Merry Christmas

Last week was filled with vomit. Will's vomit, my vomit, Garrett's vomit, Matthew's vomit, more of Will's vomit. We all just dropped like flies. The older boys and I, however, recovered within a day while Will just went on being sick. He was sick on Monday and on Tuesday and Wednesday. He seemed better on Thursday but started throwing up again on Friday and into Saturday. On Saturday night, I ended up at the children's hospital with a dehydrated Will. While we were able to orally rehydrate him without the need of an IV, it was a little scary for me. I'm just really aware of how fast organs can start shutting down in little people. He ended up being just fine and I'm very grateful that we were home within a few hours. I know that isn't the case for the parents of super sick kiddos.

Still, Christmas kind of sneaked up on us after six days of the swirling puke virus. I stayed home on Sunday morning which was tough for me since it was Christmas Eve. I almost never, ever miss church and being home, instead of with my brothers and sisters always makes me sad. I was so glad to be with Will though, rehydrating him and celebrating every wet diaper.

That night, since he'd been puke free for more than 24 hours, I was able to take him to our candlelight service. This was good because I was singing, the older boys were part of a living nativity and Troy was, of course, busy being the pastor.

I'd post a picture of Garrett as Joseph and Matthew as a wise man but I don't want to put other people's children on my blog. When they weren't busy being dressed as biblical characters, my kids were looking dapper. Will was excited to finally be feeling better.

I'm not a huge fan of the snow. But I am a huge fan of the snow on Christmas. Several years that we've lived here have resulted in brown ground on Christmas day. It almost never snows on the actual holiday which was also true this year but what did happen was magical. The snow began to fall, in giant and beautiful flakes on Christmas Eve. The twinkling lights everywhere were made more beautiful by the white and wintery wonderland as it softly fell. It was so fantastic and, as I watched it drift silently down, I had the thought that I would remember those few moments, with my kids in Christmas jammies and our tree framed in the window, for the rest of my life. Garrett is so close to being a teenager. The age gap between him and his baby brother is big and real. I have only these few seconds where all my boys are children. I want to soak up their relative smallness as much as I possibly can.

Monday was late and lazy like our Christmases always are. We opened our stockings and then had breakfast. The boys played in the snow while I cleaned up and Troy shoveled the driveway. Then we rushed through Will's gifts because he was turning into a nap needing tiny toddler tyrant. After we laid him down, the rest of us quietly and calmly opened our gifts.

Garrett received twenty trillion books this year, much to his delight. He's a history and literature loving bookworm. 

Matthew loves science and math and was truly overjoyed to get a chemistry set from my brother and sister-in-law. He loved all his gifts but I think you can see how happy he was about this one.

And Will loved everything, especially toys that made noise and his Busy Board which Troy made him. It's full of gadgets and gizmos he can flip and twist and zip and turn.

 

Our day was lovely. We're so thankful to our Lord for entering into humanity as a tiny baby in the tiniest of towns, in the lowliest of places. And we're so thankful for our family. Merry Christmas!

Barf Comes to the Toddler

On Monday night, my youngest boy projectile vomited all over me at church. I stood, immobile for far too long, contemplating where to even begin to begin. Stomach contents dripped from my jacket, ran down my legs, and were plastered to my shoes. The kid was worse. Two incredible women cleaned the floor while Troy and I worked on getting the kid into a clean outfit. We left as soon as we could.

He threw up in the car.

And then he threw up every ten minutes for a couple hours. Although, thankfully, those sessions were small amounts. Then he stretched it to every 30-40 minutes before finally calling it a night at 1:30 am. We thought his first round of the stomach flu was behind us. Troy stayed home with him yesterday and he seemed fine in the morning. Then he threw up twice and whined and cried and was generally miserable.

This morning, after sleeping for more than 13 hours, he woke up dehydrated and dry diapered. He guzzled Powerade and milk (I know. I know. I shouldn't have given him milk but HE WANTED IT and HE WAS THIRSTY and I felt like ogre telling him he couldn't have it.) and then he chucked it all over me and him making the score Barf: 2, Mom: 0. I spent my day force feeding him small amounts of liquid. He's been the saddest little lamb, alternating between sitting calmly and quietly in my arms and screaming non stop.

This afternoon, he watched ten minutes of a show (maybe a record for him), quietly looked at books, and played with Play-Doh. He was like a regular toddler. Nothing about Will is regular. He's go-go-go 100% of the time. (Also, he's way cuter than regular.) So, while I hope he can finally keep food in his belly soon and while I hope he doesn't become so dehydrated that he needs an IV, it has been nice to see that he can sit still for longer than two seconds. Even if it does take some kind of super flu to make it happen. To clarify, I do not want my child to have the super flu. I want him to be back to his old self as soon as possible. Like, right now.

