Our house is crazy loud all the time. I find myself needing to escape the din and the noise and retreat to a room full of silence at times. But not this morning.
Today is the first day of school. Ethan started 1st grade. Jon and Matty went to preschool where they will be enrolled full time for the first time ever. So my home this Monday morning is silent.
I sat down with a cup of coffee and my Bible. I put some music on as I read and I drank all of it in—the quiet, the contemplation, and the caffeine. I like it, but I don’t want to get used to it.
Our house is usually what I like to jokingly call a “happy bag of chaos”. It’s always, always, always, full of crazy frenetic energy. Until it’s not.
This morning it is not.
And, while the peaceful moment is momentous I don’t want so many of them that it becomes the norm. Like many parents I wonder at the sanity of trusting my children to strangers during their formative years while at the same time being intensely thankful for the people who often lovingly and sacrificially give of themselves to better our kids.
My house is quiet, but my heart is not. I relish this moment to reminisce, but I am already ready to see my boys again. I’m already ready to fill this house again with the sounds of legos, and fighting, and boys at play.
Not all noise is great, but when it comes to the kind of noise arising within a house filled with life there can be no better sound. This is a rare moment. Next week I’ll go back to school myself and then my house really will be silent.
But our house is not our home. It’s just the place we experience the joy of togetherness most often. Where our noise is where home is. Even as I bask in the ever fleeting silence I miss it.