Mom Lessons: Gratitude
This post may contain affiliate links, please review my disclosure policy.
My heart hasn’t been at peace. I’d say 6 months plus, there’s been unrest that I couldn’t pin down or put words to. And it’s been building. It wasn’t sudden. I finally tied it to a thought that our family needed more. It’s what the world is screaming and what I was picking up, without knowing. Even if I didn’t consciously put those words out into the world. Or even put them together in my head. It was there. This idea that what we currently have isn’t enough. Without knowing it, I was feeling that what we currently have wasn’t enough to be fully cherished, and each season wholly savored, as is.
This thought has wrecked me.
Last Sunday, we came home. We fed the kids. Wiped their messy faces and laid them in their rooms for quiet time. I started prepping dinner.
I can’t explain it, really. But there’s been a heart shift, in me. The kind I think only the Father can do. I wrote in my journal that there’s a need to slow down. There’s no rush, so why are we always rushing. We have everything we need. Why are we always seeking more. Why is there stress to gain it.
I wrote that one baby is almost 1 and another almost 4, and the reality of how quick it’s all been has planted some kind of seed in my heart. Time has come and gone and it’s still coming and going, and I really just want to be present and thankful, and the best steward I can be. Wholly cherishing each moment.
The world is constantly screaming more, and it’s a battle then. Of knowing we have more than we need but thinking more is needed before we can be still and grateful and whole.
I know they’ll remember that we didn’t have everything, but we really kind of did, didn’t we.
I have tears in my eyes as I type that.
And do I need everything then? If it doesn’t even matter when I’m a down-on-my-knees kind of grateful.
Just thoughts poured over from a mama’s journal on a cloudy Sunday afternoon.
Father, keep me here. In this clarity.
Everything around us is shouting “more” or “update” I sometimes wonder if we have lost sight of how hard our parents and grandparents worked to develop what we now take for granted. It troubles me that everything in homes is said to be “dated”- and of course “dated” seems to be used alongside “ugly”. I realize that regular maintenance is important and that sometimes we want to change colours or renew furnishings, but do we take the refreshing of decor to the extreme? I believe there is need for refreshing our lives which will in turn refresh our family. Time for slow meals, homemade bread, sunsets, walks in the park and to listen to our children (even if they’re 40 years old). I am reminded of an old song “Be still and Know…”
There is strength to be found in calming our hearts and leaning in close to our Father to hear His gentle words of wisdom.