When I set out to create a daily journal I thought it would be quite easy. I’d sit down at my computer each morning and dash off a note on what is happening with me, and hope that there is someone out in computer land who finds it and finds it useful or interesting.

As with many things, the doing has been more challenging than I expected. I imagine that this is a metaphor for most of our lives. I want to spend quiet time each day, stopping the busyness, and hushing the whirr of demands, but day after day goes by and that time doesn’t happen. The mornings begin with the telephone ringing or a deadline looming. The others in the house demand attention or there is a plan to go somewhere, and that sweet silent morning break gets pushed aside for the noisier demands of the day.

So how do we manage to take the time we need to be quiet, to really relax, to pray or meditate, or to just read or write for a few minutes? Obviously, I’m no authority on this or I would be doing it everyday. I have no children at home, no dog, no job to rush off to by a certain time, (for which I thank God). But I do run a business, and sometimes that can be more demanding than all the others put together.

So here is what I do when my brain is so full and so busy that I am beginning to feel fractured and scattered in a hundred places. Around four o’clock in the afternoon, just when I start to feel draggy and a bit hungry, I stop what I’m doing and make myself a cup of tea. Then take it to the wicker settee in the corner of my living room, under the palm tree. Sometimes I read a book for a while, and sometimes I just look out the window and think. Sometimes I write in my journal or pray, talking to God about my day, my plans, or my frustrations, or about my friends and family who need help just now.

This bit of time, perhaps twenty minutes or a half hour, calms my soul again. For a little while I can put aside the demands of business and maintaining daily life and rise above the din of it all. Those minutes help me be clear about what I am doing and why I am doing it.

So now, I am trying to take a few minutes in the morning before I launch into my busy day, to write something down. My hope is that what I write will touch someone who needs to read it, at the moment she needs to read it; that my experiences and how I deal with issues in my life will resonate with someone who needs to know that she is not the only one struggling.

I know I’m not the only one who has trouble finding a quiet space in my days to just be still for a few minutes, to collect my scattered thoughts and to sit in silence even listening to my own heartbeat. But I encourage you, like me, to keep trying to find those minutes. Those times of peace hold our lives together.