A Sleeping Baby's Face Is Utterly Peaceful

Beautiful too.

There is a song of rest: the light fall and rise of small breaths, the gentle scratches and squeaks of a body beginning. The face is most striking, the solid peacefulness it wears resting, curled, in my arm.

I'm watching the whitening of the sky, the slow saturation of a winter palette, pines and spruce emerge stillly into view. His chest rises and falls slowly, rhythmically. Furnace plumes waft gently Eastward. It's the dawn of a day and a life. 

Infinite possibility and infinite soul ellipsed in one quiet moment. I'm trying to hold these moments like a string of loose pearls. They offer grace and healing to my busy soul.

Sometimes I chafe at the stillness, I worry about everything I'm leaving undone because this stubborn child insists on being held. I try worship and wonder too. 

Such stillness hasn't settled on our house since the mornings of our first baby. It took the world grinding to a halt, and our last baby, to slow this busy soul down. It took his torn back grinding on a split tree to rescue these moments from mere sentiment. The hope, joy, the peace is all real.

Help me not forget!