The house is quiet.  After a week of hibernation, the kids are back in school, Marcus is at work, and I've just completed all the "have to's" on my work list for the day (well for the moment!).  Now I have about 30 minutes before I have to pick up my youngest wild one.  The house is a mess - dishes still in the sink, the floors are dirty, the door knobs are sticky, fingerprints and smears on the windows.  But the sun is out, the birds are singing, it's WARM and I'm outside with coffee, pen and paper.  The messy house is just a sign that we really live here and from the looks of the toys tossed about, we have fun doing it.

Just sitting, with maybe the company of pen and paper, has been a practice I've tried to embrace the last year or so.  I call it..."Shutting the Shoulds Up!" I don't have to allot large amounts of time to this practice, 5 to 10 minutes is fine.  I just haveto do it every now and then.  The world is busy telling us what we should be doing, our churches are very busy "suggesting" what we should be doing, the voices of our mothers and grandmothers even have our "should list"!  I load myself down with too many shoulds and too many expectations that I think others have of me.  My practice of "shutting the shoulds up" reminds me to come back to reality and my rhythm.  When life with 2 little kids can wait...then let it wait! 

I've been reading and hearing people say over and over the last year this idea of 'you already have all you need within you, if you just listen'.  I wasn't sure I really believed that...or if I really knew what that even meant, until today.  Sometime when we do settle in with all our "stuff" and we get still long enough, you can hear what you really need to know.  I think that is a God thing, call it what you want. There is something about the simple truths we instinctively did as kids - the very things adulthood seems to take from us.  It really is still right there, within us. 
Blessings Friends,
Christy

The Horizon
Fix your eyes on the horizon, child
fill your lungs with the breath of peace
guard your heart from growing cold
leave no truth untold
fix your eyes on the horizon, child

seek the beauty in simpleness
illuminate the darkness
trust your heart it knows the way
fix your eyes on the horizon, child

awaken the sacred 
fear not the stillness
embrace your true self
fix your eyes on the horizon, child

find strength in broken places
meaning in empty faces
we’re not all that different down here
fix your eyes on the horizon, child
By CLW, Feb. 5, 2014