It's been rough.

And as you all know, I vomit when someone in the the next town over has the barfs. There's little to no chance of me surviving toddler puke all over me, toddler lying on me, toddler stealing my water bottle and drinking from it, toddler trying to shove his cup into my mouth. It's almost inevitable that a few (or thirty) visits to the porcelain puke collector is bound to be a part of my future. True to this prediction, and despite the fact that I've washed my hands 12,000 times since Monday, my stomach started feeling pretty unhappy a couple of hours ago. I'm holding on to a small thread of hope that it's psychological and I can will myself not to get sick.

I'm also wondering if it can possibly make its way through my family before Monday. I'm guessing that's a mathematical impossibility. But we'll see. I really just don't want Santa bringing vomit to anyone for Christmas.

Hot Pink Puker

My middle child is very introverted. Not once he's very comfortable, mind you, but if you're a stranger or an acquaintance or even a casual friend, you can forget about cracking Matt's shell. He's a tough nut. He hates to have attention on him unless he's specifically gone looking for it. As his former kindergarten teacher recently said to me, Matthew needs to feel safe or he shuts down.

I tell you all of this as a preface--a little background--into why I have leaped so far ahead of all the rest of you in our race for Worst Mother of the Year. I'm so far ahead, in fact, that the committee is just going to give me my award now. In April. I don't have to wait until the end of the year.

Last Thursday, Matthew woke up and told me he had a stomach ache. He has also been loudly and frequently telling me how much he hates school. (This baffles me because he's brilliant, he likes his teacher, and he promises me that he's not having trouble with any kids.) So...I assumed his stomach ailment had a direct correlation to his detestation of education. I told him to get ready for school.

He didn't want to eat.

In addition to being a brilliant introvert, Matthew's eating skills are legit. No joke, the kid eats like he's the next champion of that Coney Island hot dog challenge. So the life choice to not eat breakfast on Thursday morning gave me pause.

I offered him Pepto Bismal the way you offer a toddler a band-aid. "This will help!"

And off he went to school because if there isn't a fever and/or some kind of bodily fluid coming out of my kid (i.e. vomit, explosive poo, eye goop) they're going.

Twenty minutes later, unbeknownst to me, my poor kid (read: my poor Do-Not-Look-At-Me-Unless-I-Invite-You-To-Do-So-Because-I-Am-Shy-And-Embarrass-Easily kid) threw up a hot pink mess all over his desk, all over his clothes, and all over a packet he'd been working on all year. My cell phone rang, "Hi, Lori. It's Jennifer." It doesn't bode well when the office is calling you twenty minutes after school starts. It either means there's an unfilled sub job in a class with a bunch of trouble makers or a sick kid. "I have Matthew. He threw up ALL OVER THE PLACE."

Oh goody.

Matthew is super smart. He is super funny. He is super athletic. You know what he isn't? A super barfer. He just, rarely throws up. On the other hand, I am a champion vomiter. A class act puker, if you will. Garrett is proudly being raised up in his mother's tradition. When we throw up, it is every 15-30 minutes for no less than 4 hours. We throw up what we've eaten and then, hours later, we receive visual confirmation that there are greens, yellows, and phelgmy reds existing in the deep pits of our stomach. Acid. Bile. Lining, perhaps? We barf big, y'all. Garrett, by age three, was throwing up without assistance. Now, to be fair, his first chuck would usually begin while he slept and, thus, cover himself and all of his bedding. However, all subsequent trips would involve him trekking to the toilet himself, throwing up, and then crawling back into his sleeping bag on my floor. AT THREE.

And lest you think that I should have won Worst Mother of the Year for THAT, I was always awake, always asked him if he needed me, and always received the answer that, no, in fact, he did not.

Matthew, at 8 years old, repeatedly hurled onto his desk, never thinking that getting over to a trash can would be ideal. He, apparently, has the barfing aptitude of a three-year-old. Poor kid. So he threw up Pepto Bismal all over his desk and then went to the office where I picked up his sad, vomit covered self. I apologized profusely to the office staff and his teacher. "He told me he didn't feel well," I said. "But, there was no outward evidence of his stomach ache."

