Do you ever find the need for quiet time? Time to just sit and exist without having to listen to the chatter of others, the drone of the TV or anything. I'm having a night like that. Where I wish I could sit outside (but I'd freeze to death), listening to the crickets chirp and the frogs croak from the pond in my parents back yard. Mentally, I'm putting myself there. Even though they have no working internet on their back porch, live in the boon docks....but you get the picture. I'm feeling the need to reground myself. To refocus. Only the people I need to refocus on are buzzing around me and I really just want the quiet time without their voices messing up my memory of childhood.

Parenting is hard work. Some days I feel like I have it all together, other days, I'm barely hanging on. Today has been just a regular day. Nothing bad. The big boys had their piano recital and it's always fun to go and listen to the kids and see the progress they have made. Another milestone we've reached together. I'm proud of them for sticking to piano even when they didn't want to. And I kinda laugh that it's my kids that take piano lessons when I was so hyperactive I couldn't sit on the bench to get through lessons at all. My sister was the piano player in our family and her kids don't play instruments at all. Ironic. :) But her girls do sing and dance.  My boys are very musical and I love to share that part of my life with them. Kadin plays the piano and the saxophone. Cullen plays the piano, the trumpet, and the guitar. Liam wants to learn the drums and within a year will start the piano. We promised Elliana's birth mom that she would be exposed to the piano as well. I love to hear our home filled with music that they are creating. It reminds me of nature's song.

The big boys and Dave went to see God's Not Dead tonight. When Cullen got home, he wanted to tell me all about it. One part of it was someone being diagnosed with cancer. Being asked how they keep hope after having such a horrible diagnosis. And that makes me think of the people I know fighting stage 3 and stage 4 cancer. How they want to hear the words I have heard. "Cancer free" but their road is long, painful, and unfair. I feel guilty thinking how reoccurrence hangs over my head when I didn't really do the time for the disease anyway. Yes, I lost a breast. And it's stressful. And I worry. And I'm on medications. But these wonderful children and adults I know and love are dealing with so much more. I pray for their healing. For balance to be restored. For the reason that they are on this journey to be revealed to them so they know they do not walk alone. How do you keep hope? Because you trust that God has a plan. And since God lives on the inside, He can't help but shine through to the outside as well. But they all weigh heavy on my heart and soul.

So, I'm needing some quiet time. Away from it all. A time to contemplate and be thankful and to just exist. For in a few hours I will have to jump back in to the craziness of a new week. But for now, I'm feeling the breeze from the country air blow against my cheek, as the bull frogs croak their magical son that lulled me to sleep every night. With the security light shining brightly into my bedroom window, I listen closely to the sounds of the night. As the crickets sing a sweet song that makes you feel safe because they only stop if danger is near. But as long as they sing, all is right in the world. May they always continue to sing.