Everything in love

This is day four of caring for sick children.

Friday morning my oldest woke up with a massive headache, feeling lethargic and feverish. She threw up that morning, and afterward she smiled at me from the couch, Mom, I feel happy! 

I think that was her hopeful wish that she was on the mend, but no.

Saturday Ethan filled up our propane tank that had been empty (Translation: now we have hot water!), so I ran a bath for the one that had been sick. A few moments after bathing, I helped to settle her into bed (my own bed, so I could monitor her better) and she immediately threw up- I just couldn't find a container in time.

So off come the blankets, the sheets, the mattress protector, the pillows, all up to the laundry room.

And in the next two days, each of my other four children began to wake with headaches and fevers, spending most of the day coughing, sleeping, whining, and fussing - all while I continue to administer medicine, echinacea tea, breathing treatments and soda crackers.

This is life.

C.S. Lewis once wrote:

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.”

Since this is my 'real' life and not an exception to it, I am leaning in. 

Leaning into the quiet moments of serving these little women of my own, and trusting God delights in this faithfulness as much as any "big" project I've worked on.

The greatest among you must be the servant of all.

So when the laundry piles up, dishes clutter the counter, voices resound
with the sound of yet another request and strength fades before the day ends,
I can take comfort in the fact that I am in good company:

God lives here too.