Today is a good day.

The air is full of everything that can be and my heart is full of everything that is. My babies are laughing and the husband is just a few hours and a walk through the door away. Yes, life can be difficult but my goodness, it is hard to catch my breath in the face of the sheer beauty of the thing.

Riley teases me because when I find a band I like I play their collective works over and over and over again. In the car, in the living room, singing in the shower and hummed in the grocery store. Consequently, Zuzu can recite most of the lyrics to songs from the Punch Brothers, Alison Krauss & Union Station and the occasional Florence and the Machine. Mumford and Sons came out with an album way back in September and yes, I have already written one post about it and yes, I know you have all already heard every ounce of it, even the bonus tracks. I mean how passe, right?  But that record has been my friend on car drives when there were no words. It has been the soundtrack to months when I felt I was being asked to grow too quickly and the background to moments when I realized I could do hard things. At the risk of sounding like a sentimentalist (Ha! Way too late, Meg. WAY.), that record has reminded me of the power of our own creative abilities. The beauty of something that touches across background and belief and place and time.

Today, I will smile and hope. Today, I will allow circumstance and meant-to-be teach me inch by painful inch. And today, I will be listening to the Mumford and Sons song, Not With Haste. Because it is four lovely minutes about need and fulfillment, beauty and belief, the here and now and the somewhere someday. Because in just a little way, it feels like maybe it is about me and this moment, right now. The last three lines catch my breath every time I hear them.

Do not let my fickle flesh go to waste

As it keeps my heart and soul in its place

And I will love with urgency but not haste

Happy Monday.