Devastation

I found this text to a scrapbook page on a digital scrap booking site that I really liked and thought many of my friends and family would appreciate. I copied the text because this is exactly how I feel some days. Moving into a new house has made me want to keep it model home clean. After a couple weeks of constantly trying to get it clean, I've realized that is just not going to happen. But this text has made me want to stop and look at the "mess" a little closer and think about what was really going on at the time of it's creation, and even be a little grateful for it. (Even as a write this, Canon is in the kitchen "making cookies.") I've also committed myself to taking pictures of some of the most classic messes, I mean creations and journal Canon's creative thinking. First of all so I can look back when he is grown up and be more grateful for my clean house then, when I'm sad they are gone, and second so I can be more thankful for the messes now. Don't get me wrong, I'm still trying to get my home clean enough to take pictures so I can show off our new house, but I'm trying not to be as frustrated my the little messes everywhere.

Devastation

When I came downstairs this morning, if I had to give one word to describe the “devastation” which ran through the entire house, it would be abandoned. Whatever activity that had passed the day before lay before me almost as if a moment in time had been paused momentarily.

With two of you now to make the mess, I admit I just can’t keep up. I can spend my entire day cleaning up after you both and you follow right behind me undoing everything that I just put straight. I cannot begin to describe my frustration, and because you often go to bed when I do, I neither have the energy nor the inclination to tidy up at the end of the day. Hence, the abandoned scene that not just welcomed me this morning, but every other morning for the past week, month, even year.

But as I nurse Luke from my chair and look around, I no longer see a mess, but the creative play of my children. I see the sun catching a dainty pink shoe in the middle of my kitchen floor left by a practicing princess, a slice of plastic pizza placed on my desk just in case I might be hungry, several abstract art pieces placed with love on my refrigerator, a baby tucked up sound asleep by her nurturing Mommy, a building block placed precariously on a DVD and a juice cup abandoned in a quest for more play. Yes, it is a mess for sure, but I’m not sure I would have it any other way.

I am beginning to realize how quickly the years will pass. It will not be long before you have families and homes of your own and my longing for tidiness will come all too quickly. While I find it hard to cope with now, I find comfort in the fact that it’s a reminder, even when you’re sleeping, that you are never too far away.