Here I am again in the “sweat box.”
Everyone is out of the house after a long day, and I’m sitting in complete silence. The kind of silence that feels deeply needed, yet almost foreign when you finally get it.
And in that silence, I begin to notice just how much chatter is running through my head.
So much, in fact, that I grab my phone and start writing.
Then, for one brief moment, after the noise begins to settle, I hear a familiar voice whisper in my ear.
My high school soccer coach.
K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
I chuckle.
And just like that, I’m brought back to the present moment.
Because isn’t that the thing about our minds? We can spend so much time analyzing, dissecting, planning, and trying to figure out the meaning behind every little thing that we forget to simply be. We turn a passing thought into a problem to solve, a moment of uncertainty into something to fix, and a perfectly ordinary day into another opportunity to question whether we’re doing enough.
Sometimes, it’s just chatter.
And maybe, just maybe, I don’t need to do anything with it.
The chaos of an ordinary day
As I sit here sweating, I feel the warmth slowly returning to my body. Today has been one of those days. The kind where you start seventeen different projects and somehow manage not to finish a single one.
Simple tasks, right?
Except nothing is ever quite that simple when you add children to the mix.
I wish I could have taken a video of my two-year-old son sitting on my shoulders while I attempted to use the backpack leaf blower to clear the excess leaves that have fallen over the past few days.
I’m sure some of you moms would have watched that and thought, Girl. No wonder you’re exhausted. Look at what you’re doing!
And you wouldn’t be wrong.
Then there was the woodpile.
The boys lost interest in the leaf blower, so naturally, we moved on to splitting firewood. That held their attention for approximately fifteen minutes before we were off to the next thing.
I shit you not. As I turned off the log splitter, gathered the few tools we had used, and started walking back toward the house, I glanced over my shoulder at the woodpile.
And I thought to myself, Welp. When the hell is this ever going to get done?
I laughed at the absurdity of it all.
Because there I was, trying to get things done, trying to move the day forward, trying to make progress on the never-ending list of things that need doing. And yet, the day unfolded exactly as you might expect when you’re raising little humans.
A little work. A little play. A little chaos. A whole lot of starting over.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, I forgot that maybe the point wasn’t to finish the damn woodpile.
Can we stop chasing balance?
I know this is my work. Finding the balance. Learning to slow down. Recognizing when I’m doing too much and when I need to let things be.
But lately, I’m actually starting to hate that word.
Balance.
Because are we ever truly in balance?
The earth is constantly turning. The seasons are shifting. Our cells are in motion, our hearts are beating, our breath is moving in and out. Everything around us is changing, growing, shedding, becoming.
Nature doesn’t seem to demand that every moment be perfectly balanced. There are seasons of abundance and seasons of rest. Periods of growth and periods of decay. Times when the trees are full of leaves and times when they stand bare, without anything left to give.
And somehow, we expect ourselves to hold it all together.
To be present mothers, attentive partners, business owners, homemakers, healers, friends, and human beings who are also somehow supposed to find time to take care of ourselves.
We want to be productive without being exhausted. We want to be present without feeling behind. We want to build beautiful lives without being consumed by the endless work required to maintain them.
Maybe the problem isn’t that we’re failing to find balance.
Maybe it’s that we’re expecting ourselves to exist in a constant state of it.
I’m still sitting with that thought.
Keep it simple.
Every time I settle into the quiet, I hear my coach’s voice again.
Keep it simple, stupid.
And I try not to overanalyze it.
Because I know myself. Give me a single thought, a feeling, a dream, or a passing moment of intuition, and I can spend hours trying to pull it apart, searching for the deeper meaning. I can turn a gentle nudge into an entire investigation.
Before I know it, I’ve spiraled so far into my own head that I’ve lost the very thing I was trying to understand.
Maybe this is an invitation to do less of that.
Maybe the answer doesn’t always require another layer of reflection, another book, another practice, or another attempt to figure out what Spirit is asking of me.
Maybe sometimes the message is exactly what it sounds like.
Keep it simple.
Do the work that’s in front of you. Let the children be children. Accept that the woodpile might not get finished today. Allow an ordinary day to be ordinary without turning it into evidence that you’re somehow falling short.
And when the opportunity for quiet finally comes, let yourself be quiet.
You don’t have to fill every empty space.
You don’t have to chase every thought.
You don’t have to make meaning out of every moment before you’re allowed to move on.
Trusting the thread
So here I sit, sweating, breathing, and letting go of whatever my body is ready to release.
I’m not entirely sure what the lesson is today. I’m not sure if I’ll wake up tomorrow with some grand realization or if this will simply be another piece of writing that lives quietly on the page until the bigger picture reveals itself.
And that’s okay.
I’ve come to trust that not every thread reveals its purpose immediately. Sometimes we have to keep walking before we can look back and see how the pieces connect.
For now, I’m allowing myself to sit with the question rather than forcing an answer.
Maybe that’s the work.
Maybe the work isn’t always about finding the perfect rhythm, completing every project, or achieving some elusive state of balance.
Maybe it’s about learning to be here, in the life that’s actually unfolding, instead of constantly trying to get somewhere else.
The woodpile will still be there tomorrow.
The leaves will keep falling.
The list will keep growing.
And there will always be another thing to figure out if I let my mind convince me that everything needs an explanation.
But tonight, in this little sweat box, I’m choosing to keep it simple.
To breathe.
To laugh at myself.
To let the chatter be chatter.
And to trust that the thread will reveal itself when it’s ready.
Because with every call to write, I believe there is a purpose behind the words I share. Not necessarily because I have everything figured out, but because sometimes the writing itself is how I begin to see.
And maybe the most important thing I can do right now is stop trying so hard to understand it all.
Maybe I just need to listen to my coach.
K.I.S.S.
Keep it simple, stupid.
And for tonight, that is enough.
In Peace, Love and Service,
Rebecca
