I got a pinched nerve yesterday.  It was literally and figuratively a pain in my neck!  Every turn of my head resulted in shooting pain on my left side. “I have a lot to do! I don’t have time for this,” I grumbled to myself.  The list of things I wanted and needed and promised myself to get accomplished that day began scrolling through my head. But this sharp pain interrupted it all.  I couldn’t sit at my laptop to work. I couldn’t sit at my machines to sew.  I couldn’t go run errands or even load the dishwasher. You just don’t realize how much you have to turn your head to do things until you can’t do that anymore, that’s for sure!  I had to just. Stop. And I don’t know about you, but I’m notoriously terrible at stopping!  Little did I know how just stopping would be a generous blessing…

After a hot bath (at the suggestion of my kids), I lumbered into my bedroom. The most comfortable place in that moment looked like our firm, but unvacuumed floor.  Ew.  But with my head suddenly feeling entirely too heavy for my neck to hold up, I laid down on the carpet, eye-level to the mystery crumbs and miscellaneous room debris.

My son came up to me, his little frame looming over me from above. “Want to play with my marble maze, mama?” he asked, holding out his contraption. My first inclination on a day like today -would have been- “Not right now, bud. I have yadda yadda yadda to do.  And it’s pretty important I get it done because yadda yadda yadda.” But here I was, laying on the floor, slightly relieved from some pain with nowhere to go, nothing I could get accomplished.

So I found myself saying something that seems to be rare these days: “Sure, let’s play it.”  We took turns running marbles through his maze, making up little rules for  our game, me looking up at him while we talk. My daughter joined in, playing with us and the three of us spent the next 20 minutes just being two kids with their mom.

For a moment, I wondered. How many times have I said ‘no’ instead of ‘yes’ to playing with my kids? How many times have I chosen to speed up instead of slow down?  God, does it take a pinched nerve in my neck to make me take a breather and give myself permission to just play with these kids you’ve given me?

And this morning, it all came to a realization when I read this quote:

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” (Simone Weil)

I realize that we can’t always cater to every moment our child wants attention, but I believe that pinched nerve was a blessing yesterday.  It -made- me slow down, it took away all excuses, all “pressing” matters, it allowed me to remember I can’t be so busy go-go-going all the time that I completely miss out on marble mazes with my kids.  Because although my life tends to revolve around housework, sewing, business, and caring for the family, their lives revolve around things like…marble mazes.  And marble mazes ARE part of caring for my family. So when I don’t enter into those moments (or at least invite them into mine), we find ourselves living parallel lives and missing out on what’s important to each other.

My pinched nerve allowed me to be generous to my kids in a way that they need it most right now–through attention.  And as someone who’s main love language is “quality time”, I found myself not just giving what they needed, but unknowingly getting what I needed as well.  Yesterday afternoon started as a real “pain in my neck” but ended as a generous blessing.

Have you experienced something that seemed like a set-back for you but ended up drawing attention to something more important?  Leave a comment below!