My morning thoughts...

Living in the "NOW" means that I get to find joy in simply watching Jamie wake up and reach for the orthopedic shoe I wore after I broke my foot. She hurt her foot the other day while playing with water in the wheelbarrow and has worn that shoe everyday since. It is too big on her and it's terribly unattractive but she wears it with such pride--a visible injury is GOLD to most kids.

I find joy in letting my kids choose how they will express themselves in this world. I'll admit that it's hard sometimes to watch some of the outfits--conjured up by imaginative hands--walk out of the house and into the big wide cruel world. It's hard not to cry out, "Conform, conform, conform--fit in with the crowd." But I don't want to do that to my kids. They are so creative and confident about which side of that line in the sand they want to stand and I never want to break that spirit.

I myself fight everyday with the notion that I must live, be, look a certain way to fit in and be admired. The voices of the world--who have traded their souls for a chance to be "normal"--ring in my ears and give me a headache. So I'm rebelling, a little each day, I'm rebelling against those voices that try to tell me that there is only one way to be if one is to be truly happy, because I'm learning that this "one perfect way" is not making me happy at all.

I do not wish to live a life of conformity. I want to make decisions based on what I feel not on what I'm "supposed" to feel. Perhaps that is why I stayed in my pajamas the entire day yesterday. I didn't lounge in them but I worked, played and lived in them. Yes all day, with a "Mrs. Goodkind" bun pulled tightly atop my head to boot (Mrs. Goodkind was a character from one of my favorite children's books, "The Firehouse Cat" and I would often feel troubled that she chose to wear such an ugly bun in her hair and felt quite certain that she would be much prettier if she let it down).

Yesterday I didn't feel the need to conform to "beauty". Yesterday I felt a little feisty and rebellious and happy to simply be present in the moment. And moment after moment of my day seemed to call for nothing grander than pajamas and a bad hair-do. So I simply lived what I felt and it was lovely.

And today? Well, today I feel like getting dressed. So that's just what I'm going to do.