sounds of silence

I think about this all the time.  Literally.  All the time.

I love my middle of the night and early morning feeds with Nola.  Even through the fatigue during the day and sometimes short temper, I savor the moments spent nursing Nola when it's dark and all I can hear are her smacks and gentle breathing and the seconds ticking by on the clock.

It struck me the other night as I counted the seconds that each of them is so much more proportionately significant in her young life than they are in mine.  I feel so blessed by the significance of every second. And it's really cool to have that constant noise penetrating the stillness of the night to remind me that a second comes and then it's gone.  Just like that.  It's the ticking that keeps me in the moment with her.  Instead of focusing on the fact that I haven't had a good night's sleep in 4 years, I focus on the precious gifts I have been given.

I spend some of my time nursing at night on praying for my kids and every aspect of their current and future lives.  The peace of the night has given me the opportunity to have that quiet time with God that I haven't seemed to fit into my day for so long.  And it's helping things.  I've begun to see subtle changes in the way things go around here, so that tells me to keep it up.

I love the sounds that come with the silence of the night.

And speaking of sounds, there goes a little wail from Nola waking from her nap.