A Thoughtful Life is Not Rushed

“A thoughtful life in not rushed” I heard this quote once, and it has stayed with me. I think in the rush of the day-to-day tasks that everybody has, it can be a challenge to take the time to stop and enjoy some down time.

We are an extremely active family. It feels like we have been tackling project after project for months (ok, years). We tend to overschedule ourselves. It really is exhausting. That is the way we have chosen to live. Only recently have we fallen into a routine that feels “normal.” Our new normal. Gone are the 10p.m. dinners and road trips that start as soon as we are out of work for the week and end just as we are ready to fall into bed at the weekend’s close. We have balance. We have prioritized our time. And I find comfort in that.  Fridays are spent relaxing in our pjs a little longer than usual, just my Bundle and I, slowly awakening our senses to start the day. We rock together with blankets and music, cuddle together over breakfast, make an occasional reading corner, and I find myself more refreshed on these days than any other.

We find ourselves drawn to various parks (here, here, and here) on the weekends. We play and play and play. We picnic, then play some more. We laugh and run and go down slides. Then head home for a nap. All of us. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Sunday mornings my little girl reads her books or watches her movie (Sunday School Songs DVD). She sings and dances to Sunday School songs as we get ready to head to church. This warms my heart.

Unlike the “bedtime routine” that every children’s advice book strongly encourages, these are casual little things that did not start out intending to be “a new routine,” but we have comfortably settled into them. Because it is fun; because it works.

I still love spontaneity and there are times that you just NEED to be spontaneous. Take a few weeks ago for example: my little girl and I were driving home to get dinner ready and it started to pour. As in, rain-so-hard-you-can’t-hear-each-other-talk pour. Since it was still raining once we got home, we pulled on our rain boots and went out to splash around. It was fun. We were wet and dinner was later than usual, but we were “puddling.”

Definition of Puddling: (verb); 1)puddle jumping or 2)spontaneous jumping in the rain and looking for puddles; this term was coined by my little girl.

Now when it rains, this is a routine. As long as there is no lightning (safety first, of course) we are going to go outside and play. I love how a spontaneous afternoon in the rain how become a new routine for us.

~Angela