The "After Shock" of the Ladies Retreat

I had the privilege of attending our church's Ladies Retreat over the past few days. This was the first time that I had joined the ladies of our church at Black Rock, and I must say it was a very refreshing time! The Holy Spirit's presence was so evident throughout the entire time and was moving greatly among us.
All of the teachings on grace, the worship times, small group discussions, personal solitude, and even the skit were clearly anointed by God and many walked away changed for the better.
The last teaching we had that was given by Laurie was very timely for me as a mom. She spoke about having grace for the ordinary days. Those of you who are moms can relate to those "ordinary days" where you wonder if you will ever do anything other than feed you family, wash their clothes, clean the house, put away dishes, reprimand the kids, feed babies, change babies, wash babies, and take care of anything and everything else that needs attending to with in the bounds of motherhood! (Of course being a mom has many brights spots such as watching your baby give their first smile, all the snuggle time from your favorite little people and seeing your kids understanding the father heart of God.) It was so refreshing to be reminded that God indeed will pour out sufficient grace not only during the trials we may face but on all those ordinary days that we face so often.
I was excited to be getting back home to my ordinary life with my family after the retreat, but all of us that rode up together decided that we should take advantage of the fact that we were childless and we went to BB's right after lunch on our way home. After filling our car with all of our bargains, we were ready to head home through the ice and snow!
Our first stop was Crystal's house. Her house is at the top of a very steep driveway. This very steep driveway was not plowed. Amy, who was driving, wasn't phased in the least. "Oh, I have four wheel drive", she says as she turns into the very steep, very slippery driveway. We were spinning wheels before we even got halfway up the driveway.
Now, anyone who has ever driven in the snow knows that if you don't make it up a hill the only way to get off the hill is to go backwards down the hill. As we were slipping and sliding backwards down that driveway, Amy was praying out loud that God would help her down the hill and the other three of us were jamming our feet on our invisible brake pedals praying that we would stay on the driveway and not fall off the steep inclines on the side of the driveway!
Thank the Lord we did make it back down the driveway and Crystal's husband jumped into his truck and picked up Crystal and her groceries and of course made it back up their driveway on his first try. Must be a guy thing.
I was supposed to call Dave when we left Crystal's house , but he had called when we were transferring the groceries to their truck. He left a message wondering where I was. Our original plan was for him to pick me up at Amy's but I wasn't sure now what he wanted to do, so I called him back. No answer. I tried his cell phone. No answer. I call our home number again and left a message and then left a message on his cell phone.
We had to make a decision since I had lots of frozen items from BBs so we decided that Amy should just take me home so that I could put the food away. I finally got a hold of Dave after I got home. He had been shoveling some one's driveway for them and didn't feel his phone vibrating through his heavy coat. So I came home to an empty house.
It wasn't empty for long since they were just in town, so I got to hug my husband and all the little people that I missed so much and then sat down in the rocker with Alyssa. Dave said that she wasn't feeling to well, so I thought maybe a little "mommy time" would help her to feel better. It wasn't long before she was asleep and I was nodding off shortly after, trying to partake in the conversations that my family was having. (Not much sleep at the retreat!) About 45 minutes later Alyssa woke up and I found out why she wasn't feeling too well. She had a major case of "loose bowels" and when I changed her it literally spilled out all over my lap. Not fun. We cleaned up from that and decided it was time to eat. Nothing fancy. Just sandwiches and chips. Easy to make, easy to clean up. Except when your baby eats a bigger piece of Dorito than she should, chokes on it and then proceeds to throw up all over herself. Again - not fun.
Well, at this point I have come to the decision that God has decided to give me a lesson in "Grace for the Ordinary Days" the minute I arrived at home, except that this wasn't quite the "ordinary" I had in mind when Laurie was speaking. This was more like one of those "extraordinary" days that come every so often to remind us how blessed our "ordinary" lives can be - and it wasn't over yet. Nope - not yet.
I decided that I needed to take a bath and get cleaned up from... ummm...Alyssa. So I got cleaned up and decided that it would be nice to get the book I am reading to the kids and read them a chapter. They were excited and I settled down in my rocker with my feet up to read only to hear Dave say, "Have you seen the dog?"
We had let Roxie out just before dinner to relieve herself and then when Alyssa threw up she was forgotten for a little while. Well, she must have taken offense to having been forgotten and decided that she would go for a little tour around the neighborhood. Dave and several of the kids hop in the van and go to look for her, while I stayed home with the other kids in case she showed up.
About 45 minutes later, she "appeared" on our door step covered with dirty, icy snow. Back to the bathtub, this time with a yucky dog who hates getting a bath. Of course after bathing a dirty dog in a human bathtub, the tub needs to be thoroughly scrubbed! I got all that done and decided that wet dog smell mixed with Comet was not quite what I wanted to smell like and headed up to the bathroom to take yet another shower!
Dave came back and we prayed with the kids and put them to bed. We watched the ending of a movie we had started several days ago and the went to bed ourselves. I was so tired I could barely stay awake to pray with Dave. Ah - sweet slumber!
As I look back at all the events of yesterday, I see that throughout all of these things God was indeed pouring out His grace upon me. I was able to take it all in stride and even managed to be singing one of the songs that we learned on the retreat. The words from the chorus say, "I come running to You when I fear when I'm tried. I come running to You - to Your blood to Your side. There my soul finds rest."
So, here I sit on Sunday morning with Alyssa sleeping on my lap - unable to go to church but more than able to rejoice in the day that the Lord has made because His grace is more than enough to get me through the ordinary days and the days that turn out to be not so ordinary!

"Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens."
Psalm 68:19

Bubbles!!!

Remember how fun it was as a kid to pop the strips of packing bubbles? Well, Dave often has large machines shipped to him for the company that he works for and they are packed with huge strips of "mega bubbles"! These are way bigger than the bubbles I used to pop! Anyway this morning he brought in a whole box full of bubble strips and the kids had a blast jumping up and down on these and popping all the bubbles. Just thought I'd share the fun!