return a blessing with a curse...

is satan's motto i think. man, has this week been trying! and it shouldn't be... i mean, we were so blessed this weekend with new floors for the downstairs and grayson's room, and we've just been showered with blessings! i think i was expecting the best week ever, clear skin and no itching, and just everything to go well. but man, it hasn't. monday was awful. it was the first day of no breastfeeding grayson at all, and man that can mess your hormones up. i was seriously in a comatose depressive state all day long. just feeling guilty, which is dumb, for stopping with the breastmilk a month earlier than i had planned. how dumb! some people can't even breastfeed at all because their milk won't come in, their kiddo won't latch or rips them apart when they do latch, or they just don't want to which is SO fine by the way. but anyway, grayson was still itchy of course. its not like laminate flooring is an overnight complete cure. so the day was bad, and when kenny got home, i just collapsed on the couch for awhile with my sweet husband asking "whats wrong" 4 billion times, and all i could say was "hormones and i don't know." around 7:30 we went up to give the kids baths, and while i was picking out grayson's pj's before bath time (are they tight enough? can he get the pants off? can he get his arm out of this neck hole? its a chore...), he was playing next to me. he crawled towards the stairs (where our gate had not yet been put back up) and sat there staring at them as if they were calling his name. i said "no sir" and went to go get him away from the stairs, and he DARTED full speed ahead and took a flying leap off the step and continued to roll all the way down to the landing. i ran screaming, picked him up, was shaking so bad and just sobbing that i had just let him do that! kenny kept reassuring me that he was fine, and it was ok. (he also got a carpet burn on his face and head, we all know how good that is for him). i could barely hold him i was shaking so bad, but 10 minutes later he was ready for a bath and laughing at his sister, while i was still paralyzed with fear. at one point, i was back by the laundry room, trying again to pick out his pj's from a laundry pile, and aislyn came up to me. she brought me a toy to play with and when it made noise she would go "oh, fun mommy! this make you feel better? its ok mommy, don't twy (cry)! baby grayson's ok, daddy's ok, i'm ok, and you're ok!" she proceeded to recap the events saying "and baby fall down stairs, and daddy run and baby and mommy twying but its ok, cuz... MORNING!!!" and i said, through tears and a fake 'mommy's ok' smile on my face, "aislyn, what comes in the morning?" she thought about it a moment, and replied with both arms in the air, "JESUS!" wow. profound. yet again. she's right. Jesus always comes in the morning for a new day. truth is, He never left. and yet , the next morning came with Jesus and a head to toe rash on grayson from a new soap kenny and i had tried the evening before. oh, and a broken down car. and yet Jesus is still the same right? i know that He is. i read that recently in a mother's blog about her sweet baby girl who was born with a condition that only allowed her two hours of life with her mommy and daddy and then she went to be with Jesus. the mom writes that at the ultrasound where they told her that something was very wrong with her sweet audrey, that all she could physically do or say was "Jesus is still the same, no matter what." isn't that the truth? our circumstances change, but our Jesus does not. but we fight it. we fight to believe that He hasn't changed. i was not convinced of it earlier this week. i was letting the circumstances get the best of me, and still am for the most part i think, but i do know the truth. so while each day brings new hardships in our lives, Jesus remains. He remains our Healer, our Protector, our Provider, our Peace, our Comfort, our JOY. that's one i should focus on, JOY. i so easily let satan steal my joy sometimes. that brings me to the title of this post. as i learn what it means to return a blessing for a curse, i have realized that satan does the opposite. he returns blessings WITH curses! not that satan gave my son a rash, i did that just fine ALL by myself. but he messes with our heads and when our circumstances change and appear to be going downhill, he tells us that joy is no longer within our grasp. but it is. i think now i need to really figure out what that means. its hard to have joy when ALL you freaking do all day long is hold your son to keep him from scratching until he bleeds. (he got an arm out last night and tore up his hand by biting chunks out of the top of it and his pointer finger, it looks so awful today- when i put him down for a nap, i noticed that his sheets and both blankies were blood stained. neat). its HARD to have joy, man, when you get so caught up in that! every time i don't hear him crawling or babbling or rolling a car across his new itch free floor, i know that he is scratching skin off. so i go find him and rescue him. this is about an every 4 to 5 minute occurrence as of late. my son might be gaining alot of weight here pretty quick because i've learned that snacks take his mind off of it if only for a moment!! listen to me, i sound like its the end of the world when there are people EVERYWHERE dealing with so so much worse!! i don't mean to sound that way really. but i do think that God teaches me as i write, so i would like to continue without judgement that i'm being ridiculous. i KNOW that in someone's eyes, i am being ridiculous. because my kid does not have cancer, and my kids are alive and well. but like i said, each person's issues are just that...each person's issues. so mine really are small, but God does teach me through them. when did this post become a novel? gees. so, if anyone has any advice on keeping hold of your joy, let me know. :) i would love to hear it. and by the way, our new floors are STILL amazing. again, thank you. we love them. grayson loves them. he loves that his cars roll so easily across them! and i think he'd be less itchy already if i hadn't poisoned him with my soap experiment! there is officially no soap that doesn't break the boy out. so he might have a stinky adolescence....watch out. i hope your day is joyful, i challenge you in that, as i challenge MYSELF in that. :)