Okay, I just have to rant a little bit today. Personally, I don't think that Moms should be allowed to get sick. When Mom is sick everything falls apart. We have had a sick free house for over a month now and I was starting to like it. Then I started getting the sniffles and a scratchy throat on Monday. The next day I heard Chase sneezing. On Wednesday I heard Hunter coughing. Yesterday I felt like my head was going to explode from all of my congestion. And then this morning after a fitful 4 or 5 hrs. of sleep I went to wake Michela up for school and she told me she had thrown up an hour before. I heard her get up, but I thought she just had to go to the bathroom! And then Aria came into the bathroom with a runny nose! When it rains it pours I guess. It's hard enough to find the strength as a Mother to deal with all the sickness in the family when you are well, but when you are sick yourself how can you get through it?! I'm tired, my fuse is short, my head, throat and neck hurt and if I blow my nose one more time I think my nose will fall off. So how am I supposed to make it through this coming week that I know will be full of sick children and sleepless nights?
I think Heavenly Father put a special reserve of power in women that kicks in to get us through these times in our lives. It comes to the surface when months of four a.m. feedings have left us depleted and we don't think we can make it through one more night. It kicks in when at 2 o'clock in the morning you are sitting outside on the back porch wrapped up in quilts, with your child on your lap, watching the snow fall while trying to ease their croupy cough. And I know it will be kicking in for me this week as I pull myself out of bed in the middle of the night to go blow my nose again and grab myself some more medicine as I head into the kids' rooms with medicine in hand for their coughs and colds as well.
No one ever said being a Mom would be easy, at times I think it might be one of the hardest jobs in the world. But I think about how I felt when I was helping that child in need; as I stroked Michela's hair as she was crying on the bathroom floor, as I rocked Aria back to sleep after a bad dream, as I sat Chase up to give him more cough medicine and kissed his sweet little head, as I held Hunter in my arms on those cold winter nights and listened to the quiet of the falling snow, and as I cradled my babies in my arms as I nursed them in the dead of night. I wouldn't trade any of those moments for all the sleep in the world. I think that reserve of power I talked about before is really an extra reserve of Love. It's our Love for our children and our families that help us get through the times when we think we can't give anymore of ourselves.
This started out as a rant, but it ended up as a reflection for me on the Strength of Mothers. So I'll be thinking of that tonight and for however long it takes before my family is healthy and sleeping soundly again, because that's how I'll make it through.
