The need to breathe. The desire to behold.

This morning was hard. It was the kind of hard where the beauty and wonder and freshness of a new day felt completely swallowed up by pure exhaustion. I didn’t want to see the rising sun peeking through my window. I didn’t want to feed and change and play with my babies. I didn’t want to answer the buzzing of text messages on my phone. All I wanted was for the world to go away and let me sleep.

My littlest boy is sick with a cold and fever and has barely slept the past two nights – waking every 30 min or hour – restless and frustrated. These nights have followed several nights of short sleep for various reasons, coupled with a lot of activity and things to get done.

When my mind is clouded by tiredness, I don’t think straight and my overwhelmed emotions speak many lies to my heart. My patience is short and I feel at my wits end. This morning the primary lie blaring in my mind...

“I can’t do this.”

“This” was all kinds of things.... be a momma and nurture my babies, love my husband, care for our home, be a friend, get out of bed...

When I’m in this place, I often just find myself crying out to God, like a little girl curled up in her daddy’s lap. I beg Him to breathe life, to infuse strength into me, to replace lies with truth, to hold and help me through His Spirit.

He always answers this prayer.

Sometimes His answer feels strong and abrupt like wind or waves.

Sometimes it feels subtle and quiet, like an almost silent ripple in a small pond.

Yet as He answers in whatever way He will, I am again undone by His faithfulness. He is so gracious and good, even in the midst of the hard.

Our hard right now is nothing compared to most of the suffering in the world. Watching friends struggle with the weight of injustice, poverty, grief, unwanted singleness, infertility, mental and physical illness, broken relationships, war, persecution, etc.  These things feel like ‘real suffering’ in comparison to our little struggles.

This moment’s ‘hard’ looks like a few sleepless nights, a baby with a cold, potty training a toddler, endless laundry and dishes and cooking, trying to meet the needs of three energetic little boys, a husband who is at the hospital 100+ hours most weeks and is drained when home, challenging emotions and relationships, and the longing for more time to process life and find refreshment.

In all of this, I have SO much to be grateful for. My original plan for this blog post was to share some highlights and blessings of our recent days.

Yet for some reason the words come out easier when I’m overwhelmed. Its like they need to pour out in order for me to breathe.

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I found myself drawn today to the things I am longing for more and more...

Beauty. Simplicity. Valuing the truly important. Slowness. Wholeness. Rest. Deep relationships. Nature. Joy.

Beholding.

I wrote in January about a primary focus I wanted to have for this year – to learn to behold. I wanted to take the time to stop and really see the people and things in front of me. I wanted to really see, hear, and experience God. I wanted to see Him and His work – in myself, in nature, in people, in art, and in stories.

We are now into the 9^th month of the year. What have I learned?

Beholding is hard.

It requires space to breathe, time to spend, a focused mind, and a quiet soul. These things are often stolen from me – or given away by me...

My space to breathe is taken by a full calendar of wonderful things to do and people to see.

My time to spend is stolen by a seemingly endless to do list that is either written on paper or spinning in my head.

My focused mind is given to news, social media, text messages, phone calls, emails, and whatever else is immediately in front of me.

My quiet soul is stirred up by worries, distractions, endless information to process, and stuff to manage.

So what do I do??

Right now? I pray.

I’m praying for God’s Spirit to fill me with wisdom, grace, and courage to learn to follow Him more fully. If HIS desire is for me to behold Him and other people in a more purposeful and meaningful way, there is a lot of stuff that needs to go to make room for this.

As I pray, I am learning to say ‘no’ to a lot more right now.

This is SO hard for me. In my desire to experience “life to the fullest!”, I try to do so much more than is best and healthy for me in this season. I also hate to disappoint people in any way, so this adds another huge dimension to the struggle.

But as I seek to hear God’s voice above the noise, I’m realizing – there is a lot of noise.

There are so many things crying out for my time and attention. Some of these things are important, but many are not the most important right now.

I’ll end this post with a quote from a book I’m reading called “Present over Perfect”, by Shauna Neiquist. My heart echoes her words...

“What I’m learning is that you have to stop doing a whole lot of things to learn what it is you really love, who it is you really are. Many of us go years and years without even asking these questions, because the lives we’ve fallen into have told us exactly who to be and what to love and what to give ourselves to.”