The first time he asked the question, it stopped me in my tracks.

“Hey Mom, can you smile at me?”

I was busy. Preoccupied. Stressed. Distracted. And the simple request of my son revealed that my smile had vanished in the mess.

In the disarray of moving to a new state, house hunting, growing our business, and countless other little things, my mind was in a million places. But not with him.

Since when did my four-year-old boy have to ask for a smile from me? When had I ceased to dole them out for free?

Over the next few weeks he would repeat his request on several occasions, each time unsettling my spirit a little bit more. It wasn’t that I was not happy, not at all. It’s just that sometimes our smile can get buried under the pressures of life.

Leave it to my boy to notice the little things that are actually the really big things. Like when Mom’s smile starts to fade.

It wasn’t only his request that had me considering my priorities. In the rare moments that I would set our busy realities aside in favor of a book, I was reading through Hands Free Life by Rachel Macy Stafford.

In the book, Stafford speaks of “Keeping track of life”, a term her young daughter coined. Stafford explains it like this:

“Keeping track of life is knowing you’re on your true path toward fulfillment. It’s being at peace with who you are and how you are living. It’s placing your head on the pillow at night knowing you’ve connected with someone or something that made your heart come alive. It’s investing in what really matters, understanding full well that managing life is the tendency but living life is the goal….It is a conscious decision to focus on what really matters when a sea of insignificance tries to pull you away.”

I knew that the busyness of our family’s current season was necessary. But I also knew that I could not allow what mattered most to take the back burner. I could not stop smiling for my boy. Or for me.

In Hands Free Life, Stafford sets out 9 Habits for Overcoming Distraction, Living Better, and Loving More. And it was the very first habit, “Fill The Spaces” that resurfaced my smile above the waves of distractions and busyness.

“Filling The Spaces” is about searching out those small pockets of our days and redeeming them in order to connect with those we love most. It is about pausing for what really matters.

I was determined to make those sacred pauses a part of our days.

And so I set out on a one-week experiment. For 1 week, I set the timer on my phone to go off every hour throughout the day. And every time it went off, I stopped to play for 10 minutes with my sons.

The biggest part of my experiment was this:  for those ten minutes of play, I joined my boys in whatever they were doing.

I engaged in their own play. I entered into their world. They were thrilled! And you know what? I was too.

Instead of waiting for them to ask me to play, they saw me excitedly joining them in their own imaginative activities.

Instead of setting down their plates of breakfast and then returning to the kitchen to clean up a mess, I sat and ate with them. I listened as between bites of eggs they told me their plans to be bridge builders when they grow up.

Instead of letting them watch another show so I could finish my work, I sat down between them as we read our way through a pile of library books.

We played “Run away from the elk!” Their baby brother played the elk.

I sat in the green grass and raced slugs around on Matchbox trucks.

These ten minute pauses quickly became an anchor to our days. Sometimes the ten minutes stretched into twenty. Sometimes my phone alarm would sound, only to find me already on the floor, constructing towers out of wooden blocks.

It’s not that I needed a reminder to play with my kids.

Well, then again. Perhaps sometimes I do need that reminder.

Maybe we all do.

But so much more, I needed the reminder to enter into their own play. To show interest in their activities. To celebrate their imaginations. And I needed permission to set down my own agenda and play. That permission came every time the alarm on my phone went off.

Each time I paused my day to reenter into theirs, they knew, as Stafford writes in the book, “…that you’re all there and there’s no other place you’d rather be.”

And that place, there on the floor or in the grass or on the couch with a story book–that place is exactly where my boy found my smile again.

You can purchase Hands Free Life here.

 

{Note:  I am not receiving any compensation for this endorsement. I have greatly benefited from Rachel Macy Stafford’s book, and believe that many others can also.}