Reprieve

Enjoying the easy moments

I’ve been working a lot and when I’m not working, I’m tired. I’ve said this many times, but let me be an evangelist for energy: I don’t need more time. I need more energy. Because even when I am home and even when I have time for the things I want to do, I just don’t usually have the stamina.

Some things are a slow suck of energy, gently tapping your resources one small sip at a time. This is how business feels right now. Every hour I’m awake, there is something. And when I go to sleep there is a list of somethings ready for the next day. I don’t have the brain space to go deep with many things so I skim across the surface, and when there is a pause in conversation and my mind searches for something to say, I literally have to resist talking about the soup I splattered up the wall of the kitchen or the customer who requested hand sanitizer and how I never thought before about selling hand sanitizer, but how much sense that makes.

It does make sense, but not in everyday conversation with friends or family.

Peony Profusion

Last weekend we hosted our youngest child’s graduation party and there were several points of failure, but overall, it was wonderful. It was regular life, the things I should be doing, want to be doing. The young folks played volleyball until late into the night and then returned to the feasting, cleaning up leftover cake and an extra dozen pounds of pulled pork. I sent home containers of pork, served pork for lunch on Sunday, to company on Tuesday, and have enough left for fried rice tonight. I overshot but it was easier than trying to do the math.

(Speaking of math, I’ve boxed up every math curriculum necessary for twelve years of mandatory education and hauled them upstairs to collect dust. I don’t have the energy to take the books anywhere, so if you need homeschool curriculum, come see me.)

This morning I am home. I filled the bird feeders and turned on the sprinkler. I admired the peonies—almost all of the buds have opened into their full glory and they’ll be gone soon, so I cut some for inside and left some for outside. I made a second pot of coffee and brought a cup out to enjoy on the patio, while the birds chatter relentlessly and wild turkeys harass the chickens. Birds, everywhere. Me, here, sitting still.

There are moments when life is perfect.

I don’t know how to write about anything of value right about now. Everything feels like lament bordering on complaint and what good is there in that, for you, the reader? You have your worries and complaints. I have mine. I don’t want to spend my one wild and precious life complaining. What do you come here to read, and what do I have that is actually worth saying?

Maybe this: maybe something good comes of hard seasons, but maybe the best gifts are in the reprieve. The porch-sitting. The mountains of extra food. The days with no alarm. The times the phone is on silent and everything has to wait. Maybe the best things in the hardest seasons are simply the five minutes when things aren't hard, and you hold on to that, and you refuse to think about the sixth minute, and you know God is God-with-you, and He makes shade and brings a drink.