In Which Julie Learns The Meaning of The Word BEGIN

I can write about this now because I'm somewhat refreshed, thanks to my gorgeous husband who has sent me to bed early this week, made me a bath and has stepped in to help out around the house.

I've been a bit tired lately - I usually cook myself fried rice or scrambled eggs with veggies/leftover meat for lunch each day as I'm sensitive to gluten and milk so I can't have sandwiches. This doesn't seem like a big thing, but when you do the school run, get a few loads of wash out, get the toddler to eat, put the toddler in his bed for a sleep and feed the baby - it's hard to fit in cooking a hot meal.

So when I get tired, I don't really eat all that much. I've stopped eating conventional breakfast food recently. I'm a big breakfast fan and I believe if we all sat down to a HUGE breakky every day we'd hardly need to eat for the rest of the day. Well, it works in theory. The reality is that I'm so tired and busy in the mornings that I can barely eat a bowl of leftover rice before heading out the door. And two mornings this week I've committed the ultimate sin: not eating breakfast!

So, there I was the other morning, no breakfast, the kitchen was a FERAL mess, the washing basket was piled as high as my waist and toys littered the floor. All of the children were home, so I had thrown together some breakky for them and fed the baby.

As I looked around my home - messy, dirty and chaotic - my heart just gave up.

I felt like my head and my heart had suddenly been dropped into thick goop and I just couldn't function. It was too hard.

I sat on the couch in my jamas holding the baby 'burping her' (which actually is my term for 'wasting time on the internet') and let a huge wave of.......tiredness, defeat and self-pity wash over me.

Lord, where would I begin?

Tears pricked at my eyes - aaaahhhh! Not tears, I detest tears of self-pity!!!!

Then I felt God's gentle prod.

"Julie, just begin."

I had read ages ago from Nancy Campbell (www.aboverubies.org) about 'Just Begin'......but......

.....well, I couldn't find a suitable excuse, really.

So...whinging and whining the whole time to God, I focussed in on what I could do first. I ignored the mess, the noisy rambunctious children, the drying oat bix on the bowls stacked in the kitchen.....and got dressed.

Whew!

Then I attacked the next thing: children dressed!

It hurt at first to keep moving and doing stuff when all I wanted to do was crawl back under the covers and sleep for a year.

But I thought: "Well, I'm up and dressed and the childrne are dressed, so I may as well keep going!" So I got the next load of wash on!

And the next thing: lunch and kiddie rest time!

And the next: put washing out!

Before I knew it, I was on a roll.

Later that night, sitting in my usual spot bouncing the baby with Ben's dinner warming in the oven waiting for him to come home (and alright, toys still spread all over the floor, the washing up only half-done and the washing merrily flapping outside in the darkness!), I reflected how my horrid start to the day had turned into a relatively good day. It certainly wasn't a great day, but I learned a valuable lesson: JUST BEGIN!

My self-respect was higher than it would have been if I'd just sat around like a blob all day having a pity party about how hard it all was. I felt good that I'd had a go and hadn't given up. I thanked God for the ministry of Above Rubies.....and above all, I felt so thankful that my heavenly Father considers me worth teaching and guiding through this messy business called parenting!