When A Mama Needs Rest In The Rubble

The first sound that registers is his feet softly thumping basement stairs and I roll over and peer search for the time. I quiet smile proudly cause he’s headed for the gym and the guy friends who harass loud but love loyal and the bantering is part of that sound. The porch light slices through the bedroom and the baby’s cough slices through my awakeness when it hits me. I’ve, we’ve, slept all night! Too happy to care that it’s not yet 5, I consider this well rested. Perspective is a funny thing.

All week the baby has battled wheezing coughs, low grade temps, and blowing nose bubbles. Which, in a Mama’s world, means piles and piles of laundry, sandy kitchen floors, and a bathroom, I hope, isn’t growing anything yet.

It’s also been the week of a new roof needed badly, but the pounding rattles the milk bottle chandelier for nine straight hours a day. The five month old goat gets flipped and wedged between two trees no bigger round than a broom handle but seriously injures his back and we’re giving anti-inflammatory injections and rubbing his paralyzed body down with warm water daily and how will I help her heart if he doesn’t make it? The nine year old who pulls on barn clothes every morning and happily traipses out in the cold before breakfast to feed and water and love all over her two goats?

It’s the week a lawsuit lands on the business desk, the internet company raises the bill, and 50 people are coming on a, possibly, rainy, Sunday afternoon for a company picnic, and, yeah, they’ll need to use our 1 bathroom. That one not getting cleaned cause the baby’s still got both arms around my neck sneezing snot across my shoulder.

Ah! That kind of week! That one kind of weary week….

Makes me want to write a new kind of definition for the word ‘endurance’. I wonder how many Mama’s push forward, onward, every day, every moment, even when there’s been little rest for her body, let alone her mind. And I hear her question her self-esteem, her confidence, her ability to make any change in the world when she can’t even get sheets changed on the bed.

But…maybe that is the change. The perspective. The job of supporting her husband through healthier choices and business pitfalls and shaking hands and patting backs of employees and feeling the blessing of their hard work and dedication and support for a business they believe in. And maybe it is about holding the kids close when hearts have to walk through sad good-byes and packages get wrapped to be given away and babies just need a soft hip and a handful of hair and a little soft humming.

Scripture says, “Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.” Hebrews 10:35-36 (ESV)

Maybe that should be the perspective. God has promised you, dear Mama, a reward. And though the race seems long, sometimes it’s about the leaning forward into this life, the leaning on a God we can trust to change our perspective. And maybe while your sweeping the porch and wiping off the table and chanting out phonograms with your first grader, you’ll remember it’s the trust. The trust that at the end there’s a reward. And with that reward comes REST! Rest, weary Mama. Sweet rest!