Day 3: empty space

 Motherhood is full of small moments in between.  Waiting to drop off, waiting to pick up,  waiting for kids to finish eating,  waiting for kids to finish playing,  waiting... waiting but available. This is the rub. You are not needed,  but you might be.  So you sit,  like a doctor on call,  waiting to mother. 

Phones are such a blessing. In these small moments you can write a grocery list,  send a quick email,  schedule a dr appointment or scroll  social media and escape the small world of small children for something more intellectually simulating. 

Pulling back from my phone has reminded me how many of these small moments exist in my life.  I thought about what I might write in this blog. I looked for images for today's rethinkchurch word of the day "sign." 

Here are some pictures I took:

Some signs are in really unexpected places. 

In Genesis,  God set the sun and moon in the sky as a sign to mark the passing of days, months and years.  

The signs by Moses were a warning to Pharoah.

As a kid I didn't know that these flags marked underground pipes. Signs revealing the unseen.  Nearly every miracle in the Bible would be defined the same way. 

Sometimes signs a messages that you need to take with you...

Besides looking for signs (I was hoping God would send me a billboard) I reflected on the book I'm reading.  I thought about Alexei Navalny and how we still live in a world where speaking truth to power can cost you your life and... perhaps more importantly, there are still people willing to do it anyway. 

Then I passed a roadside memorial on the way to get Miles from school and the image connected al my thoughts ... the cross was a sign.  It was a sign that something terrible had happened in the side of the road but it was also a sign that even the most terrible thing that can happen doesn't get the last word. I wish I could have stopped to take the picture because that was the best sign I had seen. But I was heading to pickup a kid from school and couldn't stop. 😔

Empty space feels unproductive. All day I had an urge to pull out my phone and do something with the time I spent waiting on kids. I resisted and reflected.  It felt so very futile. Wouldn't it be better to make "good use" of my time?

Perhaps there is something better than making good use of time.