Challenges

WARNING: If you are a male reader, you may want to skip this one. Lots of yucky, female information that you probably don't want to know.

Well, it's been an interesting week around here. We've been in revival at church (yes, we have a LOT of revivals), and that always changes our routine up a bit and creates a lot of challenges. Added to nightly church services, my husband had final exams Tuesday and Wednesday night. This meant he was absent for the first three nights of the week. Monday evening he went straight to the library to study before church and Tuesday and Wednesday nights were his actual exams.

Monday morning I woke up feeling like I had bit hit by a freight train. I had the makings of a chest cold, plus just felt really, really out of sorts. Weak, achy, sluggish. Ick. A trip to the bathroom revealed the reason for some of my discomfort: my 18 month hiatus (including 9 months of pregnancy) from the female sufferings has now come to an end. Now I've read that, on average, the longest a woman can forgo this womanly pleasure by exclusively breastfeeding is about 14 months. Which is what I was shooting for. So I find my 9 month sprint a little too short.
My body apparantly felt that it should make up for all that lost time. Thus, I became so weak at times that I got dizzy and felt I was going to pass out.

As you can probably imagine, it is quite a feat to get three kids 4 and under ready to go anywhere, on a normal, non-female sufferings day. Well, Monday, (of course it would be Monday) I started early because we had to go to WM on the way and get some diapers. Everything went pretty smooth on getting the three kids ready. And then I attempted to get myself ready. Just as I started to fix my waist-length hair, Elijah hollers (we say "holler" in the south) "Mama, Snowbell is hungry." So, I say get the food bowl out of the laundry room and take it out on the porch and feed him. "Laundry room?" Apparantly he forgot where the laundry room was after living here for a year. And then, "Food bowl?" Bless him, he's just like his Dad--couldn't find a clothes pin attached to his nose. So I put down all the hair utensils and take him to the laundry room and show him where the food bowl is--right there where it always is. I go back to fixing my hair.

Two minutes later: "Mama! Come look at Emma!" Elijah had decided he'd rather feed the cat inside the house than outside on the porch as instructed. So I find Emma sitting on the floor, the cat food bowl dumped out, and she has both fists, as well as both cheeks FULL of cat food. Yuck!! As I am emptying her mouth, she is constantly reaching for more. So I put her in her bed, screaming, and sweep up the cat food mess. Then I get her out, and bring her into the bathroom with me while I try to fix my hair again. She loves to stand by the edge of the bathtub and knock all the bottles and stuff into the tub. While entertaning herself in this manner, she finds a cup of water and spills it all over her. Now we need to change HER clothes. My hair still isn't fixed. Well, it got fixed eventually.

Finally, we get in the van, only to discover that Elijah's booster seat is still in Dad's car from their last trip to the store together. So off to the library we go to get it. We finally make it to church, after going to Wal-Mart and fighting the just-got-off-of work crowd. I feel my mind is really scattered and I need to try to pray before service. So I put the kids in the fellowship hall with a teenager and kneel down. Two minutes later, someone taps me on the shoulder, "Sis. Amy, Grace wet herself all over her dress." Siiiiiiighhhhh........so here we go, load back up and head to the house to change her clothes and shoes.

And this is ONLY MONDAY!!

In order to shorten the length of this blog post, I will not share what all happened Tuesay night. Wednesday night, I recruited the assistance of my pastor's teenage daughter to watch the kids while I got ready for church.

All in all, it has been a great revival and it has been worth all the work. Usually the devil fights hardest when he knows that a victory is about to be won. I tell myself that if I was not giving the devil a reason to come against me, then he would leave me alone and not give any resistance. I persevered, made it to church, and God has blessed me richly for it. And I'm sure the on-looking angels got a few laughs out of our calamities :).