace -- peace.
It is the first day of spring here. We lay in shafts of sunlight. I hold my sleepless, vomit-smelling son. We get the mail for our newly widowed neighbor. I am able to call and email work. My father-in-law comes over while I go to the pharmacy. The kids and I turn over every flagstone in the yard and find ants, spiders, ladybugs, earthworms, pillbugs, whole universes going on. We even find a lemon shaped like a carrot and play hide and seek with another neighbor's coquettish new cat. It feels easy. There is time enough for everything.
For a week or two it has felt like too much, like it just couldn't go on -- work stuff, tax stuff, stuff stuff, and on top of everything, trying to understand what it means to follow God to a new church. Well, it couldn't just go on, and, thank God, it didn't have to.
It can stop whenever I let it.
Photo: Diablo Magazine
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