{ Graceful }

This week I'm doing something new--participating in Five Minute Friday. I'm joining a group of women who write for five minutes flat every Friday. All on the same prompt that Lisa-Jo posts over at Tales from a Gypsy Mama. As she says, "No extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation. Unscripted. Unedited. Real."

 

Here we go...

 

I've never been particularly graceful. There were gymnastics and ballet classes for a couple years when I was young, and I have enough rhythm to play the piano--but dancing? Forget it. I'm not a klutz, but I've never considered "graceful" as a way to describe myself.

 

Now I'm in a season very different from any I've known before, and I'm finding new kinds of graceful all over the place. Not the physical kind of gracefulness I usually think of--but the gracefulness of being a mama. Changing a diaper while simultaneously soothing, entertaining, and holding down a squirmy fussy little human--and keeping her socks out of the poo. Making dinner, washing dishes, playing with her, and keeping laundry cycling through the washer and dryer, all at the same time. Driving, singing, and praying that (a) she doesn't choke herself screaming, and (b) I don't go crazy before we get to our destination. It may sound like multitasking, but it's bigger than that. Deeper and more intricate and harder, because I fiercely love the little girl I'm doing it with and for.

 

Motherhood brings me to a place where I desperately need to be full of grace.