Thoughts on life lately

Since Jake has been sick I've had lots of time to think while rocking him to sleep. (which also means less time to blog since I'm in his room and not by a computer- probably a good thing to take a break anyway :) I was talking with my best friend from college a couple weeks ago and I could relate to her life all too much- almost more so than I feel like I can relate to my own life currently. Writing papers, working full time, ministering to high school girls at her church, staying in touch with friends- life is FULL for her. It's full of good stuff but it's definitely busy. I remember that "full but busy" life all to well and I wanted to send her some things that God has taught me during my busy seasons. I know I've written about busyness on this blog a lot so I started to look back through my posts to see what I could send her and I couldn't help but laugh because in 2010 and 2011 almost every post began with "Life is just SO busy right now . . . "

And not that life out here doesn't have its busy moments- it's just different. Dan is pretty busy with work. Which is weird for me because anytime he's been busy I've always been busy with him. If he was gone late, I was usually with him (like a class or something at church). But, I'm not taking anymore classes. We're just now finding a church. We're still meeting new people so our weekends aren't packed with "get togethers" like they used to be in Chicago. It's just all very different. Normally this time of the year I would read blog posts like this and think "yes, Stef. Give yourself grace and take a deep breath. Even though you have 3 different parties you need to make appetizers for and you haven't addressed a single Christmas card and you only have one gift purchased... it's going to be ok. Present over perfect." This year all our gifts were done and wrapped before Thanksgiving. And our cards were addressed and stamped by December 1st. Seriously- that has NEVER happened to me before.

I know most of you would say to just relax and enjoy the change of pace. And I really am trying.. however if you know me.. you know that's not easy for me :) I have found myself getting restless- wondering if there's something more that I should be doing than dishes, laundry, cleaning, meal planning, and wiping noses every two minutes because sometimes I feel like what I'm doing is not enough even though I've read a thousand articles about how important the job of a mother is.

And then I got invited to join a book study where we are going to go through a book titled "Glimpses of Grace." On the back it says, "Gloria Furman (the author) encourages us to see the reality of God's grace in all of life, especially in those areas that often appear to be boring and unimportant."

I sometimes read stuff like that and literally stop and look around because I feel like God should be standing directly next to me. I know that Psalm 139 is true, but man, in moments like that it can actually be overwhelming that God knows me THAT well.

So there it is. My thoughts on life lately. Nothing revolutionary, just where I am. I'm sure God will be teaching me a lot in this season and I'm trying hard to listen and not busy myself with unimportant things like constantly checking facebook or instagram.. or pinterest.. or tumblr. So hopefully I'll have more to write later :) In the meantime here are some pictures of Jake I took the other day. The sun came out (a rare thing these days in Binghamton!) so I had to bust out the camera.

Have a wonderful Tuesday :)