Just As I Am

One of the favorite parts of my day is going to pick up my kids from school. It is also the part of my day that I feel the most exposed and judged. Let me explain it this way: I go to pick up my kids in the afternoons after having just come from work or just come from my house with my three year old. Either way, I am usually a bit windblown; with my curly hair sneaking out of the rubber band it has been tied up in all day and making me look a bit askew. I am usually a little out of breath after having to hike up to the school from where I parked since I can’t seem to get there early enough to get a good parking spot. And if my three year old is with me, I am usually trying to keep him from running away from me and trying to use my calm patient voice when asking him to please stand still right next to me while we wait for the kids. By this time, my deodorant (when I can remember to put some on in the mornings) needs to be refreshed and there might even be some sweat rings going on.

As I stand and try to look nonchalant, I wish that I could be all “put together” like I think other moms seem to be. I wish I had that ”fresh from the spa where I was sprayed with sweet smelling roses as I walked out” look. Not a hair out of place, not a drop of moisture anywhere. Giggling and smiling and hugging the other moms while we reminisce about our day filled with joy and laughter. Instead, I try not to look anyone in the face or else they might want to talk to me and realize that I didn’t really have a peaceful, fragrant, rosy day. It was kind of harried, and I am still sleepy and I am not looking forward to the myriad of chores I have to do when I get home and my little three year old is hiding somewhere in the trees behind me and I can’t seem to pull off that calm patient voice at the moment.

But then, the bell rings, the doors to the school open and my 5 year old daughter runs out giggling and shrieking, “Mommy!” with the biggest grin as if she had not seen me in a year.  She wraps her little arms around my legs and says, “I love you mommy.” She doesn’t care how my hair looks, or if I am sweating or tired. She only cares that I am there for her. That I love her and that I promised her that morning that I would come to pick her up and sure enough, I was there to pick her up. Her joy is overwhelming at that moment. She then has to give me a very detailed narrative about her whole day complete with the funny parts and the frustrating parts. She then pumps me with questions about what we are going to do and requests for what she wants from me.

It reminds me of our relationship with God. He doesn’t care what we look like or how we are dressed. He just wants us to come and meet with Him. Talk to Him. Spend time with Him. Just as we are. We don’t have to dress up or fix everything that is out of place. We don’t need to get right with God before going right to God. We don’t need to make sure we are perfect in every way before coming to Him because He meets us right where we are at…spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically. He is just bursting at the seams to tell us how much He loves us, how much He has missed us even if it has only been an hour since the last time we prayed to Him. To show us His big grin. To allow us to wrap our arms around His legs and tell Him how much we love Him. These times must be God’s favorite part of the day. When he gets to shower us with love and listen to our hearts. Complete with the funny and frustrating parts, the questions and requests.

What a picture of our Father’s love. God uses our children to show us this love. And I even think he shows me his joy, humor and playful side through my three year old who is now running around his sister and shrieking with joy at the top of his lungs, “Sissy’s back, sissy’s back…Come and chase me…let’s play!”

So while the rest of that day might be a bit stressful, and I will be running out of patience way before it is bedtime and will have prayed some prayers asking for God to help me get the kids to bed in one piece; it is very special when my little girl hugs me as I say good night and tells me that the favorite part of her day is when I come to pick her up after school. Just as I am…crazy hair and all…with a smile and hug just for her.

Patience Is A Virtue

I try not to pray for patience anymore.  Last time I prayed for patience, God gave me three kids.  I have learned that God does not just, “Poof”, give you patience when you ask for it – like some supernatural kind of patience where you can sing your way through life’s hard ships.  Oh no, when I pray for patience with my kids, for example, there is instantly screaming, yelling, crashing, crying, hitting, tantrums, spilled cereal, sneezing in the muffin mix that I am trying to make, toothpaste all over the bathroom floor and Cheeto fingers wiped on the couch cushions. And all of this is within the first five minutes of my patience prayer.

