I've been having a rough few weeks. I'm not sure how to explain what I mean by this. I'm doing Ok some days and others, I just cry and fume. I don't know about what. I mean, to hear me talk you'd think it's all horrible, but the reality is, it isn't! Life is good, I'm healthy, I want for nothing. Partly I believe it's that undeniably human part of me making myself miserable. It's that I LONG for more. I have enough clothes, but they're not nice clothes or sexy clothes, just the basic jeans and t-shirt attire. I want another bathroom so that my children don't have to fight over who goes first while I fuss at them and remind them to take turns, meanwhile despising them both because my bladder has backed up into my eyeballs and I really just want to pee first! We're a family of five and we live in a house, that perhaps, people did 100 years ago with large families, but now it seems too modest. I want a bigger kitchen so I feel that I can invite people over and have dinner parties. I have enough food, but I want better, healthier food that I invest my own sweat into and prepare with my own two hands. Finally, I want more time in a day. I want time to sit idly by while my children knead and mold playdoh, help them write and perform fairy tales, or read Goodnight Moon just one more time instead of rushing to get everything done and still having my chores and responsibilities spill over into the next day. I want to spend more time with my husband who I stay angry at, not because he doesn't try, but because there IS work to be done and he must provide for us or we wouldn't have all the things that we have. He allows me these precious moments with my children and, most days, I'm so bitter and blinded by all the things I'm NOT doing, that I fail to remember what it is that I am BLESSED to be doing!!!

I have sat down no less than 10 times to write out a post, when I'm immediately needed or being pawed at by my littlest saying in her saddest, sweetest voice, "up, up!" At that moment I realize how important her request really is. I must remind myself to stay up. I must remind myself to keep my head up. That up above me there are mysterious forces at work that are guiding my life. And below me, only knee high, are those who need me to look up even when I'm down. They are trying their best to grow up and one day they will model my behavior. They will either slap on a smile despite the world or they will wither and curse their situation. As I was driving home this afternoon, I passed a church sign that read:

Write your sorrows in the sand, carve your blessings in stone.

Whatever force you believe is in control or if you believe it's all just chaotic coincidence, life, through all of its chaos has a way of pointing me in the right direction. I keep my eyes peeled for anything that I can interpret as divine intervention. Perhaps this is foolish or corny, but it's what gets me through. It's what keeps me looking up. And, as long as I'm looking up, it's difficult to get me down.