6:46 AM: Baby crawling across my face, big brother sitting next to me begging for Kidz Bop, I’m ignoring the alarm that went off since both kids are awake and using my bed as their own personal play mat. There are dishes to be done, hair to be washed, and babies to be fed, and it’s not even 7 AM. It’s been not even two weeks since we’ve made some big transitions around here, but I can already tell we need to redefine some roles around the Bluhm house. We don’t come and go like we used to. It all hit the fan when I refused to clean up the crap nasty beard hairs around the sink. People, I just can’t. I am happy to wash everyone else’s stuff but cleaning up another’s body hair is beyond me. Understand this is coming from an Indian, who was gifted with a fair amount of hair on her face. Truly, if this grill wasn’t waxed on the regular you would mistake me for Chewbacca’s long lost sister.

All that to say there are transitions in the biggest and littlest of ways that come with change. If I’m not intentional about reworking normal it will rework me and I’ll be tossed with the current rather than pointing my sails in the way of destiny as a woman, wife, and mom.

Until two kids came along, Derek and I had never been home to terribly much, but now that I have more time with the kids I’m finding there is so much to do. I was happy to ignore the dust on my windowsills but now it stares at me and begs to be wiped down.

Do what matters. Since my youth group days I was instructed to spend yourself on Jesus and people. In each season that has looked different, and in this new one it looks like late night texts with a struggling friend, a college girl sitting at my kitchen table pouring out her stories while I make lunch for my kids, and play dates at the park where friends talk honestly about the hard parts of marriage and money. The hunger for wholeness is weaved through each story and song. It’s not a 6 step discipleship process, its unforced patterns of life. It invites the lovely, the struggling, and painful pieces in others and myself to the surface of our souls, where we can say our struggles aloud as we grapple for the next steps in our lives.

Reworking normal can be confusing but it’s a time to pioneer into the next season that lays before us, searching for the treasures and gems that await. Life will never leave us without transitions. As a mama I know when I dance bravely into the next season I will give my children room to thrive, grow, and savor what we have and value as a family. Their little hearts are forming what is right and true as they watch their daddy and I. It’s happening whether I acknowledge it or not, so it would only make sense to live out every season and story like the mystery and adventure that it is.