Dear GBaby,
Thanks for the quality time spent clinging to me and communicating through grunts, cries and pointing. Maybe next time we could start this at, I don't know, 6:00 a.m. instead of 4:00 a.m.? Perhaps I'm being too picky, since you are finally asleep and I did get to play a little Tetris when I'd usually just be wasting time with my eyes shut.
Breakfast in a few hours!
Love,
Mommy (or Am, as you pronounce it)
Shoot.
I think I almost lost the outlook I wanted to keep in this situation.
Oh yes, here it is.
Dear God,
Thank you for inventing coffee and for not making rules about how many cups a day I can consume.
Love,
Me
If I re-examine the recently irritating parts of my life, I'm sure I would find a better way of looking at these situations.
Dear Garden,
Could you just take a break for just a bit on the vegetable production? I'm a little tired of washing, cutting, freezing, canning. I have other things to do.
Love,
The Gardener's Wife
This one is pretty easy.
Dear God,
Thanks for the food. I really like to eat and it is so nice to have nutritious food to give my family. And thanks for the abundance so that we can expect to eat from our garden this winter.
Love,
Me
It's actually embarrassing to admit to irritation over surplus. Pretend with me that I wasn't irritated.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Did you really have to move so far away? We are, you know, part of a family. I love you and miss you and... I mean, I may have to plead a kidney from one of you someday. Except that no one else in the world understands coffee love/addiction like we do, so I guess I'll just hope that all of our kidneys make it. Anyway, I know that our close-knit family of ten has morphed into a squalling mass of people that don't fit into one living room and we're all used to different households and standards of "clean and orderly," but don't we love each other still? Don't we have enough love to overcome the differences and the distances between us?
Love,
Sobbing Sister
This one is a little harder to turn around. I miss my family. A buncha lot.
Dear God,
Thank you for providing for all my brothers and sisters, even if that provision isn't close to me. Thank you that they are healthy and happy. Thank you for letting me love them enough to miss them. And thanks for creating telephones and the internets and Kleenex.
Love,
Me.
Me.
Ok. Now I'm crying a little bit. But it is ok because the makeup that's washing off is from yesterday. Can we count tears as part of a facial cleansing routine?
Dear {Guilty} Housework Conscience,
That dream about mice crawling all over the kitchen and my mother calling to remind me to do a load of laundry once in a while was a little bit over the top, even for you. Could we please just readjust to the season of life we're in now? You know, that season with lots of children too small to be big help around the house and too big to make small messes? Because I've also got that lack of sleep thing going on.
The Homemaker
I find this irritation a little bit humorous, although maybe I should find it a bit disturbing.
Dear God,
Thank you for making cats that live on the back porch and guard my house. And also, thank you that my mother doesn't keep track of when I do laundry. And incidentally, thanks for the modern conveniences (like dishwashers, indoor plumbing and washing machines) that leave me enough time in the day to teach my kids their math facts.
Love,
Me
Me
I have to go attend to those modern conveniences now, but I think I can see a trend in this silly little exercise. The irritations (and even the sibling melancholy) are not going away, and they may be joined by new annoyances. Addressing my thoughts to the unhappy situation will not get me anywhere but in the mulligrubs. However, if I rearrange my thinking toward my Creator, I find reasons to be thankful amidst the exasperating state of affairs. I think God can handle my complaining. He's big enough.
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