It has been no secret that I am struggling for time right now. Our lives have become a type of busyness that I always promised myself would not be a part of my life. Yet we have become sucked in somehow. And I wonder how it got so out of hand.
Nothing we do is ‘bad’ in anyway, but the very energy is being sucked out of us all. I can see my younger children are not able to keep up the pace which has been set…by someone, but who knows who? I don’t. I mention it to Gary. He agrees. But what do we do? What do we cut out? When everything is full of so much goodness, how do we decide what stays and what goes?
I can see our house becoming more and more of a mess as home-school, drama, friends and general life takes over. I can see impatience settling in as the teens get used to life’s speed and forget there are other more comfortable paces to live at. Everything is go, go, go! The dream of living life at a Northern Irish speed living just outside London is simply not happening.
So today we decided to take an inset day. Now, I’ve not a clue what an inset day actually is, but when one happens at the nearby schools the children get the day off. Today, we are not leaving the house. Today, we are not meeting anyone outside of the family. Today, we are following our own pace and beating to our own drums. Thomas is editing skating videos, Lillie is crocheting hair-bands, Charlotte is blogging, A9 is watching nature videos and making notes for her own nature reference book and my littlest is snuggled up in my bed watching a Christmas dvd, without a care in the world. And me? Well I am sitting at my computer contemplating which parts of our life we need to say no to and which parts we need to make a priority. What boundaries do Gary and I need to place around our family? I am thinking deeply about what is most important to us as a family, before we lose all we have built up over the past decade and a half. And I am home-making, relishing the dust-free surfaces, enjoying the sparkly clean taps and letting every part of me breath in the Christmas scented candles lit throughout the cottage.
I begin to feel at one with myself once more. Something needs to change. Over the next few days we, as a family, will be figuring out what that something is.