Skip to main content

Three Signs Your Life Is Too Busy - The Glorious Table

Stacy the guinea pig had lived a long, happy life. I, however, felt terrible. My husband and son were adventuring in Canada while I held down the fort at home. Not twenty-four hours into my solo parenting time, I began to feel the telltale signs of strep throat. You can only “mom” so well from the couch, which narrowed my goal to basic survival.
We were getting by on Pop-Tarts, PBS Kids, and amoxicillin when my daughter’s loud question woke me. “Why is Stacy so stiff?” My eyes popped open, and I was suddenly wide awake. The guinea pig was in her outstretched hands, inches from my face. Its arms were outstretched, too, in the final pose of obvious death. My daughter was four. I was sick, and Scott was off the grid in the Canadian wilderness. This was not the moment I had scripted for a serious discussion about death.
We found a Stacy-sized shoe box and then realized we faced a conundrum: burying her. She belonged to my son, who was gone, and it didn’t seem right to bury her without him home. My mind, in its drug-induced haze, offered only one solution. Put her, shoe box and all, in the deep freeze and wait for them to get home.
The boys came home, but life got away from us, and the little shoe box in the back of the deep freeze was forgotten. People usually laugh at this part of the story, imagining a guinea pig alongside our hamburgers and pork roasts. My brother-in-law had a different take. He contemplatively said, “Maybe a guinea pig in your freezer is a sign that your life is too busy.”
Join me at The Glorious Table to finish this essay and read about the lessons I learned about leaving the too-busy life behind.

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What You Need, When You Need It - The Glorious Table

We ate steak at the fanciest place in town, me and my sister, our husbands, and our parents. Around the table, we joined Mom’s reminiscing. We retold our favorite stories of family vacations and holidays. We revealed some silly childhood secrets. And we listened to Mom’s stories from fifty years she and Dad spent together. One of our favorite stories is of the birthday Mom expected a diamond ring but went home from their swanky dinner with a shiny new set of hot rollers. Whenever Mom tells that story, instead of making fun of Dad for his slow-moving ways, she praises his serious, methodical decision making. She points to it as proof of his dependability. My mom told stories. I told stories. My sister told stories. Even our husbands had memories to share. We retold some of the stories Dad put on paper in his journal for us. The thing we missed most was Dad’s voice in the storytelling. Rather than telling the stories himself, he locked eyes on the teller and responded, “By golly, that ha

Project Hopeful Guest Post #2

I'm writing for Project Hopeful again today.  We've been very busy in Ethiopia meeting some incredible people!  Please join us! Enter your email address: Delivered by FeedBurner

It's About Who We Are, Not What We Do - The Glorious Table

Living just four blocks down the street from my best friend made it easy to share clothes, secrets, and families. We could be found within a close radius of her backyard pool most summer days. The rhythm of our summer days revolved around Gretchen’s dad’s third-shift work schedule. During the morning hours, the house needed to stay dark and quiet, so we picked peppermint leaves to chew, painted our nails, and read books. Not long after lunchtime, Mr. Liddell would wake up, which paved the way for our favorite summer activity: synchronized swimming routines. We practiced and laughed until we felt ready for an audience. Gretchen’s dad always stopped mid-project to be amazed by our mildly in sync pool programs. He clapped and went back to work while we kept playing. His presence was as steady as the summer sun. He wasn’t merely my friend’s dad; he was a comfortable, expected constant in my life. The familiarity born by all those shared moments made his cancer diagnosis particularly awful