Grrrrace

OK, Life on the farm has its moments, like all the times people tell me they are going to do their chores, or they did their chores, just like last night I was informed that of course Coco would be separated from Moose late at night so I would be able to get milk this morning.  Imagine my (lack of ) delight to get up extra early and find that Coco had no milk because her son drank it all before I got out there!  And then, it was time to make butter, and since my blender is broken, I attempted to use the Bosch Universal mixing bowl again.  Unsuccessful, again.  I don't know why, but with the blender we had no trouble at all getting the butter to come, but the mixing bowl just made a big, super emulsified mess.  Again. And when I tried to order another part for the blender, every place was out.  And then, feeling great that at least I had 9 loaves of bread rising by 8:30 in the morning, despite no milk or butter, I made an extra big batch of tortillas.  Out of the grain in the bucket that said Hard White Organic Wheat.  That was really Soft Organic Wheat.  That makes great cookies and cake, but not tortillas.  So I just growled and told everybody to eat hard tortillas and then proceeded to make some pretty good biscuits and pie crust out of the the rest of the huge bowl of tortilla dough.  

I was so frustrated by the list of all the things that seemed to be going wrong.  Some things my own darn fault, some, things that others neglected to do.  The kids got the picture pretty quickly, after I told them how much I depended on everyone to do his or her job, how it affected lots of other people(like my milk customers for the day).  Then I sent them out to clean barn and split fire wood.  The world did not crash even though the tortilla orders went unfilled.  We are not going to die for lack of butter.  We'll buy a new cheapo blender and keep trying to make it work.  

A friend to me how she always wished to handle the challenging days with grace, but easier said than done.  I started the day with such good intentions.  Great Bible study time alone in the wee hours.  As soon as the frustrations came my way, I sure did get grumpy.  But there were moments of grace, like seeing ALL the children playing a game of baseball on the front lawn with an old limb of a tree and a ball.  Not organized by a bunch of grownups, but initiated all own their own(do you think they were trying to stay out of grumpy mom's way or what?)  That was sweet.  Not to mention the terrific sunset that accompanied me as I measured out new garden beds.  And when Rose came in to the house crying because the other kids didn't play baseball the way she wanted, and said that she was having a really bad day, I made her laugh as I took out the big ponytail of at least 40 braids that the kids made in my very straight hair the other day and she saw curls where there never are curls.  Then I left everybody to play more baseball with dad in the dark and met a friend in town for a night-time chat.  

Come to think of it, we did have a grace-filled day.  Not perfect, but real.  Our little bumps in the road are annoying, but part of the process.  Our life is probably always going to be full of broken machines, imperfect people, health issues, and occasionally grumpy moms.  Thank you God for GRACE, baseball, sunsets and curls.