Paradise

You know that (country) song about how everything is going wrong but it's "just another day in paradise"?

That's the goal around here. Seeing the paradise.

The house is a disaster, the kids are whining, the parents have frizzy hair and cartoon squiggles above their heads to indicate their stress (over nothing, because our life is easily less stressful than it's been in our entire married lives) and it's just another day in paradise.

Yesterday I burned black beans (in the crock pot. I have a special talent for ruining black beans.) and the boys had eaten only mac 'n cheese and cereal for 36 hours and I had spent the better part of the day in my yoga pants on my front porch with a crow bar and a hammer trying to chip away at the inch and a half ice rink that is my front porch while listening to Sister Pearce talk about how "I am in change of whether or not I am opening my heart to the Lord. It is a decision I can make." She explained the experiment of A Heart Like His.

Chink chink chink I pounded on the crowbar hoping my bare hands wouldn't freeze to the bare metal.

If I open my heart to the people around me.....

chink chink CRACK

.....I am more able to feel the love of the Lord....

chink chink chink

......And I am completely in control of how open my heart is.....

chink chink CRACK scraaaape

.....to the people I associate with.

I pounded that stupid crowbar and ice sheet to death letting loose my frustration.

What I was doing and feeling couldn't be more opposite to what I was hearing.

But when I finished - physically and mentally exhausted - I dragged my frozen-but-potentially-soggy self into the kitchen to start cooking and cleaning for the party we were having that night.

Oddly enough I looked at my family. Ridiculously goofy hair - bed head combined with a sad attempt at home-haircuts - filthy faces, disheveled clothes wandering around the kitchen cluttered with dirty dishes and all the apparently homeless items in our home. And I caught I tiny glimpse of paradise.

I giggled with Tommy when he saw how funny his hair looked "sticking way up like that in the back".

I scooped up John, a bundle of goodness and love covered in mushed up food and spilled milk, and listened to him shriek with delight while we spun around.

And when we 4-way danced - Dad holding John, me holding Tommy, us holding each other - making the boys laugh with our awesome dance moves I saw nothing but paradise. Maybe I got Sister Pearce's point by osmosis....

The truth is that was just a moment. A moment of paradise in the middle of what is typically chaos and uncertainty. But I'll take it. Because in that moment, all was right in the world. And moments like that should not go unnoticed.