Today was a repeat “bad day.” At three, you seem to only have “good days.” You can lie down in your bed at night and be completely satisfied and go to sleep with a smile on your face, no matter what happened that day. Whether we went to the zoo, or stayed home and played with the same old toys and ate cheese sandwiches for the fiftieth time, or you got into trouble for not listening and had to suffer some disappointment or embarrassment...you happily lie down and think, "What fun we had today!" with your Mommy as we say our prayers and sing songs together. We can't do that! We adults get tied up during the day with this or that, and we want to escape it all somehow, but we can’t. Today wasn’t exactly THAT bad of a day. It was just annoying and frustrating.
Titus has a bad habit of grabbing cups full of liquid. In fact, he’s kind of like a vulture who can eye its prey from a far distance, and bee lines to the target in a matter of seconds. It’s really tested my reflex and response time. Well, Jason isn’t as skilled at this. He doesn’t have that little voice in his head yet that says, “Titus is going to be able to reach this coffee cup if I set it here. I better not chance it and leave it here. I’ll put it here instead, where he can’t reach it.” Plus, i've had lots of practice of saving cups in the nick of time! Well, it happened. And not just a little bit, it was a full cup of cold coffee sitting by his bed on the night stand. And of course it couldn’t just land on the carpet—as if that weren’t bad enough. It drenched daddy’s laptop and blackberry all in a sudden gush. “Seattle’s best” suddenly, momentarily became not so great. Ouch! As soon as we heard the splashing, we ran over and immediately started the cleaning process, trying not to utter any profanities around you kids. Checking the valuables to see if they were still operating correctly, we were relieved to find that everything worked great. Wait. Not so fast. Just 5, then 10, then 15 minutes later, the blackberry showed more and more signs of shutting down on us. Great! Not a repeat of the ipod episode! We can’t afford another phone! Grateful that the computer still indeed works, daddy takes apart the phone as best he cans, and tries to figure out what to do next. At that point, it’s not working at all! Here we are at the end of the day, and after going here and there and everywhere, daddy finally got the phone working almost back to normal, with just a few little glitches. That’s good! But it sure puts a damper on the day when you have to deal with something that COULD have been avoided.
My fault in all of this? I wanted to blame your daddy for being so irresponsible and careless. Doesn’t he know by now not to leave his drink there? Wait, isn’t this exactly what he could have done to me just a few weeks ago when I put my ipod in the laundry basket, which ended up in the washing machine? And did he scold me? No! Of course not! Okay, so I didn’t exactly berate him or give him a lecture. But I sort of did in my mind, and that’s almost as bad. Why? Why do we find the need to blame someone for everything bad that happens to us? Because who am I? I should just be consoling him (I mean, I did a little, but not nearly like I could have. I was too busy going “Aah!”). I had to force myself to remember that It could have happened to anyone. it was an accident, and it happens to all of us. am I perfect? Nooooo! No one is. Not even close! So, I tried my best to be supportive, even if my inner self was going, “Are you crazy?” I refrained! BUT, I still feel bad that I was having these thoughts. I wish my first response would have been to love in the moment. Show grace. Shower mercy. Be his help-mate through the sticky mess. I didn’t do my best today. I hope that when these moments happen to those you love (and they will) you will remember FIRST that you are no better. Second, it could happen to you, and how would you want them to respond? and last, put yourself in their shoes and envision how you’d want to be loved through the circumstances. So I’m going to go to bed now. And I’m going to be thankful for what we have. Grateful for a husband that loves me no matter what. And as always, expect something to go wrong tomorrow when we wake up, remembering that nothing ever is going to separate us from our life source, our loving, gracious god, ever. Not even death. So we won’t sweat the small stuff.
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