CONSUME

“The fact that you are putting other things ahead of what you love and need isn’t my fault.  You cannot put that on me.” 

He said this to me last night and he was right.  It is so easy to blame him, blame busy, blame the three littles under four, so easy to blame and blame and blame.  But maybe I do have the time for what I choose to have the time for.  

This season has been hard and spare moments have me grasping for a distraction: give me all the coffee, all the online shopping, all the Target runs and Netflix series and boxes of wine.  Healthy in moderation: maybe.  But when pleasure and distraction are all that fill the cracks between chaos and crazy? Life gets pretty empty pretty quickly. 

So here I am, willing to be filled the hard way, the way you have to work for: with prayer, with simplicity, with honesty and outside air and real, live words.  With choosing what voices I allow in to my life, whose words I let be the loudest. No more mindless filling, but rather sanding away the rough edges so the cracks can be filled easily and smoothly–with laughter, with mundane, with relationship. 

And sanding is about as pleasant as it sounds.

Simplicity does not happen by default.  Busy does.  Simplicity is something you have to work for,  achieve.  It seems all sorts of backwards, but you have to fight for those slow mornings, finished books, kitchen dance parties, long talks to the glow of candles, not screens– you have to fight for that beautiful, white, blank space in your calendar.  You have to fight to notice others and their needs.  At least I do.

The coffee only sustains so long, the technology only entertains so much, the wine only calms for a while and devouring only fills a little.  

Here’s to not waiting until New Years or new decades or new months.  Here’s to now. 

Oh, and here’s to be gracious to myself in the process, which may be the hardest part.