Don't speak to me like that!

By Sunday morning I had slept about 45 minutes in a three day span. Please don’t panic. This has been a normal occurrence in my life since high school. My husband was fresh off a 24 hour shift without sleep. I think added together the two of us had the brain power of a three year old. We were saying nonsensical things, laughing at farts, looking through the cabinet for cookies for breakfast, and I had a major meltdown when my favorite shoes went missing. What better place to visit in this mental state then church.

As usual The Siren began to wail as soon as we walked in the building. The nursery workers are very kind and reassure me this is all very normal and some day she will stop crying (perhaps I should tell them her nickname). At any rate, they tell me to keep bringing her back. And I do. The Kraken had to be bribed to enter his class not because he is scared but because he knows that mommy and daddy enjoy this hour of childfree time together and will offer almost anything for a smooth transition in front of the other moms and dads. The bribing probably speaks volumes about my parenting skills or perhaps the power of curly hair and a dimple, but frankly I am doing the best I can.

The sermon, which, I’m not going to lie, my mind wandered into and out of, was about identifying and resisting the devil’s attempts to sneak into our lives. As for the resisting part it was suggested we simply tell the devil to SHUTUP! That seems simple enough. When he pops into my head and tells me I am a bad mother or fat or incompetent, I yell SHUTUP! to the liar and move on. I can handle that.

The pastor, who really isn’t as looney as perhaps I am making him sound, made the point that when the devil infiltrates areas of our lives it can be very subtle. For example, worrying about the mundane everyday tasks of what we will eat or what we will wear or where we will go can, for some, take over the whole day, leaving no room to see what Christ is showing us each day. As a mother, I can attest that sometimes I am too overwhelmed by keeping to our schedule and moving from one activity to another, that I forget to look around and enjoy the day He has made for me and my children to explore together.

By this point in the sermon however, I was getting really antsy. Exhaustion had finally taken over and I just couldn’t process anything more. And being told not to worry about what I will eat got me, well, worrying about what I will eat. Every Sunday after church we go out to lunch as a family. It is one of the favorite parts of my week. (I don’t have to come up with it, cook it or clean up after it.) I leaned over to my wonderful husband and asked what he would like for lunch today.

To which he replied, “I think I am supposed to tell you to SHUTUP!”

Someone, somewhere is missing their books.

When it comes to the internet, I am a big fan. I can stalk, I mean, keep in touch with old friends, shop without my two amazing children displaying their lung power in a public arena and perhaps best of all I can unleash the inner-workings of my quirky brain onto my unsuspecting blog reading public. But let’s be honest, the internet isn’t all rainbows and kittens.

My mother loves books. And she loves to share her favorite books with those she loves. It’s pretty handy really as I don’t have much free time to read. She screens them and sends the helpful ones my way. I am currently reading about how to draw boundaries in my life, which has been very eye opening even if I am as of now, still incapable of saying no. When she stumbled upon a great internet deal involving a discount and a credit card, she did some research, signed up and ordered her books. This morning they arrived in two boxes!

The first box contained a few devotionals and various assundry writings about how to save the world by showing Christ’s love to one person at a time (my mother is a saint in the making). The second box, well, it housed something quite different. She picked up the first sealed book and just assumed from the title that it was about cats. The second selection had a picture on the cover with the title, Cats Cats Cats Galore. (Okay so that’s my own edited title because frankly the idea of a purple bra makes me blush. I cannot type that word!) Needless to say, the picture on the cover was not that of a cat.

Tomorrow my mom will be making a whole bunch of calls to her credit card company hoping to get an actual living breathing human being on the line to make sure she wasn’t charged for the pornographic material. Then she will be burning a couple books.