Monday Morning

Today has been a humdrum day so far. The boys woke me up at about 7:30. Ian loves to run in and yell "Mama! Mama! Downstairs now!" So down we went for diaper changes and breakfast (cereal and juice) and a cartoon. Then out onto the back porch to play in the kiddy pool before it got so oppressively hot that even water wasn't refreshing anymore. Today doesn't really feel like a Monday, though. My hubby had to work yesterday so it feels more like midweek, which will come back to bite me on Wednesday or Thursday when I feel like the week should be over already.

This coming weekend will offer no respite either, as we will be back in my hometown for my sister's highschool graduation. That will be bittersweet for her, I'm sure. She'll be leaving all of her friends behind and moving three hours away. It's great for me, though, because she'll be here! And convienent for my parents...all three of us will be ECU grads/students, so she only has to worry about buying accessories for one school. Highschool is one of those weird things...as a teenager you think that these people are your BEST friends, those that will be with you for the rest of your life, and then you graduate and fall away and never speak to most of them again. Oh well, I guess that's what Facebook and Myspace are for, right?

I had a ephiphany last night that I would like to share. We just went through a trauma at our house...Ian lost Blue for three days. Blue is his blanket. I crochetted it while I was pregnant with him. He's had it since (literally) the day he was born and it's really a part of him. Trying to get him to sleep without Blue is nigh impossible. Blue goes everywhere with Ian. So when we tried to find it for bed a few nights ago and couldn't, panic insued. We searched the house for Blue, but to no avail. I tried to substitute a yellow crochetted blanket, but my husband said he found Ian sitting in bed a bit later, quietly saying "where Blue go?" over and over. It was pitiful.

So a couple of days ago when I popped my head in the living room to find Ian snuggled up with Blue, watching cartoons, my heart leapt. I asked him where he found it, and he took me to the dining room and pointed to his kitchen set (we had looked in the kitchen set at least three times by three seperate people). But life in our house is markedly calmer now. Ian will take naps and go to bed without fussing, and there have been far fewer tantrums.

What I realized last night is that God is a lot like Blue. He's always with us, He's our comfort and our stability. But we take Him for granted too much. Just like Blue we drag God around through the dirt and leaves too often, and only turn to Him when we need something like comfort or warmth. We leave Him behind when we get busy doing our own thing and sometimes it's easy to forget that we really need Him with us all the time. I think that far too often we only realize how important God is in our lives when we try to do things on our own and fail...just like Ian trying to go to bed without Blue. We whine and complain and everyone around us is made miserable. Only when we seek Him out - in His Word, in church, in our prayer life - do we go running back into His arms and realize how much we missed Him.

Let's all strive to give God the important position He deserves in our life.

Prayers/Praises for today:

Praise God that we had enough money in our account today to pay a bill that we bounced a check on last week, and that the person we owed was graceous enough to be understanding and not to charge us a late fee.

Praise God for our new neighbor, who seems really nice and friendly. I pray that we will get to know him better and that he will see Christ's light shining through our family.

I'm praying that God will lay His hand on our finances, as we have recently had a lot of medical bills come due.

God Bless!

Vallere