It was wonderfully, terribly, joyfully exhausting. And at the end of each day, my husband and I collapsed in our recliners and said, “How’d we ever do this all the time?”
Two of our grandkids, ages five and three, were staying with us for five days while my son and his wife were on a trip.
If you’re a parent or grandparent, I don’t need to explain how caring for tykes can be both wonderful and terrible at the same time.
We romped on playgrounds, painted pictures, walked through the woods, played in mud puddles, built Tinker Toy monster trucks, threw rocks, went to the zoo, watched Disney’s “Frozen” movie over and over and over, read books, played iPad games, went toy shopping, and ate pizza and ice cream.
We even got the sprinkler and plastic pool out—yes, in March—because my granddaughter had packed her Hello Kitty swimsuit and the temps rose above 70 degrees.
It was a grand time in Gram and Pappy’s “Land of Yes.”
And every night, after baths and jammies and stories and drinks and prayers, Joe and I marveled at how, once upon a time when our sons were little, we did this day after day, night after night.
When you’re in those intense parenting years, I guess you get used to it, much like combat soldiers grow accustomed to shells exploding around them day and night. It’s not until after you’re away from it that you realize how crazy hard it really was.
Many things in life are like that, I think.
A few years ago, my father and father-in-law died, our first two grandchildren were born, one of our sons got married, we sold our house, I had two root canals, we moved into a small apartment and started building a house, I had back surgery, surgery to remove three spots of melanoma, and the first of three surgeries on my hip—all within a relatively short span of time.
It was some crazy ride.
If you’d told me ahead of time I’d experience all those intense things in rapid succession, I would’ve said, “Nope. That’s more than I can handle.”
I’m guessing you’ve had stretches like that, too. Times when you’ve put your head down, plowed through, and come up somewhere on the other side wondering, “How’d I do that?”
I don’t know about you, but I have only one answer: “By the grace of God.”
There is simply no other explanation.
I planted one foot in front of the other and prayed for grace to just do the next thing. And I learned something quite profound: If I just keep doing the next thing…and the next thing…and the next, leaning hard on God the whole way, I can do all kinds of things that seem too hard.
My survival manual has only three pages in it.
Page one says, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).
Page two says, “For nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).
And page three reads, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).
It’s all about grace—God’s power doing for us, or helping us do, whatever needs to be done.
As the famous hymn says, “ ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home.”
We may not “feel” the grace of God when life seems like an out-of-control roller coaster ride and we’re hanging on for dear life. But if we ever look back and wonder, “How’d I do that?,” the answer will come, if we have a heart inclined to know the truth.
“My grace,” God will whisper, “is sufficient for you. For My power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)