The Perfect Day (and what I learned)

Jeff and I just crawled into bed and both declared that today was the perfect day.  Of course it wasn’t actually perfect, but just about as close as you can get, and perfect for us and where we’re at and what we needed.  And since God’s Word says we are to proclaim His wonderous works, I’ll proclaim about the sweet day He gave us.

I guess it started last night–Jeff had a 9pm softball game, which meant he wouldn’t be home until 10:30 at least, and he’d been gone every night this week, and I feel like it’s important for us to do as much as we can as a family, so I decided to be wild and crazy and take the kids to the game, even though it’s obviously WAY past bedtime. We bathed, jammied, got snacks, diapers, the whole bit, then loaded into the car with daddy.  Now understand, I have a strange breed of children who NEVER sleep in the car. Ever. Ever.  They come by it naturally because I never could either. But anyway, we almost get to the ballpark and I say, “Wow, Dutch you’re getting to stay up WAY past your bedtime tonight, is’nt that fun?!” and I turn around and he is sound asleep–out–in his car seat.  Hilarious.  Now what do I do? So I say to Jeff that maybe we could park near the field and I could try to watch from the car. Less than ideal, but it would do.  We get to the park and it’s packed, and I realized we might not even find A spot, let alone a close one. Plus, there are 5 fields and only one has parking near it.  Then right as we pull around, a car that’s parked RIGHT behind the backstop of the main field (the only one with close parking) pulls out.  Jeff spots it, swings in, looks at the # on the backstop and says, “This is our field…”  I figured as soon as we parked they’d wake up, but to my amazement, they both slept the whole time, and I got to just sit outside, right behind the stands, right by the car, and watch the whole game. They slept the whole way home, we tucked them into bed, and ate ice cream. 🙂  Good start, huh?

So my recent struggle has been getting up early enough to have my quiet time in the Word and prayer before the kids get up.  But, by God’s grace, this morning I woke right up and bounced out of bed while Jeff got to sleep (he’d been running on WAY too little sleep lately). I had an amazing time all alone with God, sipping my tea, savoring the silence of the house.  At 8 I went in and snuggled with Dutch before getting Heidi up and making breakfast.  Then Jeff was wonderful and remained “unplugged” almost the whole morning. He played with Dutch while I did my mountain of ironing (ok maybe the day wasn’t perfect) , and I got the whole thing done.  He then read him Bible stories while I packed our picnic lunch, then we did our new favorite thing: family dance party.  Jeff bought me the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, which has killer dance music without words, so Dutch and I hold hands and jump around the room while he laughs hysterically.  Then I even got to go on a run alone (that’s a big deal to a mom!) and worship God to Tenth Avenue North on my hand-me-down ipod that I love.  Lately running has been an amazing time of refreshing for my soul.  And for me there’s nothing like running alone.  Just me and Jesus!

Then we packed up a big picnic lunch and met my parents out at Promentory Park for a long afternoon of boating, which was amazing. The weather was perfect–I learned some things (more later), and we crawled back into our car with that awesome feeling of exhaustion that’s physical not mental or emotional, the kind of exhaustion that actually feels good.  Then after contemplating having people over for the night, we opted to stick to family night, and got home, had dinner, bathtime, storytime, and both kids in bed by 7pm. It is now 9 and I’m headed to sleep after having a few wonderful hours to sit with my honey uninterrupted.  Oh, and I ate two bowls of ice cream. I know–somebody pinch me.

I share all this just to say thank you to our good and faithful God who knew we needed a day like this.  After a FULL week and some hectic days, we felt like all day God was slowly but surely recharging our batteries, filling up our tanks with His presence and His joy.  And since this is loooong already, I’ll save my little “lesson from today” for … tomorrow. Goodnight.