Saturday, April 26, 2008

+ centered +

As many of you know, I started a new job at Concordia Publishing House this week, which is to say the Jameson family started a new job this week. The experience was something like the first day of school. For five straight days.

That's sort of how life has felt for months now, truth be told.

To say its been a fairly hectic few days would certainly be an understatement. It's not that the hours were exceedingly long or the job exceedingly stressful; it was just NEW. After 10-years of marriage, six years at the International Center, and 15-weeks as a new, young family, this week was a departure from "our norm". (Whatever that is!) And we found ourselves muddling through with some success, some stress, some late nights, and several early mornings. Nothing felt "normal", routine or typical; and certainly nothing was boring, average or ordinary.

What has proved most intriguing this week has been that our family time has become the most sane, most low-key and most necessary experience in the midst of all of this change. Life with Sydney is the newest and most unpredictable part of our day. Yet it was when we were finally home together at the end of work and commuting and coaching tennis and worrying over the multitude of mundane daily "to-dos" that we found ourselves most at peace, most content and certainly most restored to get up and do it all again the next morning.

Every day with Sydney brings with it some incredible new moment. Just the reality that her physical self is never the same from day to day is amazing. She is continually growing, striving, reaching and developing right before our eyes. A new job with new co-workers and new challenges doesn't hold a candle to the changes that Sydney has brought into our lives, but somehow the upheaval on the home front is actually a calming, reassuring thing. Coming home to Sydney doesn't feel exhausting or overwhelming. Instead, after a day of the unfamiliar, her familiar, chaotic presence is something we crave. It puts everything else into brilliant, obvious perspective.

Our desire to be fully present in our moments with Sydney is essential to us. Together, Leon and I drink in our new, burgeoning sense of "family"deeply and with gratitude. We pour our hearts into our at-home time; energy and joy and enthusiasm we have long expended elsewhere is now fueling our own home. It is difficult to fully express how this surge of investment feels and how it is changing us.

So ~ this week was definitely new and overwhelming and insane and fun and extremely unpredictable. But in the midst of all of that was Sydney. And Leon. And me. And even Bailey. And our brand new, God-granted family proved the center that held it all together.

How incredible is that?



3 comments:

ChelseaSalomone said...

Hi! My name is Chelsea. Somehow, I have stumbled upon your site in blog world (probably though a friend of a friend of a friend) and am completely hooked. You are a beautiful writer (with a beautiful little girl!!), and I love reading your posts. Would you mind if I added you to my list of blogs we read?

+gmjameson said...

Chelsea! Wow, how cool is "blog world"? Sure, feel free to add our page. And I took a peek at yours, your current post is really beautiful! Oh, and Lexi looks like a version of our Bailey Emerson (a ridiculously happy golden) ... +God bless!

C Staude said...

Love this post! The pics are so sweet and the sentiment is spot on!