Make Mornings LOVING Again

A Bonus Experiment #10

If you read last week’s newsletter, you saw that this month, Living the In-Between Times readers are experimenting with delight. Maybe feeling it more often, and definitely savoring it more often! I look forward to sharing results in a couple of weeks.

Delight! Get More Squirts of Life Out of Your Day

Then, Valentine’s Day came along, which got me thinking about a different feeling—love. Who doesn’t love love? Who doesn’t want to feel it even more? Today I’m sharing some recent thoughts I’ve been having about it, and a mini-experiment I’ve been trying to feel it more.

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I don’t know about you all, but, for me, the feeling of love can be… elusive.

I’d like to feel a continuous stream of love all day long—for my partner, my kids, my extended family, my neighbors. But, man. Sometimes it just feels hard.

When I started reflecting on why it feels so hard, the answer I uncovered wasn’t pretty. Turns out, one of the reasons I find it hard to feel more love every day is that I make love conditional. 

• Maybe I could feel love if some people around here could get their acts together and get their own dang lunches in their lunch boxes! 

• Maybe I could feel love if I didn’t have to repeat myself umpteen times to get everyone’s feet finally moving toward the door every morning! 

• Maybe I could feel love if I didn’t have to be in charge of EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING, if I didn’t have to feel like I’m a big fat failure every time a ball gets dropped! 

Yeah. Not pretty. But, watching my brain’s mini-tantrums creates an opportunity for curiosity:

• I wonder what it is about love that makes me think I can’t let myself feel it until everything is perfect, or at least pretty darn close?

• Do my favorite people really have to be performing like perfectly choreographed puppets on strings in order for me to experience love?

• Is there a way to consciously choose to feel more love despite the messy chaos of family life?

I decided to devise an experiment to find out.

I started by focusing on one particularly “messy moment” in our daily schedule. Mornings. Around 7:34 each morning, our house becomes a nuclear reactor of disparate needs, preferences, and feelings, all hurling and colliding with one another as we rush to get the breakfast finished, the teeth brushed, the shoes on, the backpacks packed, and everyone out the door in time.

Not in any way representative of actual mornings at our house.

What I’d like to feel in these moments is love. That warm-chested sensation that spreads up the back of my neck and ever-so-slightly lifts the corners of my mouth and eyes. Though one kid may be sighing with annoyance over teeth brushing, and the other is staunchly ignoring my entreaties to put some socks on, I want to recognize and feel that despite the cracking chaos of it all: I’m incredibly blessed to have this family, these particular rascally pains-in-my-neck. 

It might sound weird, but for this experiment, I decided to start with my toes. This is because I’ve observed that while my chest, throat, jaw or shoulders can be clenched in grouchiness, disappointment, stress, or anxiety, my toes (when I bother to sense them) remain staunchly neutral.

Be I enraged, flabbergasted, or crushed, my toes are ambivalent, refusing to be carried along. They live in a perpetual state of chill, the deep water in an ocean over which hurricanes churn above.

So, when I get the plates out for breakfast each morning, I begin to think of my toes. I wiggle them around a little, and while I do, I also imagine my kids’ toes, upstairs wiggling, wet in the shower or cozy at the table in their socks or slippers. While I heat up oatmeal or push bread slices in the toaster, I muse about how utterly loveable those toes are. And before I know it, I begin to feel a spot of warmth in my chest.

Once I’ve got that love flame sparked, I continue making breakfast, letting love’s warmth spread across my back and through my whole body.

Does wiggling my toes make me so blissed out I’m immune to screeching “Hurry up!” or sighing audibly over the last minute “Where is my homework packet?!” or “I’m supposed to bring a donut box to school today!” scrambles?

Hardly. But, it does help me quiet the urge to withhold my love, pending a perfectly performed puppet routine. Instead, I can give my toes a wiggle and remember:

I love these cuckoo kids of mine.

I love the weird, illuminating journey of motherhood.

I really do love getting this chance to figure out how to love the imperfect mess of our lives together.