Thank You for the Chaos

Thank you, God.

Thank you for my daughter’s thirty minute temper tanrum.

Thank you for the potty training stains I have to clean off of the carpet.

Thank you for the sisterly fights I have to break up.

Thank you for the sticky hands all over my walls and the crackers stuck in the crevices of my couch.

Thank you for the toys I have to clean up night after night after night after night.

And thank you for the nasty half full milk bottles I find under the seats in the back of the van.

Mothering can be hard.  I never really understood that until I had kids.  I never realized that it is occasionally intellectually challenging, it’s occasionally physically challenging, but mainly it’s emotionally challenging.  It requires patience that some of us (ME!) honestly just were not born with.  It requires a calm temper, an ability to handle chaos, an ability to be spontaneous.

But these problems — these dirty floors and cars and emotions — those are problems of the lucky ones.

Parents with babies in hospitals and moms and dads with pint sized angels in Heaven don’t worry about these things.  They come home to clean houses and quiet houses.  They have all the time in the world to watch television and take up hobbies.  They can sleep through the night.

And what separates them from us?  What twist of fate allows us the opportunity to pull all nighters with teething infants as they must sleep silent in houses that are much too quiet?

I can’t think about these things too often.  None of us can.  If we come too close to the realization of our powerlessness, it could consume us.  It would be hard to function.

But some days we do come close to it.  We see it in another’s eyes or hear it in another’s story.

I get that parenthood can’t be complete bliss.  I understand that we cannot go around treasuring every single moment.  But man… if those moments were gone.

So from every single cell of my being, thank you Lord for the stress of today.  The tears and the tantrums and the whines and the messy house.  If even for just one brief moment in all of this chaos, I stand humbled by all that I have.

So perhaps we can all just say a quick prayer for all the mamas and daddies out there with empty arms.  It’s a small gesture, but sometimes it’s the only one we have.  Today was stressful for me.  For some, it was much worse.