I’m summoning a LOT of grace tonight. Praying it into my life and head and heart and really, really hoping that when I wake up tomorrow, I’ll sense it good and strong. I went to bed last night feeling achy and cranky and not excited to end the weekend, and I woke up today trying to shake it off. It’s getting close to Tuesday now, but I’m still feeling the same way. Today wasn’t a bad day, just a very, very long one. And it left little room for decompressing and just “being”–something I realize I’ve come to need very much these days.

I had a little conversation with God on the way home from work tonight, at 7pm, before dinner and errands and arriving here at this blog post just before midnight. I think I said something like, “Ok, I don’t know how to do this…to have such full days and to feel like I do and to want to be able to solve everything at the same time…and I just can’t, God. So I’m trusting you to help me; I know you can. And I’m sorry I don’t talk to you enough about all of this. And I’m going to be home in a few minutes, so please just give me energy to figure out dinner and to do the things that need to get done…” I’m sure it went on a bit more from there, but you get the gist. Sometimes your breaking point is a tragic event, and sometimes it’s being 6.5 months pregnant and needing to figure out dinner.

On the way to the grocery store later, I asked Jason not to make me laugh. You’d think after a day like today, laughing would be the very best thing. But the truth is, it physically hurts to laugh these past few days as baby grows up into my ribcage. I feel like I’ve just done 300 crunches after a long hiatus and I’m paying for it. Instead of laughing, I just kind of wanted to cry instead.

I’m sure all of this is hard to be around–when you’re a husband just trying to make sure your wife is decently comfortable and happy as you watch her morph into a signigficantly different version of her former self. It’s totally not Jason’s fault that my stomach hurts, but he’s the one that gets to deal with me when it happens. And he’s the one pushing the cart around the grocery store with me after 10pm and loading things into the car and unloading them when we get home. Grace. Without it we would be hopeless. With it, we get somewhere (like to the end of this day) having overcome the bumps in the road somehow.

Tomorrow is another day. And within it, there will be plenty more room for grace. Until then, I’ve required a lot for one day and am feeling a bit like I’ve met my quota. The best sounding thing in the world right now is our bed, and a little bedtime story for the babe, and a little comfort knowing that we’re all safe and warm in this house at the end of the day, together. Kruger will curl up on his bed, and we’ll curl up in ours. Baby will do his or her dance routine long after we fall asleep, and in the morning, we’ll all wake up with another fresh start and another day at hand. And there’s a LOT of grace in that.

still summoning,

mm