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Monday, November 24, 2008

A mean trick

Truly, I believe this with my whole heart: God should not allow Mothers to get sick!

I have felt truly awful today with the cold, ear infection, sinus infection mutation that all of my kiddos had the last two weeks. BUT, no matter how awesome my husband is (and ohhhhhh he is!) I still had to attend The Feast at the preschool where I teach and my boys attend, I still had to pick Ms. Bellie up from school, I still had to go to the grocery store for the rest of Thanksgiving dinner and medicine, I still had to fix dinner, do dishes and laundry; and most importantly I still had to put a smile on my face to let the kiddos know that no matter how bad I feel, they are still loved and everything is normal.

During all of these errands, I think God was laughing at me!
The Feast was a lesson in frustration until they started singing:
"It's good to give Thanks to the Lord (clap, clap) Repeat
It's good to give Thanks Repeat
It's good to give Thanks to the Lord!"

And then this, sung to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle:
"Thank you for the earth and sky.
Thank you for the birds that fly.
Thank you for the food we grow.
Thank you for the streams that flow.
Thank you, thank you, this we say,
Thanks for all we have today.

Thank you for our friends that play.
Thank you for the beautiful day.
Thank you, Lord, for creating me.
Thank you, Lord, for my family.
Thank you, thank you, this we say,
Thanks for all we have today."

At the end of The Feast, I dried my eyes and knew I could possibly get through this day.

At Ms. Bellies school, we saw the most incredible kids that were SOOO Excited that they beat Webster Groves in their canned food drive! How wonderful the feeling was that all of these kids, dressed in their orange and black for Tacky Day (hence Webster) won a goofy trophy and oh, how proud of themselves they were! Once again, I dried my eyes.

The grocery store was the big adventure! We saw some friends from church, we put everyone in the car cart due to exhaustion on everyone's part, we bought me some NyQuil (which will hopefully knock me out and make me feel better tomorrow) and we found the Lard.

The lard was an interesting find. At Thanksgiving and Christmas there is nothing better than homemade piecrust made with lard, butter and Crisco. We just have to have it!! I looked in the cooking aisle, the seasonal aisle, and the dairy aisle.
Lard was no where to be found. Finally, I asked a nice gentleman who worked there and he pointed me to the MEAT aisle. Upon hearing "meat aisle" my 8 year old says to me: "Lard is animal fat, where else did you think it was?" Dumfounded, the tears started again because at that moment I knew:

No matter how bad I felt, know matter how bad a day can be, no matter how smart my children are, I am their mother. I am
thankful. I am proud. And I am lovingly knowing that they will never hear from my mouth how hard being a Mother can be.
Especially, when we can find the Lard (or Lord, depending on you St. Louis accent!) at the grocery store!

2 comments:

dizzy said...

You took the words out of my mouth. You stole my joke! But maybe you did find them both there in the meat aisle!

Your kids are lucky they have you!

Anonymous said...

you are a wonderful mommy!
hope you feel better soon!