I’m so thrilled to be hosting my friend Alexandra Kuykendall on the blog today. Her new book, Loving My Actual Life is for every mom who feels like she’s missing out on loving her life while trying so hard just to survive it. It’s the perfect Mother’s Day gift for you to give yourself or a friend. It would make a wonderful book club book as I know her experiment will lead to lots of good conversations among moms. Please join me in welcoming Alex today. I pray you are impacted by her words, as I have been.
“The alarm on my phone sounds. As my hand searches the top of my hamper for the source of the church bell chimes alarm, my thoughts are already at yesterday’s unfinished to-do list. Despite the prior day’s frenzied efforts, I hadn’t checked everything off of the list and had fallen into bed with part of me feeling as though I’d failed. I awake to a lingering feeling of urgency of unfinished work. As I swing my feet to the floor, I feel my jaw tighten and my heart rate speed up. Back to yesterday’s crazy-busy speed in a matter of seconds.
And now the whirlwind of the day: the waking of children, feeding, throwing clothes {any clothes!} on their bodies, having an argument {or three} about them making their lunches, dropping them off at various schools, clicking in and out of car seats a thousand times, bringing not-yet-in-school children home, putting them in front of the television while I try unsuccessfully to get just a little work done, counting down the hours until I needed to begin the school pick-ups, throwing two loads of laundry through the cycles so they could move from the dirty pile to the equally huge clean pile in our laundry room, getting the littles {as we call the two youngest in our house} back in the car, school pick-ups for the bigs {you guessed it, the older two}, realizing we have nothing for dinner, scouring cupboards for something that will qualify {because it’s too late in the day to consider freezer options}, waiting in my minivan in the driveway for my husband to pull in so I can pull out and head to soccer practice with one of my older girls, yelling some type of dinner instructions at him over my shoulder as I peel out, trying to cram another hour of work in during soccer practice, coming home, eating, putting girls to bed, checking emails one more time, and collapsing, knowing tomorrow will hold another, almost identical agenda and pace.
A typical day in the recent span of my life and it is where this story begins.”
Loving My Actual Life: An Experiment in Relishing What’s Right in Front of Me, Baker Books 2016
Can you relate? This crazy busy with no end in sight. Where one day morphs into another and we can barely catch our breath, much less notice the goodness God has offered in abundance all around us?
I needed to put on the brakes. Well I really needed to slam on them. And stop. And notice. Because yes my story of living with more intention begins right here in the middle of the crazy. The crazy busy. The crazy distracted. The crazy of wishing for the next big change. You know the when’s. When this {fill in the blank with whatever that might be} changes, then I’ll be happy.
No I needed to notice today, or those days of running from one thing to the next would morph into weeks. And then months. And then years. Potentially missing my very life in the midst of the running around.
Yes, my story started right in the middle of the crazy, because there is never a perfect time, a calm time, to begin this experiment of relishing what’s right in front of us. We must begin now. Because we don’t want to miss our actual lives.
The cost is too high.
Alexandra Kuykendall
In her newest, entertaining and insightful book Loving My Actual Life: An Experiment in Relishing What’s Right in Front of Me, Alexandra Kuykendall chronicles her nine-month experiment to rekindle her love of her ordinary, actual life. After wiping her calendar as clean as a mother of four can, Kuykendall focuses on one aspect of her life each month, searching for ways to more fully enjoy her current season. With humor, poignancy, and plenty of personal stories, she shows how a few small changes can make this crazy-busy life one of holy contentment.
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