Day 13: life is messy

As I walked in the door coming home from work today. I was greeted by four small people each needing something different.

Miles was tired and fixated on looking for ladybugs in the front yard.

Philip had been waiting for me to come home to plant carrots.

Andrew was finishing therapy and wanted to do additional chores to earn more screen time.

Eddie was plowing through homework and trying to finish a science fair project that was due.

Additionally,  my wonderful in laws were working on getting dinner ready.

I wanted to split myself into a starfish.  Hold the baby,  help with dinner,  work on homework and play with the middle two. But instead,  everyone got pieces of my split attention as i tried to quickly switch between one thing and another.

At the end of the evening,  it was late.  We were exhausted.  The science project was built and we were eating dessert as I got kids into jammies.

Tonight...
Life was colorful.
Life was messy.
Life was life.

But my dad was there to build a model earth with my son.

My mother in law danced gracefully through the rhythms of an evening routine and got dinner put on and cleaned up before I had blinked.

And we all sat around the table the ulrich grew up with laughing at how hard this whole messy business of raising kids is.

We are family.
Relationships can be hard.
Feelings can get hurt.
People all have their own little things.

But in the messy and the rub we find love and grace and forgiveness and gratitude and joy and hope.

My house is an epic disaster and I am way too tired to think about cleaning up tonight.  But my heart is full.

Immensely grateful for the family I was born into, the one that I married into and the one that I birthed. There are a lot of people to keep tabs on but I love them each so and am grateful to be part of the messy story we share.