those days that shift perspective

Yesterday we did hardly anything.  I was completely exhausted from being up all night with Elijah. Once awake I noticed some facebook entries asking for prayers for Japan.  Then, curious and unaware, I clicked msn news and read about the devastation. Off to the family room, where we spent a good deal of our day watching cnn and msnbc.  In fact, Gracie can now site facts about earthquakes and can tell you how they work and what a tsunami is and how it's formed.

Facts are fine, good, but really not important.  The important were the lives. People. Families.

All caught in the midst.

It's hard to explain this to kids when one as an adult doesn't understand it either.

I had no answers for them. I just told them to pray.

Days like that shift perspective. The "annoyances" of daily life are no longer taken for granted -- they become the beautiful. Treasured.  Time is short. Finite. These moments stop and redirect my heart back to seeking the beauty, laughter, an attitude of content, and hope in the everyday.

I just wish that it didn't take days like that to remind my heart to remember.

So today, even with the tiredness in my body and the endless list of things to do I am going to remember. As I buy groceries, and wipe noses, and make a peanut butter sandwich, and clean the toliets, and make dinner, and sweep the floor, and fold the clothes, and drive to ballet, and make my bed, and pick up lincoln logs, and write this post, and brush snow off the car, and clean the boys' room, and water the plants, and wash those dishes.   Those things are life's gifts.

I am grateful.

Join me in praying for Japan.  Please.