Soul-Fed Mama: Find The Beauty To Balance The Hard
This morning I was having the kind of morning I wrote about the other day.I woke to a text message from our daycare provider that she was sick and closing the center for the morning until her helper arrived at 11. My to-do already had more on it than I could quite manage in the hours of child care I was expecting for the day and suddenly I didn’t even have them.As days that start like that do, it got worse: I spilled the coffee grounds while making my coffee and the cats were all whining their most annoying meows my feet while I supervised Bean making scrambled eggs although I had already fed them and I ended up tripping on one and stepping on another. I got out my laptop to try to get few a through emails over my own breakfast which of course meant Bean urgently needed to sit in my lap.I was frustrated and snapping and Bean started crying, which made me feel like even more of a jerk. When I finally got us on our way out, I discovered my keys were missing. We were standing in the driveway at this point and I had already locked the front door.By the time I located the spare key, found my car keys and got us back out to the car we no longer had enough time to do the errand I was planning to do, but we had too much time to just drive to her daycare for the new drop off time.Something had to change about this day.I took a few deep breaths and decided to change my mood.In my inbox was a email from Liz Lamoreux from her “Yes, this” series. She wrote, “As you move through your day today, take time to notice the beauty you see in your corner of the world.”It was the middle of the morning and I hadn’t noticed any beauty yet. I knew it was all around me, I just wasn’t looking for it. I was up to my neck in the ugly, and I needed some beauty to balance it.I drove the long way to Bean’s day care, along the coastal cliffs, down the hill and under the roller coasters at the Boardwalk, up again and through a pretty neighborhood where I used to live.The fog was just burning off and we drove in and out of the edges of it as we followed the curves of the cliff along the bay. In some places the edges of the trees were muted and fuzzy and in others they were lit brilliant in the morning sun. The ocean was grey and quiet, fading out to the soft grey horizon. I rolled down the windows and slowed the car, so we could hear and smell the water.Beautiful. And once I started noticing it, I could see beauty everywhere. I call that “enabling the wonder.”
won·der
nouna feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.
Choosing to see the beautiful helps to balance the hard. Even when, especially when, it feels impossible that there can be any beauty. Seek it out. Notice it. Hold it in your hand. Let it remind you that there is more than this hard and painful moment. [Tweet "Hard moments tend to pass, but the beauty persists. Look for it."]Try it: Take Liz’s assignment and enable your wonder today. Then come back here and tell me about it. Leave a link if you posted words or photos of your beautiful things somewhere on the web! Help us find you by using the hashtag #soulfedmama.