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15 December 2012

Another Day


I let Nathan put Caleb and Adara to bed.  

I am frustrated for ending another day as the “maintenance man.”  It feels as if I maintain all day long.  

Character.  Toys.  Behavior.  Chores.   

But not really making progress in any of those areas.  

I let Sadie cry for a minute, wanting that one minute to myself as work on the puzzle occupying a portion of my bedroom floor.  I glance over its skeleton edge, the interruption of links in the right hand corner.  I think we are already missing a piece and wonder if it is a futile effort to continue.  Sadie is unrelenting and I abandon my poorly planned Me Time to feed her.

I spend my night, the time of quiet when the children are asleep and it is just me and my husband, tidying up.  I am almost on the verge of anxiety knowing that there are still little piles needing to be unpacked and sorted behind clean-looking cupboards.   

I pick up a trail of tiny pastel rubber bands that lead to a handful of sequin headbands and three santa hats.  I toss Nerf guns and styrofoam ammo, which litter the pantry entryway, into a toy basket.    I resign myself to leaving the couch disheveled, deciding not to fluff and place the pillows because by the time I make my way downstairs in the morning the two older children will have made a tent, or boat, or war trench out of them and I will find them on the floor anyway.  

I follow a succession of messes around the house.  Why don’t the children EVER clean up after themselves?  Is it too much to expect them to put their toys away?  I am weary from what feels like wasted effort running a home.  I finish up.  Nathan suggests I take a bath.  Read a magazine.  Relax.  

But I don’t want to relax.  Because if I relax I will just continue to dwell on how utterly frustrated I am with my kids, and ultimately with myself, and have the “I’ve-had-several-life-changes-all-at-once” emotional meltdown I have been anticipating for the last few months.  No, I don’t want to relax.  I want to veg.  I just want to shut off my brain and emotions for a little bit and then go to bed.  I sign on to my computer and log on to Facebook.

As I scroll down the newsfeeds I see one post and immediately I know that this is not going to be a veg session.

“I just have such a deep, deep ache for these families right now”

Post after post of prayers, condolences, and comments.  

For Sandy Hook.  

I don’t know what this is.  I don’t read the news, or even headlines, because I don’t want to know things.  Because the consequences of sin are so painful, so heart-wrenchingly unbearable sometimes that I at some point I have to shield my heart or I will be overwhelmed with hopelessness and grief.   But I go in search of this headline tonight.  Something about it is tugging at my soul.  I immediately find it.  I don’t even need to read the article.  I now know what Sandy Hook is.  And it is unbelievably tragic.  

I am ashamed at my own thoughts and behavior of the evening.  I have whined over the petty and been wholly ungrateful.  Halfway around the world there is a mother who will not have the privilege of tucking in her child tonight and have I carelessly forfeited mine.   In an instant headbands and scattered toys and cushions take their appropriate places in the order of things significant.  

Oh God, forgive me.  

Forgive me for being so focused on myself that I was blind to the gift that was today, to moments that could have been treasured instead of tiring.  Help me, Holy Spirit, to remember that the road of Love is always self sacrificing and that the gift of sacrifice is a gift of Love.  Oh how I need your Love to fill me. 

Comfort those parents who are devastated in their grief.  Heavenly Father, who better than You can understand the death of a beloved child to the brutality of sin.  May they find solace in You.
  
I don’t waste another minute.  My frustrations, my selfishness, my sour attitude, I leave them in search of something different.  Something better.

I find some tired bunting and pushpins in one of the cupboard stacks.  Downstairs, I  balance precariously on a chair, pinning the fraying flags onto the wooden beam that joins the open kitchen to the lounge.  It is not beautiful but it is inspired.  I go to the pantry and pull out the ingredients for a breakfast the children can help me make: chocolate pancakes!  Then I borrow the children’s tin of markers and write.  “Mommy loves Caleb.”  “Mommy loves Adara.”  I nearly stop there, but I know that they will ask me about Sadie and Daddy, and they would be ever so right.  So I make a message for each precious member of my family and sticky-tack all of the love notes to the wall nearest the breakfast table.  I can’t wait for the children to see.  These ridiculously simple efforts will not go unnoticed by them.  They will love them, and I will love the children loving them.  

What a wonderful way to embrace the day.

A new day. 

With so much love.

Each moment sacred.  

When they wake up they will ask why.  They will ask if it’s Christmas.  They will want to know what makes this day so special.  And I will have the honor of telling them:  Because this day is here.  And so are we.  We are awake.  We have breath.  We are a family.  We can celebrate of our family, that God chose each one of us to be in this family, and the fact that this very morning we GET to share today together.   And regardless of how we lived yesterday, regardless of how we treated each other then, we have the gift of another day, this moment right now.  Let us use it well.  Let us choose to use it with Love.

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