I have a restless soul. I’m suspicious not everyone around me is inflicted with a restless soul. I mean the type of restless spirit that’s always looking to the next big thing, challenge, or event. A soul that feels like the next Big Thing will finally settle matters entirely. High school graduation. College. A fantabulous first job. Marriage. A promising career change. A kid. Another kid. New house. Big trip. PhD. Next Big Thing. And another Big Thing after that. And
I get frustrated with this restless soul of mine. I don’t like feeling compelled that I must always prove myself worthy against the next Big Thing. It’s tiresome to stride from mountain peak to mountain peak through life. My leg muscles get stretched and all charley-horsey. And yet still my soul urges onward.
It’s a gift, then, to restless souls like mine, to find oneself in a sheltered valley of child-raising years. It’s a stage of life where my mountain range is so stretched out that I couldn’t, even if I tried, straddle two peaks in a single stride. So I’m learning a subtly addictive new joy: the ordinary.
The Little Things are soothing my soul these days.
And Little One.
A pumpkin spice latte sipped on a drive across an interstate threaded into a patchwork quilt of fall leaves.
A baby cooing herself to sleep in afternoon dusk.
The liberation of driving alone to the grocery store.
A fragment of a poem that’s been running through my head for days.
A deluge of loosed yellow leaves that catches my eye as I change a diaper.
Snuggling into a blanket to watch a new favorite TV show.
A scrumptious butternut squash soup that I crave and miraculously have all the ingredients for in the pantry.
A caterpillar undulating across the sidewalk like a bristled, severed cat’s tail.
A fireplace.
A handful of fresh sage.
Reclaiming a favorite necklace that had been “borrowed” and hidden by a small admirer.
Remembering what is is to be a child unleashed in a wide open field with only dandelions and violets as distractions.
A daughter who holds up a thumb sucked into prune-wrinkled oblivion for my inspection.
Oh dear restless soul of mine, there is so much extra-ordinary about the ordinary. Eat, drink, absorb, watch, and be satisfied. For this life, in all it’s extraordinariness, is what I can hold to my soul’s content.
For the full list of 31 Days of Quotes to Inspire posts, wander over here.
ah, yes, here’s to the ordinary. The “extra” lies not in the thing or experience itself, but in our perception and embracing of it.
Beth, I’m like you. I love ‘next big things.’ I think it’s why I love to plan vacations, and make budgets. Both imply something on the horizon, something big, some sort of change.
And even though I’m a slower learner than you (says the girl in the middle of a giant home renovation that she probably shouldn’t have taken on), I love this reminder to look to the in betweens. Thanks friend!