A silent morning

A little smidge of lonely hits me every morning in-between the time when Paul leaves to work and when the kids wake up from their summer coma. It's weird how I used to long for mornings like this when the only sound I could hear was an occasional sigh or boredom from my dog and the audible sipping of my tall glass of homemade iced mocha. I used to dream about silence, just two minutes here, five minutes there. But not any more.


There is something that awakens within me when I hear my kids wake up, the slightest stir from their rooms makes me anticipate the way they will look when the stumble from their slumber, nappy bed head in a hot mess but never more adorable. There is something that puts my heart at peace when the dogs scramble to the door because they have heard the garage door open and Paul is home. 


* sip *


These are the times I used to dream about. I have time to pray and really search Scripture, not just read through it. I have time to take a hot shower without an interruption and I can actually listen to a few songs of my own and hear through the entire thing. I could maybe pick up an actual Dictionary and find a new word for the day. I can water plants, watch YouTube videos, clean, answer emails, do laundry, write and a million other things that are nearly impossible when the noise meets me.


Five minutes after the kids wake up, I change my mind. My world changes. This blog post doesn't get finished. The dogs can't decide if they want to come out or in as they bark at the suspicious burglar across the street walking their dog, cunningly dressed like an 80 year old woman. Fights happen. The kids' agenda for the day is set in place and chances are that hot shower I was thinking about will not only NOT be hot, it simply won't happen. At all. In my mind, I contemplate ways to convince the kids to sleep for another half hour. The laundry that I was in the middle of doing will likely stay there, unfolded and wrinkled, until someone needs something out of desperation. My iced mocha gets watered down. The sipping has ceased. The watering jug to water the plants has water in it now, but hasn't made it's way out to actually feed the flowers. The garage door doesn't open, but the vibration of my phone against the countertop is practically just as loud when I answer Paul's "Can you do me a favor?" phone call.


Life is different when everyone wakes up.
Things change when everyone is around.


And then I am back to daydreaming about the notion of silence, counting the hours until I can coerce my children into an earlier bedtime than the sunlight outside and finish the blog I started six minutes before they woke up. But until that time comes, I plan on making my day....OUR day...one that is loquacious and puerile. Take the time in your own lonely time to look up those words in the dictionary.