"Survive the chronos and carpe kairos."

This is one of those brutally honest posts. I'm exhausted. I'm still trying to reestablish "normal" after the holidays, the semester has started and I have a high energy, big class, and I'm still trying to finish the damn dissertation. (My mentor once told me that you are not really finished with your PhD until you can only refer to your dissertation as the damn dissertation. I am there.) Add the normal day to day of two small kids and over flowing laundry, and I'm just exhausted.

Yesterday was a hard day--productive, but hard. I was dragging myself through everything. But there were moments, and I think I would have missed them had it not been for a woman I have never met.

One of the things I have loved about blogging is "meeting" other moms. Moms who can inspire me, make me laugh, or make me cry. Moms who make me feel like my life is pretty dang normal. So often, I think God puts a post from one of these women into my life just when I need it. You see, night before last I read this. This mom wrote with brutal honesty about how sometimes being a mom is so hard, and there is nothing more guilt-inducing than being constantly told to enjoy every moment because it's so fleeting. Who really enjoys every moment? She called those the chronos moments--the moments in real time when you would really rather be doing just about anything else. What we live for are the kairos moments--the moments when real time stops and you remember this is why we survive the chronos moments. When Evan asked me to sing his good night song last night and snuggled his head into my palm, just like when he was a newborn. When Issa read me a whole book and then proclaimed me the best mom ever. Those are what keep me going, and it was a wondrous thing indeed to hear the reminder right before I had one of those chronos days. Otherwise, I might have missed those kairos moments.

And so...I stole her mantra for this title, and I sent her a thank you comment. It's how the blogging community works, and I am so glad I have joined the conversation.

Now...back to the chronos--you gotta do it.