I have fought a toxic pattern of thinking my entire life. The thoughts go something like…

I am as valuable as the work I produce, so I always need to be working, so I am always of worth.

It’s this pattern of thinking that has always made sitting still a struggle for me. If I am to sit, at peace, and truly rest, then I am not producing anything. And if I’m not producing anything… well, you can see where this is going.

So I’m up, I’m a flurry of movement, productivity, and decisions. A dear friend once publicly identified me as “the hurricane” and, unfortunately, the name really fit.

These last few years, specifically my years in motherhood, have been transformative for me in this area. All of sudden, with the birth of my first tiny baby, my flurry affected more than just me. I realized my inability to sit at peace was threatening to keep me from the most precious, quiet, and unseen moments in mothering.

I find it so much easier to extend grace to a friend than myself. Looking at their life from my vantage point, I feel like I have enough space to see the truth of a situation. Like… obviously you’re not a failure for having dishes in your sink from two days ago. Give your sleep deprived self a break for a minute, and soak up snuggles with that sniffly baby.

But I get so close to my own life, so close to the repetitive chores and endless work that is parenting, and I forget to zoom out and look at the picture as a whole. I can forget to how incredible this season is and that I spent many years looking forward to it.

Right now at this exact time, I’m a 28-year-old mother with three little boys. My oldest is only three. We got pregnant for a second time when he was four months old and then pregnant when that brother was 11 months old. We had spent 4 years alone in our marriage and then it felt like went from a family of 2 to 5 overnight. When Auden was born, I kept saying in disbelief

we have a one-year old, a two-year-old, AND a newborn.

Who in their right mind has that many children that close together?! (Well, we do, I guess, since none of the pregnancies were actually a surprise.)

Some days I feel like a failure, for no good reason other than I just woke up feeling that way. Other days I feel like a queen, managing all her tasks with incredible efficiency. But that’s pretty rare and when it does happen, that voice pops up. So I’m zooming out, I’m choosing to see the bigger perspective of my life and remember just how fast the season is going to pass.

Our routines aren’t perfect, but we put in the effort. Our house isn’t perfect, but it is home, and it’s a place we truly love to be.

I choose to remember that I’m never going to be a mom with just three boys, three and under again.

Things will change but the only place I can be right now… is in right now… so I need to choose to be okay with it.

I choose to love all of its beauty and accept all of its imperfections. I will accept that every surface in my house gets sticky within 3 hours of the boys waking, and I will lean into sitting still sometimes anyway.