silence

All I hear right now is a little cricket bug through the open window, the crickety creaking of Ruby rocking back and forth in the little rocking chair, and the breathing of deeply sleeping kiddos.

It's heavenly.
I sit in the dark with sleeping ones surrounding me. It has been a long evening. Everyone else is gone at church so it’s just been me, the 'babies' and Solimar, my mature beyond her 8 years, helper for the last few hours. Usually we all go, or at least most of us, sometimes, some of the littlest ones will stay behind with one of the women who works here, but because of various reasons, we decided Solimar and I would stay back with them all tonight.

In many ways it’s been chaotic.

It’s been hectic, it’s been loud, there has been crying, screaming, and time-outs (namely from one precious darling).

There has been dinner spilt on the floor, there have been 3 potty accidents, there has been lightning, and thunder (the cause of one of the accidents). There have been power outages (fortunately nothing real long). There have been bumped heads and pinched arms, bedtime tantrums and cranky whining, but now. . . that has all stopped. No one is picking on the other one, stealing their spoon, pushing them off their spot on my lap, a beautiful peace has come over this place.

and that is an answered prayer. I was making dinner and all I kept praying to God for was peace. Oh Lord, just let the chaos subside! and here I am. and here it is. The silence is a glorious thing, but I guess, if we aren't surrounded by the noise first, it’s hard to appreciate the pureness of silence.

The other night in our evening devotions we were talking about silence, and how life is so full of noise, that we forget to bring ourselves into periods of silence so we can really focus on and listen to God's voice coming through it all. I don't do that nearly enough, but right here and right now, God has given me this gift of a time to truly enjoy sitting and enjoying the peace that He brings.