Not to worry, they all said. Except that we do. We second guess all of our parenting choices. If only I'd found it even more weird that my champion eater didn't want to have breakfast, he'd have thrown up in the safety of his own home, all over the carpet. I'd have cleaned it up instead of poor Josh, the custodian. When we got home, I sent him upstairs to change his clothes. He stopped on the stairs and, with his eyes welling up with tears, said quietly, "I told you my tummy hurt."

Knife. Heart. Twist.

Yep. He'd told me alright. But he never throws up! I can count on two hands the number of times he's thrown up in his whole entire life. If it was me, I'd need my hands, feet, and a whole bunch of neighbors to lend me their fingers. How was I to know that this particular stomach ache was going to be the one that ended in a fountain of regurgitated Pepto Bismal?

Still, I subjected my shy, introverted 8 year old to public vomiting. I'm terrified that, in high school, he'll be known as the Hot Pink Puker. It is for this reason that the committee has awarded me the Worst Mom Trophy. I've knocked you all out of the running.

You're welcome.

10 hours 35 minutes

The boys are off track and we decided at the last minute to make a quick road trip to San Diego to thaw them out. The boys had a bounce back pass to Universal Studios and they got to go have a blast with their grandparents and cousin, Kaylie. Then we got to hang out with more cousins later in the week. Then I got a stomach bug and threw up in my parents' toilet which I hadn't done for, oh, 14 years at least. So, fun times for everyone.

But then...

I left this morning at 4:30 am because Troy and I are presenting at an adoption conference on Saturday and we need to do some prep work tomorrow.

My parents live 45 minutes up a hill in eastern San Diego county, CA. I live in the Salt Lake area of Utah. I am a road ninja. Also, I have mini ninjas for children. I made it home today (from driveway to driveway) in 10 hours and 35 minutes. This is, seriously, amazing. I mean, I think it's amazing for a full grown man with a bladder the size of a five gallon drum. It's practically a miracle for someone with children.

I've always longed for the perfect trip. I'll be making great time when, POOF! a semi is on fire on the side of the road and traffic is backed up for miles. Or POOF! there's a chemical spill just outside of Vegas and traffic is stopped dead. Or POOF! road construction in the gorge. Or POOF! southern California conspires against me and no one is going anywhere fast.

Not today, friends. Today I left at 4:30 so that I could get through southern California before the infamous traffic. That put me through Vegas just after their morning commute. The mini ninjas and I stopped twice--once in Barstow and once in St. George--for gas and bathroom breaks. (Just because I'm keepin' it real) I drove five miles over the speed limit most of the time. (BUT ONLY FIVE!) Cars were still passing me quite frequently. Traffic slowed around the 91 and the 60 in California but I was still cruising at a pretty good clip. There weren't many trucks on the roads to cut me off while it took them ten minutes to pass the slower truck in front of them. It did happen, but only a handful of times instead of the usual 5,726.

It was great. I was hoping all day that I would somehow manage to come in just under 11 hours and, thus, setting a record. I never dreamed I'd crush my goal.

This blog post is brought to you by Lori Is Insane and Needs Some Kind of Driving Intervention. However, now that I've set such a solid record, perhaps I can retire the dream and operate like those other freaks who take 14 hours to get to Disneyland.

Trifecta Plus One

My kids were off track for a month. A MONTH! Oh my goodness, you guys. do you know what's not a good idea? Having a first grader and a third grader go to school for six weeks just to turn around and take four off. That is NUTS. Anyway. They went back today. I went with them. I'm subbing in Matthew's class for the rest of the week because his teacher is still recovering from surgery.

A room full of first graders who just came back from what was, essentially, summer break in October. A substitute teacher.  So there was that.

We woke up this morning to snow falling from the sky. It kept falling all day long and, although nothing stuck, we had an inside day at school.

This was the trifecta of disaster.

Five minutes in to the day, a precious little girl was suddenly at my side, tears leaking from her eyes. "I threw up!" I glanced down. Her face was covered in barf.

"You sure did!" I exclaimed. "Come on, let's go."

A group of first graders (read: all of them) were congregated around the upchucked splatter. I walked the little girl down to the office. They called the janitor who, minutes later, brought an enormous carpet cleaner in to our room.

You try teaching six-year-olds who are fresh off a month of no school, are staring out the window at the SNOW, and then staring at the gigantic carpet cleaner as it chugs along, sucking up vomit. It's an absolute modern day miracle that we accomplished anything at all today.

