The Stillness and the Knowing

I sit this morning watching an amazing view- huge, breathtaking mountains, blue and white, shadowed and light, all stillness and calm from a distance but teeming underneath with activity. The scent of pine fills the air. There is no sound of cars or human chatter...just birds and a light hum from far off in the distance.

I sit on the cold stone steps of an amphitheatre set in the side of a mountain. Inside the buildings around me people are hard at work - thinking, creating, dreaming.

My view of the Rockies as I write this morning. 

Those are all things I really like to do.

Today, though, I am just being. Just soaking.

The air is chilled but the sun is bright and I know that in a few hours I will no longer need my coat. I am grateful for an early spring here.

The words of Psalm 9 spring to mind:

I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; 
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you; 
I will sing praise to your name O Most High. 

Those are the only words I can really find surrounded by such beauty.

This week, the world is still for me. I am still mother, still wife, still friend and daughter and sister, still new business launcher. But primarily this week, I am just me. Whatever that means these days. It is easy not to see myself in the day-to-day rush. To cook and love and listen and sing and to be found fully in those most pressing roles I fill in this season of life.

But this week I get the privilege and gift of stepping back. Slowing down. Walking, not rushing. Sleeping. Eating slowly, savoring food.

And friends? It is good.

I had a pastor a long time ago who would preach a sermon and then, after offering practical ways to implement his message, would offer grace as an aside to parents of young children. Draw near to God in new and different ways, forgive yourself, know that old habits might not work well with sleepless nights and unpredictable wake times and cranky, teething toddlers. Find ways to continue to know your God, but know those ways might look different than they used to.

For someone like me, who likes consistency, habit and predictability, that aside was a gift and a challenge, both of which I've been learning to accept even more so this second time around the young child phase. Grace, flexibility, stolen moments of peace in the midst of the good chaos.

This week I get to take my time, though. My prayers won't be during my showers or at red lights. My reading won't happen just in those ten minutes of pre-bed stupor. It will be quiet enough and still enough to listen.

I will slow. And revel. And fill up for the next round of joyful adventures that parenting and life brings.

So as I gaze this morning at a creation so beautiful there are no words, I claim this week for joy and rest. For connection with my God and my husband. For the finding of the current me, the seeing of the good work that God has done in me even when I've been too tired this last year to see it.

I breathe in and out, I rejoice, I hope. I gratefully receive this most precious of gifts.

This week I will be still and know that He is God.