{Technically this was prompted by Five Minute Friday two Fridays ago …. aaaannnd I am just now writing it.} 

We have had some grief tinged joy these past few weeks. We are all a little grey around the edges here … a filtered snapshot of Army life with the hard, dark things bleeding toward the center.

Two weeks and change ago, I said out loud, “I don’t want to be an Army wife today.” Too much sadness {for others}. Too much loss, too many tears, too much waiting, too much fear.

Two days later, after another awful, awful day, I laid prostrate on a dirty linoleum floor and cried. I poured out big, ugly, heaving, loud, shoulder shaking sobs. I sat alone and I wept over the last four months so I could soldier through the next five.

I’m sick of doing things that make my kids cry. We are tired. We are sad.

BUT.

James says to count it all joy in the trials.

Ecclesiastes says {and a new friend reminded me} God designs us for the place we are … and it is good. I have learned a much needed lesson in contentment this week … thanks to aforementioned friend. It wasn’t dramatic, or emotional – just a quiet recognition of my discontent in this place and an unexpected eyes wide open inhaling of the blessings that come along with the hard.

I am counting it all joy. All of it. 

So I count the ways I see my daughter, and her big, brave, beautiful empathetic heart. And oh there are so many. She exhibits a surprising grace under pressure that makes ME steady. She is such a gift, my girl who teaches me to see and remember the easily missed, the marginalized. She with an artist’s eye and a flair for color that makes my heart sing. 

I count the Wee Man snuggles in his circus tent and his bossy little voice instructing me exactly where to place my arm for maximum closeness.  His matter of fact little voice when he says, “Mom? You are a good maker.” His first soccer lesson, a game I love and played for years. A way to share my joy with my boy.

And Second Son, who peers around my shoulder and breaks into a huge grin when he catches my eye. Who just learned to wave and reaches his chubby paws out to me in concert with his cheek splitting smiles. He is a sweet salve to old but still raw-ish wounds.

And I am drinking deep from the well of community I have discovered here. A source of renewal I almost missed in my secret search for a more familiar, perhaps flashier pool.

Also. SPRING. It’s here. And I am reveling in new life, in resurrection. In THE resurrection.

I count, and I count, and I count. And I lay my burdens down, because this counting, it makes me free. And friends? Right here in the land of no sleep, ER trips, feverish babies, dirty house, fear-battles, emotional exhaustion, and parenting wars … I am content.  Sounds crazy, right. 

Count it all joy.

{Also, three of ten rooms in my house are clean, and that is three more than what I started with last week. Praise God for small mercies!} 

~M.