My Life is Beautiful, Even When I'm Bone Tired

I decided to post this picture first to remind myself that my life is beautiful. This was the front of our house yesterday. New Jersey has been hammered with snow and the boys and I had yet another snow day from school. I am tired, bone tired, between working full time, taking two graduate classes in Special Education, advocating for our own son and helping to organize resistance to our local Board of Education, which hired a technocrat to run our local public schools and who seems intent on destabilizing our tiny school district. And so it is I find myself sitting in the family van at the end of another long day, unable to find the energy to open the door and walk into our home.


At moments like this it is important for me to remind myself that I was summoned from nothingness into being and that I do not make the world, or make my neighborhood or even, make my family or myself. I do not need to be carrying burdens that do not belong to me. There is the One who calls out to us, who creates every person and circumstance in front of us. I need to remember this I type from my van hiding place that the 17 year old is inside making pizza and the 14 year old is down the block, walking the dog.

And then, I think about this. 

I know that snow days can be rough on working parents. But there is another kind of working parent we might not think about. 


Yesterday, while I stayed home from work and caught up on sleep and baking and graduate study, I drove by the high school on my way to see if the public library was open yet. I saw a man, either a district employee or a contracted district employee, shoveling the sidewalks in front of the high school  entrance. He was wearing old jeans and a long-sleeved sweatshirt. 

He looked exhausted as he scraped and scraped the ice, pausing to catch his breath. I was going to take his picture but I felt like that would be kind of awkward. He had already shoveled and scraped the very long sidewalk and walkway in front of the high school.