Lately I’ve focused quite a bit about enjoying my new work-related journey rather than my family, social, educational, spiritual, etc journeys. As I’ve written before I believe that the journey need not be segmented into separate groups – I need to uncover ways to enjoy all aspects of my life.
I suppose that I’ve had the largest change with my work situation and therefore it’s been my highest concern.
Saying that, I had two magical moments last night that had nothing to do with work – one was around 9:15pm and the other was at 4:55am. I’m sure you’re wondering what kind of crazy night I had to keep me up so late. Well…It’s not that kind of story.
My 15 month old daughter just started to go to nursery on Monday’s and Fridays. The transition has been difficult for her as she seems to get overtired and finds it difficult to get herself off to dreamland.
Between 8 and 9:30 last night I had to hold S on my chest as I rocked in the rocker. I was tired and would have been asleep myself if it wasn’t for S not being able to settle. My mind raced a bit and I kept thinking, ‘I just want to sleep! God help me!’ And then I decided to see if I could choose to enjoy the moment.
After a few seconds I realised that there will come a time where my daughter will not be able to lay on my chest. There will come a time where she won’t want or need my comforting. One day she’ll be all grown up and my heart will yearn for the closeness that I was currently sharing with her at that very moment.
I almost missed a magical moment because my brain was telling me ‘I’m too tired!’
So…I sat in the dark, with S on my chest nuzzling in with her bunny in one hand and the other around my neck. I feel so elated…so warm…so in love with S and with life in general.
And as I sat in awe, S sat up and decided she wanted to give me a kiss. She just started giving kisses this past week. She gave me about 5 kisses and then I gave her a Eskimo kiss (rubbing noses) and she laughed and laughed and laughed. And then I laughed. At 9:15 S and I were in hysterics enjoying one of the most remarkable moments of my life.
S finally fell asleep after our laugh-fest. Then around 4am she started crying. I’m sure that she’s also teething. I wasn’t happy about the early wake-up call, but what can you do?
I picked up S, cuddled her for an hour and still couldn’t get her to settle. My husband is away so I thought I’ll just bring her into our bed and see if she’ll get to sleep with me. I’m nervous about doing things like that as I don’t want S coming to bed with us to become a habit.
Anyway, I laid her down next to me and we faced each other. She giggled and then I giggled and the laugh-fest started once again! I couldn’t believe that at 5am in the morning I would be capable of laughing. That’s just nuts.
So…I suppose there’s lots to draw from my two magical moments last night. The first is that I was able to override my thoughts about being tired and just make a choice to enjoy the moment. The other thing I learned is that I need to be more open and accept that life doesn’t have to be the way I think it is. Until today I would have never predicted that I would wake-up (against my will) and enjoy a laugh-fest at the crack of dawn.
So – how’s your journey going?