I Need You at the Dimming of the Day

There's an old song, originally performed by Richard and Linda Thompson. It was released in 1975 and was written after the couple had adopted the Sufi faith and moved to a commune in London. So, um, that's not my story. In case, you know, any of you aren't following this blog very closely. Several years ago, Allison Krauss covered it and said that it was about a woman losing love and forgetting her pride and just admitting that she's broken. That's also not really my story. But I first heard this song in its original form on the soundtrack for The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. And I loved it in a way that resonated with some deep recess of my soul. As in, my eyes started leaking for no good reason. The lyrics. The melody. The musical genius.

This old house is falling down around my ears
I'm drowning in a river of my tears
When all my will is gone you hold me sway
I need you at the dimming of the day

You pull me like the moon pulls on the tide
You know just where I keep my better side

What days have come to keep us far apart
A broken promise or a broken heart
Now all the bonnie birds have wheeled away
I need you at the dimming of the day

Come the night you're only what I want
Come the night you could be my confidant

I see you on the street in company
Why don't you come and ease your mind with me
I'm living for the night we steal away
I need you at the dimming of the day
I need you at the dimming of the day

This is what love is. Maybe not all the other lyrics. Maybe not the parts about seeing him on the street in company. But the single line, repeated, again and again, I need you at the dimming of the day. This is love. When everything settles down. When the kids are asleep. When the world falls silent. Where do you want to be? There are moments when this old house is falling down around my ears. There are moments when I'm drowning in a river of my tears. And there are certainly moments when all my will is gone and he holds me sway. I need him at the dimming of the day.

This life is not perfect.

It's not how I expected it would be.

It has taken me up a winding path that is far from what I saw at the trail head.

But to share this life with a man who gets me, makes me laugh, cares for me, holds me, humors me, knows me, chooses me, and loves me, well, sometimes it's almost too much. The Lord has been exceedingly good to me. I know I take his presence and his goodness for granted. Too many days go by without me telling him just what he means to me. I forget to tell him how much I need him.

Troy,
You're only what I want. Your arms are where I want to be. It feels like yesterday and it feels like a hundred years have passed since we said our vows. Thank you for honoring them. I cannot tell you what it means to me that you are a man of your word. A man on honesty. A man on integrity. In this journey, there have been moments of purest joy and moments of deepest sadness. Through it all, you are my rock, my adviser, my best friend. Through it all, you hold me sway. I need you at the dimming of the day.

Happy 11th anniversary.

P.S. You know if you ever tried to leave me I'd punch you hard in the face, right? Hard. Just sayin'.

P.P.S. You know that the above post was way too sappy for me not to add something about punching you in the face right?

P.P.P.S. Thank you for not being a drippy romantic. It would make me throw up a little bit in my mouth. (Maybe even a lot bit.)

P.P.P.P.S. Now that I mentioned throwing up, can I use the "vomit" label? I think I will. Label: Troy. Label: vomit. Happy Anniversary!

P.P.P.P.P.S. I forgive you for losing track and telling people that this is our 12th anniversary. It totally feels like that sometimes. Good thing I still need you at the dimming of the day. Even after these long twelve, er, eleven years.

Easter Candy Drama

Well, I've met my drama quota for the day, how about you?

It was just after 1:00 pm and I'd put Matthew down for a nap. Bless his little soul, he still takes naps most of the time. There's a reason he's my favorite. Oh, okay, I don't have a favorite but if I did, and if it was based on napping alone, Matthew would be the hands down winner. Anyway, he was asleep--or at least well on his way--and I was cleaning out a drawer in my kitchen. Garrett was talking to me (if I had a favorite and it was based on communication skills alone, Garrett would take the cake) and simultaneously sucking on a candy he got at preschool today. It was one of those round, pastel, hard candies that resemble a Lifesaver but are quite a bit larger.

All the sudden, mid sentence, The Rock Star started to scream. It wasn't an angry shriek or a scared sob. It was a turn-your-blood-cold-because-something-is-really-wrong-with-your-kid scream. He immediately clutched his throat. "Ahhh. Ahhh. Ahhhh!" He wailed.

"Can you breathe?" I asked. Because, seriously, if that thing was lodged in a place where he couldn't get air, he was rapidly losing whatever oxygen he had left and I was going to be calling 911 in a New York minute. 

"No!" He wailed. Dramatic inhale. "I can't breathe." Dramatic inhale. "It hurts." Dramatic inhale. "Really bad! Ahhhhhh!"

Okay. So we established that he could, in fact, breathe. My heart rate slowed from an adrenaline frenzied rapid pump to a concerned quick beat. I might have been able to think like a rational adult if not for the screaming. I grabbed the phone.

