Pleasant Valley Saturday

It was a really long day today. I woke up at 5:30 in a crazy panic. My to-do list was a mile long. I had a lot of different places to be.

I did not want to get out of bed and do *any* of the things. I wanted to stay in bed, pull the covers over my head and hang out under there until Sunday.

What I did instead, though, was take some action.

I sent out a couple of messages to trusted friends, asking them to pray for me. I tried to convey how I was feeling.

Then I started asking how I could be praying for people. I reached out to people to see how they were. I did everything I could to get out of myself.

I embarked on the day, though I was groggy and felt downtrodden.

I headed out to Palatine to pay my respects to a friend who passed this week. As I was standing in the receiving line, I chatted with a friend, remembering her. She was someone who radiated warmth everywhere she went.

She fought cancer and lost the battle. It was hard to see her family, but I knew that their faith was carrying them. I will miss her, but I am so grateful that she is no longer suffering.

I came back from Palatine and had to run errands with the kids. Bekah has her first sleepover tonight. She could be mistaken for a first-born, in that she is fastidious and driven. She has been packed for the sleepover since Tuesday.

She spent an afternoon the other day with the birthday girl, reviewing the party agenda, sleeping arrangements and timeline. She has been a nervous wreck, worried that she wasn't going to have time to get a present and worried that she would be late (this has become a common concern for her).

So we headed to Target after checking on my parents' dogs. Last year, she got her friend and herself a matching t-shirt. This year, she wanted to do the same thing. Money continues to be an issue, so I was concerned about how it was going to all work out.

I needn't have worried.

She received a Target gift card for her birthday. We had gone to Target a couple of months back. There was nothing that really spoke to her. She held onto it, though, and even accumulated some money by doing chores and odd jobs.

She knew what she wanted to get. We went to the t-shirt racks, she got a shirt for her and a shirt for her friend. She also said she wanted to get her friend a squishy. We headed back to the toy department, where she found the right one.

We went to check out and she handed the cashier the gift card. She didn't complain that she couldn't spend the money on herself. She didn't seem at all bummed.

Jeremy recently went to the zoo with NISRA. He had 78 cents leftover from the money he had taken to the zoo. He used most of it to buy presents for him and the rest of his siblings. All through Target, he kept offering his 78 cents to his sister.

By the time we got back from Target, we had an hour left before Bekah had to be at Urban Air. At 3:30, I told Brian to take her before I lost my mind. She was so excited that I swear she was levitating.

I sat for a while and crocheted, then headed back to my parents' house. I had to mow the lawn and while I did that, Jeremy helped me take care of the dogs. He had been harassing me about bathing Tucker, the Westie. I kept trying to push it off because I was tired, but once Jeremy locks onto an idea, there's no wiggling free from it.

I left there and walked Tony, the enormous giant Schnauzer, for another hour.

Over the course of the day, I found out how to pray for people and I prayed for them. I made dinner (chili).

I am still not feeling great about myself. I don't say that to be maudlin or attract attention. I say it to demonstrate that I didn't let my feelings dictate what I do or don't do. I don't do it every day. Sometimes, I stay in bed and wallow. And that's okay, too.

There's a prayer that I heard this morning. I've heard it before. I've tried to memorize it to no avail. I will have to try harder because I think it's an important one.

St. Francis Prayer
Lord, make me an instrument of they peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O divine master, grant that I may
not so much seek to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand
to be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
It is by pardoning that we are pardoned
And it's in dying that we are born into eternal life.
Amen

I do my best to live this out, even if I can't say it by memory yet.

Tomorrow promises to be a thousand times less busy than today was. I watched and episode of "When They See Us" on Netflix. Done very well, but not something my heart can take as a binge. So I'm laughing along with Ellen DeGeneres and her audience and am soon headed off to bed.

(As an aside, I checked out books from the library today. Cue the post six months from now with me complaining about how I can never return books on time.)