the flower umbrella

"Wanna share my flowah, Mama?" She holds a plush posable flower up to me, her eyes shining. "It's rainin' an' you need to get undeh the flowah so you won't get wet!"
I look down at the pile of toys that I'm sorting and then to my precious three year old. She extends the pink sparkly flower up to me, gesturing to lean my head closer.
I feel a softening in my spirit as I lean into her, the flower lifted carefully above my head. For a moment, we sit, cheek-to-cheek under our flower umbrella.
It is one of the moments when suddenly, things come into focus. In the next room, movers pack our things into tidy cardboard boxes. Piles of clothes, toys, hangers, odd and ends from closets and cupboards fill each room. The landscape of our home has been thrown into controlled chaos-- and my spirit tightens, feeling the loss of control, order, predictability.
Yet in this moment, I sit with her and enjoy this peace. I look at her face and see joy.
At the end of the day, when all of our things are packed away onto a truck and we walk through a house all empty and echoey, we are still together.
And we are together with Him, the One who makes the house a home and sets the lonely in families.
More to come...