Bedtime

I follow a very sweet, very inspiring blog.  What I love most about it is that she posts about the simplest things and says things in such a simple, concise way, but still manages to make a very clear, profound point.  I love her perspective.  I love the simplicity of her blog and the purposefully uncluttered life she writes about.  I wish I could say what I mean without all those unnecessary words, but I can't, so you're stuck with these fluffy posts.  :)

Last week, she was talking about resolutions for the New Year and one of the things she wanted to improve on was "not rushing bedtime."  Isn't it funny how some things just jump out at you?  Those words might as well have been highlighted and underlined on that blog because they were the only ones I saw.  I can't even remember what the rest of her goals were.  

I've been thinking about our bedtime routine for the past couple of days since I read that post.  Bedtime is not when I'm at my best.  After being awake since 5:00am, I'm rarely fresh and alert at 9:00pm.  But 90% of the time, AFTER family prayer, and AFTER all the hugs, is exactly when the kids want to talk and snuggle and connect with us and share their days.  (sigh…why do they not want to talk at 3:30 in the afternoon?  or even at 7:00 after dinner?)

I have been thinking this week, that there have been too many times when the bedtime routine stays in tact, but the conversation afterward is definitely rushed.  So, even though what I'd really like to do at night is get in my jammies and curl up on the couch to watch some DVR thing, I've tried this week to make more of an effort to be available for those bedtime conversations.  And there have been some good ones!  

Because ultimately, the thing that always rings in my ears, is that the way things look today is not necessarily what it will look like in the future.  There are fewer years of bedtime conversations left than have already passed.  These are the years when they want to talk about things like relationships, goals and aspirations, college, church, teachers, and friends and I definitely don't want to miss those.  This week has made me want to embrace those bedtime conversations and look forward to them instead of rushing through them to get to some unimportant thing.  

I'm grateful that these teenagers (and 10 year olds) want to talk to us.  I'm so grateful for their wisdom and insight.  I'm sure those nightly conversations teach me so much more than I could ever teach them.