by Denise Dykstra

“In the Busy of Living, Remember It’s the Small Moments All Around Us That Make a Life”

Sometimes I get so busy that I forget to live life. Does this ever happen to you?

It’s Monday night and I have just succumbed to the comfort of the couch. However, I can not relax. The Cardinals and LA Rams game is on two TVs in our home. While Cash the Cat has sprawled out and fallen asleep amongst the noise, I am trying to find quiet to share a story with you all this week.

I thought of telling you how I became a knitter. It’s a great story. I can’t wait to share it with you.

I considered letting you know how the great moving of furniture is going over… it’s still going. My husband and I spent a day in South Haven Saturday and ended the night purchasing a vacuum cleaner, we are thrilling people like that. My boys are back to virtual learning and while I completely enjoy having them home, I also feel awash in stress over it all.

Sometimes life gets so busy with the day to day that I forget to take note of life. I miss seeing the light from a sunset until it’s broadcast on my friends social media later that evening. I am so concentrated on multitasking making dinner while I am on hold with our home phone provider, that I miss out on a conversation with my teenager.

Today I had to e-mail a group of women I have been so very excited to get together with this week. I had to let them know our meeting needs to be rescheduled for a much later date than I wanted. It was a scheduling conflict I hadn’t expected and it frustrated me. It had set me in a mood that was not what one would call good.

I was putting away dishes with extra force as I thought through the e-mail I would be sending. I didn’t like the way I was feeling. I didn’t like that our house is still not in order. I did not like that I needed to make a grocery list that included breakfast, lunch and dinner instead of just dinner. I did not like that my kitchen floor was dirty.

Wait, what? My kitchen floor dirty — and it is — made the list of complaints I was going through? I knew I needed an attitude adjustment. And quickly.

Even though I know what I need to do, I still need the reminder. When I get like this, I need the pep talk reminder of how to adjust my perspective.

I started taking another view of my current life’s inventory.

That e-mail I had to send? I knew one person it was going to make giddy. She had told me she wished we could wait to meet until the exact date we would now be meeting on. I could almost hear her smile as she read the e-mail I had not written yet.

My house is not in order. But my goodness, the fun my youngest son and I have had moving all the things around. Sure, we are tired of thinking of how to make a room work. But he is going to look back one day and think I am crazy… but he was right there being crazy with his mama.

I may need to have breakfast, lunch and dinner ready for the next five days due to the boys being on virtual learning, but I also get to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with two of my boys this week.

Is my kitchen floor dirty? Yes. But it is full of the spills of hot cocoa, coffee, an unfortunate accident with spaghetti and some spilled chili. While it surely does need to be cleaned, it also shows the wear of a busy family getting to spend time at home.

I may have fallen onto our couch tired tonight, but I am sitting in a warm home with the added benefit of a crackling fire in the fireplace. My boys are both watching football with me, well, one was watching until he headed to bed and one is just shouting to me from the other room about how great the Rams look tonight.

Cash the Cat has made us laugh more than he has made us mad today, this is unusual by the way. While our home phone may not be working, I also am not receiving any soliciting calls at all for days. I am all cuddled up and I get to write another bunch of words to you all. And man oh man, I do love sharing the words every week with you.

Sometimes, we just need an attitude adjustment. Well, I know I do anyhow. The days without sunshine and all the cold (I do not like cold, by the way) can get us down. But in the busy of living, remember it’s the small moments all around us that make a life. I needed the reminder of making a life tonight.

Maybe the reminder helps you too?