The Way I feel right this minute...

This is how I found Lucy 5 minutes after she cleared her plate from dinner last night. Exhausted, she lacked even the strength to walk herself down to the blue basement bedroom where her white fluffy bed resides.

This is how I feel right now, tired to the bone and wishing for relaxation. But it is not to be, as dinner is yet to be fixed or served, and we have both soccer practice and the pinewood derby before the day is through.

As I write to you, the college piano student who is my children's instructor is counting the beat as Brynley tries with an expressionless face to plunk out the new piece she will practice after the big recital on Monday. The house is alive, kids running in and out of the back door and other children reading and studying at the counter.

Funny how it puts my body in the mode of rest. They are close, they are safe. The sun is out after a day of rain, the birds sing outside and there is peace for the moment. After a hard day of doctor visits and delving into the small new complications that arise whenever an adopted child grows older and has questions we have now a calm at the Spruces. And so it is that my body gives itself permission to slow down, to look hard, and be tired. To long for a suspension of this moment as reality turns into dreams and can linger in peace and quiet.

I'll go back to work now. I'll cook and chauffer and cheer. I'll dress the girls in pajamas and read stories and ask Molly about when she was happy/sad/mad/scared today (my new nightley assignment) and the sun will go down as I work.

Then I'll beg my big children to go to their beds, and I'll struggle to read my scriptures and I'll write the things in my heart down into the pages of my little black journal all the while longing for John to cuddle up and tell me he needs me to stop thinking and just be with him as we drift off to dreamland.

and then, only then, will I sleep.