Bigger Picture Moment: Pretty Sure

I'm pretty sure that by this time next year

there still will be dishes in the sink waiting to be washed

there still will be an ever-growing pile of laundry lurking behind the closed door of our pantry

books still will be waiting on my nightstand, unread, beckoning me to devour words like ice cream {or carrots, these days}

weeds will be poking their heads up through wet soil, begging to be pulled

the internet still will be bursting with conversation and articles I want to read

hours in the day will still add up to 24

and I'll go to sleep at night wishing for maybe just one or two more

But this little guy? He won't be four any more. He'll be ever-evolving, just like always.

All the days of his fourness will have been lived and imprinted in my mind as a memory, if I've so chosen to live my days well

soaking in who he was and who he is

and remembering that the one thing he'll always be beside himself is changing -- he's ever-morphing into newness within the stretched skin of

my first born baby who grew into a toddler



a toddler who morphed into a preschooler



a preschooler who is rapidly transitioning into a boy



who will one day become a man

who will have been built by many one-day-at-a-times of skipping out on dishes to cuddle on the couch while reading about dinosaurs, ignoring laundry piles to romp around the house as pirates in full costume and delaying bedtime to go see how God's painted the sky each new summer night.

And so the dishes, the laundry and the bedtimes will always be.

But he won't always be who he is in this skin, in this now, in this way, so I will make the effort to remember each step of his ever-changing journey from boyness into manhood.



Happy fourth birthday, G!

Bigger Picture Moment: Instead

Thunder is rumbling a deep moan in the near distance while a web of lightening spreads across the sky, dances in the horizon.

An early morning thunderstorm lulls a snugly toddler back into slumber, and I quiet, creak, sneak out of bed at the beckoning of a preschooler's loud whisper of hunger and subsequent grumbling from his small stomach.

Holding my hand, he all but drags me out of my room and down the stairs.

We talk thunder. We talk rain. We talk lightening on the way down in hushed voices.

Heading toward the kitchen, I try to talk breakfast while pulling out the rolled oats, but he instead pulls me over to the big red rocking chair in the living room.

"I think I need mommy snuggles more than my tummy wants breakfast," he says through an overzealous whisper. "I think we better snuggle instead."

And so it waits, breakfast, uncooked atop the stove, because willing preschool arms and hearts don't.

Have you caught a glimpse of the bigger picture through a simple moment? Share with us at Melissa's today, and then encourage others on the journey of intentional living.