Progression

So the sun room is coming along nicely. I'm behind schedule just a little, but that was kind-of a given... The clutter has been combed, thinned, organized, and stored (which means, it was moved into the garage). The floors have been swept and mopped, the spiders squished and the cobwebs shooed. The wood was washed and the window frames were scrutinized, stared at, and mumbled over because they are just too much to handle right now. I'll get back to them later... The walls are being painted now (the color: "Tea Room Yellow") and the wood soon will be, too. Then a couple of rugs and chairs to sit on. Noa's painting easel will finally come out of it's box, and perhaps a few homemade decorations will be hung from the ceiling.
I've done most of the work during Bryn's naptimes, with Noa by my side (or in the kitchen, painting Mickey Mouse with her water colors). It will feel great to be done, but then it will feel better to move on to another thing of busyness. I know that I'm on a rant lately, or perhaps it's a game of hide and seek. I'm hiding from the cold weather and seeking a pseudo sun in my sun room. A funny coincidence (I know... don't say it) lately is how often I'm coming across books, articles, conversations with friends about the perils of busyness. Not that the necessary chores of everyday life shouldn't be kept in check, but that one should avoid losing sight of the progress for sake of the actions. It is a very effective tool - to stay busy. But the tunnel-vision focus it creates can effectively blind you to all of the slow-moving milestones and hearty conversations unfolding in the periphery... all of the things that require your love.
My life these days requires metric tons of love. Not the passive kind that makes you feel warm and fuzzy when it comes and a bit nauseous when it leaves; but the active kind that leaves you wondering if there was some sort of boot-camp training that you missed along the way. And now you are here emptied of yourself yet filled with with strength of others and the beauty of dependence and praying hourly that the floor does not drop out beneath you... Wondering why it seems you do not instinctively know how to live this lovely life, and yet still, it gets lived.
I would like to know, sometimes, why it seems that the deeper the root of love grows in my heart, the more fearful and frantic my world seems to spin. It would be nice if calm followed in it's wake, but not so. As if love itself is a kinetic force outside of our bounds, it explodes deep down under the sea depths of the soul and releases tsunami waves of irreversible impact...

"But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love."