Pausing for joy

Today I will do little but clean. I have laundry, dishes, and clutter that has gathered for the better part of a week.  Now the piper must be paid. My west coast daughter came east last weekend and for four wonderful days I refused to use precious time with her for the ordinary tasks of maintenance. I didn't vacuum anything or dust anything. I picked up and put away almost nothing. I didn't even do a single load of laundry.  In a household that currently includes six, it doesn't take a genius to get a mental picture of how wobbly the spinning plate of housekeeping is today.  I have to do some major re-spinning to get it back in gear. But it was worth it.  Today she has gone. I have truly enjoyed the "better part" of the week. 

I raised all my children to pull over to watch a sunset spread its wings across the sky.  I taught them to pause during a walk to be still and hear the rainbow of sounds in the not-so-silence. So of course the last four days were for relishing. They were days for looking past the backpacks on the floor, the toys abandoned in mid game, and focusing on the delight as children dropped their backpacks to run and hug, as they jumped up from their game to join us in a walk.  Were the four days enough?  Certainly not, but relish them we did.  We paused the clock on our routine schedules and made space for joy.  In a day [all right, maybe a couple of days] the house will be cleaned back up, laundry will be done, dishes put away, and the schedule back on its crazy track. Yes, I let one of my spinning plates wobble and even drop. But it was a good choice. The house suffered for a few days, but in a week that won't matter.  What will matter in a week, what matters already, is that we have shared joy.  When she is back on the west coast and months go by without seeing her we will know that our precious days here were not wasted, but relished. It is a choice. Rarely do you lose out in the long term if you choose joy.  We all need to make room for joy.