Day 3,400
Sometimes I hear the words of that Coldplay song echo in my head, "Life goes on, it gets so heavy..." Sometimes, life does feel heavy. It feels messy. It can feel like this: something has happened, and because that thing has happened, nothing will be the same again. And you find yourself wishing for the moments and days and months before the something happened, even if they were boring. Even if they weren't great. At least it was before the something happened to change everything forever.
It's March 11, 2026. Tonight, I was looking through my phone and saw photos pop up for March 11, 2014. Oh my goodness gracious. They were simple times. I want simple times more than anything else in the world. I want to go back to the times when our biggest problems were not sharing toys or being fussy from not napping or a messy house.
This is the scene: my babies were babies. They are sitting in front of our big open bay window in a comfy chair with a comfy blanket and they are cuddling while watching a show. I would give anything to go back to this day and live it again. As much as I want to go back and hold my babies when they were babies again, I think more than anything, I want this simple life again.
Waking up.
Eating breakfast.
Reading books.
Playing toys.
Walking.
Watching sweet little shows.
Naptime.
Making dinner.
Dancing in the kitchen.
Rocking my babies.
Bathing them.
Carrying them to bed.
Reading books before bed.
Laying them gently in their beds and praying for them.
Going to them in the night if they needed me.
Checking on them and watching them sleep.
What a gift it was to have those simple days.
Sometimes I wonder when it was that I stopped dancing in the kitchen.
I think this is the trick of time: it tells us we need to return to the past to feel simple and peaceful and quiet again.
But maybe that's not correct. Maybe it's because I stopped dancing in the kitchen.
Maybe it's because I learned to value bathing my babies over sitting at the table and listening to their stories about school and friends and boys and girls and sports and music and listening to their slang talk.
Maybe this is the quiet moment of now. It just looks different from the picture.
Above everything else, I have a choice:
I can wish for the quiet, simple days in the pictures from the past.
Or, I can live quiet, simple days now.
They are just different quiet. And different simple.
All I have to do is make a choice to start dancing in the kitchen again.
It all starts with a small choice like that.
Dance. Or don't dance.
Talk. Or don't talk.
Live simply now. Or live in constant longing for what was.
Tonight, I am thankful for the different quiet and simple days I am living now. It's different, but it's good.
