A Little Slice of Heaven

Just like everyone else, I look forward to the weekend. I get to stay up late & sleep in - sort of - schlep myself around in my jammies, read & drink coffee, after taking care of the menagerie, of course. Great, right? Or not. This past weekend is a perfect example of a lazy winter weekend gone awry. Hubby was working, so it was just me and the boys, the animals, and the fireplace. Should have been cozy on a cold winter day. Except that it wasn't just cold, it was COLD! Ass-numbing cold, with frozen mix (rain, sleet, snow) - and the dogs think they have to go out every 15 minutes - urgently! Take them out and they wander around, or they harass each other, or bark at squirrels. The diva girls will pee on the floor out of spite, and nobody wants to take the risk and have to clean it up, so you take them out even if you think there can't possibly be anything left in them. Naturally, Toby thinks he has to go out every time the girls go - so he can pee everywhere they've peed, or pooped, or walked. Then there is feeding the fireplace. You can't enjoy a cozy fire without a bit of work. I tried to make efficient use of dog-time by carrying wood up onto the back deck and bringing some inside and putting it in the fireplace. Kill-two-birds, and all that because otherwise there would be no relaxing by the fire at all. As it was, my lazy-time was severely cut into. 

To top everything off, the boys were fighting. All weekend. Over everything - and nothing. As long as they were apart doing their own thing, it wasn't too bad, but as soon as one got bored and wandered into the other's space, the fight was on. Consequently, I spent an inordinate amount of my time breaking up arguments and herding them back into their own areas. Finally I gave them cleaning jobs to do that kept them apart and busy, for the most part. We tried playing Uno, but tempers were on a hair-trigger, and it wasn't working out. When I finally had had enough and flat couldn't stand to be around them any more, I chose to escape; I grabbed my tablet, put my headphones on and watched a mini-marathon of Psych on Netflix. I even flung caution to the winds and ignored the dogs for a couple of hours. It was like a little slice of Heaven for those few hours. And there wasn't even any potty accidents on the floor, confirming my suspicions that they really don't have overactive bladder disorder. It doesn't happen often, but I was super excited about going to work on Monday.

I could be inspiring and say we achieved peace through remembering how much we loved each other and realizing how important family is and how much we mean to each other. I could gloss over the melodrama and hateful words the boys spewed at each other with a tale of forgiveness and deep brotherly affection...but I just don't have the energy required to put that big of spin on things. And really, the truth is, life is messy. My life is messy. Sometimes we have days when there isn't a lot of love being shown. It happens. We get over it and we still love each other, but it's a messy process sometimes. Just because we love Jesus and try our best to follow Him, doesn't mean we are supposed to be perfectly poised and in control of our emotions all the time. I'm a work in progress and so is my family. Christians are placed on teetering pedestals inside fragile glass houses. We are constantly being evaluated for non-Christian-like behavior by non-Christians. We aren't going to be perfect. We are imperfect humans living in an imperfect world full of sin and all that small 3-letter word entails, and we will fall off of that teetering pedestal on occasion. It isn't a matter of if, but when. The difference between some Christians and a true follower is that a true follower will be heartbroken over his failures, repent, and pray for strength in order to do better because for him, it isn't religion. It is a relationship. So, yeah, even though I am a Christian, a follower of Jesus, I fall tragically short of perfection on a fairly regular basis, and sometimes, in spectacular ways. 

This past weekend was not so great, and anger seemed to be the soup du jour. I can't remember who said it, but when we get angry with someone, and we say that person "made me mad", it is a way of transferring the responsibility for our anger on that other person. They didn't make us do anything - we have a choice. We can choose to be angry or we can choose to not be. The one phrase I heard the most was "he's making me mad!"  Evidently we chose poorly.