trusting the mess and the grace

Last week I posted this picture on Instagram. It is grainy and not the best quality, but here it is in all its glory. For a caption I wrote:

My days are simple. Busy, messy, full. But simple. And I'm trying to memorize them before they are gone. 

I have a book/journal by Sabrina Ward Harrison called "The True and the Questions." In the intro she writes: Trust the mess and the not knowing…this is the real part, the most interesting part. This is yours... Trust the mess. Trust yourself. Leave ripples. 

There is so much unknown when I look at my almost three year old and eight month old. There is so much I wonder about, dream about, hope for. And that can get so easily lost in the everyday-ness we face. When Blythe has another potty accident right as I sit down to feed Becks I so quickly forget the importance of this day and the significance of this one fleeting moment.

One of life's hardest truths is that we don't get do-overs. There are no mulligans.

But we do get grace.
Lots and lots and lots of undeserved, unending grace.

I have to trust the messiness of our everyday lives. I have to trust that dance parties in the living room and peas spilled on the kitchen floor and bathwater soaking through the rugs and pinky fingers lifted during tea parties and bedtime stories and three a.m. comforting are leaving ripples.

And I have to stop myself. Slow myself.
Still myself.
I have to or I will miss it.

May Sarton said, "Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to stand still." And that is what these daughters of mine are doing for me, and in a way I think that is what parenthood is all about: It is knowing when to not freak out when milk was spilled or a lip was busted or book page was ripped. It is knowing to care fiercely for your child's safety, character, and faith. And it is knowing when to stand still and accept the grace and beauty this life has given you in your children.

What you don't see in this picture is that it was in the mid afternoon. Becks had woke early, Blythe hadn't napped at all, and I was on the verge of losing all sense of control myself.

Parenting is terrifying. And yet parenting is leaping while we're afraid.

In another section of her book, Harrison writes, "Trust the mess and the grace….try to just soak a bit in the goodness of feeling so deeply for another." 

Most days you will find me wondering if I'm doing anything right, and questioning if my children will learn the important stuff. But most days you will also find me waist deep in the mess and the grace, soaking in the goodness of getting to be mom to Blythe and Becks.