Today I am grateful for a quiet peaceful home.

I am tired.

It was not a hard day necessarily, it was a delight.

But my muscles are tired from a sleepless night,

my emotions are rather taught from loving emotionally needy boys,

and my body is tired from the journey home that was

much more adventurous and much much longer that I thought it should have been.

I was so grateful to walk in the door to quietness,

to shower off the grime of the city without a timeframe,

and to scrub my body with lavender and feel my muscles slowly relax

without anyone saying my name or needing my attention.

Many days I have come home to be tortured by that same quietness.

It seemed to relish in harshly reminding me of what wasn't here.

No pitter patter of little feet.

No voices telling stories of the day.

No need for cuddles or my rapt attention.

Just quiet.

Always quiet.

I would turn on music and pick up the home

while biding time till Husband got home,

or I would go to the neighbors house to be bombarded

by hugs and questions by little friends and hear the adventures of their day.

But the quiet would be waiting when I came back.

I was so grateful for this home of ours.

I truly was.

Grateful for the way God has blessed us with such a peace filled home.

A place filled with little things that told the story of us,

a place of beauty and joy.

But some days the quietness was sort of personal torture chamber

with no end and I battled through it, fighting to remember

that God loves me with an everlasting love and this was and is His good towards me.

All while the quietness seemed to mock me and my pain.

And other days I would sit and miraculously enjoy the quietness

and the grace that God gave in those days in giving contentment and joy.

But today as I walked in and quietly thanked God for His mercy in giving me rest and quiet,

it stood in stark contrast with previous days and made me want to weep from joy.

For I know that days are coming when all my moments 

will be consumed by a little ninja and these quiet moments will be but a memory.

Not that there will not be quiet times,

I actually believe that it is very important to sit in quiet

and I look forward to teaching Little One this joyful discipline,

but I am also aware that it will be quite different (:

But I did not want to weep for joy that those days are gone,

but rather that those days were.

That God saw fit to painfully walk me through the quiet.

Through the peaceful quiet and the battlefield quiet

He loved me and brought me to know Him in the quiet

in a way that astounds and humbles me.

"Season by season,

I watch Him amazed,

in awe of the mystery

of His perfect ways"

~Sara Groves

I am loved with an everlasting love

that goes deeper than any man can understand and any words could ever tell.

And I am so so grateful.