You have your hands full

It’s Plank Pullin’ time! The one day a week that we strongly resolve to ignore the multitude of specks and sawdust around us and pull one bona fide plank from our own eye. Matthew 7:3-5, style.

If I had a dollar for every single time I hear that, I'd have quite the retirement fund. Yes, I hear that a lot. When I'm at the grocery store, two kids walking alongside me, one hanging off the cart, the baby in her infant car seat taking up the entire bottom of the basket. I hear that at the post office, when I have all three boys, standing outside where the post office boxes are, and the baby is on my hip, because our post office is tiny-and better them standing there looking at boxes than them playing with the line markers.

I even heard it on the soccer field yesterday, as I trudged through 98 degree heat with three wound up boys, and a sweaty baby, looking for a soccer coach that was nowhere to be found (but was at another site). My kids were not obnoxious or rude, they were well behaved-its not the most pleasant experience to think you're going to play soccer and meet your team, only to find out you're not getting to play because we had the wrong information. Yet it took time, patience on my part, and we made it through. And then it came, "You have your hands full." No, that's not why I was irritated-it was because of miscommunication-yet in the grand scheme of life, it was not a huge deal, we got over it. Its not worth sweating about-literally and figuratively, this is going to happen. Its all how you handle it-and I knew I had four sets of eyes on me watching as I handled it.

It's the "You have your hands full." remark that made me think "Really, you don't think I know that?" I simply said, "Yes, and I wouldn't change it for anything, its a lot of fun." I mean it. Although the noise is loud sometimes, the rare bits of silence at my home is deafening. Although the laundry piles up quickly, we do one load a day (or at least make an effort to) so it doesn't get out of hand-yet if and when it does, it gets put away quickly with five sets of hands to help. Although the food bill grows by the month, no one goes hungry. Although I contemplate just how we're going to pay for soccer, school pictures, life in general times four, my parents did it. Many parents do it. We're not made of money, yet we never went without, and neither will our children. We will make it work.

What we have is a lot of fun. There is always someone to play with, someone to read to, some adventure waiting. I may sit and wonder what adventure will happen for me when all my children are in school/preschool, yet I am enjoying what I have now. I may have my hands full, but at the end of the day, my home is full with all the babies I wanted to have, and therefore my heart is full. There's no better way to be.