day two of my life post-silence

Oh blessed silence... where did you go?  

Having returned from a week of silent retreat, I have been plunged into the crazy noisy everyday life that God has given me.  Oh my.  There is so much noise in the world.  Most of it around my house is truly beautiful though (depending on your perspective, I guess).  

Right now it's rather quiet.  The twins are both sleeping, the preschooler is sucking her thumb reading a book on the rosary (looking at the pretty pictures), the kindergartner is playing with an old microscope we inherited from a neighbor, and the oldest one is writing her own chapter book. She's been writing all day since about 10:00am and is onto chapter 4 now.  

Earlier in the day, we had the noise of evil laughter as the twins chased each other through the house, the washing machine whirling our clothes through sudsy water, the dishwasher doing my kitchen chores for me, the phone ringing and kids stampeding down the hall to see who it might be, latin prayers chanted, math facts recited, silly songs sung with great gusto, and the timer on the stove calling us to the table for lunch.

I am craving some quiet, but I am so happy to be amidst all this chaos.  It's so much easier, now that I realized I don't have to strive for this perfection that I had envisioned.  Now I realize that I only need to strive for God's perfection... and all that involves is loving.  In each moment that I live, I need to love those around me. Giving myself as a gift, asking God for help, and not always thinking about the next moment or the next project.  

Yesterday I didn't manage to get to my morning prayer time until about 9pm at night. hmmm... I set the alarm for 6:15 and got up as I said I would.  I had a lovely shower, got dressed and headed down the stairs to pray, but one of the twins decided to join me, and then 3 other kids crept down the stairs to investigate.  It's hard to really pray when there are 4 people sitting on you and another one crying in his bed upstairs.    I did manage to pray my rosary in the afternoon and that was a lovely break.  

This morning, I decided that I would pray first and then get dressed.  I crept downstairs, and savoured 30 minutes of quiet... but I should have looked at the clock because by the time I was done praying, everyone was waking up and I didn't have time to get dressed myself.  In fact it's 3:30 and I'm still sitting in my jammies!! I did get my rosary in though, and I managed to bake some cookies, get all the schoolwork done and type this blog post.  I'm sure I'll get it all figured out one of these days. 

This afternoon we are going to have tea time at 4pm, so if I want to be presentable for this anticipated affair, I suppose I need to go get dressed.  

Enjoy your noisy houses and savour your quiet pauses throughout the day.