Last Tuesday I loaded the kids up so we could take care of some business at the library. There's always so much drama involved with outings. You have to decide what everyone is going to wear, listen to complaints about the clothes you picked out and make suitable adjustments, try to make sure you remember everything you need to pack before leaving the house while your thought processes are interrupted every 30 seconds to mediate in an argument about who gets to close the garage door this time. And I have awesome, pleasant, obedient-most-of-the-time kids; they're just being kids. And managing kids just being kids is so much work that just the thought of interrupting the normal course of our day with an outing started raising my stress levels. But you push on anyway because you hope it will be worth it in the end, and you want to give them a happy childhood full of fun memories.
Sometimes all of the effort doesn't feel worth it, but most of the time, it does.
I mean, sometimes your mom wants to take a picture of your sister, too, and life becomes unbearable, but it passes.
As we were loading books in the car I noticed a tree with bright gold leaves, my favorite, so we trooped across the parking lot and then across the street enjoying the blustery day. It was much colder than we expected, but running and tramping through leaves did us all a world of good.
We had some impromptu races.
Sometimes my mind feels so overwhelmed with all of the things I'd like to do, all the things I feel I ought to do, and I have a hard time coming to the conclusion that I really can't do it all. I want to do it all, and I want to do it all well.
It helps to take a deep breath (or several) and walk as fast as you can into the wind, to stop and freeze in time childish delight.
And go to Stonehenge. Because when given the choice you should always go to Stonehenge.
"It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill;
that is the very worst thing you can do.
Let the thrill go--let it die away--go on through
that period of death into the quieter interest
and happiness that follow--and you will find
you are living in a world of new thrills all the time."
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity -
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