Tired Mommy

As a mom of many, I am tired.

Tired from lack of sleep, yes, but I also am just tired....

......tired of cooking (I would LOVE that Willy Wonka pill that was a meal in a pill!)
.....tired of cleaning (they make self-cleaning ovens, why not self-cleaning houses?)
.....tired of breaking up fights
.....tired of shopping (and the saying that comes after the shopping - "there's NUTTIN' to eat!)
.....tired of cleaning toilets (I'm actually thinking of painting bull eye's inside of them)
.....tired of telling kids to blow their noses, make their beds, pick-up their stuff, do their chores, put away their laundry and be nice to each other.

I've had so many of "THOSE DAYS" this first semester, that I don't remember what the "OTHER DAYS" are like. In fact, I am not sure how to define a normal day anymore. Is the crazy, mixed-up kinda' chaotic day now my "normal" day, and the eerily calm day the "other" day?

A few weeks before Christmas, I was actually wishing I could get sick enough to go to the hospital for a few days. I know it is insane, but I was thinking about three meals a day that I didn't cook, staying in bed all day and having people wait on me. OK, I didn't say I was thinking logically, I was just dreaming...for a few seconds, anyway.

After three weeks of Christmas break, and being thrust back into the routine of crazy kids and home schooling, those thoughts of the vacation to the hospital are gone.

This morning in an email to my husband, I gave many reasons why I should just have a good ol' fashioned nervous breakdown. In addition to the staying in bed and three meals a day, I would have the following advantages:

-I wouldn't have to cut my own meat anymore, because I wouldn't have a knife.
-I wouldn't have to make my bed anymore, because I wouldn't have sheets.
-I wouldn't have to tie my shoes anymore, because I wouldn't have any shoelaces.
-I wouldn't have to pick out matching clothes each day, because I would be wearing a white jacket with really shiny buckles on it.

I am not trying to make light of mental health issues, I am only trying to laugh myself away from this becoming a possibility.

Laughter is healing.
Pr 17:22 "A merry heart does good like a medicine: but a broken spirit dries the bones."
Along with laughing, today I am encouraging myself in the Lord, as David did at a time of hardship.

1Sa 30:6 "And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him...but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God."
My circumstances aren't as bad as David's, but the solution is the same....looking to the LORD.

As I looked up verses on my online Bible using the key word "weary" I got tears in my eyes, reading about the help and the hope there is in the Lord.

Galations 6:9 "And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."
So, I remind myself, and other tired and frustrated moms, let's not be weary, let's not faint!

We are doing well, we are mothering precious souls, we are teaching and training them in right ways. There will be reward, years down the road, but we won't get to the end of the tunnel, unless we continue through some times of darkness. Let's use His Word as the lamp unto our feet and the light unto our paths.