When I was a child, the hundred-year-old grade school was just down the alley way and a small jog through the towering pines which separated my block from the library and then a jump across the street. I would often escape to the playground of the school. The swings swung high and dangerous, the merry-go-round was fast and left me dizzy, but my favorite thing to do was to try to balance on the giant 5-coats-of-chipped-paint teeter toters. They were heavy and had three steel grooves underneath so as to accommodate any unbalanced weight. My right thigh bares a scare from being caught under a heavy seesaw groove.
I would often place the seesaw on the middle groove, step on top and then try to balance the wood plank just so...and just when it seemed that the world had stopped and I had achieved the impossible...it would tip and I would overcompensate and it would tip again and again.
This is my life right now; overcompensating, tipping, trying to balance, but not quite able to keep it "just right". I keep waiting for the calm to come and the grooves to click into place so that everything is just so. But maybe that isn't the way it is supposed to be right now?
I like comfortable, but maybe slightly uncomfortable doesn't necessarily mean without a sense of peace and happiness. I enjoy being the YW president, but the feeling that I am really "on top of it" is very fleeting and usually slips through my fingers about an hour after church ends.
I very much enjoy being my children's mother, but I very rarely feel at the top of my game. There is constantly something new thrown into the mix, and at any given moment I feel that I could turn into the crazy mom that I try to keep caged in my neurosis.
I try to remind myself that this is a consecrated time, I may not see or feel the blessings always that accompany sacrificing comfort. My unspoken deal with God is that this time as president of teenage girls while I have very difficult young children is really just helping me prepare to be able to guide my very difficult young girls when they hit puberty. Because it's all about me really:)
But the truth is (I know) that life isn't about comfort, as soon as I've found comfort and have mastered something in particular, the rug is pulled out and I find myself trying to catch my balance again. And that, I'm told, is what I asked for, right?
Speaking of rugs, I have been on the lookout for the perfect rug for our giant middle area in our great room for 2 years now. I wanted something perfect: big, not too vintagy, not too ugly, and soft.
I found this rug from Anthropologie, but it wasn't quite big enough and $3000 is slightly out of the budget.
Then I found this one on overstock. The tubes are quite large pieces of felted wool, it's so soft, big, colorful, and perfect for our space. And the kids love it, it actually absorbs some of the noise of that room. So we bought two.
Come on over, my house smells like a giant sweater.
