Get-to

It feels like I am always counting. Can you get into your boots before I get to ten? Counting groceries and pairs of socks and just how many bowls are squirreled away in bedrooms at any given moment. How many minutes are left before we're late for school and how many plates to set out for after-school snack and how many days left until Christmas. 

Tonight when I was settling Kachi into bed, I scooted in beside him for a kiss. He climbed on top of me. "You can't leave," he said.

"How about a hundred-second hug?" I asked. And I wrapped my arms around him and began counting to one hundred.

His head burrowed into my neck and he held me tight. My counting, which had begun at a good clip, started to slow.

He just wanted to be in my arms. Just wanted to be held. Not managed, not directed, not parented ... just held. 

And while my evening to-do list hung paused and waiting, the weight of it shifted. It ebbed. Faded. 

That hundred seconds was the most full and beautiful and restful of my day.

Kids are not great at getting things done on time and they are not amazing at shaving seconds off a schedule but they are very good at connecting and they are very good at stuffing joy into the little cracks and spaces of their day.

This morning I was getting everyone ready and out the door for school but Pascal was dilly-dallying so I sent the big kids outside to play while I got him ready. When we joined them in the fresh air, they called me over, laughing. "We built a snowman!" they crowed. There was not a lot of snow on the ground and they'd only had a few minutes but they had made this hilarious little snow man, complete with buttcheeks.

I, bona fide adult, don't tend to jam joy into every minute. I do the things I have to, and pat myself on the back if I do them more quickly than I'd expected. 

Left to their own devices, my kids create. They build. Write. Strategize. Draw. Sing. Invent a game. Make rhymes. Find patterns. Laugh at butts.  And they do this in the space between leaving the house and leaving the yard. Between leaving the yard and arriving at school. Between assignments. In between all the must-dos they jam a whole lot of get-tos. 

And sometimes I find myself lucky enough to be squished in with that list, a get-to. Get to hug mama for 100 seconds. Get to lie with mama while I fall asleep. Get to draw with mama, get to read with mama, get to make up silly songs and wash dishes with mama.

I hope this Christmas offers you a whole lot of chances to enjoy your get-tos. I hope you get to make a snowman while you wait and play on a frozen puddle when you pass it. I hope you get to press pause for one hundred heartbeats with your arms around someone you love. 

Jesus came because you're His get-to. ❤

Merry Christmas, friends.

Xo.