Sometimes when I'm sick I remember the helpless, frustrated feeling of the past few years. I've always been pregnant or nursing, these five years. It was hard. I was treading water, feeding my children too much fast food, leaving the laundry piles too high, fighting with my husband too much, drinking soda to sooth my nerves. I clung to God. I wrote. I judged myself harshly. I confessed publicly.
So when I get a head cold and don't feel like fixing dinner, I feel the feelings of new motherhood, the overwhelmed, exhausted feelings. I might panic a little.
I think I have been more depressed than I realized. Now that I'm not depressed and can remember what it's like to get a full night's sleep, I am extremely wary of going back to the dark days of helpless hopelessness. So tonight I made dinosaur nuggets for the kids and asked my husband to pick up dinner for our fancy adult palates.
And...I didn't feel guilty about it, even though I wanted to.
There's a load of laundry in the dryer, and it's calling to me but I'm busy blowing my nose. Do you know what? I can fluff and fold it tomorrow.
I'm tired. I'm snotty. My floor needs sweeping and my children have watched a lot of television. But this is just a season, and when you are sick or tired or just worn down by life, you need to be gracious to yourself. I might feel better tomorrow. Things will get done...someday.
Maybe the hardest part is the "No" part. The part where you have to confess, "I can't do it. I am a child of weakness, I am small." We don't want to hear the masses telling us we are wrong, that we CAN do it, and by the way, chicken nuggets are going to kill everyone. We just want the masses to help us and understand, because we are all susceptible to head colds, we are all bruised and broken.
When we are small, He is big. When we are weak, He is strong.
Maybe all of our problems are because we are so full of Yes and Goals and Success that we just don't want to ask God for help and wait on Him while we feed our children chicken nuggets.
But God loves to help us, and our children love chicken nuggets. There's no need to freak out.
