A New Year with a Fresh Perspective

New Year’s Day I woke up feeling exhausted. After having a long night with the kids and staying up late having a great time of reflection with my husband, I woke up the next morning not feeling so well. In fact, as the day progressed, I learned it was food poisoning. Now, ordinarily food poisoning is just horribly awful all by itself. But when you’re pregnant, it feels twice as draining. I won’t give a clear description of my experience, but I will say that in between “emergencies,” I was just about in bed all day long.

Well, during one of my emergencies, I happened to leave my MacBook wide open. I had one of those moments when I didn’t think about closing it and putting it out of my children’s reach. While I was in bed curled up in terrible stomach pain, I suddenly thought, “Uh oh, where’s Karina?” I asked my husband, hoping he would say she was in her room quietly playing with her sister. Unfortunately, that was not the case. My sweet little 2-year old was sitting at my computer plucking keys from the keyboard, one by one.

My keyboard was nearly bare. Even the space bar was removed.

When my husband sat it on our bed, my mouth hit the floor.

“How in the world did she do this?” I asked Kellus. We both just shook our heads at the things toddlers do when they are unattended.

Now friends, I decided not to get too upset over it. In fact, I couldn’t blame her at all. I should have closed it and put it out of her reach–but I didn’t. I ran off hoping she wouldn’t mess with it. Boy, was I wrong.

The other reason I couldn’t get upset is because God has been showing me just how valuable my children are…how they are priceless and precious little ones who mean so much more to me than my MacBook and every other object in this house. It’s a fresh perspective that God has been stirring up inside of my heart daily. Maybe it’s because of the many pregnancy losses we experienced over the years. Maybe it’s the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary that opened my eyes a bit more. Maybe it’s just a fresh perspective from sincere prayer that God would help me balance the little lives he’s blessed me with. However this new perspective developed, it’s one that didn’t cause me to flip when I saw my laptop messed up. Moms let me tell you something. Some time ago I would have flipped out. I’m thankful to The Lord for showing me what’s more important.

This year, one of my many prayers is that God would continue to show me how to be the best mom I can be for my four kiddos … how to love them when life is great and on the days when it gets messy. They matter so much more than replaceable things!