Gratitude Saturday...

Hi.

So I missed Friday.

I would love to give you a really good excuse. But honestly, my only excuse is that despite my good intentions of writing the post Friday morning while Pumpkin played, it simply didn't happen. First, Aubrey Kate managed to smash herself so close up against the end of the crib, that when I checked the monitor at two in the morning, the crib looked completely empty.

Here's the thing. I have the flu. And in order to sleep, I'm taking some rockin' awesome cough medicine. And it pretty much stops the coughing because it gets dangerously close to stopping me from breathing entirely. About fifteen minutes after I take two swigs of the stuff, this warm, cozy feeling comes over me and then it's seven am.

Fabulous.

Unless my husband is at his annual band geek conference putting me in charge of the whole keeping the baby alive thing.

So the fact that I woke up at two in the morning to check the monitor deserves some sort of mother of the year award. But I was drugged enough that it took me a while to register that I could not see a baby lying in the crib. No baby. Empty crib.

I managed to drag myself out of bed to see if perhaps she had made a break for it over the side of the crib and was hoping she survived the attempt. Thankfully, she was there in a ball at the end of the crib. Her face was crammed into the crib bumper so I moved her back a little. You know, that whole breathing thing is important.

The same scenario repeated itself at five am. Only that time, I was sobering up so it took me an hour to fall back asleep. But I wasn't so sober that my alarm could wake me up.

No lie.

I slept through my alarm. Putting my whole morning an hour behind.

Thus, my excuse for not having time to post.

But really, I'm glad I was sort of forced by drunkenness to wait. Because trying to get ready for an overnight trip with a baby did not bring out the best in me. Have you ever tried to pack a car with a baby in your arms? How frustrated was I that she refused to let me put her down without some serious screaming?

So.

Thankfully, she fell asleep five minutes after we got on the road. Seven minutes late.

That gave me some time to soak up a little music for an attitude adjustment. My mind was a hot mess of thoughts. I was sick and did not at all feel great. Somehow I had managed to get upset by my gorgeous daughter wanting to be held and snuggled. I had let a combination of not feeling well, getting up late and my To Do List get me all flustered. Apparently, I earned myself a big FAIL at mommy-dom that morning.

And in the middle of that, all I could think was I am so glad my Savior doesn't ask me to do a whole bunch of stuff to earn His love.

Because I would be a big ole failure at being "good".

And what if there were a long list of "stuff" I had to do every day to earn salvation? Or worry about how good everyone else was being because I needed to be just a little better to make the cut into heaven? Or doing some completely dramatic act or risk coming back in my next life as beetle?

Jesus did the work. He made the sacrifice. His grace covers up all my failures.

In the mess of my morning, I was finding I was simply thankful to rest in His love. His grace. His sacrifice. And that I could do nothing to earn it and nothing to lose it.