Small Moments

Last week, Ruth Ayres posted a prompt to the SOS: Magic in a Blog group to write about a small moment. It hit me in one of my frenzied weeks when one kid was getting over strep and another was getting a sinus infection; I had a doctor appointment for myself; testing was going on at work; and there were all the typical home things to do: floors to sweep and lawn to mow and dinner to cook and laundry to wash and why is everything my son owns sitting on top of the toybox instead of in it? I don’t have tons of these wild weeks lately, but they do still strike, and I am rarely fully prepared.

So I brushed off the nudge to find a small moment and kept on ripping through my week with a chainsaw. Summer is the place for small moments, after all, and I was almost there.

But when I sat down on Monday night to try to write, I had absolutely nothing to say. I had jumped headfirst into the frenzy, and it had sapped any creative energy. On Tuesday night, I was still tapped out. I remembered Ruth’s prompt, and among the flailing nonsense I wrote on Tuesday night was a list of moments I wished I had noticed. It was a definite shift in my mindset. I remembered the slower way I want to live.

The next day, Morgan of Winsome Paper Goods posted on Instagram “Some words on seeing” and included a little montage of stories on the things she is noticing and asked the question, “What are you seeing?” The convergence of reminders settled my heart. I needed to slow down.

Of course the next day was still busy and rushed, because remembering you need to scale back is not the thing that makes it actually happen. I was driving to pick up my kids when the sky over the field stopped me, and my mind instantly slowed. This, my heart was saying. Notice this.

Anymore, I can’t seem to stop taking pictures of big old trees and sweeping stretches of sky, and both instantly calm my mind and soul. I think it’s because they live the opposite of how I do sometimes--patiently, mostly quietly, and they are full of beauty just from the essence of what they are. They remind me to look up and away from my own navel and enjoy what lovely things the world has to offer. They make me feel, no matter where I am, at home. They just are, and the world is better because of it.

I drove behind huge farm machinery and turned off on a little gravel road I remember walking down a million times and snapped a picture of a tree that has witnessed my entire life’s growth and now witnesses my kids’. That same pale blue sky spread all around, the same one in which I used to cloud watch in the daytime and count stars at night. I think I used to act like this landscape was wallpaper for my very important life, but it was actually quietly shaping me to be the kind of person who really does know that the small moments matter, and it is continuing its quiet work of reminding me to pay attention.