Anger Mis-management

My mind has been very preoccupied lately. So many different parts of my life are flying in as many directions, and I often find it difficult to be "in the moment". This is a dangerous place to be when five small children are constantly running circles around my ankles and asking questions about life and their pursuit of a mid-morning snack.

Needless to say, it hasn't gone very well.

Take today, for instance. All day I was sitting on pins waiting for a call from our loan officer. The appraisal for our hopeful house was supposed to come back today, and it was ALL I COULD THINK ABOUT. The kids would come up, be completely in my face, and I wouldn't even see them there. I would hear my name being called, as if from far far away in a distant Narnia land, only to realize that their nose was touching mine and they were screaming. Bloody, evil screaming.

So I screamed back.

Bloody, evil, Mommy screaming. Ugh.

Case in Point:

While trying to explain a math problem to one of the older boys today, the younger one piped up with the answer. I asked him to wait so that I could finish my sentence. And he kept talking. No pause, nothing...just kept going. As if the words coming out of his mouth had to be expelled before he could breathe. It was infuriating. After shushing him three times to no avail, I lost it. I started to make this terrible noise. Like the one they teach you to do when you're being attacked. Not a high pitch scream, but a guttural, loud, annoying air horn type of sound. One that might just make you pee your pants if you're 6 years old and sitting at the dining room table trying to do your math.

And this was not a singular sensation today. Granted, I didn't pull out my victim scream again...but seriously, every time that I felt crossed or disrespected or ignored or inconvenienced, the volume of my voice would jump. IMMEDIATELY. No questions asked, just yell.

By 4pm I was certain that all was lost. I just knew that the appraisal would come in low and that we would have to walk away from the house we wanted...that my children would grow up knowing only one form of communication defined by its excessive volume, and that they would need therapy in order to survive...I knew that I couldn't do any of this well enough, not school, not child rearing, not wifery, not housekeeping, nothing. And it was only 4pm, so I just couldn't justify that glass of wine.

*sigh*

There are some days that are just like that. ^

Sometimes things are beautiful, and my children listen and I can just feel God working through me to raise my children. Then there are others where it's lost before 8am and the desire to hide in my bathroom behind locked doors is so intense that I can not resist the fleeting respite, and I sit on the pot with my face in my hands and choose to breathe through the din of the banging on the door.

It's on days like today that I am so thankful for tomorrow.

When my 6 year old wakes up tomorrow, he will look at me with fresh eyes. He will see his mama. His strong, beautiful, morning coffee breath mama, and he will curl up in my arms as if there was never an evil bloody screaming match over a math answer. He will reach up and twist my pony tail and tell me he loves me because, like the God that made him, his mercy for me is new every morning.

hallelujah.

All Things New

There comes a point, after you've owned a vehicle for a while, when you start to get a hankering for a new one. When we bought our van 5 years ago, we had three children. Wonderful, adorable little boys. The fourth was on her way, and we knew that our Ford Focus couldn't handle that much child. We had crossed that threshold into the land of low mileage vehicles, and we were kind of excited about the whole thing. There were two whole extra seats in this midnight blue gem. Enough for grandparents to join us on a field trip. Perfect.

5 years ago. With all the growing and birthing that's happened since then, we have approximately 8 more feet of kid in or family, altogether. Just wanted to put that out there for imagery sake. 'Cause I personally think it's nuts, and the idea of 8 feet of anything in a minivan gives you a good idea of how cramped we are in there nowadays. Add five mouths and a few bad attitudes to that, and cramped turns into trapped.

