We Are That Family

We missed church on Easter.

Note that I didn't say we weren't there.

Oh. We were. And that was the hard part.
SoMeBodY in this family thought that church started at the Special Service Start Time.
So that's when we went.

Which means that we got there...way too late for the early service. And way too early for the late service.
(and it didn't work so well with our plans for the day to stay for that one.)

So. On a really lovely Easter Sunday, we missed out on all of the beautiful music that I would have just loved and arrived in time to hear the tail end of a sermon that I felt too grumpy to listen to from the vestibule.

Sarah wore a beautiful, white hand-me-down dress that I really liked better the first spring that she wore it.
Oh say, about two or so years ago.
Jacob wore his shirt tail out, because I didn't have a belt for him. 
(not that anything tucked in this family stays that way.)
(and we found out, right before hurrying out the door, that his church shoes were suddenly too small.)
(how do these kids do that ???)
The other, older boys wore their requisite uniform of t-shirts and sneakers.
Yes. To church. And on Easter.

I would have loved to have lined up cooperative, color-coordinated children for a snapshot or two.

I know that Easter isn't about the superficial pretty stuff.
I just like to celebrate with the superficial pretty stuff! :)

Funny how the little things on the outside can bump into my junk on the inside...
Expectations that weren't bad,
disappointments that make sense,
holidays, where I can feel like as a mom I just didn't cut it...
and a snowball of "failure and defeat" starts to roll and grow,
running into the pain already in my heart, the real h.a.r.d that's on my plate...picking up speed till I have a big old pity party taking over my day.

I get to feeling...and then thinking... like...we are that family.You know. Always unraveled with loose ends flying everywhere.

           

I felt that again today when the police officer who pulled me over said that my inspection sticker had expired.

In February.

oh.

And then he proceeded to ask about my boys.
Because he was the officer on duty when we had that bb gun incident.
blush.

He was so chatty.

I. was. not.

Turns out that he had gone to Sunday School with The Farmer as a kid.
And that small "be-ye-kind-seed" planted all those years ago, burst into bloom on this very day for my benefit. :)
I thought of the song,"Thank you for giving to the Lord...I am a life that was changed..." as he handed me a warning slip instead of a fine because he said he "knows us."  :)

(perhaps Ray Boltz didn't have this kind of thing in mind when he wrote those lyrics. But I thought they fit.)

But there's those feelings...and those thoughts .
Again.

We Are That Family.
We just can't get it all pulled together.

I can't get it right.
How often I allow the moment to determine my worth, success and value as a person...and mother.
Because my life and the people in it, myself included of course,
provide enough of opportunities to support an ever-lengthening buffet spread of defeat...
to add to my plate...
if that's what I continue to choose to snack on.

Those sneaky lies that try to embed in my heart...always start with something that might be a little bit true.

We Are That Family.

We are...actually, alot of things...unraveled...with loose ends...and late for church.





"Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth;
shall ye not know it?
I will make a way in the wilderness,
and rivers in the desert."                                 Isaiah 43:19




We are...also...celebrating Him and the new thing that He is doing!
We Are That Family Too.