Rip off that Band Aid

Well readers, you've been invited into the depths of my being after my last post. First, let me say thank you for allowing to me to go off style with that one. I am on a journey to find forgiveness through God's grace and love. Only by reading that piece could one truly understand why I am in pursuit of forgiveness.
Ephesians 4:31-32 tells us:
" Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." It says for those who follow Christ and His teachings needs, as a Christian, to forgive as we have been forgiven. We are taught that God loves us as a parent loves a child with unconditional and never faltering love. My husband uses the image of a child climbing up in to the lap of Jesus and being consoled like we would our own children. What an image that is. All of the pain and hurt I am trying desperately to release isn't mine to keep. God loves me in spite of the fact that I am a sinner. He loves me even though I struggle to forgive others.
Life has a way of leading up to events that God has been preparing us for all along. I have been able to forgive things in the past and move on, but why now, with the woman whom I called mother for those 33 years, can I not find that grace to let go? I have to be able to move on to grow in my journey with Christ.

“Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.” ~ Corrie Ten Boom

An act of will. There are no gauges to read the temperature of my heart right now. How can you measure a heart that burns so hot with hurt, yet so cold by years of pain. It's such a strange place to find yourself in indeed. I learned years ago, before I started to seek a closer walk with God, that in order to keep a relationship with my om I had to build walls. Guard myself from hurt and rage from her own heart. I see now, after reading my own words that I did myself no good all of these years by just "letting it be". Doing that only leads to a building pressure cooker of emotions ready to blow at anytime. I have found myself there many times. Yet, lately, as time goes by, I feel the steam releasing slowly.
I ask you readers to indulge me, if you will, on my journey. Whatever you struggle with daily to let go of, may we work together to heal. There are many relationships that can break a person's spirit. Take your time today to pray for God to heal your pain. Free your heart. For life is a short journey we all have here on this Earth. Don't waste it with anger.

Letting go by God's grace: My journey to find peace

                I hadn’t slept in almost 5 days, which was probably God’s way of helping me through the next few hours of my life.  It was Thursday, September 16, 2010.  I had been in the ICU unit since Monday morning wondering what the doctors could tell me about my mom’s recovery prognosis.  It was not good.  The stroke/heart attack that had put her in this coma had its grips on her.  You never know how you will react when you get a phone call like this one. 

                “Kelli, your mom has had a heart attack and is in ICU.  It’s not good.” 

                It couldn’t be real.  This wasn’t happening.  My mom and I had too many things to sort out for it to end like this!  It was a Monday, and I had seen her the day before.  After an argument, like so many others we always had… over nothing important.  I wasn’t prepared to see her when I got to the ICU.    The tubes going in her throat, arms, and nose did not bother me as much as knowing she wasn’t able to know I was there.  She had always fought.  FIGHT MOM!  If there was ever a time to fight… do it now!!!!  This can’t be it.

                After I absorbed this scene, I walked over to her bed and held her hand.  Her face looked so peaceful, no anger, no hate, just a state of rest.  In a strange way, this made me feel a little more at ease.  I hadn’t seen a look without a twinge of pain on her face in many, many years. It’s how I knew in my heart she was gone but the machines were keeping her alive.

                Tuesday and Wednesday I lived at the ICU, going home to see my kids and husband at night, and leaving early the next morning.  I would talk to her about my kids and stupid things, now that I think about it.  Shouldn’t I have said so many more profound things than: “I made the best version of your chicken pot pie last night, the kids ate it up.”  Looking back I wanted to say, “Why do you blame me for so so so many things that I couldn’t control.  I did not cause the divorce.  I was 17 and doing my best to cope.   I do love you, whether you believe it or not.  I was a good daughter.  You were so bitter that you wouldn’t see it.”

                There were brief periods where we though she was coming around but it was just the body’s natural responses to stimuli.  It wasn’t mom.  They ran tests to check brain activity.  It was the outcome I had been preparing for all week.

                Your mom’s stroke and subsequent heart attack on the operating table have left her with little to no functions left.  She could stay hooked up to this machine and maybe last a few months.  Unacceptable.  Not what she wanted.  It was 5:23 on a Thursday.  It was mom’s last night with us… well with me.