*eye twitch*

Our minivan was gently used when we got it, but has since made itself the dumping ground for our family of seven. Things live in there for months. Lost gloves find nirvana under the back seat, half eaten granola bars slowly grow mold in the cup holders, and french fries petrify in the crevices of booster seats. It is the grave yard of all things discarded in haste. This last car trip, the van was in such disarray that I was afraid to open the door at the rest stop for fear that the trash would file out with the children. To add insult to injury, our little lady decided that her hamburger patty would best serve its purposes masticated and soaked in water...in her cup holder. *boke*

When we arrived home from that trip, the weather was teasing us with sunshine and warmth. That was my cue. I pulled the van out of its dark den and into the spring day, the vacuum out of its dusty hiding place, and a wad of plastic bags to contain the flotsam and jetsam that I planned to extract from their evil dominion. At first, the kids just ran in circles around the empty garage, a re-discovered play area that they had forgotten over the winter. But eventually they got curious and decided to help. One brought the Windex, another the paper towels, and the third a bucket of soapy water and the ice scraper. Bless him, he tries.

After an hour of tugging at belts and bench seats, while vacuuming and wiping and cursing under my breath at the invention of bubble gum and stickers, it was done. We stood back to admire our work, all of us tired, but completely satisfied. My oldest piped up, "Wow mom, we have a really nice van. Let's not get a new one just yet." I smiled and agreed.

And that's when it hit me.

Before this great cleansing triumph, our van was filthy. And every time I got in it, my only thoughts were of a new one- a bigger one, a better one, a cleaner one- just not THIS one. Every time I had to bend myself in half to buckle in their cute little bottoms, the thoughts that filled my mind were all wistful desires and discontentment. Not once in the last 6 months had I looked at that vehicle and thought to myself, "Wow, we have a really nice van. Let's not get a new one just yet."

But now it was clean, and my mind was starting to do a little internal loop on itself.

If I have this feeling about our van, what else in my life am I dissatisfied with for the very same reason? What else have I allowed to become covered in clutter and dirt, buried under misuse or neglect?

So, I started to list it all in my head, and I thought about writing it down for you here so you could see, but the list was long enough to be cumbersome in blog form. Mainly because it was pretty much EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE. Seriously, everything. In some way or another the dissatisfaction that I found myself feeling about anything could be boiled down to the fact that I wasn't being a good steward of all of these extraordinary blessings.

After this little epiphany, I took a walk through the rooms in our house. What about this room is making me crazy? That mirror? Let's clean it. That bookshelf? Go through it, get rid of the old tattered books, and straighten the ones left behind. The scary linen closet? Stack it up nicely. The "loved" dining room table? A little olive oil and lemon juice will make it shine a bit more.

Now here's the thing. All that ^ up there? I can't live like that every single day. I am not Mary Poppins. If you've been keeping up with my ramblings at all, you know that I'm a big proponent of being okay with your messy house. But friend, there is a time for everything. And we all know that after the continual desolation and bleakness that winter brings, there's something about the advent of spring that makes us desire open windows, a clean house, and a catharsis of all the dust bunnies and bad attitudes that have been building up for five months.

So I cleaned for a day. Even with 98% of the mess still there, I feel much better. You have to be realistic when you have five kids that you teach at home. Grace, even in frantic spring cleaning, is an absolute must.

As I was scrubbing walls and cabinets I kept thinking about all of this stuff, and I kept coming back to this question: why didn't I just want a clean van? Why did I want a NEW one? Yes, there's the obvious space issue, but this mindset permeates a lot of my life...not just my vehicle. Is something old and a bit worn out? Yes? Get a new one. Go! Go shopping! Take the keys, go walk the aisles and find a replacement. Bigger and better. Yessiree. And while you're at it, see if there's something else that catches your eye, and get that, too!

Where did this voice in my head come from? How did people get from settling the wilderness and making their own clothing and homes, to throwing away a hairbrush because it has too much hair stuck to it? I personally blame the mail order catalog.

But that's not really the point. It's not how we lost something, it's what was lost.

Not so long ago, things were cherished, taken care of, and repaired again and again. This was mostly out of necessity.  Through the labor of a handmade life, people learned the inherent worth of things, and of the people behind those things...even when they didn't make them themselves. I hat wasn't just a hat. It was hours of work, done by a fellow in town who you knew by name. The few products that were actually bought in stores were saved for over long periods of time, and when finally acquired were treated with great consideration and care. Nothing wasted, nothing thrown away.

