Slide or Soar

My husband is a musician. I am a homemaker. I could put many other words here, technically, and sound more cool, but I am merely that. And that is a lot. I am the one who cleans our sweet barn home top to bottom and keeps it tidy, looking pretty, and smelling nice. I cook most of the meals, and do some of the many dishes that accumulate daily. (My husband is like the dish man-he’s amazing. I do dishes but the guy is vigilant in the kitchen. It’s wonderful.)
I make sure bathrooms are presentable and that there’s no pee on the seats. Yes, with boys this is unavoidable sometimes-shrug, GROSS, move on.
I’m the one who teaches our two children their subjects, helping them with math problems, language, spelling tests, writing, grammar, history and whatever else that comes up, on the three days of the week that they don’t attend a charter school. I garden occasionally outside, watering plants and getting my hands dirty, which I love. I research healthy yet delicious meals and go to the grocery store and play the chef with ingredients that I hope will be satisfactory to every member of my family as well as my own taste buds. I wipe tears from sweet faces and I bandage wounds from playing hard outside, and console with words and prayers. I also sometimes scold when need be, which is not often, and send kids to their own rooms to have their own thoughts so that they can work out angers or frustrations. I bring towels to steamed-up bathrooms after showers when children forget to put one within reach. And when everyone is tucked in for the night, I finally read my own books and play my little word games and write my thoughts down if I have the energy to keep my eyes open at that point. It is a humble life. I love it.
I have felt the pressure many, many times whether from others or because of society’s views on the stay at home Mom, or even my own insecurities or need to help earn money for our family in a very expensive world, to get a “real job.” A paying occupation. I have worked throughout my time as well, cleaning houses to help supply financially, working in an office, and other odds and ends of these sorts of things. I am not against it or above it. I respect working mothers and women so very much, I can’t even describe in words my esteem for my friends who are both heroes in the workplace and tender, present mother. They are an amazing force.
We live paycheck to fluctuating paycheck. When you’re self-employed it is unpredictable. Often. Because of this, though, I’ve been able to see many miracles and we’ve been provided for supernaturally multiple times from the most unusual sources. It is not the life for everyone, it is hard to let go and not stress out some months.When work outside of the home is necessary, I roll up my sleeves and do it. This is good. But Chris and I feel rich, even when we don’t always know where next months rent will come from which is currently the case.  We are so happy in our humble life. We have to depend upon a God we’ve come to trust and rely on in many times of crisis- where God was faithful. Where things should have fallen apart and were instead worked out in ways we could not have anticipated.
The word for this season in our lives has been: Trust. Be still. Be thankful.
A couple of things I have clung to that were given to us through people many years ago are:
“The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places, Yes, I have a good inheritance. Psalm 16:6
And: “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4
Today I awoke with thoughts of wings. God bestowing us with wings, and telling us we can soar on the heights.
Last night our precious 13-year old daughter prayed for us, and one of her prayers was that we would be lifted out of the fog and into the light where we can see truth more clearly. Then today, I read this:

I was at one time spending a winter in London, and during three long months we did not once see any genuine sunshine because of the dense clouds of smoke that hung over the city like a pall. But many a time I saw that above the smoke the sun was shining, and once or twice through a rift I had a glimpse of a bird, with sunshine on its wings, sailing above the fog in the clear blue of the sunlit sky. Not all the brushes in London can sweep away the fog; but could we only mount high enough we should reach a region above it all.
And this is what the soul on wings does. It overcomes the world through faith. To overcome means to “come over,” not to be crushed under; and the soul on wings flies over the world and the things of it. These lose their power to hold or bind the spirit that can “come over” them on wings of Surrender and Trust. That spirit is made in very truth “more than conqueror.”
~ Hannah Whitall Smith (Quaker, rebel, realist, poet, believer, writer)

I once had a dream that I was climbing up this strange roller coaster-type waterslide with many twists and very high plateaus and dead ends. I arrived at a place where I looked down and saw a very twisty, scary looking slide that I was supposed to go down, and I stood there, terrified. I turned back to go back the way I’d come, and it had vanished, leaving the one choice, to slide down, but then I was presented with another: giant wings that I could put on and soar with into the expanse before me. I chose the wings. I clipped them onto my arms and dove off into the air, soaring over tiny towns and miniature people and cars moving around down below. I awoke with such a feeling of exaltation. I want to fly, if given the choice.

Anyways, I don’t really know what that has to do with my first part of what I wrote, other than just keeping hope alive and “mounting up on wings like eagles” even in a life that sometimes feels mundane and quite ordinary. We were made to fly.