Meditations Of A Stay At Home Mom: Take Up Your Cross

This is a blog that I follow from time to time.  I enjoy reading Colleen's thoughts, because her life seems to reflect my own in so many ways.  Her post today is simply brilliant.  I wanted to share it here, because I needed to read this as much as I need to practice it.

Meditations Of A Stay At Home Mom: Take Up Your Cross: When he throws a book in anger because he doesn’t understand or because he simply doesn’t want to work and I so badly desire to just react to his poor behavior and tell him what I really think of him, I must remember the invitation:

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

When the toddler is on a rampage, turning over pint-sized chairs and pulling books from the shelves because we’ve been too long in the learning room and I feel my blood begin to boil, I must remember the invitation:

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

When I enter the kitchen and I see what they’ve left—the uneaten food, the spilled milk, the uncleared plates and crumbs—and I want to bark at them to ‘CLEAN IT UP ALREADY!’, I must remember the invitation:

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

When it’s quiet time and I’ve doled out instructions to keep silent so the little ones can rest and so I might have a moment of peace myself and still they carry on with games too loud or interrupt me 1001 times, I must remember the invitation:

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

When the baby is screaming that annoying scream while someone continuously bangs on the table and another runs in crying with hurt feelings, I must remember the invitation:

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

When the laundry has over run me –again—and I can’t decipher the clean from the dirty pile and I have no clue exactly when it will all get folded and put away, I must remember the invitation:

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

When it’s dinner time and five cranky, hungry people crowd my personal space, asking me questions about what we’re eating and when it will be ready and I so desperately want to call it quits and escape into a hot bath, I must remember the invitation:

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

When it’s time for bath and books and prayers and bed and someone wanders down the stairs with just one more request, I must remember the invitation:

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

And when day has faded into night and I feel the tiredness in my bones and I drag my sluggish body up the stairs, I must not skip prayers and visiting with John but I must remember the invitation:

“If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me.”

I will not die the death of a martyr, hung upside down on a cross for all to see.  But if I accept his invitation, I will most certainly die from a cross.  My death will be from thousands of little crosses hand carved daily just for me, invitations to nail myself—my pride and my vanity, my haughtiness and impatience, my selfishness and my ego, my dreams and hopes, my comfort and my plans to a piece of wood and drag them to the altar for Him.