The air was cool but still and the sun warm, as I sat on our back steps finishing lunch and sipping iced tea.  The light and calls of my two youngest lulled me into a reverie.  My 3-year-old was waiting for me to put him on the "trampabine" and his little sister followed him around, babbling in kind after him.

So many distractions in the world around me, changes that seem never-ending and exhausting.  A Facebook newsfeed ever-revolving - an addiction I mindlessly allow to eat minutes of my day, steal moments away.  Variable, but constant calls to shop my way out of the moment of boredom, frustration, loneliness - e-mail sales flyers full of fantastic deals, online shopping groups and pages established by well-meaning friends building their own businesses, lovely full-color catalogs and magazines delivered to my mailbox.

The (often self-manufactured) drama of others' lives - locally and globally - splayed for all to see online:  divorces, lost friends, sickness.  Yet another neighbor moves, another play mate for my children gone. Another mom friend packs to leave.

The constant pull to advise, instruct, and enlighten or seek others' advice, instruction, and enlightenment provided by today's social media and online "communities."

I often consider these things the business of my days, but so often many of them - or letting myself be consumed by them - distracts me from the business of a life.  My life.  As a wife.  As a mom.  As a human.  My children's lives.  Their hearts.  Their minds.

As I struggle to stay in the moment, not let myself be ferreted away some rabbit hole of depression or boredom or frustration by the constant change, I can - for the first time in my life - catch a glimmer of the joy and peace in always turning back to a constant God.

So I breathe in the fall air deeply, soak in the colors - the changing of the seasons is a call back to that eternal Constancy, a reminder that there are things out there unfettered by our petty human dramas.  Something that will keep moving us forward, regardless of what else swirls around us.
And it is reassuring.  

The bounty of fall

The morning had started off chilly, but by early afternoon the sun was warm as I lay on the trampoline while my two youngest sprights circled me.  The light was golden, as only the light of fall can be, laced by the early yellows and oranges of fall leaves waving in the cool northern breezes.

We gathered handfuls and armfuls of leaves and through them into the golden air so that they could rain down on us as we bounced and ran around the trampoline.  I giggled with them as they ran and slipped in the leaves and fell into each other and me.

I wanted a picture of it - maybe to post on Facebook? - but there was no way to capture the beauty and glory of that moment in one photo, or ten, or even a video - and I didn't want to leave to get a camera - so I sent up a prayer that I would remember that moment forever - their smallness, their innocence, the light, the leaves, the giggles, the gratitude.  I'm not sure how I got so lucky, but I hope I can remember these small moments in twenty years and be just as satisfied with where I am.