equilibrate

i'm listening to norah jones and watching the kids re-equilibrate with the addition of rosie. 
we're out on the porch on the coolness of this sunday morning after church.  zoe is playing with a bug, rose and the boys are climbing a small tree.

i'm watching them move and find their bearings,  on the branches, with each other. 
i can feel the pull of one, the push of another as they shuffle and adjust.

equilibrate.  to bring to a state of balance.
a place where things work, make sense.
isn't that what we are always trying to do? in life. in work. at home. in our relationships. we want to avoid the opposite- instability, wobbliness.

i had a moment yesterday.  i was in a post-migraine daze, not feeling great, looking at old pictures on the computer.  i found myself walking through the rooms of our old house - noticing things like, where the laundry basket was, what books were on the table.  then i moved on to our street, the neighborhood.  i remembered our rainy days, the path to school, the color of fallen leaves in puddles and the hum of cars that work well, with intact exhaust systems, running on roads with out potholes- the almost sticky sound of tires on wet pavement. 

i came to some pictures of jude and bryn at their lemonade stand from last year.  they are on the sidewalk in front of our yard.  behind them is our huge water oak, and our new honda pilot and our house.  they have giant smiles with missing teeth and very blonde hair and are holding their sign proudly.  that is when my moment came.

it was all-so-normal. expected. it made sense.

and i looked around at now.  the pictures of our life here.  the constant red dirt.  the ramshackle make shift houses, the wild collarless dogs that all look the same, the broken down roads, the trucks that can barely make it up the hill with their load of bananas.  it was all so not normal- so out of the ordinary- not expected.

then i looked my fourth child, left on the street with her beautiful dark chocolate skin and her giant eyes; and at the constant greenness of the yard and the flowers; at the red feet of my children as they role in for dinner after an afternoon running free; and while it wasn't necessarily expected, it somehow makes sense.

it is somehow a big messy balance. it's wobbly but it works.  things are in constant shuffle and life here is in a mild state of disrepair, but it's good in it's weirdness. we wiggle and adjust and try and screw up and try again.  today it feels right- sometimes it doesn't- shift left, i'm back. there is the living.  in those movements of response and regulation as we do our best to equilibrate.  in the moving, the adjusting, in the things that throw us, is the joy.