morning work and reflection

As we prepare to celebrate Laura's fifth birthday, I was reflecting this morning on how differently I spend my days now.  I am able to work in a leisurely fashion that I never could have dreamed of when the girls were babies and toddlers. Yes, my days are stilled filled with caring for small children, homemaking and home school lessons(well, planning right now), but I have time and energy to enjoy my work, to see and capture beauty out my windows, to have moments of reading and thinking quietly. It is a marvel.

As I write this, Seth is at our patio table by the garden, playing his third board game of the morning with a neighbor friend. The girls have been playing in a neighbor's inflatable baby pool in the front yard where I can see them making a terrible, grassy mess and loving it all. I have been: working in my kitchen cleaning out the freezer, making breadcrumbs, thawing blueberries for baking, in my garden tying up climbing cucumber and pea plants, on the computer organizing my morning photos, outside chatting with the neighbor, and back inside tidying up the house, and a few other activities.

It is quiet right now in the house, but in a moment I will be busy with two bathing suit-clad girls who will likely eat their lunches outside before returning to pool play for a short while, but then the calm will come again when they rest in their beds this afternoon while the temperature soars to very hot and humid. By late afternoon I will be rummaging in the garden for peas and beans to add to our sweet corn and homemade burgers for our dinner tonight.

Nothing is perfect, certainly not our family, but God's grace abounds in our lives and His mercies are new every morning, ready to continue to work He has begun until the day He completes it. May you be encouraged this day to work with what He has given you, knowing it is all from His hand and accomplishes His purposes.