What's this blog all about?

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Joy-ful-ly
     adverb
          with great pleasure and happiness

Overloaded
     adjective
          Loaded with too great a burden or cargo

For hats sometimes I feel as though I've worn them all, in fact I've worn so many at this point I don't even care to list them.  I've found that by focusing on the simple things in life big things begin to happen.  I am finding that this new hat, the overloaded but joyful one, this hat is my favorite.  It doesn't sound like these two words are meant to be written side by side, but put together they speak my life...

It's Monday morning, my eyes are blurry as my Strong Man sets a mug with the letters J-O-Y stamped across the side, the aroma of coffee begins wafting through the air as he tells me he loves me and heads to the shower.  I have enough energy to mumble it back, perhaps it's just a grunt, but I sit up knowing that if I don't use this time to wake up my whole day will fall out of place.  Still in bed I grab my journal and Bible, and take a sip from that JOY mug, a reminder of my life goals-always find the JOY.  My eyes start clearing as my mind begins to plan out the day when my biggest boy sits on the edge of my bed, a new morning ritual that I hope stays around a for a while.  He asks how I slept and what I'm reading today.  Then he tells me what he read the previous night before he goes off to find breakfast.  By now my Strong Man is showered and slowly opens our bedroom door so our Babe can blow me kisses, before they head to the kitchen.  My middle boy is probably still in bed sleeping or still in bed reading his current book.  It's a peaceful start to the day.  I soak it in and cherish all of it because I know the moment my feet hit the floor is the same moment the quiet peace stops.

From that point, on any given day, I might find myself fishing toys out of the toilet, finding things in the flour that shouldn't be there, or catching my breath as my biggest one cruises past the window hanging off the zip-line upside down with ice as the only landing pad underneath.  My middle child, my Laughter, my wild child, he might booby trap the bathroom using an entire roll of floss, think up some amazing experiment, or gets lost in the bathtub because he used almost an entire jar of bubble bath.  It is guaranteed I will have at least one moment when I have to rescue my youngest off the top of a desk, table, or shelf that he climbed and got stuck on.  Each day I have some kind of teaching to do of any given subject as I home school my two big ones.  I will have at least one conversation about Boy Scouts, a few about Lego's and Minecraft is going to be the death of me.  In the kitchen at least one boy will want to "help" me cook. At some point I will think it's safe to sit for a minute before I realize that the trash is being picked through, or a snack didn't get put away and is now on the floor, or a lost crayon has been found and is being used to decorate the windows.  Sometimes my life is overloaded.  Almost daily it's overloaded.

It's also in these moments when life feels like it's too much that I find my joy, my purpose.  My Strong Man and I get to walk with these little people through the hard and the easy, we get to teach them to find JOY in all of life... My joy comes not in fishing things out of the toilet but in knowing they have a drive to explore and learn. My joy comes not when I have to punish one of my small hearts, but in the hug after.  My joy comes not when they struggle to learn, but when it's grasped; when they know they've got it.  My joy comes from family adventures, if they only last a day or a few years. My joy comes from the boys living beside me, walking with me, and learning to be men of character.  My joy comes when they achieve things and when they take joy in other people's achievements. My joy comes from letting them watch me cry tears of grief, getting up and showing them it's okay to hurt and it's okay to move on.  My goals for my boys are to love people hard, to say yes to wild and crazy things, to take on too much and to find joy in it all. This blog is a journal of life experiences, written down so I won't forget.

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