                We had decided that afternoon to take her off of life support because it was her wish.  We all knew she wouldn’t want to be kept in a state of, well, nothing.  The slew of doctors from the cardio and neuro department were talking and telling us what had happened; Very technical terms that I didn’t understand.  The world around me faded out, and my mind went back almost twenty years.  Twenty years that would forever change the way I saw my mom.

                That night, all of my family (aunts, uncles, cousins, and step dad) went home to do their grieving.  I volunteered to stay with her.  They knew I would be the one.  I have always been that person in these circumstances.  I was with 2 grandparents when they passed, and I shall forever consider it a blessing.  You can truly see God’s wonders through death.  This was my time to make my peace.  Let go of so many twisted and confusing scenarios that had played out between us over these past 18 years.  She couldn’t tell me she forgave me, and that’s why I struggle today.  She held so many things against me that no child can help.  As I sat there next to her bed with my cheek on her hand, I sobbed.  I cried for wasted years in the past and wasted years we won’t have to try and be better.  So I let my mind wonder back those 18 years to the day that changed the course of our relationship.

                To say my parents’ divorce got ugly is an understatement.  To say that the damage it did to my mom’s mental state… there are no words.  She changed that day.  She died that day.  The woman I knew as my mother was no more.  Instead there was bitterness, anger, and total lack of acceptance.  She didn’t ask for it and did not want it, but she turned hurt into hatred.  Hatred of what happened to her, what she couldn’t control, what she felt was rightfully her life that she had built.  GONE.
                I have scattered memories of her ripping flowers out of a flower bed that my dad had built in our yard.  Sprays of color and mulch littered the driveway when she was finished.  She would have a lot of tearing up to do if she was trying to erase him from this home.  Then there is me… a living breathing reminder of my dad.  Having me meant she still had a reason to be in contact with him, in control of at least one thing.  So, the pawn is created.

                Whenever she was mad at my dad, she tied me up into it somehow.  The day before I graduated high school was pivotal.  Nothing was ever the same.  My boyfriend of 3 years at the time was dropping me off from our dinner.  Tapped to the back door were 2 cards, one marked Jim.  One marked Kelli (the child).  Strange.  Jim opened his and it was a loving graduation card with money in it as a way to go!  Mine did not feel like a card at all.  It was a series of papers folded up in a legal envelop.  Mine started,

Dear Attorney So and So,

                This letter is to inform you that as of today, the child will be living with her father from here out.  She obviously has a connection with him and chooses to be with him.  Blah Blah. 

                The new “crazy mom” was born, and I had no idea what a turn my life would take!  The rage she began to show was terrifying.  I had never seen someone so full of hurt, anger and pure hatred of another soul.  A mother is supposed to be a safe harbor in a storm, not the hurricane itself.  I was hurting too.  My dad was gone, my mom was a mess, and I was left here to live with her.  I was lost.  Empty.  I was too young to fully grasp all of the dynamics of my parent’s relationship issues, and I am forever thankful for that because there are some things kids should never know.  I was safe from that for a while… a short while.  Her venom towards my father grew more every day.  She was unable to let me have my father as just my father.  She had to try everything she could to turn me against him, so that I would hate him as much as she did.  I remember saying some of the most horrible things to my father in that first year after the divorce.  What he didn’t know was that many times she was standing right next to me telling me what to say.  Did I want to say them?  No.  I was under so much emotional stress in that home when my dad moved out, that I didn’t know up from down.  My own mother had turned me against my dad and I had let her.  Regret was born.

                At 17, every version of my reality that I knew was shattered.  How do you absorb such a huge change in the blink of an eye?  In my case, the way I choose to handle it would forever put a strain on my mom and me.  All I knew to do was keep doing what Kelli (the previously referred to child) could do.  All I could do was press forward.  After all, it was their divorce not mine right?  So wrong.  Divorce can temporarily rip a person to the ground.  Devastating consequences that no one ever saw coming.  Part of her hated me for not hating him.  She never said it but never had to either.
                I moved into my dad’s 2 bedroom apartment, the day before I graduated.  I remember lying in my room that first night.  Shadows from the parking lot came in through the blinds and made new shadows that seems like a foreign world to me.  I woke up the next morning and got ready for my big day.  Looking back, I was saying goodbye to so many things all at once.  My childhood friends from school, the home I grew up in all those years, and mainly myself… but I didn’t even know it.
                That summer before college, I was wild.  I drank and partied, was ready to get out of this town.  Little did I know geography doesn’t ease pain.  My first few months at college were very freeing but scary at the same time.   When I went home on the weekends, my “home” wasn’t with my mom anymore.  My dad’s new home wasn’t mine either.  He did a great job giving me my own space and made it wonderful, but it wasn’t the home I had grown up in.  It was bitter sweet.

