The Miracle of Dry Towels

Yesterday was a day of highs and lows.

The Lows:

• I am very pregnant. I have felt incredibly good for the majority of this pregnancy (thank you JESUS!) but I am beginning to feel every minute of the 38 weeks I have carried this child. I am also feeling the pressure of 3 kids under 4 who very much need my love and attention right now. I want to be gracious and fun right now. I want to fill every minute of these last days (weeks?) with laughing and playing and wrestling and enjoying each other's company, because adding a 6th person to our brood will change the way this mama can play for awhile. But instead of all these good things, I spent most of yesterday focused on crossing off MY list. MY nesting. MY need to get stuff done before birth day. I spent most of yesterday grumpy.
• I dropped the baby monitor earlier this week and the screen went dead. We do not have the time or the money to replace our entire 3 camera baby monitor system.
• Daniel is feverishly working to get the Price Hill house finished before birth day so that he can be home and present when we have another child. Except for our Sabbath day, he is rarely home.
• We bought appliances for the Price Hill house and decided to upgrade our own appliances in the process. Which means Daniel also has a list of jobs to accomplish here at home in order to get all of the appliances fully installed. I have 2 weeks worth of laundry to do and the dryer is not yet hooked up.
• I am more and more nervous about the possibility of going into labor when Daniel is not home. This is becoming a very real fear...

The Highs:

• Despite the guilt of working on my list, I got a lot done yesterday and that just plain feels good!
• I put out a plea on Facebook for help with the monitor and a friend from church responded. He took it home on Wednesday and got it working again! His initial attempts failed and he didn't think it could be saved but I prayed! I believed! I asked several trusted prayer warriors to pray too! His wife dropped off the monitor this morning, COMPLETELY restored! It works perfectly again.
• During the monitor saga, my mom and my mother-in-love decided to pool their resources and buy us a new monitor system, should the old one be truly dead. If you have never priced video monitor systems, they are NOT cheap. I felt very cared for that they were willing to buy such an EXPENSIVE gift. And I'm grateful that now they don't have to!
• Daniel was quite productive last night and the kitchen at the Price Hill house is even closer to being finished! Once the kitchen is the done, the remaining projects are fairly small.
• I realized that not having a working dryer is only a problem in the winter. In September, why not line dry the clothes? I already have clothes line and pins so outside I went. I strung up my line, strung up the wet clothes and an hour later- I had clean, dry sheets! Plus I got to enjoy the bonus of having sun dried clothes (there's something very domestic feeling about that for me...)

So despite the lows, I'm grateful to call out the highs. But the day doesn't end there. It actually ends with a miracle. I truly think God showed up in a crazy way to show me that He sees me.

Last night I had to teach to 2 voice lessons. I loaded up the kids and off we went to go teach. The kids had done such a good job while I taught I decided to treat them to Skyline for dinner. While we were sitting in the restaurant, I noticed it seemed to be getting pretty dark outside, despite the fact that it wasn't all that late. Then I checked the radar. Rain. Lots of rain. And I had laundry proudly waving in the yard, soaking up all the September heat.  Now, if you have young kids, you know there is no hurrying them through a meal that they actually like. These kids were going to eat every last scrap of cheese from Skyline and would not be hurried. I could do nothing but pray the rain stayed away long enough for us to get home. As we left the restaurant it had already begun to rain and I knew my clean, dry laundry was no more. Sigh. 

We pulled in to the rain soaked driveway and I felt my grumpiness level shoot through the roof. Why did this season have to be so hard? Why did Daniel have to choose THIS year to buy and fix up a house? Why couldn't God make this time easier? Didn't He see how HARD all of this has been on me? I was serving up all of the 'whining whys' God detests and none of the praise He actually deserves. I got the kids in the house and went to check on the status of the laundry. As I stepped off the walkway onto the grass, it dawned on me that the walkway was dry. The grass was also dry. I looked around me. Our driveway was wet. Our neighbor's driveway was wet. The street was wet. Our porch was wet. But our walkway and our lawn was dry... As I reached out the see how soaked the towels were, my hand grabbed dry terrycloth. Friends, the towels were completely dry. Dry as could be. I GLEEFULLY got the laundry off the line and hustled inside just as the heavens opened back up to dump more rain on the thirsty grass.

In that simple discovery of dry towels, I felt so loved-- so SEEN by our good & gracious Father. He gave me a great gift and a gentle reminder that He's present for me. He sees what Daniel & I are doing, how we choose to live our lives and raise our children and he's blessing us. He's given us another arrow for our quiver and He is just so good. He can be nothing but good.