From Miffed To Meek At Midnight

Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 9:44 pm

It was sometime in the middle of the night last night when I awoke to my dear husbands dog acting strange. I got up to let him out thinking that maybe he had to go when I smelled a stench that made my stomach turn. In the middle of the night my dear husbands dog decided to defecate all over our carpet. Not only that, but he had left a nice puddle of pee as well. I was angry and actually thought of leaving it for my husband in the morning. That was not a good plan I decided and in all my frustration I picked up the clumps then lifted up the carpet cleaner to carry it to the mess. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I had to clean the carpet in the middle of the night, the last person who used the carpet cleaner left the waste container full and the entire thing dumped onto the carpet when I lifted the cleaner. Now, not only did the house stink of poo, but it also stank of old, nasty, carpet cleaner waste. The odor was overwhelming.

I was the SEETHING family martyr. I was the only one in our family of 8 who was working to clean the stinky mess up. I started the carpet cleaner and realized that it was out of cleaner (we run it over the carpet a lot and usually keep it full of cleaner all the time). Off to search for cleaner I went. It was useless, we were out. I ended up using an all purpose cleaner and in my anger I hoped that the very loud carpet cleaner would wake up my husband. Not only did the obnoxiously loud machine not wake him up, but it didn’t wake anybody up. Almost exhausted to tears, I asked God “why me, why now, in the middle of the night, when I have a 4 month old baby to feed and a house full of chores tomorrow?”. His answer was that he wanted me to talk with him, lean on him, and not fuss about the mess anymore – my frustration was getting in the way of our time together. I immediately felt guilty for my little temper tantrum and was glad that I hadn’t disturbed my sweet husband who had to be up at 4:30 to get to work in the morning. I can only give thanks to God for that because the cleaner is LOUD.

I took quite a while to get the carpet clean – remember, I also had that stinky ‘old cleaner’ spot to take care of. By the time I finished up the chore I was wide awake. It took another hour for me to fall asleep. I was no longer upset about it though, I was actually thankful for the opportunity to take care of the issue because I know Ryan wouldn’t have woken me up to do it even if it made him late for work. I am grateful that I found it first. What a blessing.

It was such a different feeling, when I decided to clean the mess up FOR my family, instead of doing it BECAUSE of my family (I call the latter martyrdom – dying for my cause).

My family is a gift – who knows what tomorrow will bring. For today, God has taught me that doing for them is something I GET to do. It is my ministry. I want to be good at it.

“busy mom” art compliments of Fun Draw