I do pray for humor. I pray for a spirit of fun and playfulness to keep up with my three kids. That way I have a great story to share after one of the sick kids sneezes into the muffin mix and then the rest of the family eats the muffins and get sick as well.

All the food on the floor turns into a fun game with the vacuum where I run around and threaten to suck my children into the vacuum cleaner and get to listen to their lovely giggles and allows me to laugh which gets some of my frustrations out as well.

I pray for a spirit of understanding and imagination as my son explains that he just had to jump from the desk to his bed because the carpet was hot lava. Except that he slipped and hit his head on the wooden bed frame, which gave him a gash in his head that needed four staples. And my three year old has to remind his older brother that he is dead now because he fell in the hot lava…hard to argue with the logic of it all.

Through all of this, I see that the reason I don’t magically become patient when I ask for patience, is that I would never truly understand what it means to be patient unless I first went though a situation where patience is needed.

Like the time my daughter swallowed two coins because she didn’t have any pockets. She needed somewhere to hold them while she played. I started to get angry but realized that it made sense  and that it was something I would have done at her age.  So I prayed that the coins would make their journey through her little body safely. And after a week of poop duty, she understood that little kids don’t make good banks.

(sigh)

God give me patience…oh, wait, aah....one of the kids just puked all over my car. I told him not eat all those butter packets. Still, God allows me to be calm and compassionate as I clean up the mess and give my child a bath and then cuddle him later. That will be a funny story one day. Just not today.

Special Prayers

When I was asked to join a Moms in Prayer group I was a little hesitant. I felt that my prayers would be a lot different from the rest of the moms in the group and they might not understand where I was coming from.  I have a son with special needs. He has ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder and Sensory Processing Disorder. 

To better explain those terms, my prayers sound something like this: “Please God, be with my son at school today. Please help him to feel calm and safe in his classroom so that he does not feel the need to climb out the windows. Please help him to remember to use kind hands and kind words when the other kids tell him to not roll on top them in circle time. Please help him to remember that he is not really invisible and that his teachers need to know where he is at all times. Please let the other kids be kind and patient with my son when he gets too anxious or excited and starts spinning and shrieking at the top of his lungs. And please Lord don’t let him get his hands on scissors and try to cut the teachers computer cords again. Please let this day be one of the good ones.”

My son needs a lot of extra help to get him through his school day. At home, he demands a lot more of my attention than my other two. Sometimes I feel like I am the worst mom when I am too tired and stressed to react in a calm manner to his hyperactive settings. I often feel like I am not paying enough attention to my daughter and younger son and the mom guilt gets pretty heavy. For the most part I have been keeping all of my helpless feelings and guilt inside my heart and thought I would just have to bear them the best I could.

My friend just kept encouraging me to join the prayer group so I thought I would give it a try. It helped that it was at my next-door neighbors house and I could just walk across my yard. While there are times when I feel my prayers might not make sense to the other moms, they do understand the love I have for my son and they can relate to the stress and mom guilt that all moms deal with when raising kids.

As I kept coming to the group each week, I started to realize I wasn’t just there to pray for my kids, I was there to pray for their kids too. This was a support system where perhaps the lessons that I have learned might help someone else. I could be a “stretcher bearer” for another mom that might be going through a rough time.  As the Bible says in Galations 6:2, we are to “Carry each other’s burdens and in this way you fulfill the law of Christ.”

It has been a true blessing in my life to hear my children being lifted up in prayer by other moms as well as to be able to lift other children up in prayer myself. I already see answered prayer and the power of God working in all of our lives through this prayer group.

So while I still might have some awkward prayers: “Please God let the school staff remember to put the bathroom supplies up higher so that my son will not get out the Maxi pads and stick them all over the walls,” God is teaching me more and more about His grace and how it is sufficient for me and for my son, for His power is made perfect in our weaknesses.