A Cup of Coffee

It's 5:30 in the morning on Martin Luther King's birthday and I have an entire morning ahead of me for just me. A whole sweeping morning to fill my soul with writing and reading and inspiring stuff. Oh my word. It doesn't get any better than this.

Roy, sadly, has to work today. And so, I got up to help him out the door, as I do most every morning. As Roy is gone until late evening, oftentimes, we pack an ice chest filled to the brim with food for him. And so, I go to work on that while he readies his truck and gets his stuff together, and is out the door by 5:30.  It's kind of a job in itself getting him out the door, but that's okay.

My reward? A quiet hour in my living room, candle glowing, a cup of coffee beside me, its steam lazily curling up towards the ceiling, and my iPad.

Perfection.

Jace doesn't have school today, either, but he spent the night at Tami's. We headed over yesterday to watch the Cowboys game with them. We dined on burgers, chips, salsa, and guacamole, while we rooted for our favorite team. It was intense -- those Cowboys? They gave the Packers a run for their money...and in my opinion, they should have won it.

But they didn't.

Anyway, in the midst of this crazy game, thunder shook the house. I quickly headed to Caleb's bedroom to make sure that Jace heard it as he is always talking about how much he loves a good thunderstorm.

When he saw me in the doorway, he said, "I heard it, Mom," with that tone that says -- You can leave now.

Kids. Gotta love 'em. Cuz you can't kill 'em.

Anyway, it wasn't long until we all got warnings of a tornado that had landed in our vicinity, and the Keene siren was blasting at the top of its lungs. Chas happens to work with Keith who works on the weather team here in town, and so Chas started texting him. Keith said, no worries. The tornado is ten miles away.

And so we didn't worry. Jace came running in, proclaiming his adoration for living so precariously. "Wouldn't it be cool, Mom, if a tornado actually hits Keene?"

Hm. Not so much.

And so, once the Cowboys' road to glory hit a roadblock, Roy and I loaded up for home while Jace stayed behind to enjoy the stormy weather with the Lewis clan. They are much more fun than his parents.

I called Dad last night and he and Jo told me how they were iced in and more was on its way.

Clearly life has slowed down in the midwest. It's pretty slow here today as well.

Recently I read a statement that stopped me for a moment:

Hurry always empties a soul.

I remember one time when the girls were little and I was teaching quite a lot and had to rush out the door for some sort of academy program. I was screaming at them, getting angrier by the minute because they were taking their good sweet time, not a care in the world, and making me late. I headed to their bedroom, raging in full blast that they needed to get it together, and get out the door because I am LLLLAAATTTTEEE!!! And in that moment, I looked up.

At the end of our hallway in that Wisconsin apartment was a mirror -- a fairly large mirror that told the full truth about what it saw. And when I looked up I saw this raging ugly woman.

And it totally stopped me in my tracks. Because that was the woman my kids saw.

My kids' mom was an ugly raging woman.

And suddenly? Well suddenly it didn't matter that we were late. I changed my tone, lost the anger, let go of the rage.

I became the mom, at least for that moment, that I wanted to be, that my kids deserved.

Now I'm sure I didn't magically turn into Mary Poppins from that day forward; but I was more aware. That mirror provided a life-changing effect on me.

Our lives are busy these days. If I want to spend time with people I love, we have to be purposeful about it. Between work and school and home responsibilities and travel and the list continues, we are in the typical go go go mentality that has taken our nation by storm.

But today I am going to slow down. Today I am going to nourish my soul.

Excuse me while I pour myself a cup of coffee.