The Season of Right Now
In roughly seven weeks, our life is going to change drastically. I think I’m ready for it, but I don’t know.
Are you ever really ready to have a baby?
This is the fourth time I’ve done this, so I feel like I’m a little more prepared for the process of transition. I’m ready to not be pregnant. I’m ready to meet her. I’m ready to see my big kids become big siblings, some of them for the second or third time, one of them for the first time.
I’m ready to to move forward, but I’m also not.
I’m not ready for middle of the night feedings. I’m not ready for the sleep deprivation. I’m not ready to try and get three kids up and out the door in the mornings with an infant in my arms, and then get those same three kids to bed at night with an infant in my arms.
I’m not ready to figure out how to fit eating and nap schedules into sports schedules.
I won’t really be ready for any of that, which is why I’m priming myself daily to just let it all go. Go with the flow. Ride the wave of crazy until it crests a little bit.
“You’re not going to die from disorganization,” I tell myself daily. Although with the nesting settling in full force, I am finding myself a bit twitchy at all the things that need to be done around here. The clutter – AH! The clutter. I want to get rid of all of it. I want to stop spending money (last bit of summer fun combined with school time preparations is making me feel like I’m just tossing stacks of bills into the wind…)
I want to hole up in a neat, quiet, organized house and wait for her to come.
But I can’t.
There are activities in which to participate, preparations to be made, messes to be tolerated, and bills to pay. Insurance confusion won’t sort itself out, and kids want to swim three times a day while they still can.
(I just wish they would quit swimming in their clothes because the laundry is killing me softly.)
As I work on my new book on motherhood and creativity, I’m challenged to apply the lessons that Wendy and I are so passionate about teaching to my own life. One of those lessons?
There are seasons for everything in life.
There’s a season in which creating, working on my craft, takes a much more prominent role. And there are seasons when mothering my brood has to be given greater precedence.
There’s a season for a neat house and fresh, homemade meals, and there’s a season for dirty floors, dirty laundry, and take out and left overs.
There’s a season to keep up, and a season to fall behind.
I’m not sure if there’s ever a season for sleeping when you’re a parent, but I hold out hope as it’s the only thing that gets me through the days.
Right now, as we finish out our final two weeks of summer before school starts, I find myself in a season of activity. That’s okay. I’m going to be okay with that. This is a season with friends over, lots of noise, messy floors, and memory building. It’s not a season for extended hours of writing.
In two weeks the season will change.
And after that? An entirely new season will begin.
Embracing the crazy is my only option…because drinking’s off the table.
I’m kidding!
Sort of…
What season are you in right now? Are you enjoying the season, or are you, like me, talking yourself through it, clutching onto the joyful moments like a life vest?
The amazing photos are courtesy of Lulu Photography.
