sLOVEnka: Ugly Duckling

The last couple of days have been real buggers for me. Is that even the word I'm looking for? It was the first one that came to mind. Tough. The last couple of days have been tough for me. The whole of August was pretty darn rainy and cold, and Tomáš had been home on vacation for 10 days. We have a joke in our family whenever it's cold or rainy where Tomáš says, ''Oh good! Now I don't have to feel bad about not going out and doing something.'' He is a homebody in the truest sense and in many ways so am I. The only difference is that I have the luxury of being home on maternity leave, so when he is home, all I want to do is go out. With him. As a family. (My famous phrase). So, I had a classic case of cabin fever and I think it's safe to say we were both really beginning to get on each other's nerves. And I can think of a couple of little pink princesses who were also well on their way to climbing up my last nerve, giving it a good grip, and wrenching it wildly for all they were worth. Despite my best efforts Rosy had inexplicably stopped napping, leaving me with elevated blood pressure, a few bald patches and a late-night attempt to go to the store for potato chips. Then something interesting happened. I opened an old notebook and found something I'd written, I guess, years ago. It was from the pastor of Imago Dei church in Portland, Oregon, Rick McKinley. He said this, ''If you quit being thankful, you quickly become forgetful of what God has done for you. Then you become ungrateful, feel entitled and soon it leads to rebellion. He then mentioned 1Thessalonians 5:18 ''Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.'' And went on to say, ''Don't waste your pain! Don't waste the hardness of your circumstance on bitterness! There is plenty of grace for you to come to thankfulness, but you have got to come to Jesus for it.''

Now of course I was speaking of my circumstances kind of tongue-in-cheek. But the truth of the matter is, there was real anger there. Real yelling. Real feelings of entitlement and real negative effects on my girls, on my family, on myself. I felt like I deserved that down time in the middle of the day, and it was really hard not to feel resentment that I didn't have a single second to myself. But then I started thinking about that quote. I remember feeling guilty for years each time I found myself outside an attitude of gratefulness (read whiny baby). I felt like a failure. Then a good friend of mine told me that it was the effort of coming back to thankfulness that mattered to God. That I keep trying, remembering all that I have and being grateful for it. And this was very freeing for me, ''for me to come to thankfulness...'' Because I desire to live in thankfulness. I know that it is so much better of a place than entitlement. Bratty, snot-nosed sniveling (I'm talking about myself here) is not cute. Tomáš is so good at reigning in my crazy. Keeping me in check. Reminding me that we have two healthy, beautiful little girls and millions of women would give their left...vacuum cleaner?...to be in my position. It's a very humbling, good reminder. Last month he told me, ''you always think everyone else has it better than you.'' I'm sorry to admit that that is so often true. I don't know why my brain goes there but it does. But enough rambling. I feel like I talk about thankfulness a lot. Maybe because I struggle with it just as much. But the old adage is so true; count your blessings. You'll no doubt stop feeling sorry for yourself in a hurry. Isn't that sort of the story of the ugly duckling? When he stopped feeling sorry for himself he turned into a beautiful swan? A bit of a stretch, perhaps, but it works.