                My daydreaming was interrupted by nurses having to clear tubes in mom’s trachea.  One second ago, she was in her 40’s in my mind, and now reality.  Was she going over those same thoughts in her mind too?  Could she?  Did she know I was there trying desperately to make sense of this mess we called a mother-daughter relationship?  I just wanted her to wake up, even if for a moment.  Wake up so I can tell you that I have never understood your anger towards me.  Didn’t you know that I acted the way I did because you acted like you resented me?

                Her lips were chapped from where the tubes were cutting in her skin.  I took a warm rag and washed her face.  She always had such beautiful skin.  I used lotion to help the chapping on her face and some Vaseline on her lips to keep them from getting worse.  I saw myself in her face while she lay there in that bed.  My features, with age, were becoming more and more like her.  How do you say goodbye to someone when there is so much left to finish?  So many unsaid things to share, and even more things said to retract.

                My mind drifted back to a summer night in 1999, when I moved back to Nashville, after being in Knoxville, for almost 4 years.  We were listening to music and dancing on the patio.  I had some friends there, and we were all having a great time.  Neil Diamond was always a favorite.  We used wooden kitchen spoons as microphones and belted out Sweet Caroline with a force her neighbors were sure to appreciate! Ha-ha.  My mom was smiling.  She was the closest thing to my pre divorce mom that I would ever see again.  The alcohol abuse was just now becoming evident to me.  I remember night after night of drunken phone calls full of foul language cursing me and my dad.  Her anger became intolerable towards me after she had been drinking.  A child should never hear their parent refer to them as the child that turned into such a little... well, I will skip that part.

              

                My struggle began with trying to love the person who gave birth to me, but distance myself from the monster her illness had created.  It is amazing how much abuse a person will take and keep going back for more.  I will never be able to explain to myself or anyone else fully why I did that.  All I can say is that somewhere in the depths of my heart, I always held out hope that my mom was still in there somewhere. 

                In the years that followed me moving back, things only got worse as my life drifted further from hers.  I met my husband, Nate, in the fall of 1999.  I loved him the moment I saw him.  I remember telling mom that I had met my future husband.  I was about to declare war on my sanity and didn’t know it.  The bell was about to ring for round one!  From the moment mom realized that someone had my heart, and in her mind, control over me… it was over.  The battle between Nate and mom had begun.  My referee stripes were adorned and GAME ON!

                Finances were always tight it seemed, and mom always bailed me out.  I rarely asked for it, but she just couldn’t let it be.  After my first child, Will, was born, she was paying bills and groceries on a regular basis for us.  I always appreciated the help, but realized nothing from her was free.  There were enough strings wrapped around everything to make a person crazy.  It was in these years I realized that mom was truly bi polar or something to that effect.  I would argue with Nate over why I continued to have a relationship with someone who was obviously ill.  BECAUSE IT’S MY MOM, I would say.  How can you just walk away from that?

                So there I sat, that night in the ICU with mom listening to our favorite Neil Diamond songs, while I laughed and cried and tried with all of my heart to say goodbye.  I didn’t sleep that night.  I couldn’t.  It was her last night.  I could sleep when this was all over.  Her breathing kept getting heavier and more labored, more medications were necessary to prepare her body for the ventilators being removed in a few hours.  It was almost 5:30 am on the 17^th of September.  Three days after I had turned 33.  At 33, my mom had lived half of her life and didn’t know it.

                I walked out onto the roof of the parking garage where I went for my occasional smoke.  It was so quiet, beautiful.  The sun was coming up and the world looked different today.  It’s funny what you think when faced with such a hard day ahead of you.  I thought as I watched the sun coming up, the next time I see the sun rise; my mom won’t be here anymore.  I wish she could see this last sunrise.  It was God’s wonderful Good Morning to me that day.  All colors one could imagine painted that sky over the roof top chapel I had created for me there those few moments.  A nurse walked up beside and me and told me she had been watching me all night with my mom.  She just held my hand and told me she would be there for me when the time came later today, that she was the nurse that would be handling the process of turning off the machines...  I looked down and started crying.  It was real.  The day had come.  Goodbye or not, ready or not, it was time.  Through the tears she squeezed my hand and said, “It’s going to be ok sweetie.  She is going home today!”

