some things...

 Sometimes my kids are insane, and my life is ridiculous, and I feel like at any moment someone is going to jump out of the bushes and tell me I'm a top finalist in a "your life is like a crazy sitcom" contest, and it all gives me funny things to write about.

{I will not tell you which family members in my life uncannily resemble certain characters on Everybody Loves Raymond. I would like to. But they might read my blog. And I enjoy receiving birthday and Christmas presents too much}. 

But other times Charlotte isn't funny, she's just a flailing ball of whiny two-year old arms and legs, and sticky hands on my skin, and needy eyes, and my house gets destroyed faster than I can pick it up, and my laundry piles up higher than Kilimanjaro, and I don't really have anything to say that I think anyone would be interested in.

But then, one, I find blogs -with far more readers than mine- that are dedicated solely to what sort of gourmet homemade meal they're making for their cat each day, or how to knit toe-socks using organic camel wool, or other such weirdness. And two, this is my little piece of the written world, I suppose, and I shall darn well write about whatever I choose too. {Possibly badly, and likely chock full of grammar mistakes because I usually type with one hand holding a baby. But again..mine. all mine}

So today I have nothing funny. Probably too many words. Not enough pictures. Something different. I just wanted to try to encourage you. Maybe there's someone that needs some kind words today. Maybe there isn't. Maybe all you people are just fine and dandy and walking on sunshine and you will say, thank you anyway...I'm a-ok, and kindly hand my words back to me. Maybe It will only serve to encourage me, if I go back in time someday and read this. I'm alright with that.

It's nothing new. I'm not preparing to gift you with some amazing, ground breaking, never heard of before, secret of the universe. But it is truer than true. And sometimes you need to be knocked in the head with something one-thousand and one times before it grabs on tight to you and you really feel it's meaning.

Before might have been a thousand.

Maybe this will be plus one.

You don't have to have a terrible, awful day 

to still feel like things are getting all crumbly around the edges. 

Sometimes that grey feeling can worm and twist itself into a things-are-going-fine day.

And you don't have to be alone in a room with the shades drawn 

to feel completely by yourself. 

And tired.

And very small.

Sometimes that comes in the middle of a day filled to the brim with 

people.errands.work.talking.driving.calling.never ending being needed-ness.

But then there's this. 

 bad day or bad entire year

a small problem that subtly pricks your spirit or a huge problem with no end in sight.

It's not the end. You're not alone. 

because there's this

and it's always, always, closer than you think.

maybe not today. and maybe not tomorrow. 

and maybe not ever in exactly the way you picture it.

But it's there. 

You are wonderful, and talented, and obviously have fabulous taste because you read this blog.

And although I promise you there are others who have felt how you feel, 

and have been where you are right now,

there is no one else that can be who you are, 

in the same way that you are,

to the people who love & care & depend on you.

That's something you were uniquely made to do.

You are needed, and valued, and so very, very, very precious

to the One who put you here.

{and gave you these people that ruin your house, and can't find the laundry basket that's a foot from where they dropped their dirty socks, and who generally are the cause of days that get crumbly around the edges, but yet you still love fiercely.}

{oh, just me?}

Jeremiah 29:11

Have a wonderful weekend sweet friends O' mine!