My husband is no doctor but on more than one occasion I've heard the story of the time he swallowed his Sunday school offering. He was a few years older than Garrett and was taught a quick lesson on why we don't put quarters in our mouths. It lodged somewhere near the bottom of his neck. At the time, they happened to have a doctor attending their church. He took one look at Troy, shoved two fingers down my husband's throat and up came the quarter.

Garrett was pointing to the same spot on his neck that Troy has described as momentarily housing a quarter. I tried to dial Troy's cell. Maybe it was the concerned mother. Maybe it was the screaming. Maybe it was the adrenaline still coursing through my veins. I dialed something like 192-7116 which isn't really even close to my husband's number. And there was no area code involved which, if I actually want to reach Troy, I need to dial. I hung up. "Get me water!" My son commanded as if I was the dumbest human being on the planet and he, himself, possessed a medical degree.

I grabbed a cup, filled it with water, and thrust it at him. He swallowed. "Did it go down?"

"No! It hurts. Ahhh! What are we gonna do? It's going to hurt forever!" At this point he starting swallowing dramatically. When that didn't produce desired results, he began spitting a sticky foam all over the floor.

"I need to call daddy. You need to stop screaming. I know it hurts." I rubbed his back. "I know. I know. I'm going to help you."

I called Troy. Correctly. He didn't answer. I called the office. The church secretary went and got him for me and I asked him what to do. "Should I shove my fingers down his throat or take him to the doctor?" I asked.

"Well, you can try to make him throw up and if that doesn't work you can take him in." 

"Okay. How do I do it? I don't want to hurt him."

"Just shove them down there until he throws up," he replied.

"Okay."

"Keep me posted."

I hung up. Then I took The Rock Star outside. I know. It might not have been my finest parenting moment but, well, I didn't want to have him throw up in the toilet because I didn't want to fish around for the object to make sure it had come up. And, since he wasn't having trouble breathing and, therefore, his death wasn't imminent, I also preferred not to have to clean his vomit up off the floor. Call me a horrible mother but it took an extra seven seconds to get outside and he was irrationally yelling at me the whole time. "No! You are not going to make me throw up! I don't like to throw up. Barfing hurts my throat."

That last one really got me. If I wasn't worried about his pain level at that point I would have asked whether barfing or having something stuck hurt worse. Because if he wanted to live his life with a hard candy stuck in his throat who I am to judge? To each his own.

I told him to open his mouth. He batted at my hand, turned, and ran up the slide into his play yard. I turned around. "Okay, fine, I guess it'll just hurt then." I started to open the door. I do this reverse psychology thing on my kids a lot. Sometimes it dawns on me that I'm up a creek if they don't bite. "Hi, just ignore him. He never stops screaming because he's had a candy stuck in his throat for a month and a half." Thankfully he turned and came to me. I shoved my fingers deep down his throat. He gagged. Nothing happened.

"It still hurts! It's still there! Ahhhh!" He wailed. I reached for his mouth again. "No! I don't want you to do it again! I said I don't want to barf!"

As soon as he said that he keeled over at the waist and violently began to heave. I'm still not sure whether he took matters into his own hands or whether his body just took over on auto pilot. He heaved. Foam and sticky saliva came out. He heaved again. More foam. More sticky saliva. He heaved and retched. Up came a chewed tomato. Up came phlegm and gunk. Up came the hard Easter candy.

"Are you okay now?" I asked.

He smiled. "Yes."

I picked the candy up from the grass.

At that point I realized that my right hand was coated with a very sticky, very slimy, saliva. I'm still not entirely sure how it got there. We walked in the house. He saw another hard Easter candy, still in the wrapper. Looking at it with disgust he muttered, "I am not going to eat that."

I washed my hand. It took great quantities of soap and quite a lot of scrubbing to get the saliva off. Apparently his throat started mass producing some kind of coating.

Then I did what any good mom would do. You know, to make up for the fact that I made my anguished child walk outside to throw up. I took pictures.

The set up of this photo is two fold. On the one hand, I thought that by having the candy next to a quarter, people would get an idea for the size of the candy.

On the other hand, well, like father like son, I guess. Maybe 25 years from now Garrett's own child can add a trinket to the "Things Our Family Has Attempted to Swallow" collection. Although, this is not the quarter Troy swallowed. No. Because he actually washed that one off and put it in the offering.

He didn't beat his daddy on size but he's younger so it stands to reason that his esophagus is smaller.

