In which I remember what is important

I woke up the other morning and quickly realized that my prayer from the night before had backfired. Instead of blowing the massive amount of leaves from our huge maple tree into our neighbor’s yard as I had requested, the Lord had instead tripled the amount of leaves and dumped them back on my own front yard. Seeing how He can move mountains, I’m sure tripling leaves is trivial stuff.

So that afternoon, after Jace was down for a nap, Brynlee and I grabbed our rakes, the leaf blower and an mammoth amount of big black garbage bags and set out to rediscover our lawn. I quickly went to work raking and blowing leaves into a pile for quicker bagging.

Brynlee, on the other hand, ran around the yard like a wild banshee, giggling and truly enjoying every minute that the leaves had to offer. I endlessly tried to round the leaves up into one heaping pile. While Brynlee equipped with her orange fisher price rake, would push the leaf mound all over the yard again. She would run and jump into the pile, throw continuous amounts of leaves in the air and would hop on the full lawn bags as if it were a trampoline. She purposely put leaves in her hair, took off her shoes and packed them with the crispy things, and used the leaf blower as a man made wind storm.

I watched, truly delighted that she was enjoying herself, but continued in my pursuit to alleviate the leaves from the yard. I stopped once or twice to snap a quick picture, but then would return to my task. After about 30 minutes of me working and her playing something Bryn said caught my attention. She grabbed an armful of leaves, and then said, “I love this” as she threw the leaves into the air. She did it again, but this time said, “Do you love this, mom?” Smiling at her sheer delight I answered that I did indeed love that. She paused for a second then asked, “If you love it, why aren’t you doing it?”

My girl had a point. In my attempt to get things done I had ignored the opportunity to do something fun with the little girl that I cherish.

At times I find that I become so obsessed with caring for those that I love that I neglect to focus my energies on really enjoying them. With that I put down my rake and spent some time making memories with my little Brynlee. We threw leaves in the air; I grabbed her arms and spun her in circles. We giggled as we steam rolled through the pile. She threw leaves at me and I returned the favor.  For the next little bit, nothing else mattered.

The Lord knew what He was doing by tripling the leaves that day. He knows me, and He knew that I would be driven to get the task done. He knew that He needed enough leaves that when I finally came around there would still be plenty of leaves for us to play in. He knew that through my little girl He would have the opportunity to remind me of what was important.

I challenge you all to make an effort within the next few days to truly enjoy the ones you love. Put your to-do lists away, turn off your cell phones, computers and TV’s and make some memories. And I will do the same.