Here’s one from the 2009 archives. I need this one right about now because the blasted time change has thwarted my early morning quiet time, and my little larks are popping out of bed way too early.
“Try interrupting the meditations of someone who is very attached to her spiritual exercises and you will see her upset, flustered, taken aback. A person who has true freedom will leave her prayer, unruffled, gracious toward the person who has unexpectedly disturbed her, for to here it’s all the same – serving God by meditating or serving Him by responding to her neighbor. Both are the will of God, but helping the neighbor is necessary at that particular moment.”
-St. Francis de Sales
The summer sun is just beginning to seep through the blinds. The baby sleeps soundly beside me. My husband has already left for work. Amazingly, the older girls are still asleep in bed together, all legs and elbows, intertwined in a den of sheets.
I slip downstairs and make some coffee. I pull out my Bible and my prayer journal and settle myself down at the kitchen table. My heart is still and so is my home. I begin to pray. “Lord, I offer everything…”
I hear a baby whimper softly over the monitor. Then silence. I utter a quick prayer of thanksgiving.
Then I begin again. “Lord…”
“Mommy?”
I jump, startled to find my toddler standing in the living room.
“I hungee,” she says.
I hold back my sigh, remembering the words of St. Francis that I’d, only days before, stumbled across in a book about saints.
This is my daily bread: Interrupted prayers, unfinished sentences and essays, cold cups of coffee.
A sigh does slip out, but only softly, gently, and then I smile, opening my arms wide. My child climbs on my lap and nestles close. “I hungee,” she repeats.
I leave my prayer journal and Bible behind to make her breakfast. As I fill my child’s sippy cup with milk, I ask that God will me fill me up, too, and that he will perfect my intentions, that he will help me make my life a hymn of love to him, and that I will allow the many interruptions I have on any given day to help me to grow in patience and holiness.
Don’t miss another interruption to your day. Subscribe to Momopoly.
Just as great of a reminder now as when I first read it :)
Oh I needed this too! I have been struggling greatly of late to embrace those interruptions. I feel so frayed at the edges, I just want to cling to the thin shreds of quiet. So much harder to bow my will and whisper: Not my will but thine be done. My head knows that only there will I find true peace but my stubborn heart is still learning.
This is absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for posting this again (I didn't have the pleasure of reading it the first time, so I'm grateful for the repost!). This is so often my morning and I have never, ever thought of it this way. bless you.