A few weeks ago, I woke up uncharacteristically early and decided to watch the sunrise. I throw clothes over pj's, took my coffee and walked down the road, greeting early morning runners on route. I must have been quite a sight with wild morning hair and coffee cup in hand.
The sunrise was worth it.
I tried to be quiet because I was already freaking out about the coronavirus, but I couldn't really talk about it because I sounded like a hypochondriac. I am, but I've also been expecting this since I watched an Oprah show way back about how scientists predicted a virus will mutate enough to cause a pandemic. At the time, they thought it would be bird flu (it could still be). I also looked at how fast the numbers climbed in China and I just knew this was going to hard to contain.
I was grinding my teeth in my sleep freaked out. And then I watched the sunrise and felt like God was saying, stop to notice the big things. In that moment, the sunset was so big, the sky a show of colour changing every second. It was a performance. One I hardly ever attend, something sidelined as small. I thought of my child when he was born. He was tiny (2,4kg), but the first moment I saw him, roaring in his deep voice, he was the biggest thing in the room. Sometimes the smallest things are the biggest things.
Right now, something so small that we can't even see it is causing big changes in our lives. Its horribly scary but it's also a reminder that the small things could be the big things.
Job stress, workloads, deadlines, career success all loom like big things over us, taking up so much headspace, but in comparison to our family, health, creativity and the wonder of nature they are the small things.
Trying to fit in fitness as a mom is tough. Pre-parenthood, I brisk walked about 5 times a week and followed a few workouts online when I felt like it. Now, I'm lucky if I can fit in a 10-minute workout a day during the week. So now, most of my weekly workout time is clocked on Saturday and Sunday.
We're all supposed to get a minimum of 150 minutes of exercise. At the start of Saturday, I only had 57. Now, I've clocked 224. Yeah, baby!No gym. No fancy equipment (other than this watch that my husband bought cause I'm far too cheap to buy such fancies, but I do love it). It's possible.
A friend of mine asked my advice on teaching her art-loving young child to draw using how-to guides/formulas and my gut response was Nooooo! I couldn't explain why, but I've been thinking about it and here's why I wouldn't try to teach a young child how to draw...
1. Learning the so-called rules for drawing often overpowers the most important thing about drawing - the ability to see.2. The implication of teaching someone how to draw is that there is a right way and a wrong way to draw. If that was the case, all art would look the same.3. An artist will learn through the best possible means - exploration - there's no need to assist them, only to equip them.3. Formulas for drawing often follow a left-brained way of thinking and it encourages copying images like a camera. But we have cameras, so...?! 4. Left-brained formulas for drawing are downers for predominantly right-brained creators and can hamper a growing love for art.5. Drawing formulas assume perfect proportions (like symmetrical faces) when nothing is perfect.5. There's a magic to a line that is drawn freely, without hesitation, and it's easily lost when drawing according to the rules.
Yesterday evening, we cleaned our yard and put up solar-powered fairy lights.
We lost track of time and before we knew it it was almost 8pm and we had a very tired 3-year-old. He wanted the lights to work, but they needed 12 hours of sun to charge first (according to the box). E lost his mind. He was screaming and crying for the sun. I explained that we can't make the sun come up - it's God's work. He said he wanted God to change the world (we took him to the planetarium so I think he remembered about the world moving around the sun).
Long story short, in the bath he cried to his dad about why he couldn't see God and why couldn't God just come here. Emotions were wild. How do you explain this to a 3-year-old when you don't know either. So I was honest, I said that as old as I am, I don't understand everything about God either, but I do know that God shows himself in different ways.
I went to fetch something we left outside and our tree lights were magically on. So I showed E and told him that God heard him crying for the tree lights, and even though they shouldn't be working, God made them work to show him that he is real and he listens. E, full of wonder and awe, said, "God heard me and changed the world."
Yes, He did.
P. S Don't ruin it by telling me some logically reason for the lights to work, I prefer a little Christmas miracle.
I'm starting to feel that frantic rush to get everything done before Christmas.
I have to remember that done is better than perfect and presence is more meaningful than presents (that's a good thing cause I think I am a crappy gifter). Oh, and to purposely slow down.
Pic from back in November inside Helderberg Nature Reserve, Somerset West during our first family mini-vacay.
