We are having a great Monday-- and folks, that is rare.  Usually Monday is met with a great deal of sadness for me, as my dear husband is gone so much through the week that I feel like I only really get to have him on the weekends.  Which means, Monday = No Hubby for another whole week.  And that saddens me.  I am sure there are other wives out there who can sympathize.  And also, Monday means a week of school and drudgery with not much to look forward to.  But today I decided I wasn't going to fall victim to that bad attitude.  I was going to approach our time together as exactly what it is-- a gift. 

Part of this was because of a caller I heard on a morning radio show this morning as I was coming home from dropping my son off at school.  This woman called in to say she was proof that a woman who hates kids can still be a mother.  It was sad what this woman had to say about her kids-- how much they drive her crazy, how their needs overwhelm her, and how she never really wanted kids.  But she does love them, she pointed out.  Then she justified that she sees to all their needs, so that made her a good mother-- they were fed three times a day and clothed and bathed.  I don't know why but hearing her made me resolve to truly appreciate my kids in a way that didn't just mean barely doing the minimum.  I guess hearing her spell it out was a wakeup call for me that merely meeting their basic needs is never enough to instill in them their eternal value and to give them the foundation they will need to stand on one day. 

And so today we read aloud and played a game of Husker Du, a favorite of mine as a child.  I worked on math and grammar with my two youngest for awhile while the older two worked on a writing assignment I had given them.  Later, the kids sat on the screened in porch and played Apples to Apples while I made a lunch of sliced kiwi and sausage and egg sandwiches.  I played some old Crosby, Stills and Nash on the cd player while I worked.  And while I worked I heard, "Just a song before I go, a lesson to be learned. Traveling twice the speed of sound it's easy to get burned." 

My lesson today?  I better stop traveling too fast, lest I miss all the moments I have with these blessings God has given me.  When I finish this post I am going to load everyone up for a walk up to our neighborhood playground and lake.  It might be slow going-- and it definitely won't be an athletic effort on my part-- but it is one of those things I have been meaning to do for a long time.  No time like the present! 

Happy Monday!