But that loop in my mind... it kept circling deeper...

What if...when the things we owned stopped being seen as precious and worth maintaining, and started instead to become disposable...what if we let that seep into other parts of our lives?

Friendships. Marriages. Families.

...Disposable...

Parenting your child is hard, so you check out. Your spouse is needy, so you stay at work. Your parents are getting old and cumbersome, so you stop visiting. Your friend doesn't agree with you, so you don't answer calls. To really address any of those issues is hard work, often full of heartache, and always time consuming. But to let those all go, to leave them where they are...that decision makes a statement: 

You are too broken for me. I'll just throw you away. 

---

Which of you can honestly say that you've never been thrown?

Truth be told, I don't believe that any one of us has been spared. So many homes are torn in two by divorce, lives are drowned by addictions, families are plagued by anger and rage, friends are left in the wake of our idle tongues, children are burdened with our criticism and resentment. But with all that said, and all that pain daily dealt and received, I still believe that not one of us is disposable, no matter how broken.

When I was young, a woman stood up in the front of our church and spoke about her journey away from, and then back to God. She compared her life to a bar of soap. Beginning fresh and whole, beautiful and white. Slowly being whittled down, piece by piece, washing by washing until it was merely a sliver of murky brown waste. No one wants that soap. It doesn't make much lather any more and it slips through your fingers too easily. It's the thing that gets thrown away when you scour the shower, and replaced with another- fresh, whole and white. And that's where she had been. Worn down by her life, her decisions, and the wounds given by those around her, until it seemed there was nothing left worth keeping. Disposable.

And then she talked about coming back -- Wandering into church broken and confused, feeling like the prodigal son who'd been eating alongside the pigs, and wondering if someone so far gone could ever be worth saving. She expected to be cast away; by the church and by God. But instead, she experienced the opposite. Grace and forgiveness. The people surrounded her and helped her move forward. And God...He didn't cast her aside. He didn't leave her where she was.

Instead, He took her sliver of soap 

-what was left after she had been worn down to nothing- 

and He made it new.

In many ways, we are all worn down soap. We each have places in our lives that we aren't proud of -whether the fault is our own or not. Yet even the most broken of spirits is not cast aside by God. It's such an amazing thing, the mercy that is offered. But what I find more amazing is that we are asked to do the same.

Not one person in your life is disposable. Say it. Out loud. Not one. That includes you. It includes your spouse. Your best friend. Your parents. Your opinionated mother-in-law. Your insanely disobedient child. The neighbor that doesn't read social cues and drives you nuts. The slow cashier at the grocery. The dude that pulled in front of you in traffic yesterday. Not one person in your life is disposable.

---

Think back to that dirty van. Very few things in life are that easy. More often than not, mending a broken relationship or showing grace and forgiveness take way more than an hour of hard labor. Sometimes these things take years. But after that hard work is done, and mercy abounds, you will have the joy of stepping back to see the repairs that you have encouraged - knowing that what you have is really very nice, and you don't need a new one just yet. 

Now that is some work worth admiring.

things that hurt

I love going to the doctor with all five kids.

It's a monthly highlight in my life...schlepping an infant carrier into the office, small hands leaving little prints all over the sparkling glass doors. I watch my children do laps back and forth in the waiting room, refusing to sit and read, choosing instead to tap incessantly on the fish tank and ride the small inflatable creatures like pogo sticks. I'd love to know which doctor bought those for the waiting room. They have a sick sense of humor and I will punish them by bringing all five of my snotty kids together to see them EVERY TIME.

Today was a four year check up for our little lady. Where those one thousand four hundred sixty days went, I'm not really sure. But there she is: tall, and sassy, and four. I managed to haul all the kids out of the house in time. Wearing shoes, no less. (Feeling super proud of that one.) Their shenanigans in the waiting room were actually a little milder than usual. But despite these positive advances in my children's sophistication, my stomach was in a small knot.

