Friday, April 12, 2013

Lord, Give Me Joy

This just passed through my mind: "Lord, give me joy in parenting my two year old today."

The joy is there, I just have to look past myself, my tiredness, my desire for an elusive day (even an hour) off, my desire for my house to stay clean.

We spent the last 10 days housesitting, so T has missed his toys. ALL of his toys. So by 9:30 in the morning, he has already played with all of his toys, which equates to dumping them all on the living room and kitchen floor. I can't walk two feet without stepping on a toy, over a dog, or bumping into a little boy who has to show me all of the toys that he's missed, while asking me to sing "Old McDonald." While juggling a cranky, teething babe. It's just so easy to get irritated.

If I let myself go down that path, though, I'll be digging myself deeper into a pit that I'll be stuck in all day. I know this from past experience.

So, just a little verbal processing to bump me into the path of gratitude rather than ingratitude and irritability.

I can try being grateful for a delightful kid, for a healthy (minus the cold) baby, for a nice home that was clean when we got home, despite our only time at home in the last week being a house full of people eating and drinking for our Friday evening Happy Hour (thanks to a husband who cleaned everything while I was getting dressed for a wedding).

I have much for which to be grateful on this horizontal plane, but I think I need to go a little further on this day. I need soul-nourishment that comes from the outside.

When JR left for the week on Sunday afternoon, I determined that I would make life easier by making a pot of soup and eating it for the rest of the week. I threw in every veggie I could find in the house, plus a couple of protein sources, some rice and some spices and figured that it would keep me sane and healthy and satisfied, if a little bored (throw in some cheese and bread from the freezer and voila! boredom cured), for the week.

We also celebrated the Lord's Supper on Sunday morning at church. A little piece of bread and a little sip of wine and this is grace, tangible grace, to tide me over until next week, to proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again. I need to keep tasting these crumbs on my tongue this morning, to make joy start seeping out despite the clothes that my son just decided looked better strewn all over the floor than folded in a basket. (Update: and the 50+ cars that he just dumped out ... maybe this is the time to decide that he has too many cars?)

Lord, give me joy today. A pot of soup and a small piece of bread: my body and soul are well-fed this week.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The Holden Family thanks your husband, too, for cleaning everything so you could come to the wedding!!

love to you,
H