"Our Feet are Set in a Large Room"

Having passed an unsettled day fretting over the enormity of schoolwork + housework + life management + Everything Else, and having no clear resolution in spite of all my fretting, I turned tonight to Charlotte Mason, who wrote in Chapter 25 ("The Great Recognition Required of Parents") of Volume Two....

"This great recognition resolves that discord in our lives of which most of us are, more of less, aware....[i]s it not a fact that the spiritual life is exigeant, demands our sole interest and concentrated energies?  Yet the claims of intellect--mind, of the aesthetic sense--taste, press upon us urgently.  We must think, we must know, we must rejoice in and create the beautiful.....once the intimate relation, the relation of Teacher and taught in all things of the mind and spirit, be fully recognised, our feet are set in a large room; there is space for free development in all directions, and this free and joyous development, whether of intellect or heart, is recognised as a Godward movement."

I love the reminder that my feet are indeed set in a large room, that there's space for my growth and my children's growth, that these interests are not in competition with each other, and most of all, that the Holy Spirit is my ally in living a beautiful, unique life which engages both my mind and my hands.

I feel better!