{available}

Snowy & sleep covered, our house resides.  Like prism filled icicles dangling from rooftops, my thoughts adhere to my person.  They envelope me this early morn.  With my family still wrapped in peaceful dreams, I arise captivated and content.  My mind makes more of what it means to be restful. My heart holds a heavy space open for easy it seems.  Less am I consumed with the hurry and hustle of check off and rush.  More am I transfixed on the pace and rhythm of my family.  How we work.  What makes us tick.  How we move in one motion under this roof we call ours. Growing.  The boys are.  Legs are lanky.  Heads hit higher on their trusty measuring stick: Mama.  More fuel is needed to satiate their long, stretched out bodies.  With Casey's birthday just last week and Eli's in just a few months, I am reminded ever more clearly in the current days that my time with them is fleeting.  We are in transition.  My boys already have interests outside of our home. Spend-the-nights and friends over for play are becoming more frequent. And I celebrate this newness.  I do.  My back arches with pride as I delight in seeing their happy spirits soar. Outside of me.  Outside of us. Yet deep down I catch myself watching videos like this one of Eli just 3 years old "reading" from memory one of his favorite books and this one of Casey Face at just a year and a half old telling his Nana where he likes to be kissed best.  Up entirely too late past my bedtime, I click again & again on tiny clip snippets of these young men who were once my babies. Tears trickle. My smile hurts happy from its constancy. These scenes are past tense.  Captured inside man-made visual representation.  Clutched in my memory, yet I find them cloudy already.

Time.  It levels us in grace.  It moves effortlessly without pardon or repose. And yet it captures our all along the way.  Our growing.  Our transitions. Our mess ups.  Our heartbreaks.  Our triumphant too.  Through time, heavy changes and hearts do too.  With arms stretched high to the sweet savory sky that wakes us every morning, I find myself reaching to touch thankful.  To wrap my whole person around time and the journey.  In what my space has been allowed and for what my hands have had the chance to hold.  My fingerprints turn upward for the hurts dark & desperate as well as the goodness stockpiled in my heart.  All have made my journey His. Leveled in grace, most indeed.

Grace.  If you're not careful, you'll let the world tell you it's costly. That where Grace goes so does her evil step sister, Guilt.  But, that's not the case at all.  Don't be fooled by the complexly shallow hubbub of this media marketed world.  Grace and Guilt were never related.  No bloodlines tie them to the same gene pool.  Grace is the only child of us through Him.  She's the reaching and the remembering.  The tiny dark places where no one else knows you sit and the beams of light and laughter you so very much adore.  She is time; she is healing.  And she is always available. Always.

I think that's what time is telling me these days.  That we are at our best when we're like grace.  Available.  Present in the moments that make us. The tears. The tricky.  The unknown.  The battles.  The believing.  The smiles and the simplicity too.  Honesty and effort can be beautiful and courageous when we allow ourselves to move with grace.  That there's no such thing as a happy run-on sentence, and that's okay.  A life lived like a wad of sizzling bottle rockets perhaps might not be what we're after.  The booms and the pops are short lived leaving smoke and cardboard wrappings to pick up in the dark night.

I am working with grace.  I am leaning into her peace.  I am loving on her light a little more.  Time's steadiness allows her to lead me to what matters most.  I am enjoying the wholeness I feel when I allow myself to sync up with the holy that hangs on my own heartstrings.  When I find my hands wrapped in what makes more of me and more of my family, I feel her shine. It's not worldly.  It's not even popular.  But worthy.  So very worthy.  Grace leveled, I am learning what available looks like.  Better yet, what it feels like. My heart halts less for the hurried and more for the wholesome.  Reaching up, I touch thankful a little more everyday. 

.mac :)

p.s.  I would love you to join me on Instagram or Twitter this year.  Your challenge?  Look for ways that life's BIG is in your little.  Feel free to tag me in your post and add the hash tag:  #lifeisbiginthelittlechallenge