My week of re-centering

Wow, this week wasn't so bad.  I am a little tired since the monster slept so poorly last night, but on the whole, I feel a lot more balanced than normal.

That isn't to say that I don't have papers to grade, grades to enter, a house to clean, a dishwasher to fix, food to make, and a body that needs to lose weight before my knee breaks altogether (it has been hurting pretty regularly now).

Nope, I have stuff to do.

Stuff with deadlines...

Stuff that is WORK...

Stuff that is exhausting...

And not quite enough sleep... still...

But I feel ok about it.

What is different?  What have I done, or made a habit of doing in the last few days that I had been missing?

I stop and pray.

In the middle of the stuff and the demands and the deadlines, when something comes across my desk, my e-mail, my ears, I stop and pray.   Just a small prayer.  It only takes a few seconds... but I take the time, the energy, the focus, to stop.

It isn't easy though!  I have a line of students at my desk needing help, panicking because they need everything done and turned in within an hour.  Mrs. Davis pops her head in and says she needs to run one of the baby goats to the vet...it is wheezing and not doing well.  I have papers to grade and kids to help, and now two classrooms to supervise.  I pause and pray.  I pray for the goat, and the family that has been bottle feeding it every 2 hours around the clock for the last week.  Kids need my help.  The class in the other room gets louder, but I pause and pray.

And it made a difference, I think.  Now, of course, I am approaching this from a specific worldview, and not everyone who may come across and read this may be from this view.

It could be that I pause and center... a form of meditation...
It could be that I reclaim a tiny bit of myself within the madness...
I could be.....

I know... I know it could be... but my center IS God, or should be anyway.  And yes, I do reclaim a tiny bit of myself within the madness... the tiny bit of myself that is that of God within me, which I sometimes lose in the madness.

Whatever you would like to call it, when I find my center, even when everything else is rushing at breakneck speed around me, I find a tiny spot of quiet, and for a moment, that is where I live.  For now, it is enough.