Yesterday I ran outside because I literally didn't know what to do with myself. 

I was completley overwhelmed. With work as a teacher starting up next week, Adela's baptism on Sunday, and some projects that I promised would get done before summer ended ... I just didn't know where to start. I had a horrible sinking feeling that I wouldn't get it all done at all. 

So, I ran outside with my socked feet stuffed into my thong sandals (I don't know why I do that) and walked up and down the drive way. I prayed and cried and asked God to please just write down a list of what He wanted from me so that I could stop being confused and disappointed in myself all the time. 

All the time. 

Because at the end of the day, the list felt like a big fat sign that I had messed up. That I had messed up the summer. Maybe I was doing all the wrong things. Maybe I wasn't on the right track. Maybe my family wasn't on the right track. Maybe I wasn't what and who I was supposed to be and needed to trim corners of my heart to fill the space that others expected of me. 

My eyes lifted to the sky and I finally saw the approaching storm, the warm moist wind filling my face and nose. 

I love storms. It feels like watching a force of God approach, full of power and promise. 

So I sat on an old blue tractor and wiped tears from my face. 

A bird, a simple barn swallow, flew in front of me and perched on the power lines. "Look at the birds. They do not plant or harvest or store food in barns and your Heavenly Father feeds them." Matthew 6:26. I stared at the bird. It didn't need to worry and God promised me that I was more valuable that it. That silly little barn swallow. 

That barn swallow also didn't need to be anything but himself. He just had to be. To live. 

"Oh, God," I breathed. "Me, too?"

He whispered back into my soul. Yes, you, too, Lora. You just need to be. 

The fog, confusion, and fear cleared. I smiled. I even felt a little foolish. 

I am me.

I have a ridiculous passion to improve things, to teach, to watch people grow, to figure out systems, to find the fullness in life every breath of my life. 

Oh, goodness, how I suddenly loved that bird. It isn't a smart creature and it isn't worried about it. The more it trusts God the more it rests in God's bounty and provision. 

I rose from the tractor when the wind gusted up, the sand pushing me back to the house and my list. I am me. God created me for His purposes. I just need to enjoy the ride, the placement of my soul in the wide tapestry of His love story. 
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I was puttinig Adela to bed and she had a thousand words. I tucked a few strands of dark brown hair behind her ear and marveled at the sparkle in her eyes as she told me about the most important part of her day: digging up irrigation leaks with her papa. 

The laughter was hard to hold in, I could feel it bubbling up at the base of my chest. She was full of conversation about worms and frogs and gophers, repeating a dozen things she had learned and expressing her fascinations with the process. 

And I was so thankful. 

It had been one of those days when I had felt exhausted and preoccupied. There had been a lot of phone calls to make and decisions requiring thought. I had felt like a truly terrible mom. I had been so emotionally and mentally unavailable to the girls. 

Eventually we said our prayers, sang our songs, and turned out the lights. I walked away and was so thankful for the way God provided love and connection to our active little girl through the simple act of working with her father. It also made me pause. 

We really don't have to recreate or construct perfect experiences for our children, we just need to include them in life. Life is already part of the interesting and complex. Life is already full. But so often we feel the need to occupy our children elsewhere while we get life done. As if they need to be compartmentalized into another part of our world. 

Now, I'm not saying that I should have put the phone on speaker while I called doctors and dentists that day and let Adela be part of the decisions being made, but there are more opportunities than I realize to include the girls in my life and in my world. There are conversations to be had over folding laundry. There is laughter to be heard as we squish pizza dough. There are plenty of ways that we can be seen and heard. 

This realization is such a relief. Connecting with my girls can often feel like another chore, another expectation that is sometimes not met. However, when I invite them into my world and my life, the connection can me more real and deep than the reconstructed moments that are squeezed into a busy schedule. 

Thank you, God, for showing me that it never was that complicated. Relationships are about sharing our life with others, including them in our world.