I am sitting in my kitchen scouring my refrigerator. My daughters are hungry, but I am not even sure I have anything to feed them. We have just returned from almost a full month away. The milk was bad, the cereal was stale, there was no orange juice. What will I feed them?

There were, miraculously, five perfectly good eggs in the back left corner of the refrigerator. We had brought half a loaf of bread home from the lake. “Alright girls, who wants eggs and toast.”

It was agreed that we would have eggs and toast only if the toast was slathered in butter. I popped the bread into the toaster and started cracking the eggs. I stared at the to do list my husband and I had made the previous day. Unpack the bags, fix the crack in the windshield, pick up the mail, go grocery shopping. Then there is everything that needs done before school starts. There is just so much to do.

I needed to get breakfast on the table right this second. Not because the girls were starving, they were already happily munching on their buttered toast, but because there was just so much to do. My house was a mess, I had a meeting to go to, school started for teachers the next day. I needed to shop and clean and organize and launder. I needed to do all of those things yesterday.

As I began hurriedly cracking the eggs into the frying pan, I head a little voice at my elbow. “Can I help?” “Yeah! Me too! We want to do it.” There wasn’t time. Didn’t my girls know I had a chore list to tackle? Didn’t they notice we could not sit on the coach in the living room because of all the stuff?

I sighed and let them each crack an egg. I watched as they clapped and told each other good job. Then I did something radical. Rebellious even. I turned the burner on to low. Eggs taste better when cooked slowly and carefully, but who has the time? I usually cook them on high. Instead I decided that the time I have and the things I get to would have to be enough. Because I am enough. And I cooked my eggs on low, because food is meant to taste good and this life is meant for enjoying.