God of Wonders

The day started at 5:50 am. I was awakened from my blissfully sound sleep with "Mommy! Milk! Milk! Elmo! Meshi Steet (Sesame Street)! MILK! MOMMY! MOMMY! ELMO ELMO ELMO ELMO!"

We may be staging a Sesame Street intervention for our youngest before long.

As the morning progressed, so did the chaos.

Libby spent the morning wearing nothing more than a smile and Andrew's soccer medal. Adam was running around in swim trunks and navy blue dress socks. (With all the clothes shopping I do...)

There were fights over Legos, arguments about breakfast, and doll stroller derbies on the new(ish) hardwood floors.

A cherished water shooter got broken at the pool, causing sadness and tears.

Baby sister -- who had been awake for far too long -- started losing it, fell and scraped a knee, started bleeding, and really lost it before we could leave the pool.

Which caused us to make another March of Shame (our second this week!) out of the waterpark.

And that was all by noon.

But...I have to write down the moments of grace that I experienced in the midst of it all. Because if the past is any indication, we will have more days that look like this one. My ears will be ringing, I will be tired of arguing with these little lawyers-in-training, and the next meal to invent and prepare will be looming again. And I need to remember the diamonds I have stumbled upon in the dust and keep looking for more. And I will not remember them if I don't write them down.

So let us return to the waterpark, where Andrew had just brought me his tears and his broken water shooter. Adam came running up to see and immediately said, "Mom, I'll share my water shooter with Andrew. He can have it today, and I'll have it tomorrow. And then he can have it the next day, and I can have it the next day..." And then Adam promptly handed Andrew his unbroken water shooter.

That does a mama's heart good. Even better on a morning like this one.

Fast forward to the car in the pool's parking lot, where I have just belted in two loudly (incessantly) chattering, wet boys and a screaming, bleeding toddler who obstinately refuses to let me put a bandaid on her scraped knee. Oh, the noise. My throbbing head. I got up too early for this. Make it STOP. So what do I do? Crank up the Kids Worship CD in the car. Adam likes the music two ways: LOUD and FAST. And, magically, everyone stops crying, chattering, arguing and starts...singing! "God of Wonders," their new favorite song. Adam has a big grin on his face and is singing lustily. Andrew is proudly doing the hand motions he learned in Children's Church. Even Libby is trying her best to sing along in her best toddler nonsense words. And as I look at my three little people singing earnestly in the rearview mirror, I have an all-too-rare moment of clarity: this is grace in the real world -- in my real world.

To steal a line from the kids' song: "Hallelujah to the Lord of heaven and earth." We all sang.

I'd like to say that we came home and spent a delightful afternoon together doing family Bible time, counting our blessings aloud with one another, baking cookies for the neighbors, and praying for world peace.

If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you can probably guess that's not how it went.

But I still had a song in my heart.