love lessons
August 15, 2014 § 2 Comments
The day began a product of disrupted sleep. Our daughter struggled to collapse into rest, my husband’s sleep interrupted, my own dreams traded between places of need as I attempted to comfort my daughter conscious of my husband and son’s peace.
It is an impossible balance, inevitably as one falls asleep another wakes in a restless pattern of exhaustion. By dawn nerves are frayed, emotions tender, and we begin from a place of insensitivity and intolerance; each exchange heavy with misunderstanding. Defensiveness and aggressiveness cling like sleep to the corners of our eyes tempting conflict and challenging kindness with a bitter perspective.
The gentle words and compassion each so needs misplaced in the morning routine. Tired emptiness filled with frustration, no one’s fault and everyone’s burden. It is a sleepless walk of the weary, a moment that can stitch us closer together or tear at invisible intimacies. We share the deficit with a wealth of responsibility or divide hurt feelings with blame.
One day this challenge will have passed, but our actions and words will have created assumptions of self and family. Who do we trust with our worst and who inspires our best? Where do we find comfort when peace escapes us and where do we hide our struggles?
Today I am thinking of the little girl who cannot sleep. She is the one most tender to other’s emotions and most eager to carry the burden of another’s troubles. In this one act of sacrifice, accepting the discomfort of evenings broken in wakefulness, we offer our daughter what we may some day ask for ourselves. This, above all the easy blessings of family, an act of love and a lesson on loving.
scribblechic 
Very nice! Yes, always lessons…
I am humbled and amused, in parenting, to find these lessons as predictable as errors and as unexpected as success. Thanks, Maurice!