Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord.

Colossians 3:23

It is Friday. The baby who is temporarily in my care is sleeping peacefully, after a drawn-out spell of wailing and then vomiting some of the milk I had just given her through her feeding tube. My small son is also sleeping–after whining and crying and running a fever most of the day. Now I can only pray that the Tylenol we administered does it job in lowering his fever, and that he will sleep well for the night and wake up feeling better. Little daughter is still fussing in her crib. I punctuate my typing with injunctions: “Ellie, lay down. Go ni-night.” She lies down.

I am a foster mom again, for two weeks of respite care. I have barely had time to consider how it is going between tube-feedings, therapist visits, and, alas, my own children getting sick. But here are a few moments that lightened my life this week. May they lighten your day as well.

Sunday:

This was our day to enjoy our normal Sunday routines before the other baby came on Monday. I stripped the twins in the morning before church, I can’t remember why anymore–probably just because it was hot?–and let them toddle around in their diapers for awhile before they got dressed. They love having their clothes off, and their faces always wreathe into grins, and they slap their bellies delightedly. I too enjoy watching them scamper about with their little smooth tummies and strong little legs. Then I heard Teddy coming  up behind me: “Uh-oh, Uh-oh!” I turned around, and there stood a stark naked Teddy, big-eyed and clutching a sodden diaper, held up for me to see.

Monday:

In the afternoon, I was trying to be two places at once–outside with the twins who were eating popsicles on the porch steps as well as inside keeping an eye on the baby in the pack-n-play. I kept the door open and went back and forth between my charges. Once, I poked my head out of the door and caught Curly chewing Teddy’s reusable popsicle handle while the twins looked on. “No, Curly, no!” I scolded, rescuing the somewhat chewed stick. “Ellie, don’t let Curly chew your stick,” I admonished the little girl who watched me with big dark eyes and thoughtfully chewed her popsicle.

I stepped inside and placed Teddy’s popsicle stick in the sink. Then I heard a little girl’s voice: “No, no, no!”

I had a hunch what I would see before I even went and looked: Ellie squatting down to watch and scold while Curly tried to eat popsicle stick #2.

Friday:

Today, after a mass meltdown when I tried to put exhausted toddlers into their highchairs for lunch, we ate mac-n-cheese on the kitchen floor, both of the twinnies digging into the same bowl with separate spoons. (I am a little ashamed to admit this, because it doesn’t seem like something a good mom would allow, but right then I just wanted to get some food in them before I put them down for a nap.)

Afterwards, against their will, I cleaned them up and changed them before putting them to bed. I was expecting to come downstairs and clean up the mac-n-cheese mess on my kitchen floor. But when I got there, the only thing I saw was an empty bowl surrounded by a clean floor. A guilty Bitsy-dog slunk away, pretending she wasn’t there. The open back door silently mocked me.

Now, this is not my normal method of cleaning my dishes or my floors, it really isn’t, but I must admit, it has its perks.

Since the floor was clean, the foster baby was gone for a parental visit, and my babies were sleeping, I fixed myself and Ben a nice lunch.

Then, I sat down and wrote the following poem on my white board and hung it in my basement laundry area.

But I know the words that Jesus said: 
A welcome for the little and the lost. 
This Shepherd-King who gently leads those with young--
He understands divided time. 
The prayer split triple, whispered by a stove, a sink, a blacked-out nursery, is liturgy too;
Full hands worship as well as empty ones.

By Phylicia Masonheimer