Not yet.
Not yet, of course, being the refrain of the song of this life. Time alone with my husband? Not yet. Girl nights on the regular? Not yet. Finishing the book I’ve been writing for longer than I’d care to admit? Not yet. Losing the baby weight? Not yet. Sleeping through the night? Not yet. Having a clean house? Not yet. Not yet. Not yet, not yet.
You get the idea.
It’s a life that by virtue of its chaos is passing by so quickly that we want to grab it by the lapels and pull it down onto the ground with us and force it to slow down so we can both take a breath and maybe, for a second, appreciate its glorious beauty.
It’s a life of miraculous wonder too, of course it is, but it’s a life of miraculous wonder that we are very often too busy or too stressed or too distracted to see. It’s a life that by virtue of its chaos is passing by so quickly that we want to grab it by the lapels and pull it down onto the ground with us and force it to slow down so we can both take a breath and maybe, for a second, appreciate its glorious beauty.
Because it’s a life we would do all again, if given the choice, isn’t it? If the Ghost of Motherhood Past came blowing through right this second and took us on a journey backward wouldn’t we pick these very same people out of a long lineup of options, even if they were covered in dirt and scabs and food stains and had peanut butter smeared in their hair?
Wouldn’t we grab them all up in our hands and drag them home so fast we would just be a peanut butter-scented blur to passersby and they would barely have time to take a second glance before calling out after us: “Boy, you sure do have your hands full, don’t you?”
Of course we would.
Because there’s room in this already full life to also cram in this truth: that we can love it vehemently and wholly while still nodding in solidarity to each other when someone stands up (or raises a fist weakly from the floor) and says “Hey, this is hard.“
We can love this hard life so much that when and if the Ghost of Motherhood Future came to visit us lying there on the floor with garbage in our hands and asked us if we wanted to just fast forward right into that quieter and less chaotic future, I know without hesitation we’d all shut her right down with those two simple words:
Not yet.
Not yet, Not yet, NOT YET.
Liz is a writer, blogger, teller of stories, believer in truth, and mama to four. She shares her stories on lizpetrone.com and all over the Internet, and recently finished a sloppy first draft of her first book. She can also be found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
