draft

I wrote something on my Instagram page the other day...

hang on, let me back up.

I'm currently sitting at my computer in the living room while my kiddos eat their lunches and there are probably twenty things I could be doing right now other than this. Five of those things are probably more "important" than this blog post but I've got something to share. But I only have time to write it, not edit it etc. so this is gonna be quick and unedited (sorry mom).

So, on my Instagram the other day I wrote about this gap between draft and edit.

I sat across the table from my friend today. She is one of several sweet friends I have met at the library. We sat at Chick-fil-a while my kids played on the other side of the glass in the play area and I asked her "what did you do right with your homeschooling?" her kids are older than mine and I just really really needed a dose of perspective. "What did I do wrong?" she asked. "No." I said quickly, "I think the jury is still out on that, but what do you feel, as you look back, that you are glad you did. What did you get right?" Her reply was exactly what I needed to hear: she said that she was glad that she trusted herself.

She can tell me her story from the end of that chapter, I'm still in the middle. And if there is one thing I have learned about these middle spaces it is that they are messy. And this brings me back around to the gap between the draft and the edit.

Our day by day is like a draft. It is messy and imperfect and in-process. When we get to the end of that season and we get to tell the story of how it all went we get to tell the edited version. It's appropriate that we do this. The problem comes in when we judge our messy first-drafts to other people's edited stories.

I'm sure my friend had lots of totally crap days. She might not have called them that, but that's what I'd call them. Days when I wonder "what did I even accomplish today?" and "does this even matter?" But at the red light, I turned and smiled at my baby and he smiled back at me - his whole face glowing with the smile of someone who is fully loved.

That's it. One little piece of it, but important. One good line in the draft of this day. One that may or may not make it past the first round of edits. He might not even remember being three. But he'll know what it was to be small and to be loved and that will matter.

Well, the boys are drawing on the wall now so I guess I'm done.

Thanks for reading.