In the stillness of sick days where my normally active children put themselves to nap, and I wonder where they are and find them sleeping, I have had some time to think about the upcoming school year and whether or not I’m meeting my “year of less” intentions I set out at the beginning of this year. Along with quiet days and introspection comes a lot of questioning whether I’m enough. Whether I’m enough as a mom, as a wife, as an educator, as a future missionary.
And these thoughts could run me ragged. But I’m finding peace in my morning times on the little grey couch in my bedroom. I’m stealing moments of peace throughout the day to remind myself that I am His, and that’s what matters.
The moments in the days are filled with little graces. And I don’t have eloquent words to connect them all succinctly. Perhaps the poem I’ve copied below will find you a place of dedication as it did me.
We have to be candles,
burning between
hope and despair,
faith and doubt,
life and death,
all the opposites.
That is the disquieting place
where people must always find us.
And if our life means anything,
if what we are goes beyond the monastery walls and
does some good,
it is that somehow,
by being here,
at peace,
we help the world cope
with what it cannot understand.
William Brodrick