As Sunday naps go, it may have been short on quantity - but it was long on quality. I had to be back at the church for an afternoon meeting - I only had 30 minutes to devote to sleep, so I set the alarm on my phone, stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. I was exhausted....My friend's funeral was yesterday afternoon, later in the day we drove College Boy up the mountain and deposited him in his dorm (You KNOW how much I loved that....), and we didn't get home until quite late. Add to that today's earliest wake-up time of the week, and a Children's department that was busting at the seems with kids ( No lie....we had the highest attendance of Children today of any Sunday in 8 years!), and I was toast.
I slept hard for about 25 minutes, and then I started to wake up of my own accord - just prior to the ringing of the alarm....It wasn't an abrupt waking - it was one of those peaceful, little by little wakings - where your senses come to, one by one. First, I felt the warm breeze (yes - warm....on the 13th of January, how that is possible, I do not know!) from the open windows - gentle and lovely. Next - I smelled that smell....you know the one....The green grass, wet dirt, sun-kissed air dried laundry smell - the smell that never fails to simultaneously relax and invigorate me. I cracked one eye open, then the next and there before me, was a beautiful sunbeam - shining through the window - making the newly clean Den (A surprise gift from my Daughters!) glow. It is a rare occurrence, at this stage in my Mid Life Wifery, that the waking up is more pleasant than the sleeping (and let's face it....Sleep? Well these days it's just about my favorite thing) - but that is how it was today...those moments were golden.
The alarm went off, I pushed it to silent, and laid there for a few minutes - reflecting on the last few days, and how all of our lives might benefit from the benefactor of my most worthy nap....an open window. In honor of today's unseasonable warmth, I had decided to open all of the windows - hoping to rid the house of all lingering germs. In so doing - I left my house open to the delights of fresh air...it rid the house of all of the pent up, stuffy, stale old air, and replaced it with a soft, fragrant, clean, newness. How to transfer that, to a Wife at Mid Life? To achieve that opening of spirit...to let the pent up, the stuffy, the stale air out of my life, and fill it with a soft, clean newness? Here, at Mid Life.....when everything feels like it is changing, or ending, or stuck.....
We had a guest minister today - a young man who is actually a member of our Church. He preached with passion and joy, extolling the virtues of unconditional love, of service to others...of daily Birth and Death, as we begin - over and over again, to live a life worthy of the One who showed us how to live....to be Plan A people in a Plan B world. For the record, I am not a jump up and down, shouting kind of Baptist.....I am a sit in your pew, and know all the words to all the songs, priesthood of the believer kind of Baptist....but today, this Man made me want to Shout....he made me feel that it is still possible to open the window of my spirit, releasing the old...the pent up...the stuffy.....still possible to fill it with radical vibrancy.....turning my Mid Life into New Life. Today, this Man's words were the breeze through the open window in my soul.....perhaps the trick to this Mid Life Wife slump is to look for the breeze, every day, and then open yourself to receive it, thereby creating a constant flux of renewal....a spiritual manifestation of that green grass, wet dirt, sun-kissed, air dried laundry smell....one that leaves you simultaneously relaxed and invigorated.....one that carries you from Mid Life to New Life.
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