As I sit here, we have been traveling every weekend in the past six weeks, my kiddos are not going to be on time, the driving is driving us CRAZY and I am tired. Oh, and because we are traveling I am not at home. We are staying with friends who are more like family and at a place my children are incredibly loved.

It makes me stop, look around and seek out the happy moments in this fever pitch of chaos that will not let up for another few weeks.

We are all healthy, we are all happy and we are together. We have had a lot of church events happening that have uprooted our weekends to hotel rooms, guest rooms and air mattresses. But by the grace of God, we get to do it all together.

In the busyness of travel, this weekend our friends we are bunking with got us out to the local zoo. As we were walking and checking out all the animals my oldest says to me “I love days like this, when we are together.” In that moment I was tired, my littlest little was fussing in the stroller, my back was sore and I was starting to feel all the travel catch up to me; and then my son brought it all to a halt with one comment. His little sentence caught me off guard and it was like a cool glass of water after a dry and hot exertion – he refreshed me.

There I was ready to call it quits, ask to go back to the car so my little and I could rest while everyone else continued on at the zoo. I was replaying in my mind this frantic last week filled with bills, medication refills, teacher emails, packing for this current trip all while catching up on laundry, planting a butterfly garden and six peony bushes plus making time for stories at bedtime and homemade bread. I was exhausting my exhausted self, in my mind at the zoo and then like it was from God’s lips to my ear I heard “I love when we are together.” It made me look right back at that hectic week and thank God that I got to do it all with my family. Together.

Sometimes, right in the middle of chaos God sends you a quiet moment that restores that mama soul, revives your mama heart and causes new energy to come back to the surface, just at the moment you want to give up and give in. I know that as my little ones get older our togetherness will be less and we will slowly grow into our own lives but I am so thankful for the quiet moments I get, the peace that comes when I remember the most important thing is being together.

Be encouraged mamas (and papas if you are reading too); it may be busy, it may be wild and it may be non-stop but one day it will be calm, it will be quiet, it will be slow – and you will miss days like these. We are all going through it one way or another, and there is comfort that even in that, there is togetherness.

x. earnest mom