Life Comes One Day At A Time

I am just a little lost and lonely today. After weeks of travel, hotels and restaurants, I am back to my little world. The one that fits into a 1000 sf rectangle, with no travel and mostly a diet of casseroles. The one in which I am hard pressed to find any space that is not occupied by someone, child or animal, where silence is only had by putting on my husband's heavy-duty ear protection, meant to be used in rifle target practice.

The organization that I had hoped to have completed in the brief moments I was home, was not done. So we arrived back here again on Monday after seven days straight of road travel. Children unloaded, husband unpacked and repacked. Within 3 hours he was gone for another week of work and I was left with, well, everything. At least that's what it felt like.

Bins of clothes. Plastic bags filled with miscellaneous items the children had collected in their extended visits with family. Cupboards, while not totally bare, seriously lacked any inspiration. The knowledge that the school year must begin shortly, caused my brain to overload. The only question it saw was, "How on earth do I get from here to there?"

Tuesday the curriculum arrived. Laid out according to child, each stack added to my sense of impending doom. I couldn't do this. In spite of all my brave words and plans, the reality of it all came crashing down. I would fail again.

The children had not changed. And the fear that I would be unable to welled within. While being away from the kids and with my husband had felt long at times, I now felt like I was awaking from a dream and that nothing had changed. Maybe my husband and I had reconnected. Maybe we had laid plans for improving our child-training methods. Maybe I had been excited about starting a new year. But here I was surrounded by stuff....and it felt very much like I was back in the last year....discouraged and needing a break.

Issues with the phone has made communication with my husband difficult, leaving me feeling more alone. I can feel the fingers of discouragement reaching around my spirit. I know their touch. And there was a time that I would have allowed the feelings to take over---depression would be the result. I refuse to give in though. Not today or tomorrow. My children need me....all of me. It would be easier to sink into a world of sleep, but by writing and acknowledging the feelings I am going to keep going.

Little by little the bins will be unloaded, the bags will be opened. The stacks of curriculum will find homes on shelves needing to be rearranged yet again. The piles of "stuff" will make it's way to Goodwill, and I will get up again, fix another pot of coffee, make another day of meals, explain two-digit subtraction, vowel sounds, and gather supplies for another science project. I will load another load of laundry, wash more dishes, fold more towels and pick up more legos. I will cry sometimes, but sometimes I will laugh.

Some days will be successes and some days will feel like failures. That is life. It is a special gift. What would I do if today I found out that I only had a short time left to live it?

Today is the day I am choosing to live. This is my life, my gift, my ministry.

"Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Do all things without murmurings and disputings:

That may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;

Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain." (Phil. 2:12-16)