all together?

I think its really easy to be with our children & not really be with them.  I'd like to pretend that I had it all together and everything runs perfectly around here, but the sad truth is that it doesn't.  I am with them all the time, but very rarely with them.  Tonight I sat on the couch in the play room with them and each one of them stopped what they were doing and crawled up in my lap, one at a time.  It was sublime. I relished every second, until it was after 8 (typically bed time) & I started my normal mental lists of what I needed to get done the rest of the night.  I suppose that's normal, to have a list playing through your mind all the time of whats next whether its right now or 5 weeks or months from now.  I don't want this to be my normal anymore; the Lord is showing me how I need to move through my day more efficiently. I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Its important for children to be cherished in word and in deed. I think of the cliche that says "for children love is spelled t-i-m-e".  I home school so you'd think that I spend plenty of quality time with them but the question stands, 'is instruction quality time?'  How many of your teachers did you know and feel close with? I want my children to be able to say, 'wow I can talk to her about anything, she wants to hang out with me, she enjoys my company, I want to talk about important stuff with her, she realizes my important stuff is important even if its "just kid stuff", I value her opinion...'  I know that getting on the floor and playing and talking with them as children will become teen & adult children who want to be with me and who will still have all the things I just listed in our relationship.  Our adult relationships with our children will be a direct reflection of the time we purposely invested with them.  Being present, & not in my mind running lists.  If the adults in our lives would notice our divided attention and feel unappreciated so will our children no matter how old they are.

Every relationship in our lives deserves undivided attention!  It goes back to what I said in my post "Doing":
"This picture of meeting a friend for dinner keeps coming to mind. We’re good friends and we care for each other but we sit there in silence the entire meal and in this picture I think thats what a good friend is, someone who is around.  Or worse yet, I go to meet my friend for dinner, but sit with someone else and enjoy an entire evening with them without ever acknowledging my friend who I came to meet.  Now, I want a good conversation and some laughs like the next person and God does too; He even wants so much more than that, He wants genuine intimacy. We can’t get that sitting there silent or spending our time thinking or doing a million other things.  We have to move into an active relationship with Him just like we would in our most intimate human relationships."

We can have intimate relationships in our lives where people know us very personally and us them. This includes God, spouse, children, & friends; in that order.  It is time to take time before time takes us!!   Our children want desperately to be with us, to have us enjoy their company & them ours' and like I said the time we invest with them as children will be directly reflected in their adult relationships with us.

I'm so glad that the Lord is changing the structure of my days so I can see... I think there's more to see in regards to other things but I'm liking learning how to shut down the list making and trouble shooting in my mind long enough to spend quality time with 4 of the most important people in my life.