My Cup Overflows

It is summer and I know I should be thrilled and downright overjoyed to spend lots and lots of unscheduled days with my two soon-to-be three year olds.  Part of me is over the moon excited, but that part is somewhere close to twenty percent.  (Okay, ten percent.)  The other eighty (or ninety) percent of this momma is stressed out and dreading those rainy days and one-hundred-degrees-plus days and days like today where laundry is the big crescendo.   I shudder to think that my kids only get along for an average of ten minutes and that’s on a good day!  I cringe when I think about all the effort it takes to cover my table with plastic, whip out the paint, masking tape and construction paper just to have Jake tell me “my done” after thirty seconds. 

This morning I confessed all of this to Jesus, while at the same time thanking Him for the tremendous blessing He plopped in my lap just three short years ago.  I was honest when I told Him that I wonder some days if I’m cut out for all of this mothering stuff.  Why else do I feel such dread when I gaze at our usually cluttered calendar and see box after box of white, empty space?

After pouring out my heart, I picked up my pen and made a list of things I could do with my kids.  Things that they would enjoy and I would enjoy, then I prayed I’d have my sanity intact by the time I checked off each one. 

Read a book

Play hopscotch in the driveway

Have a picnic lunch

Have a tea party with real water on the back porch

Paint a picture (even though I know Jake will only last about thirty seconds)

When I was done with my list, I smiled to myself thinking, “This is going to be good.” 
Let me tell you how my day has gone so far:

READ A BOOK:  In two separate accidents, both kids (I promise I am not making this up) peed all over the bathroom floor and all over the basket of books I keep in there for potty training.  So we skipped to the next activity on the list while we let our books dry out…

HOPSCOTCH:  Jake cried when I took a piece of chalk out of his bucket to make the hopscotch squares and Lilly tripped and skinned her knee two minutes later hopping from square to square.  She cried too.

PAINT:  Jake lasted only thirty seconds.

PICNIC LUNCH:  Lilly asked me ten times for peanut butter even though I told her ten times it was already on her plate.

TEA PARTY:  After filling up pitchers with water, both kids poured and poured and poured until their entire pitcher was poured out all over the table outside.  (Apparently, tea kettles with make believe tea inside them are much easier to control!)

Somewhere between the pee, the tears, the empty pitchers and overflowing cups, I realized that I had to teach Jake and Lilly when to stop pouring.  So we started over and I showed them how to stop right before the water got to the top of the cup.  They watched and listened, then I filled up their pitchers again and they tried on their own.   

And then it happened: twenty glorious minutes of pouring out water into two tiny teacups and then dumping it back in the pitcher to start all over again.   No talking.  No yelling.  No crying.  No fighting.  No whining.  Just pouring and filling, pouring and filling.  

 

In the silence that is so, so sacred these days, I whispered a “thank you” to Jesus. 

Thank you for this quiet moment.

Thank you for trusting me to teach these kids simple things like when to stop pouring water into a tiny little tea cup and huge, life changing things like what it looks like to follow You.

Thank you for giving me this glimpse of what it looks like to be poured out, thinking I don’t have enough, only to discover that my cup is overflowing with blessing.

Thank you for filling my cup so that I can pour it out.

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. 

Psalm 23:5