Broken ankle

Ok, so don't panic I haven't broken my ankle, let me explain. This morning was one of those mornings were it was only 8am and the day had been rather down hill from the beginning. Nothing completely out of the ordinary, and maybe it was just my attitude but not great just the same. As Randall was leaving for work I asked him somewhat in jest to pray for me to have patience today. His reply, "No way, because then you'll break your ankle or something terrible today."

It reminded me of about 4 years ago when Anna was a baby. She was a very, very hard baby. Basically she awakened at 5am every morning crying and that was basically the day from then on. Keep in mind there was also a 3 hour stint of crying every single night too. I was completely exhausted emotionally and physically. I was having I guess you could say an adult temper tantrum complaining about how I had just had it with our life and taking care of babies and "really needed a vacation". Rand was in graduate school at the time and money, leisure, dates or anything of that nature were fairly non existent. Well not more than an hour later my "vacation" came. I was holding Anna trying to quiet her crying and trying to dose her some medication and gave her the plastic syringe to hold for a minute while I reached for something. She turned and with much force stabbed me in the eye with the syringe. I'm not exaggerating when I say the pain was immediate and intense. Long story short I ended up in the ER and after hours of waiting in horrible pain not being able to see anything The Doc said I had a severely gouged my cornea. Needless to say this gouge in my eye made it necessary to sit on the couch for 3 days doing nothing. With an eye injury the other eye acts sympathetic and I could not open or use either eye for those 3 days. That eye proved to have nerve damage and bother me for years. I quickly learned my lesson. I wasn't going to be asking for a vacation anytime soon.

Rand had a similar experience once. When he was in the missionary training center getting ready to go to Albania he was really struggling. I don't know why exactly but he was praying for patience or to get through the experience there a little easier. I believe it was that day he was playing basketball and severely sprained his ankle and ended up on crutches for a few weeks. He quickly learned that things weren't really as bad as he had originally thought.

So,I guess what I am saying is that on those days in the land of Motherhood where I feel like it's groundhog day over and over loading and unloading dishes, and clothes, cleaning, bathing, I have learned that the best thing I can do at that moment is count my blessings. I consider myself completely blessed to live in a nice home where I stay with my children and don't have to work, 2 reliable cars to drive, a husband with a great job, 3 beautiful children, wonderful family and friends, health and strength and baby #4 on the way. Today I consider myself very blessed indeed.