Night is a gentle friend.
It's 10:30 at night and I'm just getting around to making the yogurt. It'll take a while for it to cool, so despite my best efforts, it's going to be a late night. Again. But I couldn't help myself, I thought about yogurt and about boys who always want snacks and how I told them I'd make a new batch today and I had to get that milk cooking.
The good news is, I'm writing a blog post. The other good news is, I don't seem to be afraid of nighttime anymore.
For years now, as soon as the sun has gone down, the world has shifted into an unfriendly place for me. My thoughts scatter and retreat into corners, I only want to go to sleep. I've explained it away as the fact that I'm a morning person (which is true) but that doesn't quite justify the fear. There have been deeper anxieties beneath it all, thoughts of days that end when you haven't made the grade yet, when you feel deeply unsatisfied with yourself.
A while ago, I started to ask myself, "What would it take for me to feel like I've done a good job, at the end of the day? Or even to get the phrase, 'done a good job' right out of my head? What would it take for me to simply enjoy night, the deepening indigo of the sky, the night frogs and geckos, the quiet of the house?"
I can't say that I know when it happened. Was it when I stood on the street at midnight at the beginning of the New Year, watching thousands of lanterns forming rivers of light in the sky? Was it when Isaac came to me after nights of walking? Did I sweat it out? Did God set me free?
Maybe it started with that question... What would it take? It seems that with all bad thinking we need to get to the root, and I've been thinking about the story that I always seem to tell myself: that life is a list of things to get done and done well. In truth, there is so much more to life than that. There is so much more to God than that.
There's nothing that messes with to do lists and self-expectation like a baby in your arms who doesn't want to be put down. You have to slowly reel your mind back in, focus on his face rather than dinner waiting in the distance, unweeded garden beds, the laundry that needs to be strung on the line, the chapter you were smack in the middle of reading to the kids, clutter everywhere. You pull yourself back to the baby and slowly he comes into focus and you realize how relative time is, again. Days fly like leaves do when the wind is strong and they rain into your kitchen. Moments are slow and sluggish, then speed up again when dinner should be ready by now and the kids are arguing because they're hungry.
My lists will stretch on ahead of me all of my life. But life is not about finishing, life is about continuing. Continuing in love and patience for helping the pettiest of heartbreaking arguments between small kids. Continuing with the daily things that grow mind-numbing in their repetition. Continuing to notice each other and breathe the same air in peace. And continuing to be thankful at the end of the day, to meditate on all the good things, even all the mediocre ones because continuing often is mediocre.
A long string of mediocre moments extends like a dream into the past, and this is what life was and is. Every video I have of the kids is precious, only because it was picked out. In the moment I'm sure I was just as antsy and bored and ready to get things done. But we pick out these moments and we remember them and write them down and photograph them and record them. We make songs out of them and draw all over them and somehow the mediocre is the real life, far beyond getting the laundry on the line. It's almost laughable, when you think about it that way. Oh my overflowing shelves need to be organized, but YaYa is learning to play the ukelele, and Isaac is gurgling and talking more and more, and the morning breeze is like heaven.
The yogurt is probably cool enough for me to stir the starter in now, so I'm going to go and do that. And then I'll shower, and go to bed, and breathe in all the rest the night has to offer before I fall asleep.