i'm booorrrreeeedddddd.

yesterday i awoke to the sounds of sibling bickering.  ahhh, music to my ears.  there is nothing like being roused from a gentle sleep by shouts, accusations and cries of injustice.  then when they come bursting through your bedroom door demanding that you assume the role of wise judge, you know that you have a very long day ahead of you.  i am sure most moms would tenderly, yet authoritatively, gather their feuding hens upon their bed and use that moment to teach valuable life lessons, but not this mom.  this mom needs coffee before she can have a wise thought, let alone a coherent one.

i love my kids.  i do.  but they can drive me insane.  mommyhood is hard for me.  i was never one of those girls who dreamed of being a mom.  i didn't have names picked out for my kids by my 9th birthday.  i didn't fantasize about who i would marry and how many children we would have together.  i don't know what i thought about, really, but it probably had more to do with candy than children.  so for me, after about 60 consecutive days with my children, i get a little irritated with them.

"mommy, i'm bored."  normally i say something inspiring like "boo hoo," but apparently when my little one said this to me yesterday, my father invaded my body.

"find something to do or i will give you something to do."  i actually cringed after i said it.  how many times did i hear this as a kid?  how many times did i not heed his warning and find myself sweeping out the garage or picking up dog pooh in the backyard.

"but i'm bored."

 i looked at my little man and realized something....i was too.

as a part-time student and full-time, stay-at-home mom, i get to spend lots of time with other moms.  there is a whole gaggle of us here who don't work and who sacrifice ambitions and sanity to stay home with our kids.  we all do it because we feel it is the best choice for our families.  we love our kids. we love that we get to be home with them.  we just get bored sometimes.  ok, we get bored a lot.

i feel guilty when i get bored.  i feel like i should be cherishing this time with my kids.  i feel like i should be coming up with creative crafts and educational experiences to do with them.  i feel like i should be putting more energy into entertaining them.  guilt.  guilt.  guilt.  and when i contemplate how my friends who homeschool do this day in and day out because they LOVE it, then i really feel guilty.

last night as i was grumpily making dinner and trying not to think about the fact that i will have to do this approximately 123,456,894 more times before i die, i realized that i was falling back into a pattern of thinking that I had condemned just a few months ago.  earlier in the year, i had read a book that changed my perspective on what it means to give thanks.  the book is called 1001 Gifts by Ann Voskcamp.  this is no churchy, cheesy just-say-thank-you-everyday-to-God kind of book.  this is a gritty and raw book that was birthed out of the author's own pain and disillusionment with life.  i read the book and realized that i was a woman who went through most of her days acting like her 7-year-old, grumbling and complaining about being bored instead of seeing the face of God in even the most mundane of moments.

boredom is a vision problem, an inability to see what is really before us.  when my kids get bored, i remind them that they have a room full of toys, not to mention a pool and trampoline in our backyard.  when i get bored with life, with being a mom, with being a homemaker, i, too, forget all that is around me.  the reason i have to clean house everyday is because i HAVE a house.  when i get annoyed because i can't decide what to make for dinner, i forget that i have an infinite number of menus to choose from and the money necessary to buy all the ingredients.  when my kids fight and i fume, i have lost sight of the fact that i have two healthy, bare-chested boys who have brought a fullness to my life that i could never have conceived of beforehand.

i am bored because i forget.

seeing is hard and remembering is work, yet these are the two necessary ingredients of gratefulness.    routine would try and rob us of our sight, of our knowledge that in the midst of dishes and bickering and sweeping the floor that we are blessed, that He is present, and that all we truly long for is within us and around us.

try it when you are bored or irritated or disillusioned or hurting or depressed.  it can feel like you are pushing a basketball through your nostril.  it is hard.  but something happens when you begin to focus on who God is and what he has done.  your heart begins to soften.  your eyes lift upward and you see.  you truly see.