A Carmelite Nun Day

     I had a day that was like being a Carmelite nun!  Poverty, self-denial, and bliss.  The wreck of a day was drenched in the Spirit of God.
     Annie is a complete catastrophe.  She is teething: drooling like a faucet, fever, runny nose, cranky.  She wants you to put her down.  Then she screams when you put her down and acts like you have abandoned her to the netherworld.  She demands to be picked back up.  She arches her back and screams at the top of her lungs if you sit down next to another child to check their handwriting or their spelling lesson.  She is truly, truly a piece of work--up all night, and then hell all day.  This has been going on for three weeks.  I could not imagine a child being so hard if I just imagined having a child.  It would be like a farce, like an exaggerated comedy that was a spoof on parenthood.  The spoof is on me!
     So this morning I woke up and prayed with all my might that this day was entirely His, and I would just do anything so long as He stayed beside me.  I prayed this out loud, in bed with four girls draped around the bed--I prayed like I was about to be sent to the guillotine.  The girls looked with peaked attention.  
     After a few hours of a torturous morning that was strangely peaceful given the circumstances, it was time for Annie's nap.
     Instead of one and a half hours, she slept for 35 minutes.  I almost wept.  But I trusted in God.
     I brought her downstairs, and discovered that she was in the best of moods.  She was laughing, giggling, totally adorable.  So I canceled school for a couple of hours, and we just enjoyed her.
     The a pool fence lady came over to give us a bid.  She was shocked and amazed at the shoes lined up, the polite children. . . we were like Martians to her.  She finally left.  I went to put Annie back down for another nap.  Annie woke up less than an hour later.
    Although every moment was my worst case scenario, it was never really bad.  The worse events happened, but God kept all our spirits high.  We  got all the school done, mopped and vacuumed the floors, did laundry, cleaned the splattered mess in the bathroom from Clare's bloody nose last night, made a meal for a family that just had a baby and still had food for ourselves to eat.  By the time the day was done, Annie was playing with everyone like it was Christmas morning.  She was a little disruptive during prayers, but goodness, she IS a little prayer.
     I had no control of the day.  I have no idea what school work was done.  I have not done ten things I was supposed to do.  I yielded to the torture, and grace came back to bless me.  It truly is a mystery how the Spirit of God teaches us trust.
    I pray to God with all my heart that Annie sleeps tonight and that the teething ends soon!