Linking up with Five Minute Friday today! The word is:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, here’s another post about the never-ending story of sickies that has descended on our house. It’s a suspenseful tale of all night cough fests and very little sleep and, at one time, a great plot twist involving poop.

I KNOW. Can’t wait to read it, can you?

Wait. WAIT. Before you leave me for something vastly more interesting on the interwebs, let me apologize. I have tried at numerous points all week to write something really fascinating or inspirational or at least solidly funny, but each time I had a thought like this: “Well, look, the boys are doing something rather adorable, it will inspire millions, I should post about this!”

Then THIS would happen: Something involving children’s Mucinex all over the bed, or I would forget the cuteness because I haven’t, you know, SLEPT in about five days, or the cat would catch on fire*, or something.

The doctor had told me that Blonde was no longer contagious, and we simply had to wait it out.

And so. We are waiting. We all still feel a bit under the weather.

I know. This may be a bit dramatic. But it really is kinda how we are feeling around here.

I do love it, that waiting. I’d put it right up there with doing my taxes. Or constipation. Or doing my taxes while constipated.

So, yesterday, I woke up with the blonde firmly shellacked to my side in a sticky pile of six-year-old grumpiness (sticky – because I tried to give the kid some cough medicine at three in the morning. This is never a good idea. Six year olds seem to lose all fine motor skills after midnight. You can look it up in the DSM-V under Annoying Inability to Get Medicine in Mouth Because Tired.)

Ok. I was a bit…off kilter. Off balance.

Ok, I’ll admit, I was GRUMP-Y.

So, I did what I always do when I am grumpy (also, when I am sad, tired, overwhelmed, impatient, freaked out, or basically any other sort of wack emotion) – I prayed. Rather listlessly, and with a heavy side of whining, but I prayed.

And then, I got up and put on skinny jeans. This helped too, somehow. First of all, they sort of lift and tuck all the bits and pieces that need, um, lifting and tucking. This makes me feel like a real person.

And so here’s what happened next:

1. My morning devotional was about being a slump. Yes, the kind where you feel all blah and tuckered and just spent, like the world is a big huge puddle of sadness. I read it over twice and felt heartened.

2. I got a letter from my Mom. It was about step work. No, I’m not talking square dancing (which would be fun, wouldn’t it?) It’s about 12 step recovery; some notes she had written down when I was a kid, and KEPT all these years and then sent to me. I felt encouraged.

3. I was able to lend a hand to a student with something for class. And I felt… helpful.

Life is hard. It involves sickness and tiredness and sometimes the occasional mornings of grumpitude. I guess all I have today to add to that is that we need to hunker down and stay close to God at those times.

Well, don’t we always? In good and in bad? We need to keep close and He will do the rest.
“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee.”

Isaiah 26:3, KJB

Not, “so-so peace,” or “kinda-sorta peace,” or “peace in pieces.”

Nope. “PERFECT PEACE,” people! (Say that fast three times!)

That bible, it seems to have a lot of answers, doesn’t it. Perhaps, all the answers. To all of it. Even for tired babies and tired mommies and tired mornings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Ok, no cats were actually IN FLAMES at all during this post. Or at any other times. Like ever. Back off, PETA.