A Karaoke Tuesday Morning

Katie Lyke | Austin Motherhood Photographer

To whoever it was that gave my daughter a karaoke microphone for her birthday, thank you.

No, really. Thank you.

Because this morning, while listening to a very enthusiastic rendition of “Part of Your World” at full volume, it sparked a realization I didn't know I needed.

While Everly was singing, Audie was shrieking alongside her, convinced she was part of the performance. The coffee grinder was whirring. The dogs had tracked half the backyard into the house after yesterday's surprise rainstorm. There were dishes to put away, laundry to fold, and a long list of things waiting for me.

In other words, it was a completely ordinary Tuesday morning.

And standing there, I realized: this is the life I prayed for.

Not some social media highlight reel version of it. Not the version where the house is clean, the kids are quiet, and everything on my to-do list is neatly checked off.

This version.

The noisy one. The sticky one. The one with cinnamon rolls on a random summer morning before Vacation Bible School because it’s fun to say yes to a whim of a request in the grocery store dairy aisle. The one where a baby sits in her high chair eating peanut butter toast and humming "mmm, mmm, mmm" after every bite. The one where the soundtrack of the morning is the microwave beeping, children singing Disney songs from my own childhood, the dog that wasn’t supposed to still be here barking at the door to come in, and someone asking me for something every thirty seconds.

It's funny because when I was younger, I prayed for so many of the things that fill my days now.

I prayed for a husband. I prayed for children. I prayed for a home full of life. I prayed for work that mattered to me.

Now the anwers to those prayers surround me every single day.

And yet most days, I’m so used to them that I forget to notice them. Because the truth is, the things we pray for don't always arrive looking the way we imagined.

Marriage comes with dishes and disagreements and schedules.

Children come with sleepless nights and endless snacks and little plastic “treasures” that somehow reproduce on their own and fill every nook and cranny of the house.

Meaningful work comes with responsibility and stress and balancing more things than feel possible.

The blessings and the burdens often arrive together.

But every once in a while, if we slow down long enough to notice, we get a glimpse of what is actually happening.

We realize that the noise we've been wishing would quiet down is the sound of a life that's full. We realize that the chaos we've been trying to manage is evidence of people we love. We realize that the season we're trying so hard to survive is also a season worth savoring.

Every chapter of life comes with challenges, but every chapter comes with beauty too. Sometimes beauty looks like a Texas sunset or a beach vacation or a big achievement. And sometimes it looks like peanut butter-covered fingers, dirty floors, loud music, and cinnamon rolls on a Tuesday morning.

Today, I hope you take a moment to breathe it in. To pause in the middle of the chaos. To look around at your ordinary life and really see it.

Because this is your life. And maybe, in ways you've forgotten, it's the life you once prayed for too.