Normally, I’m not a huge fan of winter. I’m an autumn person, a lover of leaves and golden light and the beginning of a chill in the air. While I’ve always appreciated the winter months more than summer (endless heat and sun are not my preferred states), I’d still pick the newness of spring over what has felt like the lull of death and cold of December, January, and February.
This year has felt different. True, the weather has been more mild, and much more wet and less sharp. But also, I think it’s the fact that I’m trying very hard to appreciate every season I get to experience, whether it’s a short window of time left where 10 year-old John Mark still vies for a spot on my lap as I read aloud, or the freedom I now have as the mother of mostly older kids to pull away for an hour or an afternoon if I need to refresh. It’s all seasons… all an ebb and flow of time and situation and people and space.
That subtle shift I’ve been feeling for a bit now is becoming more clear; we are less and less a family of older teenagers and young adults and more and more a family again of younger children. It’s been a sweet thing, to come back to a place that I know most people leave and never visit again. Given such a long break of the full “on” of the early ages means that I feel so much more appreciative, I think, of this stage than I was the last time it was my everything. Oh, I know it will never really be my everything again. It will always be a shared slot in my attention. But still… it feels new again. And I’m grateful.
I’m grateful, too, that I’m experiencing this round of preschool-to-4th grade with the eyes of someone who knows the battles ahead and is neither paralyzed by the possibilities nor romanticizing what might be. I’ve done this before. It’s familiar territory. Somehow that brings an excitement to move forward, an ability to just walk without being too caught up in what it all means. I know what it means. It means that my children are growing, that they are becoming who God planned for them to be from the beginning. It means that I’m still holding little hands and acting as tour guide, but soon enough, I’ll be letting go again.
But not today. Today I’m enjoying the fact that when my husband is in country and home, he is fully home. Today we can prowl our property, looking for treasures in the grass, along the creek, and in the sky. We can grab onto the fact that school is life and life is school, and if we want to spend an hour racing through the fields or feeling the warm sun kiss our face even as the wind nips our skin, we can. Today we can just enjoy who we are, and what God has given us.
The books will still be waiting when we get inside. We’ll still have time to explore the Smokies with Willa of the Wood or to marvel at the wit in Beat the Story Drum, Pum Pum (affiliate links). Winter, though, only comes once a year. And this season of life only comes once, ever. I’m going to settle in to this feeling of quiet and let it soak into my heart. Spring will be here soon enough.