Redemption Thursday

This morning the kids convinced me to go out for Halloween costume supplies.   Just the other day I had to take them all to Walmart to return something and pick up a few things and was reminded once again why I like to either go alone or take only a portion.

The 45 minutes spent in Walmart consisted of me saying “No” to the requests that came every two seconds for stuff.  By the end of it I’m sure I looked and sounded as haggard as I felt inside.  I always hope at least our chaos makes some old folks chuckle in remembrance of their busy and tired days with young children.

With this in mind I was hesitant to say yes to another shopping trip with all the kids.  I explicitly explained in the Gabe’s parking lot that they could NOT ask for everything we walked past and they had to be calm and good listeners or else this wasn’t going to work.

We made it through, found most of the costume pieces they needed and a few things I didn’t know we needed.

I was on a roll so I thought I would run into Aldi while they all ate a snack in the car.

That went really well, so when Ira pointed to Hobby Lobby across the street and our need (we use the term loosely around here) for more perler bead supplies I said “Sure” and gave them another stern warning about not asking for anything else.

We made it in and out in record time with no whining for any other art supplies!

Boy, we were really cooking with gas at this point so I pushed my limits and ran into Kroger for the things Aldi was out of.

In and out in 5 minutes.  This was a record setting day.  One for the books!

We got home with groceries, bead supplies, and a take n bake pizza in hand.  I warmed up the oven and all three boys unloaded every single grocery bag for me.

The moral of the story: don’t give up.

I’ll leave you with my favorite Henri Nouwen quote:

“Maybe, for the time being, we have to accept the many fluctuations between knowing and not knowing, seeing and not seeing, feeling and not feeling, between days when the whole world seems like a rose garden and days in which our hearts seem tied to a millstone, between moments of ecstatic joy and moments of gloomy depression, between the humble confession that the newspaper holds more than our souls can bear and the realization that it is only through facing up to the reality of our world that we can grow into our own responsibility. Maybe we have to be tolerant toward our own avoidances and denials in the conviction that we cannot force ourselves to face what we are not ready to respond to and in the hope that in one future day we will have the courage and strength to open our eyes fully and see without being destroyed. All this might be the case as long as we remember that there is no hope in denial or avoidance, neither for ourselves nor anyone else, and that new life can only be bore out of the dead planted in crushed soil.”