 “Amen,” I said.

                I gathered myself and said my prayer to God.  How do you sum up all of these emotions into one prayer?  God knew my heart.  God, give me the strength to let her go, to let the past animosity go with her.  Give my heart the strength to know I always did my best, even when to mom it wasn’t good enough.  I pray from my heart, Lord, that she knows you.  Give her the peace she needs and let my life be anew.  For the past has dictated my present and future for far too long.  I need peace.  Her spirit died years ago to, but on this day, I say goodbye to the flesh.  I say goodbye to the hope of what could be.  Amen.

                The hallways I had walked for a week now seemed so sad, I was aware of every person walking by me with either a smile for a good outcome, or a broken heart like I carried.  When I got back to the room my aunt, step dad, and her best friend were there waiting.  Those relationships were already strained from years of my mother and me not seeing eye to eye.  It was evident by the way things had been this week.  I had been asked not to allow my husband in the room to be beside me because my mother wouldn’t want him there.  Everyone else, except my step dad, had their spouse there beside them to comfort them through this.  As not to add more drama to an already awful situation, I asked Nate to go on home and that I would be fine.  I know it broke his heart to leave me, but I could deal with this craziness better alone.  I kissed him goodbye, assuring him I would be strong.  He looked into my eyes and told me he knew I would be because it was who I was.

                It was now 9:45, and it was time.  It was all so bizarre to be in a room with these people who were family, but blamed me for my mom’s unhappiness for so many years.  No one ever said they blamed me for anything openly, but when someone tells you that they had wished a better life for her where she was treated with respect by her daughter… well, it’s easy to read between those lines.  How can you respect someone who has a driving force within them to create drama?  To thrive on misery instead of enjoying what changes life can hold for you is no way to live.  Yet, like a string with a weight on the end spinning in the wind, I had been bound up in this for years.  Wound up so tight and twisted, I couldn’t even see how much time it was going to take to unravel the emotion damage.

                In movies, you see a person’s life support switch off and they go quickly and peacefully.  That is not really what happens.  Even though the body had suffered from a stroke and heart attack, it was still relatively strong.  The tubes came out at 10:23… and the waiting began.  I found myself on that rooftop many times throughout that day, seeking a moment alone away from the morbid surroundings in that room.  My faith has taught me not to be sad for the soul passing because they are on their journey home.  No one in my family there shared that understanding.  I continued to pray for peace, understanding and to let go of anger. I must let go of things I cannot change.

                I remembered a few years earlier when my mom’s mother became ill, and I was asked to help take care of her instead of putting her in a facility.  I was with her until the end. My aunt and my mom were so thankful that day that I was there when she passed because they couldn’t go in there.  I know now, God was preparing me for something else.  He was preparing me for this moment.

                It was 5:13, and I stood at the vending machine getting my 100^th can of diet coke for the day.  I was on a strict diet of coke and coffee that day.  I had been up for 39 hours.  My cell phone rang.  It was the ICU nurse from the roof, and she said RUN!  It is time.  Everything went in slow motion.  My body went numb, and I could think was I am going to miss it.  Running up the stairs I began to cry.  I’m not ready yet.  I knew this was coming, but I am not ready.  Everyone was around the bed.  She had almost no pulse.  I sat by her bed, held her hand and said the only thing I could.

                “Mom, I love you and forgive you.  Please forgive me for things you never understood.  Find your peace.  Go home.”

                The monitor showed flat line.  She had gone home.

                Everyone was there surrounding one another, but not one of them came to me.  I sat alone in a chair next to the bed.  My face was down in my hands, but there were no tears.  I counted the lines in the tiles at my feet.  1, 2, 3… if you stare at something while fighting back tears you can see amazing shapes.  All the faces I was seeing were crying.  Faces in anguish.  My gazing was interrupted by a familiar pair of pink tennis shoes I had seen that morning on the roof while looking down and crying.  It was Susan, the nurse that held my hand at the beginning, and she held true to her promise and held my hand at the end.  She didn’t speak, nor did I.  My family didn’t even notice, I was being consoled by a stranger.  She wasn’t a stranger though; she was my angel that day. 

