bunnies and everything else

I'm sitting here in a kitchen that needs cleaning, gorging myself on exactly ten Easter bunny-shaped marshmallows, not sure whether I should finish my thoughts here or master the responsibilities at hand.

I will finish, dishes tend to lend themselves ubiquitous anyway.

There has been a thought, a realization edging it's way to the surface of my heart. A little more appears each time I write here, each time I talk to a friend, in my regrettably infrequent times of peaceful meditation, and now the glimmer of it's clarity is right upon me.

I have found JOY in this life.

The joy of an exposed life, no secrets, no regrets, just life lived a full as I know how to make it, at peace with the season of life I am in, knowing that my sweet children will not be little for long, that in years to come I will long for these days of housework and cuddles and teachings about God's creativity in the moment. I love who I married for who he is right now, not expecting him to become some one else or to change, but because I know that he is meant for me even in ways I do not yet know.

I am enamored and obsessed with capturing God's grace and learning to use it as salve on the wounds of those around me and especially in applying it to my own short comings. It is so easy to dig a grave of self pity instead. So easy. I don't want to be religious. I want to be Jesus to the world, not a critic or cynic but JESUS. I refuse to drown in Western Christianity, I want to be the lifeboat. I fail. I pick it back up and try again, learning volumes with each opportunity to be humbled.

I am ok with whatever it is people think of me, REALLY. I am secure, I am fighting to love and live unselfishly, I accept the words and judgments of others. Good or painful they make me better and don't we all just, want, that?