I've had three fellas go through the four year check up, and there's something very special about that year. I use special in a very loose sense here. Words like grievous and bothersome are more accurate. The majority of her check up was fantastic. Her interactions with non-family are a coin toss most of the time, but today landed heads up. She was a charmer and show-off: giggling and giving me thumbs up every time she answered a developmental question correctly.

that look, right there.

I smiled back and my stomach turned, still keenly aware that she didn't know what was coming. All the smoothness of the morning was dependent on her ignorance, so I had decided to wait to tell her until it was almost time. After the vision and hearing tests, I sat her down on my lap and whispered in her ear,

Honey, you know how we've been reading about viruses and germs in science at home? *nod* Well, do you remember those special medicines that help our bodies fight those germs fast so that we don't get sick? *eyebrow goes up* Today is a day when you get some of those medicines. They're going to give you four pokes. *silence*

She looked down at her toes, and quietly agreed to do her best. I warned her that I would have to help hold her nice and still, but that it would be over super fast.

The nurse came back in a few seconds later, her tray overflowing with hypodermic horrors, little bandaids pre-opened and dangling off the sides, and purple gloves at the ready. She suggested that the best way to make this happen was for me to be in charge of stabilizing the top half of little lady's body while she popped as quickly as possible through the shots on her legs.

I laid my trepidatious, darling girl on the table, crossed her arms over her chest and held her hands in mine. Nose to nose, I looked down into her eyes. They were so calm, but only for a moment. The nurse wasted no time, and with each of the four pokes I watched my baby girl's eyes change from surprise to terror, and her face pinch as she dealt with the pain. I made it as far as the letter G in the abc's and it was over.

There are many opinions on vaccinations. As the wife of a handsome fella who got his PhD in immunology, we choose to vaccinate our kids because my husband has done all the reading. Literally, ALL of it, and we believe that the benefits far outweigh the risks. I totally realize that this can be a very volatile topic, and I bring it up only for the illustration. Just wanted to get that out there, because my non-confrontational self is super worried that you're going to block out all the important stuff because I used the "V" word. Moving forward...

As soon as the nurse gave me the go ahead, I scooped my baby girl up in my arms and squeezed her tightly. The tears streaming down her cheeks made their way onto mine, and we were there, just the two of us, slowly working through the pain. "You were so very brave."  I whispered.

"I know." she whispered back...

Like I said, four and sassy.

---

Parenting is hard. Watching your children go through something difficult is one of those hard things. The temptation to come to their aid, to defend them, to remove the assaulting thing from their path, is so often strong...but not always best. We do not learn to walk by means of our parents legs. We learn to walk on our own two feet, falling over and over, causing many bruises and many moments of angst in the hearts of our folks. 

Watching them go through something physically painful is even further up the list. I am a firm believer in the magic of bandaids, and I will put as many on as possible to stop the tears. Sometimes the gashes and bruises are a result of their own foolishness, but even though my mouth may chastise them initially for their lack of brain cells, my heart aches that this was the consequence for their actions. Plus there's all the blood. Blech.

Holding them down while they go through something painful that you've given a green light has been the hardest thing for me thus far. As parents, we have a perspective far above our children's that allows us to make those hard decisions...to know when certain pain is necessary, or even beneficial. When our oldest was four, we sent him into surgery to remove pre-cancerous cells from his arm. My husband would tell you that watching the nurse put that mask over that little face, letting him fall into the murky world of general anesthesia, and allowing his helpless body to be wheeled away behind closed doors...was one of the hardest things he's had to do. But had we left those cells there to do their worst...I dare not speak it.

Wounds must be cleaned, bones must be set.

These things are for their good, their benefit. We as parents know this, but it does not make it any easier to watch our children suffer. It does not make the pain any less real, or the look in their eyes any less harrowing.

