Enjoy the Silence

This is what happiness looks like. My kids. Sleeping. 

This quiet that invades my house is goodness. I can hear the ticking of the clocks and the quiet whirl of the ceiling fan. The sun shines through the window and makes the piles of clothes on my kitchen table look almost inviting. 

I love these moments. I never really appreciated silence until I had kids. I used to think that silence was boring and was always looking for more entertainment, more conversation. 

It's not hard to find in a world as fast paced and noisy as ours. Radios, music, television. You can't even walk down the aisle at Walmart without TV advertisements suddenly jolting you out of focused concentration. 

However, I've learned in my short years of motherhood, that there is truly beauty in the silence.

These past few weeks during our move we were without internet. It was mostly an inconvenience. One of us would have to go out at least once a day to find WiFi. From banking, to blogging, to friends, email, Bible study helps and the source of all information ever (Google), our whole lives are online. 

At least that's what I thought. 

But once I adjusted myself to the idea of being offline, I really started to appreciate being unplugged. I focused my time and attention on all the myriad of things I had to do here (and there was plenty!). I was never bored, but I had plenty of time for the little things that sometimes get forgotten. 

Things like tea parties, hide and seek, and really good books.

My kids are used to this type of unplugged silence. They live here in the moment, never wondering about what someone else is doing on the internet. And while they would love a little "iPad time," I think they genuinely prefer to simply run and jump and play. All of us together. 

Over the past few weeks I've gotten to enjoy that simplicity. I was reminded that I don't have to be plugged in to be productive. There is so much work and learning here to do at home with these little ones. I don't need Pinterest to be creative, and I don't need to post a picture on Instagram for something to be fun. 

I can be happy here with these little people, in our own little world of stuffed animals and Dinosaur Train, without all the noise and distraction of the world. 

And now that we have internet again? Well, I'll enjoy that too. There is no harm in a little noise sometimes, as long as we remember to stop every now and then to enjoy the silence.