If you have kids then you know what I am about to talk about. That feeling of you try and try, you give and give, you buy and buy, you run and run, you do all the things and still you get to the end of the day and feel like you are NOT enough. I’d like to say “It’s only when things are busy at the the beginning of the year.” Then it becomes, “It’s only during the holidays when everything is busy.”…………, “It’s only during the spring when things are wrapping up.” …………..“It’s only during summer when we try to get so much to fit in and it flies by.”
Do you see the pattern? Yep…. It’s the pattern of life. The reality that I have come to is IT DOESN’T SLOW DOWN. If anything as we get older time speeds up……but does it really?
As I have pulled back this past year, I have been working really hard on BEING and just not DOING. Let me elaborate. We feel busy all the time because we are always busy DOING things with our children. Running them from activity to activity, appointment to appointment, then throwing family in there, work, and friends….yep the time passes and you blinked. While we can’t slow time down we can enjoy it more and THAT’s become my new life goal. I’ll always have the passion to work, it’s who I am. I’ll always have the grit to get through anything and everything, it’s who I am. I’ll always have the energy and excitement to create new things but you know where I need to discipline myself? In the BEING. I know I can’t be the only parent that finds themself lost in their thoughts only to pull up to the activity to realize I spent the last 10 minutes in my own mind and mindlessly say “Have a great time, remember I love you.” and off they go. Perhaps it’s the phone, the emails, the constant ability with all this “wonderful” technology that pulls us from our greatest gifts…our children. It is those very things that use up our patience so when we see our gifts we have very little left for them.
So that’s been my newest goal and you know what? It’s harder than any goal I have ever set. The idea of just BEING when I’m with my children or the people I love. For so long DOING has been part of the picture that just BEING and SEEING and LIVING life with them comes with a different set of skills. So I encourage you, to stop the DOING or while you are doing be intentional about also BEING PRESENT.
One day the DOING will stop but if we do our jobs right BEING with us will be something they will cherish forever. I realize more and more as life goes on my children don’t need me to buy more, do more, sign them up for more, or run them around more…. Really I hear “Mama, just BE more, not for me but for you. Mama when you are your best self, it’s the best version to show me. Mama what you do is nice but WHO you are will show me the courage I need to always be me.”
Maybe you are the perfect parent and got it all together and as you read this you turn into Judge Judy….I applaud you. But if you are like me just trying to get by doing the best you can…guess what?
I. APPLAUD. YOU. ♥️
