I Cooked Dinner Tonight

The day began with fussiness and not wanting to be put down--at all. After a shower, Alice fell asleep on the bathroom floor--at 9:30 in the morning. The child who normally struggles to take one nap ended up taking three (the other two were taken on me) and not a whole lot got done around the house. I thought about what to do for dinner. Because of where we live and having a little one and Jay having a long drive from work, getting takeout or going out to eat is not an easy task. I took a mental inventory of pizzas and corndogs in the freezer--after all, how am I supposed to get all of this done?

Then I read this post by Liz Foss and reconsidered.

God doesn't call us to wallow in our suffering. He doesn't want us hoist our crosses upon the shoulders of the people around us. The sleepless night is my cross. It's not my husband's cross. If I stomp around the kitchen, whining about how tired I am, I foist that cross onto someone else's shoulders. If I "fake" it, and smile instead and force myself to take even more care with breakfast, I bless someone. The thing about choosing joy, even when we don't feel joy? Usually, we end up feeling it too. It's not dishonest. It's discipline.

So I cooked dinner. Yes, it was only Chicken Helper (Thank you, Reasor's for your 10 for 10 sale a couple of weeks ago!) and yes, the chips were about to go stale, but it was a warm meal eaten together on real dishes.

He works hard for us. He deserves it. Really, he deserves better than Chicken Helper (and it was the Mexican variety, which I don't think he is crazy about), but this is real life, and even on the days when the children are feeling fine and are well behaved, it's not gourmet cuisine around here.

Tonight I will try to get to bed a little earlier and wake up with a smile, even if I don't especially feel like it. By lunchtime, I should be feeling it for real.

*No, my husband would not care if we ate frozen pizza (well, I would heat it up) because the baby was sick. He wouldn't care if we ate frozen pizza because the baby wasn't sick. I like to save the pizzas for emergencies, though. Or for the weekends, because I am pretty much cooked out by Saturday.

**The picture above is from the ribbon cutting ceremony for Jay's new office--another blog post that never made it out of my head.