---

To a four year old girl, getting four shots is a huge deal. She's still talking about it (now two days out) and reminding me that she's barely living through it. Many parents have had to make the decision to watch their child go through much worse than pokes. I am in awe of their courage, and thankful that I have not yet had to be in their shoes. 

With Easter coming this weekend, and Good Friday here already, the idea of a parent allowing their child to endure great pain for the sake of the healing it will bring...is very real. Whether you celebrate Easter with bunnies or crosses, or not at all...there is a universal truth in the love of a father for his children. He had one son. One that did all he asked. And he let him die for all his other children...those that had turned from him, and walked away. I can't even fathom the strength of that parent's heart.

You may not know the whole story. Or you might, but see it only as a moral tale. You may hold it central to your life as truth. No matter where your heart lies in the matter, it is hard to deny that the father in that story has a love for his children that no earthly father could muster.

I, for one, am certainly left in awe. 

Talking to Strangers

Grocery shopping with five kids isn't for the faint of heart. I do it as infrequently as possible, and always with a list, a straight face, a clenched jaw, and the intense desire to disappear in the wine aisle while the five children run free among the coolers of ice cream and frozen pizza. You would think that -in comparison- shopping with only one would be a breeze. *chortle*

------

When our youngest was born, it was fairly evident within the first week that we had ourselves a crier. Our first four babies had been pretty easy, as long as they were being held.  But this little guy...he would scream and scream, arching his back and writhing out of our arms, no matter what we did, or how much we jiggled. Sleep eluded us at night, and rest during the daylight hours was a phantom. The other kids worried terribly over this, and did their best to help ease my aching back muscles by taking turns walking the floor with their baby brother.

Around 9pm every evening, he would finally calm down for about an hour, only to awaken again with a vengeance and scream for an hour or so longer.  It was during this sweet spot one evening that I decided to go grocery shopping.  I dared not leave little man at home with his daddy, because -even if nothing helped when he was screaming- having mama around always helped the most.  So, I strapped the still screaming baby in the car seat, grabbed my shopping list, and pulled out of the garage.

He screamed the whole way to the store, slowly loosing vigor and sounding more and more like a strangled duck as the minutes dragged on. The moment I pulled into the Meijers parking lot, he fell asleep. Just in time. I strapped on my Ergo carrier, and gingerly lifted his sob wracked body from beneath the straps of his seat.  I tucked him into the carrier and hugged him against my chest in the hopes that the smell of mommy would keep him content.  I breathed a quick prayer and shut the van door. 

As I was grabbing the diaper bag from the front seat, another van pulled in beside mine, and a young mom hauled a baby seat from the back and plopped her happy baby into a cart. I didn't stick around to chat or even smile.  I was on a mission...but beyond that, I didn't want to talk to anyone, and certainly not to a mother whose small child was easy. Not tonight. 

The first thirty minutes of my quest through Meijers were peaceful. I was stopped more than once by sweet old ladies who wanted to peek into the carrier, or know how old he was, or tell me how cute he was.  I started to relax a bit, and slowed my step...I even looked at things that weren't on the list. Hooray, I thought to myself, I can do this.  

It may have been the cold air that woke him, but the peace abruptly ended by the frozen chicken. There was no slow crescendo. It was a sforzando of mass proportions. I pulled him out of the carrier and jiggled and hushed and rocked. Nothing. Switched to the sling. Not having it. 

My grocery cart, full to the brim with slowly melting food, could not be ignored any more than my siren of a child. All that could be done was to finish the trip in record time and blood-curdling glory. I tucked him in my arm and under my chin so that I could push the cart with one hand and my hips and then proceeded through the last three aisles, grabbing anything that looked like it might alleviate world hunger. 

A moment before, the store had seemed empty. But now, every soul had emerged from the shadows and was staring. I could feel their eyes burning holes. Some eyes spoke pity, others anger, some disdain. But every one of them was on me, the woman with the screaming infant in the grocery at 10:30pm. What a terrible fool.

