Just for a moment

(image from the internet)

This morning the house is very quiet.

It's here.

The time I've been watching and wondering about is here. Months of worry and anticipation and now the moment has come.

I returned from aerobics today to find the house still and quiet.

Mark is at work.
Jennifer began her first day of High School.
Christian is actually hiking Mount Timpanogos and will begin the first day of his senior year tomorrow.

But today I sit in the stillness of my home.
Alone.
Spread before me is time and opportunity.

While I thought a lot about this moment it has managed to come upon me slightly unaware after a tornado of activity in the last two weeks of summer.

Yet summer still remains. It's still warm outside. The sun shines brightly and beckons me out to pick ripe blackberries and tomatoes and sit in the shade and read as I listen to the sound of the stream and birds busily finding worms and taking baths.

I have rooms to clean and laundry to wash. Organizing to be done. Weeds that need uprooting. Planning to do.

But for a moment I am frozen in time. Trying to understand and take it all in.

Soon after we moved here I put together a spread sheet charting the children's movement over the next 10 or so years. I charted them through elementary, middle, high school and college. I included missions and possible marriage dates. It was incomplete for the older ones because I realized that as they became independent it would be up to them to fill in the blanks, to see where their choices and lives would take them. At that moment 9 or 10 years seemed so far away -yet here we are. Mark and I home with two kids in High School. I remember when we moved here - looking around at families in the ward with High School kids and older ones that I never met and thinking that they had entire lives that I knew nothing about. They seemed old to me. But yet, here I sit... just where they were 10 years ago. I don't feel old. In fact in many ways I feel younger than ever. I thought about doing another spread sheet but it would be pointless. Too many blanks I would try to fill in and that's not really my job anymore. Next year at this time I will only have one child at home - a spreadsheet seems like overkill.

So here I sit in the quiet stillness of my home.
Alone.
Spread before me is time and opportunity.

I wonder where the next spreadsheetless 10 years will take me.
Some things will fill in on their own but there are still blanks left for me to fill in.
Choices and options that will shape the next 10 years.

I'm glad I don't have to know it all right now
and I'm glad to have the guidance of the holy ghost
and love of my Father in Heaven to help me in my choices.

And for this moment...

I think I'll go shower.