Eat Pray Love

I should be cleaning up my house, Willis is asleep and Ruby is at school. It looks like a tornado blew through our dining room. There are brownie crumbs on the table, playdoh stuck in the cracks of the table, O's squished on the floor and who knows what I might find if I unbuckled Willis' seat from the chair...hopefully no old meat, which Sean did find once and claimed it was the cause of whatever illness was making its way through our home that week! The living room floor is scattered with toys and I think there are still dishes in the sink from last night's dinner. Can you see why I am procrastinating? There are also 3 baskets of laundry in my bedroom waiting to be put away. How old do kids have to be before you can start having them do their own laundry? Probably 3 is a little young to expect Ruby to be putting her own clothes in her drawer and have some semblance of order in there.
My messy house is not why I am drawn to write today, though. I went to my first book club gathering last night, with most of the usual suspects. Our first book was Eat Pray Love, which I read about a year ago. I didn't know what to expect, yet I think I was anticipating an intellecutal discussion about the book and the author, and what I was pleasantly surprised by, was the depth of the questions and the insight our answers gave in to our selves. This is a group of women I would say I know well, and yet there is always something new to learn about those in our lives, if we are just a little bit curious. I keep thinking about the title of this book, eat pray love and can't help but think this is the answer. This is what we need to do, eat and pray love. Let love be the focus of all that we do, from eating to praying and everything in between. Love is all you need, right? Turning that to myself, I was asked the question last night about my own experience with meditation and I attempted to share what is for me a really difficult thing to describe. This led to a discussion about listening to divine wisdom, that voice that we hear inside ourselves when we are open to listen. For some reason, that voice keeps speaking very loudly to me since I left our gathering last night, telling me I need to share this "I don't know anything you don't know." Is that weird? I am humbled by this experience and struck by the notion that we all know intrinsically what we need, sometimes it takes someone seeing it from the outside to get us in touch with that, but truly, all the answers are within. They are not somewhere to be found out there, separate from ourselves, look within and you will find the truth and the light. Eat pray love for yourself and that will open your heart to the interconnectedness of us all, to that experience of supreme love that Gilbert writes about in this book. If you haven't read it, you should. And if you haven't joined a book club, I recommend that to.
And now that quote you've been waiting for....

God...abides very close to us indeed - much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert

Giving

Your gift is what you give - Yogi Tea bag

Or something along those lines...I got this tea bag the other day. It was today that it struck me though, the gift in giving. I have been taking care of my niece Mylie today. Her little sister Piper is in the hospital and Anna is, of course, there with her. Standing in my kitchen, picking cashews out of a mixed nut can, because that is what Mylie likes, I was aware of the satisfaction I feel in being able to offer something in someone elses time of need. What I can offer isn't that it is so much, it's just that I am the one that has the ability today to be able to do it and it feels really good. I have, for the last several weeks, been complaining, for lack of a better word, about the lack of time I have for myself. Today, I am wondering about that...I don't feel tapped out, I feel full today and have had very little time to myself (amazingly enough though, I am blogging with 3 children in the house, 2 of them awake!) Maybe part of it too, is the gift I get tonight. Ryan and Niki are coming over to take care of Ruby and Willis so Sean and I can go out to dinner. I feel blessed that our family is what it is and that in times of need, big or small, we band together. I do believe that difficult times can bring out the best in us, remind us of what we are capable of, even if only in our hearts. Life is good.