Running

I love running. I love hearing the thump of pavement under my shoes, seeing the first brave, green blades of grass poking through leftover snow on a sunny spring morning that promises to be just a little bit warmer than the one before it, crunching golden-brown leaves in the fall; I love to run.


But not on errands. Nope. Not at all.


The only thing that makes running errands all day a bit brighter is that the Mice usually come along. Yes, that's right. The addition of my kiddos to my errand-running is the best thing about the errands. I'm sort of a countercultural rebel that way. Although I hate running errands with a passion (a passion), I do love including the girls in the grocery and household shopping. I am the mom who talks to her babies through the whole shopping trip far before they can respond.


I am that mom, and I'm okay with that.


Regardless of how much I enjoy having the girls along on errand-running, I still can barely deal with how much I dislike that running. The whole time we wait in line at Walmart, during the drives from the bank to the grocery store to Walmart, I go through the list of what else we could be doing that would be far more valuable to their development (and to my sanity!).


Therefore it should not be surprising that leaving for my first Walmart trip at 10:45 yesterday morning, a good 45 minutes later than I had planned, and returning from my second trip to Walmart at 9:45 last night was not exactly the idea day in my world. In between Walmart trips we "ran" to the church, the dollar store, two health food stores, and a swimming lesson.


And yet.....it was a good day. It was a marvelous day, a brilliant, beautiful, crisp fall day spent working my tail off to clean up from a glorious vacation, to organize and re-organize a house that is finally being settled after four years of spending our lives here, and most importantly, to fight as hard as I could to find some peace and calm in our rat-race lives for the Mice.





As I struggled to find some quiet, calm time for them in the midst of our necessary errand-runs, they were the ones who provided for me.


They wanted to picnic outside for lunch, and, since the wasps have left (died?) for the season, I happily obliged. I was 'running' around the kitchen munching leftover pizza while they dined on their sandwiches outside when I suddenly heard two gasps. Miss Mouse, in a horrified voice, announced, "We forgot to pray!". Sunny, equally horrified, set her sandwich down with an, "Oh, no!". I waited, just wanting to see what would happen without my intervention. Sure enough, two tiny voices in unison began, "Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest.....". They resumed their picnic after finishing their prayer.


In the midst of our running day, the children were the ones who remembered to pause, to give thanks, to enjoy the moment. With that, I'm beginning an intentional practice of thanksgiving, counting blessings to 1,000 and beyond.

1. Two children's voices in unison saying our table prayer

2. Knowing those two voices are our children

3. Crunchy leaves all over our lawn....and the strength and health to be able to take care of them with a rake

4. The means to be able to run all those errands - the time, the finances to know our needs will be filled

5. The post-vacation chaos that is present because we were able to take the vacation in the first place

6. My 4- year old insisting on buying bracelets for her 2-year old sister with her own money "because [Sunny] wants them, Mom!"

7. These moments with my girls - these days that I could not see from October six years ago