and I am not angry

I am slapping on sunscreen

starting the dishwasher

answering phone calls

cleaning up bedding from my overnighters

dashing out the door to early morning swimming lessons

My kids are ready (remember when you were a kid and didn't have a blessed thing to do?), shouting from the van in good natured tones:

Mom, we're going to be late!

I feel that squeezing, burning frustration rise in me.  It doesn't matter that I've been up since the crack of dawn, I still have people shouting that I'm late!

I am ready. I grab Eli.  Oh, he needs to be changed.  I walk run over to my diaper bag and start digging in it for the necessary paraphanalia.  But before I can get to that stsuff, I have to remove my favorite Bible, a beat up leather NIV, from the top.

I recognize the irony of my priorities as I dump God's Word on the table and I stop.

Lord. . . I don't have time to sit down and study today.  It's going to be a flip-open-and-read-the-first-verse-my-eyes-land-on kind of day, but I really do want to hear from You.  You're important to me.

Standing, still holding my (admittedly peeeuuuuueeee) son, ignoring the calls of my human event reminders, I open my Bible to Isaiah 27 and start reading at verse 2:

In that day --

Sing about a fruitful vineyard:

I, the Lord, watch over it;

like I watch over my kids

I water it continually

hear, hear

I guard it day and night

2 am mommy calls

so that no one may harm it

always with their best interest in mind.

Yes, Lord, this is how I feel!  You do this, too?  This continual care for needy ones? And You sing about it?

I let this thought wash over me and then let my eyes scan to the next line. 

Thunder from Heaven for Hayley on a Monday morning:

I am not angry.

He does all of this care, this protecting, this loving guardianship. . . and He is not angry.  I feel enlightened and amazed at how much I needed this encouragement from God. 

I continue the continuum. . .

I am not angry.

He is not angry.

He is not exasperated.

He is not faint and weary.

He is God and He has every right to be angry with these ungrateful beings He calls children. 

But He is not. 

And I am so thankful.

May I pass on the grace and lack of anger to my children.