how it is

This is how it is. I am very, very tired. The girls have all had colds made worse by asthma, in varying degrees. On Tuesday night Greer was awake coughing for literally two hours. It's a hacking, gasping cough that I hate. Last night I sat praying beside her on the bed as she was going to sleep. What else could I do? I sat there thinking of the verse from Psalm 127 which comes up in the afternoon prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours; to those he loves, the Lord gives sleep. I took it as a promise for her, and I reminded God of it desperately. I sat there until the coughing seemed to slow down, and she went to sleep. She did cough later on in the night, but nothing like the night before, and she managed to sleep through it. I'm so grateful.

I went to the supermarket today and did nearly a whole month's worth of shopping. I ended up with two overloaded trolleys and a fed-up two year old who just couldn't see why she should stay sitting down. I was weary and slightly overwhelmed by the amount of food I was about to purchase. The checkout lady smiled as I shifted Abigail into the trolley our groceries were going into and finally strapped her in successfully. "I think you are very patient" she said out of nowhere. I smiled and chucked inwardly. Too tired to be anything else, I thought. "Do you think so?" I laughed, "that's very nice of you to say." And we had a great conversation about meditation and being kind to your soul, about how stressed people can be when they come to the supermarket, and mothers who have nine children and how sometimes more is actually easier. It was a conversation that made us both happy. And then I went to the chemist, popped into Isobella's class to drop something off for their show next week, and once we got home, finally, I'd been out all day.

It's Friday tomorrow, and there's the week gone. With sick children and broken nights and grocery shopping. One of those weeks where I take the treasures where ever I can find them.

Tonight as I was tucking her in Greer told me she thinks God is going to help her get all the way along the monkey bars at school. I smiled and felt compelled to add a note of caution, even just going one more bar than yesterday Greer, even that is good. Trying not to envision a trip to the emergency clinic. Then her face lit up and she said "imagine if there was a monkey bar that went all the way around the world. Imagine that you could go all the way round the world!" And then I got it. Going all the way to the other end of the monkey bars is like travelling to the other side of the world, it's that far, and that amazing. And what a thought, what a dream, to swing across the bars and land somewhere completely else.

And then suddenly the moment comes where my mind soars, because I can do that. Right here on this page, and in my head, that almost boundless place, I can swing over to anywhere. Sickness, tiredness, supermarket shopping, I swing right on over you.