Saturday's grace - dancing

Momma and Beth, dancing to Jesus music

Miss Beth saw me turn up a Christian song on the radio.  That was her cue! When Momma turns up the radio, it's time to dance!

Sure enough, Beth's face lit up.  She ran over and asked me to dance with her.

As we danced, I knew.  This is God's grace for me, for this hour.  Oh, it was so lovely!

Peter was a nervous, hyper handful all day, following me around talking incessantly about birds, detailing all the things he wants to buy to attract more birds.  He gets a lot of expensive ideas from bird books!  He's taken to praying several times a day, in a pleading voice, that Daddy gets a better job, so we can buy more bird paraphernalia.  Poor Daddy!  Sure, we all want a better job, but this whole bird thing makes husband feel more pressured than ever.

I don't have a good camera for distance shots; sorry about the blurriness.  We've been getting a lot of red-winged blackbirds lately, and lots of different woodpeckers.  We all enjoy the view!

Peter put seed all over the yard, hoping to attract more friends.  It worked!

ADHD children hover around you most of the day.  It's like having a perpetual shadow, except when they get engrossed in something.  I loved it when Peter read for a few hours a day, but since encountering the OCD difficulties with repeating words and phrases, he's never gone back to devouring books.  I remember how he used to say, "Mommy, I just love to read!"

I wonder if I'll ever hear that again?  I thought we had beat this, but it's only when he reads Scripture that the repeating goes away.  I'm still praying and trusting, but this saddens me--not the Scripture part, of course.  That's a wonderful blessing.

I love Peter's enthusiasm for life science, but if he had his way, I'd never spend a moment with my other children.  His lack of impulse control renders him selfish, unfortunately.

God did apply some grace to this problem, earlier this week.  I don't remember why, but Mary followed Peter around for an hour.  Finally, exasperated, he said to me, "Is this how it feels to be followed all day?"

That made me smile.  He's really a sweet boy!  I just hope he finds a long-suffering, sweet wife!  May it be so, Lord!

So far he hasn't found the impulse control to stop following me, but at least he can relate to the fatigue I feel.

What in the world is this?

Well, so many people stare at me funny when I have my kids with me, that I decided to take a picture of myself in different lights, to see how badly I'm ageing.  This is bathroom lighting.  The acne scars make it far worse; they look like wrinkles. Being tired doesn't help either.

Lord, may my own daughters not get acne, please?  It's an emotionally painful condition, as some of you may know.

This is living-room lighting, with light coming from the window.

 Can you imagine this face yelling at you, because after being asked to dress three times, you've still not put on your pajamas?  (That would be Paul, my absent-minded professor.)

Ugh!  I'll never yell again. How scary!

The solution to my homeliness woes is to smile.  I need to smile most of the time.  

What my face can't provide, my spirit can.  

Children love smiley moms--even 45-year-old ones.