Four little words can summon all the guilt in the world when I allow myself to speak them. I'm a work from home mom of a Mary Kay business. This means that I do in fact get breaks when I go to facials, parties, meetings, or training. But lately it doesn't seem to be enough. I get frustrated because I want to eat dinner with two hands.
Mommy needs a break.
Or my heart is racing the whole 35 minute drive home from a girls morning date at Starbucks because my 6 month old is screaming so hard in the back seat that I'm not actually sure her little heart can handle it.
Just breathe, stop crying.
It's 4 am. She napped all evening because RAWR if she didn't. So she was up until midnight. In the back of my mind I really believed going to bed at midnight meant mommy sleeping until 8, because her normal sleep pattern allows me at least a 7 hour "break" at night. But here we are at 2 am, bouncing and swinging. And here we are again at 4, nursing and praying it works, because
Mommy needs to sleep.
But then the outburst is over, and she's sleeping soundly in my arms or playing happily on my lap, and a new thought pops in my head.
Mommy needs to pray.
Because let's face it. For every tear she cries mid tantrum, for every exasperated sigh I release when I hear her cry through the monitor at 2 am, for every tear I shed when we've bounced and swung for 2 hours and all I want to do is go to sleep - there's someone in the world crying too, because they lost their baby. Because they can't get pregnant. Because it just hasn't happened yet and they feel like they're dying a little inside with every Facebook pregnancy announcement.
Without the sleep, the sanity, or the long relaxing showers, there's a trade being made that I am infinitely blessed by. She's not always going to wake up crying for me. One day she's going to sleep until noon and I will be so aggravated that I might even forget I once slept until 3 pm. The day will come when she decides to leave the nest, and on that day I know I'll be wishing back all the moments that I couldn't catch a break.
That's when the guilt hits. All this extra time with my baby that I'm spending aggravated, frustrated, all the other adjectives that mean the same sorts of things.
And so we pray. Me over her, my words straight from the heart, covering her before shooting off to God's ear.
I pray for patience, something I've never had much of.
I pray for understanding, because when she's crying, there is obviously something wrong. And maybe for now that "something" is I want to be held, or I want to stretch my legs; but one day, that "something" is going to be a broken heart, a lost friend, some other problem that in that moment will be as important as the small problems she faces now. I need her to know that Mommy is trying. Mommy wants to understand. Mommy will answer her cries. But to do all that, I need to be aware to look for the problem, and to understand she's not upset for no reason.
I pray in thanks. Before she was born, I prayed for her. While she was in my womb, I prayed for her. God heard my prayers and granted me the desires of my heart, even more abundantly than I could have asked for. When blessings pour down on us, we must send praise back up to Him. Thank you, God, for my home. For my husband. For my cats (even if they do run up and down the hall like a pack of buffalo in the middle of the night). For the heat and lights that make our house warm (even if we cringed while paying the bill). For the food in the pantry (even if it is pretty sparse at the moment!) - the "even if's" are almost as important to keep in mind as the actual blessings, I think.
Guilt isn't necessarily a bad thing. If I didn't feel it, I wouldn't realize there's a silver lining to all of these things. And even though I pray over her nightly as I lay her in her crib the first time, I may not stop to think about how blessed I am to hear that cry through the monitor. Or to be the one who bounces her back to sleep. How could I forget to say Thank You, because my lap is where she wants to be?
What have you felt guilt over? Maybe it's mom related and maybe it's not - it doesn't matter, really! What is it trying to make you aware of? How can you change your way of thought and maybe even how you handle that situation, to make your life a little richer...or to realize how rich it already is?
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