joy in the cycle of the everyday

No Friday Fotos this week--I've been too busy to even remember that I had a camera!

It's been one of those weeks where it seemed every conceivable chore around my house had somehow accumulated: The laundry pile was applying for its own zip code, the grass was up to my eyeballs, my sink had turned into Mt. Dishmore, and the only toys my children chose to play with were the ones with a jillion pieces--which they were so kind as to scatter about in as many places through the house as possible.

And of course all of this hits when it feels like I'm a balloon with a pin hole in it---slowly deflating my energy.

Please tell me some of you feel this way on occasion too?! Like your legs weigh a ton each, and every time you stand up it's like trying to walk through cement, and all you feel like doing is sitting on the couch and eating Otter Pops and reading blogs and Facebook updates?

I do have a little secret to getting me over down weeks like this---it's called "The Rheumatic Fever Memory".

Last year, when I was sick with rheumatic fever and in the worst pain of my life---when I couldn't sit up or eat or hold a book or even change position in the bed without feeling like someone was beating me with a mace---when I was basically a prisoner in my body left to stew in my own thoughts until the pain medication would mercifully kick in--when I wondered (since they didn't know what I had at the time) if I was ever going to be better again--the thing I found myself missing the most, fighting to get well for the most--was the cycle of the everyday.

I didn't care if I never got to go to Macy's or have a pedicure or go on a luxury vacation. All I wanted to was get well enough to be of use again. I wanted to wake up and make a bed, comb four little boys' hair, vacuum a floor, load a dishwasher, hunt down lost shoes, scrub a toilet 5 times a day, and make a dinner that everyone would complain about. Those mundane, thankless, daily kind of chores that--in and of themselves-- are the stuff that drives us to read US Weekly and covet Paris Hilton's life, are a kind of magic when you consider them in a cycle. In a cycle, all of those things lead to a clean, productive, orderly home. Kids who learn to work along side you wearing shirts with all the stains removed. The testing and increasing of your patience. Those simple daily memories of life with laughter and surprises, and little talks shoved in amongst the necessary.

When you can't do ANYTHING--you realize just how much you miss doing everything.

So, that's what I focused on this week: The fact that I am well enough to feel the hum of the vacuum in my hand. The scent of a fresh bottle of Gain being opened. That certain (albeit ever-so-temporary) shine of a newly mopped floor. And I do it all for these cuties:
They're my reason to not break "the cycle", and to find the joy in the every day.

Hoping you find the joy too--without rheumatic fever, of course :) .

~Happy Weekending!~