All in all, it was about a five minute ordeal (much shorter than the 15 minute ordeal Troy went through). I have every reason to believe that his body would have broken it down relatively quickly--although I never would have just let it go what with the way he was shouting and sobbing. Thankfully it was just a candy. As Troy pointed out, if he'd had to wait for his body to break down the quarter, it would probably still be there.

Toilet Bowl

This blog should be titled Livin' in a Toilet Bowl. Because, folks, I've got my head in one often enough. Seriously. Vomit is a post label and I use it way too much. I threw up. Again. But the really weird thing was that I only threw up one time. I cannot even remember the last time I only threw up once. I don't even know for sure if such a time exists. Last night I felt just fine until about 9:00. I swallowed some knock off Pepto Bismal with great hopes that it would stave off any vomit. At 10:00 I started to shiver and at 10:10 I yakked. Let me just say that Pioneer Woman's Enchiladas do not taste nearly as good coming up as they do going down. Oh how my throat burned. I wanted to reach my hand down my esophagus and tear it out. Anyway, right there, in the middle of my enchilada sauce barf was a perfect pink circle of Regular Strength Stomach Relief. (I am aware of the fact that that is just way too much information.) But maybe--just maybe--enough of it got in there to do the trick. Or maybe I just got lucky last night.

Vomit, Vomit Everywhere

Last night there was a lot of vomit. It was not mine. This morning it took two loads of laundry to get all the sheets, blankets, and clothing cleaned of barf. Garrett threw up in his bed and in my bed. He was awake for most of the night acting completely hyper in between spew sessions. I tried to sleep with him on his floor (on top of a sheet with a trash can nearby) but that didn't work because he kept sitting up and saying, "Dada! Ball! Honk Honk! Biss!" I put him back in his bed and he slept for three hours before his sobbing woke me up. I put him in my bed. Forty minutes, a couple of rounds of throwing himself under the covers and then playing peekaboo, and a whole lot of, "Dada! Teeee (TV)!" later, he ralphed into my hands and all over my sheets. I decided to try his floor again. I rubbed his back and every time I stopped he either grabbed my hand and put it on his back or sat up and pushed on me until I resumed rubbing or whimpered, "Mo-a." At six this morning he finally drifted off to sleep for a couple of hours. At eight he shot straight up and shrieked, "DADA!" I crept off to my own bedroom and informed Troy that I was going to sleep and he was on duty. I slept until 10:00 bringing my total hour count up to almost six. Garrett hasn't thrown up anymore but when I put him down for his nap, he was running a 101 degree temperature. The poor little guy has been catching everything that germinates within a few hundred miles, I think.

I wouldn't trade being a mom for anything in the world but when you look at that positive pregnancy test you think things like, "Oh, it's going to be so cute and cuddly and it'll smile and laugh and I'll get to give it a bath and take it to Disneyland." Rarely do you think, "Yep. Pretty soon I'm going to be in the trenches of motherhood, catching barf in my hands." But when that soft little head finally fell asleep on the pillow next to me, it didn't matter that it smelled like the inside of a stomach, it was still the sweetest little thing. And in my mind I heard the words of a Caedmon's Call song...

this house is a good mess
it's the proof of life
no way would I trade jobs
but it don't pay overtime

I'll get to the laundry
I don't know when
I'm saying a prayer tonight
cause tomorrow it starts again

could it be that everything is sacred?
and all this time
everything I've dreamed of
has been right before my eyes

the children are sleeping
but they're running through my mind
the sun makes them happy
and the music makes them unwind

my cup runneth over
and I worry about the stain
teach me to run to You
like they run to me for every little thing

when I forget to drink from you
I can feel the banks harden
Lord, make me like a stream
to feed the garden

wake up, little sleeper
the Lord, God Almighty
made your Mama keeper
so rise and shine
rise and shine

cause everything is sacred
and all this time
everything I've dreamed of
has been right before my eyes

Could it be that everything is entitled to reverence and respect because God placed me in the very circumstance? Could every mundane act of feeding that child, cleaning up his puke, vacuuming the house, be worthy of prestige? It's true that my reaction to that one positive pregnancy test among the many negative ones was surprise and elation. In that one instant I suppose I began naming him, holding him, teaching him. I certainly did not instantly think of the sleepless nights and the vomit. But in the bleeding and the bumps and the bruises and the stomach flu, I see glimpses of heaven. God has entrusted me with this little life and every day I learn more about how much the Creator loves me because of how much I love my son. And trust me when I say that God does a whole lot more than hold my vomit in his hands.