Bigger Picture Moment: Here Goes My Heart

11:38 PM

We are wrapped in an incomplete darkness, soft and warm.  The thinnest sliver of white light is slicing from the closet door.  Landon is heavy in the cradle of my arms while he sleeps through a midnight feeding, slow and deliberate, if not fully aware. 

From the hallway, the low hum of the heater keeps the night from falling into silence -- the constancy of air rushing through vents and rumbling through coils. 

We are in a cocoon of a nighttime moment.

My head tips back onto the pink upholstered chair, and I close my eyes, thinking.

It seems like nobody is reading my blog lately.  Barely any comments -- but I can't complain about that because I haven't been reading many blogs either.  Rarely leaving comments of my own.  And I feel like I'm trying to write for an audience.  I don't want to write for an audience.  It stunts my natural flow.  I want to write for myself.  To record our lives.  To tell stories.  To enjoy the creation.  But even if I don't want the purpose of my writing to be for an audience, I still -- honestly -- thrive on the feedback.  Sigh.  

I guess I know the reason for the lack of feedback.  The lack of connection.  I'm not doing much with blogging.  I'm sitting stale.  I'm too enmeshed in other areas to focus much attention on writing.  I'm reading novels.  I'm watching movies at night.  I'm trying to make this Christmas break fun for the kids.  I'm trying to soak up every moment with my baby.  Before he's not a baby anymore. 

What's that saying?  'Wherever your efforts go, There, too, goes your heart?'  'Where your time goes, there goes your heart?' 

Whatever the specifics are, that's where I am right now.  My time is going in different directions.  It's okay.  I'll find forward motion again, enough for blogging and living all at once.  But here goes my heart...

I look down at my sweet boy's eyelashes, resting on his round cheeks.  His fist clenched around the neckline of my tank top.  His legs bunched up between my hip and the chair's arms. 
Here goes my heart.  Here is where my current efforts must lie.  Here, and with the big girls sleeping in the next room, sprawled across their beds and tangled in their blankets. 

Here, and in the living room, with my husband.  With his arm wrapped around my shoulders as we sink into the couch after an exhausting bed time routine.  Here, and lying in bed, talking long past the time we should be asleep.  Laughing at the antics of our children.  Wondering about the future.  Planning.

And my writing is still whispering around the edges of my effort; it will always be there. Sometimes more dormant than others.   Never gone, always wished for.   Sometimes usurped.   And the other issues -- the more selfish, pride-gratifying issues of readership and comments and everything else -- can be dealt with later.

My heart doesn't have the extra strength to go there right now.  For now, it will be here: rocking a baby and tickling a preschooler and dreaming with a kindergartner and kissing a husband.  And that is the perfect amount of enough.


We're seeing the Bigger Picture through simple moments -- moments that force us to stop and take notice of the ways our worlds are important, meaningful, and beautiful. Please join us at Hyacynth's place today! Grab the button, link up, and read a few others to encourage them as they walk this journey of intentional living.