Dear Me,
Today is not your day. Today is not the day you get to have your own, be your own, or do your own thing.
Deal with it.
Today is not going to go exactly the way you dreamed it would, when the house was quiet and the sky was dark, when you were full of good intentions and unused energy and you imagined you could teach like Susan Wise Bauer and cook like Martha Stewart and workout like Jillian.
Nope.
Today will not even begin the way you would like. It will just begin and you'll be in the thick of it before the sun is up, all your good intentions squashed by the casualties of motherhood.
All the grace you intended to show will be challenged by ungraceful accidents, in the bed that was just washed and fluffed and refreshed.
All the learning you planned to engage in will be replaced with redundant reiterations of lessons already learned. You will repeat and try from yet another angle and you will think you've gotten through, again.
The laundry you sorted and folded will be dumped in closets and some of it will end up, still folded and clean, back in your dirty laundry.
The meals you were going to lovingly prepare will be derailed by missing ingredients, burned by distracted mothering, or they'll be just plain late. The ones you prepared it for will pick at it and they might pick at you.
You will be sorry to hear that all your list-making and chore-charting will be overlooked and you will have to remind and re-do and there will be complaints. Many complaints.
Some even from your children.
You'll take so many long, deep breaths that your head will feel light, and you'd better use your hubby's deodorant because that all-natural, granola-girl stuff just won't cut it today.
I could go on but I think you get the picture. You will be challenged today, and it will not look like the fuzzy-homeschool-and-homemaking day you idealized. Idolized, maybe.
Just sayin'.
You can't crawl back in bed. The day is waiting and the kids are hungry. You are not up to the task so you'd better pray, even if it is a punctuated, "Jesus. Please. Help." He'll hear it, and it's up to you to see His answers.
It's up to you to see the blessings when they are marred by messes. You have to choose to be thankful that your child is at least truly sorry for his accident. That's a victory. Celebrate it.
You will need to rejoice that you have another opportunity to teach those lessons and make those meals, because it means you have children at home and young-people-becoming-adults at home, who look to you and need you and would be different people if not for your influence. Make it a godly influence.
You can give thanks today because maybe yesterday you forgot to, and maybe that's your real problem. Your thanklessness lead you right to discontentment.
You wrapped up in self-pity and failed to see them taking in the Christmas lights, all glowing and silent. You missed the half hour the two siblings spent together, sprawled out on the floor coloring. You were annoyed, rather than thankful, at how everyone congregated in the kitchen before meal time, all together and hungry and waiting.
You forgot about shocking your kids and you let the cares of this world pile up on you.
So today remember just this: you will long for these days in the future. Just like you get all nostalgic about the baby years that are gone (you forget how hard it was, don't you?) you will one day think back to these days and I hope it's with joy, not regret.
Since His strength is made perfect in your weakness, you are well-prepared for this day.
Go get 'em.
{This week had several of "those days" in it and I wrote this and read it and re-wrote it and talked myself through it several times. I write a lot of things that are never seen, but I decided to share my little tantrum here with you. God is good, but sometimes my attitude really stinks and I just need a good, swift kick. You?}
Linking up with Emily, Emily, and A Broken Hallelujah