I’ve been slowed.
Life is still whizzing around me while I make my way around it like Bambi on his new legs.
Wobbly. Weak.
Baby number four inside me claims my energy and wellness, and I am forced to move slowly. Accustomed to greater productivity and pace, it sits ill.
So. Tired.
My five year old, Abby, asks for stories. In the car, at the table, at breakfast, after school, always she asks for stories. Stories from when I was girl, stories from when she was a girl, stories that are imaginary.
And the little girl who once loved stories is a grown up mother, and she has no room for them now.
My mind doesn’t dwell on story, except this one I’m living in, and I know this is sad. In my spare time, I often read how to be more productive and efficient in all this small story of mine. Non-fiction, self help, spiritual reading: kids, house, family, church.
But slowed down as I am, I find story outside myself again. Productivity disabled, I put aside the practical books, and pick up others. Oliver Twist, The Giver. I settle into the couch on a Friday night in early May with a view out the window.
Snow falls in thick sparkles like magic in a circle of streetlight. Snow in May.
Such a workaday world and not enough room to believe in magic. But maybe, just for a bit, my weary spirit finds rest in a world outside my own. I wish to be more like her, my Abby, and I remember my childhood, how golden with promise and hope. I remember how wildly I loved my parents, loved life, pursued everything with passionate enthusiasm. Now I am tired and worn and limping through this season.
Abby wrote me a story into my gratitude journal tonight before bed, complete with pictures, and this was the story:
Rosie slowly walked. She was nervous.
Then she knew what to do. She went to the pond and she prayed.
It’s story enough for me now.
I form the wish into a prayer and send it out into the streetlight circle of magic still falling.
It’s never too late.