Sometimes a mama can get busy and when that happens, every little interruption becomes a big interruption and then pretty soon the baby who’s not really a baby anymore comes in and his big brown eyes well over and he hugs long and tight and he says “Mama the sign at the hardware store says ‘don’t be so busy making a living that you forget to live the life you made'”. 

And my heart quivers in my chest a little and even though it’s just a short-term project that’s taken me away from my normal everyday routine for the past week, to them…a week without mama is a long time.

It worked out nicely that it rained so hard over my birthday…our outdoorsy stuff could be put on hold. And by the time they all got home from shopping with Daddy for Mama -how they love to spoil me with hair pretties and earrings and construction paper cards- everyone was too tired to go to the movie we were all itching to see.

So I kept on working.

And he kept on coming in for extra hugs.

I pushed the guilt aside, no time for stopping when there are already too many stops to get this thing done.

But then today, after the third solid day it dawned on me.

We’ve weathered cancer and we’ve weathered loss and we’ve weathered pain and we’ve weathered struggle and along with all the weathering there have been stops to get out of the rain and if we didn’t stop we might’ve just shriveled and is that what He meant when He said Be Still and Know that I am God?

If I DON’T stop working, my baby might stop hugging.

The project will get done.

The work will be finished.

The computer will still be waiting.

But my babies are growing.

This weekend I turned forty-two, and half my life is on the wind and if this body faces aging and if Jesus waits to call me Home, I may have another forty-two years on this old planet here, and that’s only four more times to celebrate the really big anniversaries with my beloved and that’s only thirty-one more times to have birthday parties for my babies before they’ve all gone on to not be babies anymore and that’s only forty-two more times that they’ll all squish right on up next to me and whisper and squeal in delight as I slowly and suspensefully rip open their little packages wrapped with layers of paper towel and newspaper and tied messy with all the Christmas ribbon in the world.

If I’m not still and set the projects aside and let the to-do list lie down for a rest, how will they know I love this life we made more than I love making the living?

I shut the computer down and asked my husband to take us to our favorite beach.

And we celebrated my birthday.

We celebrated the beauty of this earth God made.

We celebrated family.

And we celebrated life.

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  Psalm 46:10