                By the time I stood up to face everyone else, my mom looked so different.  Her beautiful porcelain skin was gray and dull.  Her poor mouth had been put through so much with the tubes and ventilators.  It was hard to see her like that.  My next prayer was for God to remove that image as quickly as possible.  No child wants to see a parent like that.  The nurses asked us to leave while they finished getting her body ready for the crematorium.  The young man who had been the other nurse for the day asked us to come back in when he was finished.  The tears came again.  He had seen me overnight combing her hair and putting the Vaseline on her lips, and he had done the same for me now so I could have a better last memory of mom.  He had placed a single rose in her hand that I had brought her the night before.  He will never know how much that meant to me.

                Everyone left, and I was again alone with her.  I couldn’t leave until I knew her body had been taken to the funeral home.  I called Nate to have him come get me.  My mind was everywhere, and I had failed to let him know it was over and to come get me.  I floated through those hallways where it seemed I had lived an eternity already.  It was the 5 longest days of my life to date.  The sun was setting with fierce colors.  It didn’t seem tranquil like the sunrise that morning.  Harsh reds and oranges were almost burning my eyes.  As I sat at the pickup area waiting for Nate, I just let it all flow over me.  The air felt different.  The world was off.  One of God’s souls had gone home, and I could physically feel her presence being gone.  Part of me died that day too, I think.

                I sat there alone with my thoughts.  I thought about how absolute this moment was.  I would never forget sitting here on this bench.  How many other souls just left this world, I thought.  Does their air feel different?  Do they physically feel the lack of that presence.  Whether someone was a healthy part of your life or not, they were a part of your life.  For better or worse she was chosen to be my mother.  It was the path God had given me.

                I went home that night and was so tired but sleep escaped me.  Years of my life were running through my head.  My mind drifted to the morning in the hospital when my dad and step mom came to visit me.  It is amazing how one person can tie up so many relationships.  My dad had remarried Allison over ten years ago and for me to say I was less than graceful about it is an understatement.  They had every right to be happy and create a loving and healthy marriage together.  I was selfish and holding onto childish behaviors.  Regret was creeping back in.  I thought about the hurtful things mom said to me out of anger, and I had done that to Dad the day before his wedding.  He will never know how that haunts me to this day.  Yet, there they were open arms to love me in my time of need.  Allison is more of a mom to me than I truly deserve.  She could have turned bitter and angry like my mom did all of those years.  Fortunately for me, Allison, whom I proudly call mom today, knew what unconditional love meant.  She knew that somewhere in me, outside of this sick and twisted mess was the real Kelli.  She and dad saw through the drama and knew my heart was going to be able to come through all of this damage.

                I knew as soon as I saw my dad, I would be a wreck.  The tears that I had been holding back around family could not stay in anymore.  I felt like a child again when I hugged my dad.  I felt at home.  Safe.  Forgiven.  Even with everything going on around me, at that moment, I thought to myself, the one person who I truly did wrong with my actions never once turned his back on me.  Not only that, but I was given the chance to have a mother daughter relationship with someone who had nothing to distort or hold against me.  Allison loved me for the person she knew I could be and forgave the person I had been.  My relationship changed with both of them that day.

No excuses

Dear readers... all 3 of you...

  I can't believe my last entry was in August of 2009.  I have let myself down first in this long lapse in writing.  But more importantly, I have not devoted the time I have so strongly encouraged you all to take each day for yourselves.  Wow, my June Cleaver meter is non existent at this point.

 To anyone reading this... 2010 is new for everyone.  2009 was one of the hardest years in my life.  In every way imaginable, it was an uphill battle most days to put one foot in front of the other.  It is easy to let yourself get bogged down with the bad and not see the silver lining in anything.  I am here to tell you today that no matter how far down in that valley you are... there must be a peak or the valley could not exist.  It would be an endless flat landscape of the same ole' thing.  Who wants that?  What joy could you feel at that peak if you had not just pulled out of that desperately low valley.  Why do I say all of this today?

  LIFE IS SHORT!  Each day on this Earth is a blessing!  You can make a difference in a life.  A smile, a hug, a quick phone call... you have the chance to share.  Share your love, your time, your life experience... just share.  Gifts do not have to cost anything.  I learned a valuable lesson recently.  Life is so precious that we need not waste a second worrying about trivial things.  I held a 5 month old baby this week that is going blind.  She was born with this condition and there is nothing the doctors can do to fix it.  In a world where so much is wrong, why something else so sad?  But her mother said something that I will remember for a long time.  She said," Don't be sad... because she is still here.  She is not going anywhere.  She just wont be able to see.  Thats not the worst thing that could happen!  I still have my girl to hold each night.  Some dont have that."