I made it to the check out, and pried every item one by one out of my cart while he screamed in my arms. Eventually I stopped apologizing to the people around me and just kept my eyes on the floor. The longer I waited, the more he screamed, and the more they stared.  And low and behold, there she was, three rows down: the mama with the silent happy baby, checking out at the same time as me. 

shame. anger. frustration. hopelessness. 

The cashier took pity on me and sent another employee along to help me get to the van. Once the groceries were in the trunk, I slumped into the front seat with the screaming banshee. Diaper change, gripe water and nursing were all futile. Nothing would stop him. Nothing. I sat there, staring into his squinted eyes, wondering what I had done wrong...how was a mother of five fully incapable of calming her baby? Why had I been foolish enough to bring him along, to take this risk?

Then she came out.

Baby still tranquil, grocery shopping done. She was there, in all her maternal glory. As I sat in my car, just trying to breathe, she calmly unloaded her food and set her happy baby in his spot in the van. She climbed into the front seat and started the car. But she didn't leave. She just sat there looking down.

I looked away, and tried not to notice that she was still there...until I saw out of the corner of my eye that she was no longer in her van, but was approaching mine. I glanced up to see her standing outside my window with a napkin in hand. 

I rolled down the glass, she handed me the napkin, and I heard her whisper, "Hang in there."

Choking back sobs, I nodded, and she walked back to her van, and drove away.

I looked down into my clenched fist, and through my fountain of tears, saw this:

There are many different types of crying. Some tears are joyful, others not. Some cries are shallow and short-lived. But some cries, and the ones that do the most good, come from deep down in your toes. I sat in that front seat and sobbed, with each breath reaching back to support yet another wave of release. Minutes crawled on, as little man and I shared our burdens through our tears with only the angels to hear us. I cried out of exhaustion, and sadness, and frustration.

But it was more than that.

I cried because, in a moment where I felt that all was lost, and there was no light to be seen, God made it very clear to me that He had not made any mistakes. Through the words of a perfect stranger, God had spoken to the depths of my mothering soul: words of peace and comfort that pulled back the dark veil of despair and filled me instead with something I had lost. Hope.

Waiting for The Next Best Thing (Part 2)

We arrived home after that glorious week, and were promptly dumped straight back into real life. Instead of a nice s-l-o-w immersion, we were greeted by a messy apartment (which was boxed up for moving the NEXT week), and four kids that weren't into the whole concept of, "Hey, sitting down and being quiet is the most funnest thing to do in the whole wide world!!" ...Yeah, not so much.

That beautiful bottle of wine got packed in with all the kitchen stuff.  I remember wrapping the bright pink, transparent goodness in brown paper before setting it in the laundry basket that would be its carriage to a new and bigger home.  Hoorah!  We were finally moving out of family housing at U of M and into a house, with a yard, and a fence, and a garage, and a neighborhood.  I almost felt like a grown-up.

Once we were settled into the house (which really means the beds were up, and we could find the toothpaste), I thought to myself, "This here is cause for celebration!  How about that bottle of wine?"  But it was too close in time.  We needed to save it for something special...down the road.  So, I unpacked the wine and set it up on top of the microwave so that we would remember we had it. (Like I could really forget we had a bottle of wine we're supposed to drink.  Seriously.)

August arrived and I got a part-time job co-leading the kids program at our church.  I hadn't worked outside of the house since our first child was born.  I remember feeling so excited that adults wanted to be around me...that they recognized an ability set of mine that didn't revolve around poop and laundry. (Shocking, I know.)  Add to that the slight increase in spending money per month, and we had something to celebrate! Yes? ...No.  We were too busy.  Having a job was really hard, especially while still teaching 2 of my 4 kids at home.  No celebration, just survival.

Then came October.  The month of doom.  I had marked the date on the calendar, "Adam hears back about the grant".  We counted down the days, praying that it would fund. That we could stay in Ann Arbor...that we could actually start saving for a home of our own...that we could stop relying on federal and family assistance to make ends meet.  Something to show us that the past seven years of our lives wouldn't be counted as lost.

