12-26-10 Rough

…yeah, I was up most of the night with various degrees of painful stomach cramping/vomiting. Didn’t sleep much. So Dad and the kids went to church without me. There was no alternative, as I felt…well, pretty rough…but I must confess it was very difficult to hear them all getting ready for church and I was laying there feeling awful. I am an absolute wimp when it comes to pain, but the pain of my stomach was eclipsed by my longing to be going with everyone else.  So many times I’ve missed church due to sick children, and I’ve always embraced it as part of motherhood, but this - – they are all healthy on a Sunday, and I’m not – - this is kind of hard. When they sang a song for me before they left, I about lost it – Jewel picked her favorite song, Where The Roses Never Fade. Ok, so I really don’t think I’m on my deathbed quite yet, and that made me smile, but that’s about the only nugget I could find at that point. Nuggets were kind of hard to find today. I dozed through most of the morning service – I know Glen preached again but I wasn’t very focused so missed much of what he said. Before afternoon church started, I caught up on a couple of blogs that we enjoy – – and was encouraged that Mary was so upbeat even though her children and husband have been and were still sick yesterday, Christmas Day. I even left her a comment to that end… which is why I felt doubly frustrated with myself when afternoon singing started at church. Okay, well, here’s some more background to this day: for the last three years, Kaiser Christmas has been the same night as Rinkenberger, so quite obviously we’ve missed Rinkenberger Christmas for three years.  This year, Grandma Rink ran her dates by me before she set the date for certain, so we could be sure and be there. It was so so kind of her and I appreciated it greatly and was greatly looking forward to again being at Rink Christmas and catching up with family again. So… obviously that’s not going to happen, and I am so disappointed about that but powerless to do anything about it. I know we always say or think Lord willing, but when it comes right down to it it’s not always easy to submit to His will when we want our will so badly. But I was doing ok with it, figuring God knows I didn’t need to be at Rink Christmas again this year, no matter how much I thought I needed to be. Then I listened to church online and they sang There Were Shepherds and it was so beautiful – and we didn’t sing it yesterday on Christmas Day when I WAS there, so now when I’m sick at home they sang it, and that’s a highlight of the Christmas season for me, to sing that specific song which we ONLY sing at this time of year, obviously. I lost it; I’m ashamed to admit I cried like a baby. Okay, well, so I was very tired too, and extremely disappointed and thus highly emotional anyway with the way the day was turning out, but talk about salt in an open wound – I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be learning from this, but I hope I’m learning something.  I did feel better after that, so it wasn’t entirely a waste, but still, I feel kind of silly about it.  I mean, come on, it’s just a flu bug (rather, a viral gastro something or other); it’s not like it’s cancer or something really worth crying over….

The Slough of Self-Pity is difficult to escape, but I’m pretty determined, so I took a couple pictures of the absolutely gorgeous day outside, trying not to think about the fact that I wouldn’t be going for a walk in it, let alone sledding…

Curt read in Proverbs, but in the midst of sopping up all my tears, I missed when he said the chapter. Ok, I’m really searching hard here, but I was encouraged that I could pull up my faithful KJV Bible online, enter the last verse he read, and almost immediately know he was reading in chapter 24. He had just started the second reading, in Philippians I think, when Rascal started going nuts because a car pulled in the driveway. What a great watchdog. Anyway, it was 2 teen drivers, one of whom confessed that he hit the ditch coming down the hill south of the house and broke our fence there. Now what a dilemma. Do I walk down there and keep the steers in? Ouch. Or trust that the boys’ assessment was accurate, that the top and bottom wires were still connected but loose? Do I bother Dad at church? What if the steers get out and are halfway to Mackinaw by the time everyone gets home?? What do I do? Dad didn’t have his phone, so I texted Levi and Jesse, and needless to say didn’t learn much from Curt or Glen during the afternoon service. To say I was stressed was putting it mildly. And my boys were texting during church – observers probably thought they were terrible, and it was my fault – anyway, I was a bit upset by it all. I know, I know, it’s NOT that big of a deal, but I was at a point where molehills looked like mountains. Pathetic, huh?

So that was my day. Dad and the kids got home; he and the boys immediately went out to do chores and fix the fence, and Tori managed things in here. I was banished back to my room in the hopes of preventing the spreading of this nasty little thing I’ve got. And there I was ALL AFTERNOON and ALL EVENING.  Sipping on hot tea and chicken bouillon, with nothing to do except read and rest, I should have been happy as a lark, right?  Not hardly. I was glad to hear lots of laughing and fun going on in the rest of the house, and with continuing cramps and some diarrhea too, I knew I didn’t want to be out there, but I still did – minus the cramps, of course. So the time passed, with occasional visits from Dad, ASK, and the kids, from a distance of course, and I got caught up on some reading which was good, and by 8:00 I was asleep.  From later reports I heard that the rest of the house settled down soon then too.

And I’m very thankful that THIS TOO SHALL PASS (like Grandpa Steiner often says) and that I have otherwise very good health!!!!!!

And that’s it.