Grace for the Day

I don’t have many complete and coherent thoughts these days.  They come in scattered little bursts and are mostly focused on the next thing to get done. 

This has been the hardest parenting month of my life.  And I feel like such a wimp, knowing that there are many moms out there who have special needs children or lots more children than me, and I wonder how exactly they do it, since I feel like at any given moment I just might burst into tears.  I daydream of sending Josiah to pre-school.  Or boarding school. 

I guess I had it easy before, since I had never had three children all crying at the same time.  Or have a child throw a fit in church before.  Or in the Benson Online Internet office.  And when people in said internet office first question whether or not these really are my children, and look at me very skeptically when I assure them that they are, and then I have to carry said children out bodily, kicking and screaming simply because of one yellow crayon, it doesn’t do much for one’s self-confidence as a mother.      

Whenever I think I have learned a lesson in selflessness, my children make sure I have another.  I end the day emotionally and mentally exhausted though I haven’t done any real coherent thinking.  Disciplining all day long makes me want to crawl into a hole. I can’t minister to people the way I want to; I don’t have time to read; nothing ever seems to be done well.   I just realized today that I will have to miss our mission’s conference in Kenya next April (which only happens once every couple of years) because Lily won’t have a passport by then.  I cried. 

Yet I am so thankful.  Thankful for this chance for my own self-will to be ripped out of me.  Thankful that I can learn, one more time, that God doesn’t need me to “get things done” the way that I think He does.  Thankful for the opportunity to be confronted with my own selfishness.  Thankful to learn just a little bit more what it means to lay down my life.  To have my pride cut out from underneath me that somehow I thought I was a “good” mother…whatever that means anyway. 

It’s all grace.  Grace if I am able to get through a day.  Grace if I get a good night’s sleep.  Grace that my daughter is doing so well in school.  Grace that Lily has shown such tremendous progress.  Grace that I have been given good work to do.  Grace if my children turn out “right.”  Grace that I am His.  That I have a purpose, a plan, true love, this great salvation, a future filled with hope.  Not much else matters other than grace. 

Everyone needs a little Grace in their lives.  Or a lot.