Pressure Cooker

Have you ever cooked with a pressure cooker? It is often used in Indian cooking and many Indian students pack them in their suitcase when they come for their studies in America. I love Indian food so I bought a pressure cooker and taught myself how to use it. It has a very important button on the side that you can press to let off steam so that your lentils don’t come pouring out of your pot. I had to learn to use this often as it took me a long time to figure out how to cook lentils in the pot without making a complete mess.

Last week felt like I was the lentils. But I didn't let off the pressure very well and made a mess. I had a sick child home with scarlet fever (just a fancy way to say strep throat with a rash) for five days, the younger child was fussy because the older one was getting so much attention, too many cartoons, and record heat outside which made it 100F inside the house (our pressure cooker!) where we were quarantined until the sick child was not contagious. 

Here is a snapshot of an evening in the middle of the week. It started to get comical by the end. But I don't remember laughing at four o'clock in the morning.

Broken silverware drawer and injured foot
Rash breaks out all over oldest child and realize he has strep
Broken mercury thermometer in the bathroom, call to poison control,  followed by tedious clean up

Dishwasher leaks all over the kitchen floor
Water bottle leaks in son’s bed at 11pm and completely soaks mattress
Musical beds for mom, dad (to couch) and son
Musical beds again at 4am because son keeps kicking mom and she hasn't slept 

My housemates in Japan can attest to the fact that I do not do well in the heat. After my first summer in Japan, they commented, “Oh, Kim, you have your smile back!” I didn't know I had lost it. Ouch. My kids can now attest to it too, unfortunately. By Friday morning, I was exhausted and cranky and overwhelmed. I lost it when I was doing the dishes one more time because I had just done them. I felt like I had not left the kitchen in five days. It was not a pretty sight. The pans did not go gently into the sink that morning. The mercy in it was that the only one who saw it was my husband.

I am learning, slowly, that having a child with special needs makes a difficult week even more challenging. In my "free moments", I also juggle talking to the doctor about medication, figuring out insurance issues, scheduling meetings at school, and advocating for my son in arenas where he is misunderstood. When you have a child with special needs, you are also learning that parenting looks very different than what you imagined. And you have days when you think you are going crazy because nothing you try is working. Anyone else with a special needs kid feel crazy some days? 

I am very aware that my circumstances were not as bad as I thought. I have been through weeks in the past when I could barely get out of bed because my grief felt like a weight on my entire body. Some of you may be in that season and wishing that you had my week instead of your own. Whatever the season I am in, I have to admit that sometimes I have days that just seem to overwhelm me and I can't get back to a place of gratitude and openness to God's touch in my life. 

My kids will probably only remember that they got to have waffles and ice cream for dinner last week. I hope so. I am thankful that I can make amends and let go. I am also thankful that there is a group of women in my life that are learning how to practice the Spiritual Disciplines in our everyday lives. This past week we practiced Fixed Hour of Prayer**. We did a simplified version and picked one time during the day to set a timer or alarm (I used my cell phone) to remind us to stop and pray. My time was 2:30 in the afternoon. This was my prayer.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; 

try me and know my anxious thoughts. 

See if there be any hurtful way in me, 

and lead me in the everlasting way.

Psalm 139:23-24

I wish that I can say that I was extremely spiritual and was given great insight into God. I was not. I was given great insight into myself. I didn’t like stopping and pausing. I didn’t like noticing how my attitude toward my children and my circumstances was not loving but irritated and grumpy. And yet, I stopped. I paused. I recognized that I needed God’s help. Sometimes I took it. Sometimes I didn’t. I saw how frail I am and how much I need the power of God to enter into my every day earthly life and transform it. This week is “back to normal” but I am very aware that I worship a God who took on our human condition and entered into everyday life so that I could know that I am never alone in it. That is the mercy of God for a mom who needed it so desperately last week. And every day.

**Fixed-Hour of Prayer calls for regular and consistent patterns of attending to God throughout the day. Benedict of Nursia believed that both physical labor (work) and prayer were in God’s hands. They were both God’s work. He is renowned for saying “Orare est laborare, laborare est orare” – to pray is to work, to work is to pray. Benedictines today continue to punctuate their work with prayer rhythms begun over 1600 years ago.