the beauty of a pause

There I was at my kitchen table,  too early in the morning, weary, bleary-eyed. My almost-9-month-old is working hard on crawling, and the newly-firing neurons in his brain are messing with his sleep--and hence, with mine. With only the benefit of coffee for a crutch, I looked out over the day ahead, and just before I could get discouraged, the little scene coming to life on my kitchen table caught my eye:

Then caught it again:

I wish I could say that, in that moment, I could finally see the beauty that is my life, and that the day--and all days thereafter--rolled smoothly on. Not so much. But that much isn't necessary, either. In the moment I chose to pause, and see; to fire up my iPhone, open my Hipstamatic app, and shoot, I reminded myself of a few things:

...that my life IS indeed beautiful

...that I want to be the kind of person who chooses to pause and see that beauty

...that when I choose to pause, I connect to my "infinite power to relax, to release, to change, and thus to change everything."*

And so I carried on. I got up, walked around, and I found this:

And this:

It may not be much, but in the moments when I paused, looked, and shot those images, all I was connected to was that very moment, that breath.

And that is how I choose to live out my days: breathing into the moments, easing into the beauty. As it turns out, there is an app for that.

*Karen Maezen Miller, from Momma Zen