*sigh*

I think if we had opened that bottle of wine in October, we wouldn't have tasted the summer in it at all. It still would have had its sparkly pink appeal, but it would have been a bitter reminder that the beauty of that week away was just that, a lone week in an ocean of months and months of striving and failing. Our hearts were so heavy with grief.  Even now, looking back from over a year of healing, I write all of this, and that hopelessness is trying to seep back in and steal today's joy.  Yikes. Moving on...

Right after Thanksgiving, we found out I was pregnant with our fifth child.  We had talked about the possibility of having more kids down the road, when things were secure, and we had more space and more income. But this -now- was not our plan. There were tears and worries.  I cried for at least an hour one evening over the absolute impossibility of adding the cost of diapers to our already strapped monthly budget. I was pregnant and hormonal...it was rough.  But eventually we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and carried on into winter. Without wine.

During those cold and gloomy months, we made some tough decisions.  After spending over a decade of his life studying and working in science, Adam decided to leave it behind for the sake of our family. Again, more tears and angst, and again...more bootstraps.  There were a whole lot of mouths to feed, cause I was eating ...a lot (me and the growing boys around our table), and so on we went.

In February, Adam interviewed for a data management position in a health analytics company.  I remember that morning we sent him out the door, dressed in the only jacket and tie he owned...the same one he wore to defend his dissertation.  The sun was so bright and warm, and even though winter was still looming over us -ready to bite with more storm and bitter fury- it was the most hopeful I had felt in months. The interview went well.  The second interview went even better, and ended in an offer.

We had reason to celebrate!
But I was still pregnant. *oh bother*

Slowly but surely, the bottle of wine on the microwave became more and more buried; by bills, jars, cards, legos, and all things that needed a home up off the counter.  After a few months of being hidden, I think that both Adam and I had forgotten there was a celebration to be had.

There was a hot summer and a big belly, then there was August.  And Sam.  He was a week late, but cooked to perfection. Grandparents came quickly north to meet this beautiful new addition.

He was not our plan. 

But we could not have planned so well as this. 

Certainly, this was our best reason to celebrate yet.  A beautiful, healthy boy. An easy birth, and four big sibs who were thrilled beyond reason to have this little guy join our family.  But by now, that bottle of wine was stuffed so far under our tiredness and the noise of a screaming baby, it didn't even cross our minds.  

There have been so many reasons to celebrate since his birth last August: two weddings, major holidays, birthdays, successful work days, great days of parenting and loving and living.  

Finally, on Friday night, we noticed the top of the bottle peeking out from behind the kitchen chaos.  Adam suggested that now was as good a time as any. We had gotten the kids to bed...and any parent would know THAT is worth celebrating.  So I dusted off the bottle, and we opened it up.  And this is what we saw--

The beautiful transparent pink had turned into a murky, ugly, dark brown.  We had waited so long for the next best thing to celebrate, that our wine had lost some of what had made it our favorite in the first place. It still had the taste of country-picked strawberries, but it had acquired a backwards bitterness that was not originally there.  All that waiting...all those excuses...that, and the fact that I had something precious and didn't protect it from the one thing that would destroy it even faster than time: sunlight.

As we sat there drinking it in the darkness of our finally quiet house, we couldn't actually see the wine, so I don't think our celebration was dampened one bit.  In fact, I can say for certain that it was a perfect ending to the day.  But it got me thinking...

How often am I unwilling to celebrate a victory, or a blessing, or a day well lived because I'm waiting for the next best thing?  How often do I allow discontentment to seep into my joy and turn it murky and brown, leaving me with a bitter aftertaste instead of sweet rest?

Today was long, full of sick kids, and generally un-enjoyable.  But I spent that time in my warm home, with my beautiful family that grows more beautiful each moment. I have one glass of wine left in that bottle, and I don't intend to leave it there any longer.  

Here's to celebrating the blessings of today.