It’s a Privilege

There was a saying I heard throughout my childhood from the time my grandparents lived with us to leaving the house. “It’s a privilege.” It’s a saying my grandpa used to tell my mom when she was sick and he would take care of her. She’d say “I’m sorry Dad, that I threw up all over” or something to that effect, and he would say “Mary, It’s a privilege to take care of you.” It’s a saying my mom continued to say whenever I felt bad that I needed her for something that wasn’t so fun for her, such as changing the sheets in the middle of the night, or holding my hair as I lean over the toilet.

“It’s a Privilege.”

That saying came to mind last night. I had a bad headache last night, and fortunately took medication before it got out of hand, but forgot to take it again before I went to bed. So at 4:30 am, I woke up with a splitting headache, and even the smallest sounds in our quiet house made my head throb. So I pulled myself out of bed and took some medicine again, and crawled back in bed, and laid there until the meds kicked in and let me go back to sleep.

About a half hour into my new sleep, Elias woke up. It was so close to his wake up time, but still to early, so I thought I’d try to get him to go back to sleep since he didn’t seem ready to wake up for the day yet anyway, and it would fit into our schedule this morning if he slept in late instead of taking his morning nap.

So I changed his diaper, which is normally all he needs, and laid him back down. He just screamed. Afraid that he’d wake up everyone else during this dangerously close to wake up time in the early early morning, causing everyone (myself probably the most) to have a cranky day. So I picked him up again, and he just snuggled as close to me as he could. I snuggled him for a few more minutes, and then tried again. Screaming again. So I picked him up. I could not have him wake up the other kids, but it was obvious that neither he or I had enough sleep yet.

So I took him downstairs and warmed up some milk, and sat in front of the fireplace in the living room and snuggled him as he gulped it down.

I was annoyed because he doesn’t normally get a bottle at night, and it just turns what could have been a zombie-like trance of changing his diaper and going back to bed into an all out awake awareness that I had to be fully awake again before headed back to bed. I know…sob sob…poor me. But with just around 5 hours of sleep under my belt for the night, I was annoyed.

“It’s a privilege” came to mind. I looked in my son’s eyes in the firelight, and the way he wanted to be as close to me as humanly possible. How could I be annoyed that I was awake for such a moment as this? How could I be angry that it was me who had to get up, or angry that he would not go back down after getting his diaper changed. I get to feed him a bottle in the middle of the night! I am privileged to do it.

It was so appropriate that this week at my Bible study, we were talking about God’s multiple references to children as blessings in the Psalms of accent. Let’s be honest, though. Sometimes, though, children don’t feel like blessings. They feel like work. Well, that’s usually because children are work…and a lot of it! I mean, no one can deny the truth of children being blessings, but we don’t always think of them being blessings. It lead us to a discussion on what other things we see as “work” but God gave them to us as “blessings.”

It made me think, that the fine line difference between “work” and “blessing” is often our attitude. Think of all the blessings that we miss out on because we just see them as more work.

So that’s my deep thought for the morning, and something for you all to chew on. That’s also my big news for the morning: I got up in the middle of the night when I’ve gotten used to sleeping. Now I need to pull my 3 kids together, and runs a ton of errands with them, and as I unbuckle and rebuckle carseat straps 83 times, remind them at every stop to not touch the candy at the check out, to use inside voices, to tell them not to run up and down the store aisles, and to answer the 3,451 questions that they will have for me along the way, I will try to recite to myself:

“It’s a Privilege.”

Because that is the truth.