limitations

I'm bundled in blankets, pillow under head and computer on lap, piles of tissues all around me and surrounding the half-empty cup of tea on the nearby table. It is that time of year, after all, when we put in more hours indoors and less out in the germ-killing sun, and the sniffles and aches start to beset.

I was not pleased with this scenario an hour ago as I sadly came to terms with a change of plans for the evening (namely, staying under the covers while the rest of my dearly loved homeschooling mothers community gathers together for fellowship and encouragement), but then my husband returned home and he lit the candles around me and said, "I'll take care of dinner," and brought me a fresh box of kleenex and called the little girls off (they think I am a jungle-gym whenever I am in a semi-reclined or reclined position) and I'm pretty sure some of the sniffling was because of tears: I am a lucky girl and sometimes it takes just this sort of scenario for me to see it.

The truth is that it is that time of year and there are limitations that come with it, but I think to myself that just like the girls who come to my house each Sunday evening and I talked about last night, sometimes the limitations really are a gift.

As the days grow shorter and the temperatures colder, we are more and more confined to our homes. This can be tiresome at times, but really, I think it is a gift if I will stop moping long enough to see it. Our rhythms slow down just a bit. We think harder about outside-the-house activities, since they mean interrupted schooling and zipping multiple jackets and blowing on cold hands around icy steering wheels and being busy when it is dark (and we all know deep down, I think, that dark is meant for home fires and home cooking and home smells and home serenity). Candles and warm applesauce and wool afghans replace late-night stops at the ice cream shop and play dates at the park and sweat from gardening. I have grown to love both extremes, and I would be remiss to ignore the limitations of each as gifts.

Even when the limitations are blurry eyes and an achy neck and a stuffy nose.

After all, I think I needed this rest.

My body has been issuing a demand for pause and I have been ignoring it to the best of my abilities, which is not something I am now proud of. I can't say for sure what my iron levels are at this point, but I feel certain that they have dropped significantly and quickly of late because I have been having dizzy spells and just feel weary beyond anything I've ever felt before. I have not cheerfully accepted this new limitation (thus the pressing forward despite indications that I should not), but I am feeling remorse over that.

I tell the girls last night that perhaps the novelty of pregnancy has simply worn off and that's why it's hard for me to accept these adjustments to life as I was enjoying it, and not long after one of them prays that I will not miss the excitement and awe over a new baby even when it means giving up certain things.

Today, as I shorten school lessons and dole out extra chores to try to accommodate the limitations of this season, I think about that prayer. I think about the idea of limitations being a gift. I think about how self-sufficient I start to think I am when I am not confronted with the reality that I am not.

I think that this confrontation is a gift.