Time is at a premium for every mom, whether her family is just beginning or fully grown, whether she's home or not, whether the children attend school or are being educated at her feet. It isn't just me, with a full, teetering plate of 7 in our homeschool, one 19-year-old launching his life, a couple of blogs, and a book.
Yes, that book. It is squeezing me, and all of us here because this is truly a group effort. One daughter loves to read what's been written, two love to babysit for a little extra cash (or trade for a new t-shirt), two climb onto my lap and laptop, and a hero husband shuts the bedroom door to allow me to write. I am not accomplishing this big task in solitude.
And you, too, feel the squeeze. I know because you share your hearts with me in texts of prayer requests, emails containing lovely, flowy, streams of consciousness, a couple of hours over iced tea. We have to stick together, we moms, or the job of being mom can overcome us. We can't surrender to isolation.
In the squeeze of time, we still need each other. We need to connect, face-to-face, through electronic tools, through the postal service, here on a blog in the comments.
And more so do we need to connect with Jesus. I feel squeezed most of all when there has been a severing of His fingertips touching mine. When I drop my head onto my cool pillow at the end of the day and realize that I haven't seen Him. He's there. Yes, He is most certainly there, but in the squeeze my gaze has gone off somewhere else all day long.
How grateful I am for Jesus. He is present here in the squeeze and I can hide away in his kind, enveloping embrace that always, always communicates that there is no more for me to do. It is finished, and He did it all, already.
Breathe.