Embracing seasons

Zoe is three months old.  And so it’s been three months of learning to mother three children, and three months of new and jarring interruptions. Interruptions to sleep every 3 hours, 2 hours, even every 45 or 30 minutes.  Interruptions to chores – “Play with that bouncy ball outside the kitchen!” “I’m thirsty!” “How do you write __?” And the perpetual, “Can you read to me?” “Can you play with me?” Interruptions to eating. Interruptions to conversations. Interruptions to time with one child to tend to another child. 

My fuse is short these days, and I find myself pining for another time, another place, another rhythm.  I pine for a different season when I settle in for some quiet, when I first lift a spoon to my mouth, and I hear Zoe crying, 10 minutes into a nap. When I start digging through the drawers to re-organize the kids’ clothes or piles of paper, and smack in that worse-than-before-mess limbo, someone needs help in the bathroom. The familiar shot of irritation courses through my chest, and starts to shape a series of half-conscious thoughts, full of anger and complaint.

And then there are moments when, through the light of Grace, I see those moments for what they are: my children’s little tear-streaked faces, asking for comfort and compassion. A creative bustle to acknowledge. Hilarity to be stored away. A chance to absorb and reckon through thoughts and motivations behind little acts. 

This is a season of interruptions. This is a season when the needs and the good of three children fills our heads and time and house. A season when the three adults — my husband, my mother-in-law, and I — hand the kindergartener, the toddler, and the baby back and forth so we can love on them and also pursue God and love other people. A season when solitude and hobbies and leisure take a back seat sometimes, so that someone we’re called to love can be seen, be heard, receive kindness, or maybe so another exhausted caregiver can rest, or do the Lord’s bidding, whatever form that may take.

Yes, I often pine for a different season.  I miss the predictability of daily rhythms just a few months ago, the extra hours of solitude and autonomy, productivity and predictability. But He reminds me daily: Every season is given to you in my unchanging wisdom and love.

This seems like a strange time to pick up writing again, to even attempt at keeping a blog. Yet even before Zoe’s arrival I have felt a persistent nudge to write more – to pause, to reflect more intentionally, to make a record of what I’m receiving from the Lord in the midst of joy and weariness, frenzy and waiting. Now that Zoe has come and the days are fuller, I feel even more compelled to write, to help myself see and remember truth.

As I hiccup and harrumph through my days, learning to be part of a family of six, the Lord is drawing me to quiet relishing: my children’s funny faces, knowing smiles among the adults, walks with Zoe napping, winter-planted bulbs, seeds and tubers luxuriating in the spring warmth, conversations with a neighbor, the nudging of our church toward deeper community, vulnerable talks with my husband and my mother-in-law, praying as a family, leaning on each other more as we need each other more.

So here it is, a first entry for this season, a short piece that took five or six sittings to write. Maybe this will be my twelve stones from the Jordan, my Ebenezer. In due time, perhaps I will look back on this time not as a season of interruptions, but as a season of the Lord graciously turning my head and saying, “Will you be about my business?”