Today I feel better! Hooray!!! I woke up feeling so much better than I had in days, and so I got dressed and went downstairs to find... chaos. Absolute chaos. It looked like a tornado had gone through the kitchen, and the rest of the house didn't look much better. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. Mom is out of commission for a couple days, so why should anyone clean? I totally see their point of view. But good grief. You people are really ok with living like this?
But actually it was a good thing for me. For the past little while I've been frustrated with my life as a SAHM (Stay At Home Mom), because it seems like I accomplish nothing. I run around in circles all day starting things and sometimes finishing them. I dry tears and kiss owies and stop arguments and run kids all over town. I make meals that no one seems interested in, and I wash dishes that are never done. I do mountains of laundry, but there are always enough dirty socks on the floor to fill another laundry basket. At the end of the day I'm exhausted, and I wonder, "What have I accomplished? What did I really do today? I can't even remember."
You know that story (is it supposed to be a joke?) where the husband asks the wife what i the world she does all day, and then one day he comes home to find the kids in the yard in their pajamas playing in the dirt, the front door wide open, muddy footprints tracked into the kitchen, bowls of cereal spilled on the kitchen floor, and water running in the kitchen sink. There is no sign of his wife, and he panics that something has happened to her. He runs upstairs to find her happily snuggled in bed with a book, and when he demands to know what's going on, she says, "You know how you asked me what in the world I do all day? Well today I didn't do it."
I feel like I lived that story today. Except that the Captain would never ask such a question, and it was two days instead of one. And I was upstairs suffering, instead of enjoying a book. (Oh, how I wish I could have enjoyed my two days off!) But when I came downstairs and saw the chaos that reigned in my absence, my first though was, "My family needs me." Which is a silly thing to think, because of course they do. I mean, I have seven children. How could I doubt that I was needed? But I think I had begun to wonder if my running around in circles all day was really doing anyone any good.
So, no. I wasn't upset that my house was a disaster. I wasn't thrilled about it, either, but I did enjoy a moment of assurance that what I do all day is valuable extremely necessary.
So how did this show that the Lord's hand is at work in our lives? I don't think He made me get sick. I don't even think he let me get sick. And I don't think he set up the chaos, either. But I do believe that he can make every situation into something for our good. Even being sick and miserable for two days.
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