Inspiration

I found this lovely place through the NieNie Dialogues. Have you met Stephanie? I found her blog for the first time several months ago. Her story has stayed with me between readings. She is one of my heroes. I am grateful that she is willing to share a peek into her incredible journey, taken and made with stunning grace.

We've been so productive in life lately, forging ahead through schoolwork, miscellany, quotidien things. It's been mostly a joy, excepting the moments in which one of us runs out of internal resources. Even then, though, the coming back, apologies, making nice, cuddling each other up, these things are exquisitely precious.

Sometimes I forget that it is work and work and unending work that lands us here, in a place where we can revel in our accomplishments. All talking, explaining, rule making and enforcing, hugs and laughter and skinned knees contribute to what and who we are now, this little group. Today we had an English test, many other English lessons, writing, math, spelling, a trip to the doctor and three trips to the pharmacy for medicine to make the allergic reaction stop. This is not a small thing, a day like today. It is a huge and lovely thing, beautiful unto itself. It includes things like hot chocolate while we fold clothes, a dishwasher filled and emptied and filled again, vegetables, three good alternative meals for Q, grapes to take with us on the fly, and big drinks of good, clear water. Each of these things is a small miracle, you know. And each contributes to the larger accomplishment that is the magnificent day, closing with the oohs and ahs which a blue and gold and rose and platinum sunset demands.

I am always caught, just a little surprised that things go on as they do. I feel still the rip in my little corner of the universe, though delight at my small crowd sometimes blurs the edges of the hole. S popped in this morning, couldn't wait 'til I was out of the shower to tell me: "I think Q's smile is just getting bigger and bigger. Yup." And she was off again, jumping back into my bed to snuggle up her punkin brother and make him giggle some more. In so many ways, I am one of the very best-blessed mamas in the universe.

Anyway. See if you can't find a little bliss right where you are this day. Thank you, Stephanie, for sharing some of yours and for keeping it real.