Amen.  It put so much into perspective.  S,o give each day as if you may not get another chance.  Call someone you have lost touch with, pick up the neighbors paper and take it to the door for no reason... just LIVE!  All things through Him are possible.

Cinderella and the downfall of the modern woman

Today I am taking a totally selfish "all about me" moment... so gather round. I took my 5 minutes today to ask God what he wants me to be when I grow up. If I grow up... no wait, if I am 32 do I automatically enter grown up status? When do we know that we are doing what we are supposed to do? I envision the opening scene from Cinderella waking up(hair & make up fully done) to bright sun, a flock of birds flying her gown to her as she sings in perfect pitch to greet the day. For some reason mine always starts with half my hair standing straight up, the other flat and frizzy; i wake up to a gassy dog trying to steal all of my pillows; and my melodic voice is more like Kermit the Frog with a cold... my fairy godmother is out of town most mornings. So if I am doing what God wants me to do, where is my entourage of birds to fetch my clothes?
It all hit me as I was using my custom made bottle of baby butt rinse brought to me by parents of a baby I watch. He is allergic to wipes and most fibers, so I get to ponder life's questions during the 20 minutes it takes me to spray down his rear and use countless cotton balls to clear the mess... do not be jealous! God wants me to be happy with what I have but always strive for more. When baby butt rinse in involved, up is really the only option.
Things are starting to turn around here in the Phillips' house. God has given us gifts that we have prayed for and prayed for, and I appreciate each one. I want to give others a glimpse of what God has given me. I can never fully appreciate things if I compare myself to unrealistic goals. So, as I sit and wait for bibity bobity boo, I am going to enjoy today for what it is. Take your 5 minutes and ask God what He has in store for you. I kept looking for what was down the road from God, that I missed what was right here, right now! So, even if God has put a big bottle of baby butt rinse in your way, just go with it because its what He wants for you right then. Have faith that you are doing these things for a reason. It's a journey, and He is in charge! Blessings and love to all today.

On God's clock.

I find it so relaxing to sit here tonight after a day of several oh so joyous events. I feel like Mr. Roger's coming in with a smile and a warm greeting, taking off his sweater and in a calm voice saying... "Hi, welcome in!" Now, understand, my version may not be exactly what you saw on the show. I am taking off the sweater because a 5 month old projectile vomited on me like some scene from The Exorcist. My calm voice consists of a less than quiet bellow up the stairs that I was soon to punish whomever left the ice cube on the floor that melted into a small lake just big enough for me to slip in, and my "welcome in" is not quite as mellow. Does "Shut that door or the cats will get out!!! See you left it open to long and the cat got out. Get in this house!" count?
Serene I know. You, too, can achieve this harmonious level of calm. Let me tell you how to accomplish this. First, set your alarm 10 minutes later and not give any time for your morning chat with God. Then drink enough coffee to fuel a 747... and put a 2,4, and 7 year old bickering in the background on top of that. The tension is melting away already I can tell. Remember to take everything personally because the 5 month old threw up on you just because he knew you were bored. And the unholy level of foulness that came out of that small beings diaper was just a treat because what better way to say I love you than a diaper that clears a room. Now that's special.
And because I know not one woman out there needs a moment to herself, be sure that one child wakes up right as the others are falling asleep after crying for 20 minutes that the Dora nightgown is dirty.
So, what have we learned today? Well, I know one thing is FOR SURE. When I do not make time in my day for God to speak to me and work through me it is AWFUL. God created everything in this world... including time. We owe Him some every single day without exception. He does not care where you are but He does care that you focus on Him. The rest of your day can be as peaceful as mine was(which, had I given Him time earlier, I wouldn't have been ill prepared for my day) .... So bottom line is this... we are all on God's clock before anyone else's even when there is vomit or poo involved. Trust me, I needed prayer after that today. So, mommas out there grab a loofah, some lemon scented Clorox(because it is the only thing that gets you clean afer a day of kids) and treat yourselves to a cleansing shower. If you haven't talked to God today, please do it now!