Well, Now, Compared to THAT...

So it's been a pretty miserable week.  It doesn't seem like it should have been; after all, it was just a minor cold (no sore throat--thank You, God, for that!--but plenty of stuffiness, achiness, and extreme lack of energy).  But somehow, even a minor cold, when combined with week 31 of pregnancy, resulted in a few days in which, no matter how cheerful I tried to be, I just felt terrible.  As a matter of fact, I still do.  Not only did I deal with the physical complaints such as the painful pressure in my head, but even worse was the mental and emotional junk...thoughts like, "I will never have any energy again...I will never be able to finish the half-completed projects around here...I will feel this horrible until after the baby is born...I will always feel this winded, just from walking up the stairs"...and so forth.  The fatigue has been astonishing.  One day I had to take two naps just to make it through the day!

The boys have been kind and compassionate.  Yesterday morning, when Josiah saw me stumble out of my room around 8:15 a.m. rather than finding me on the couch reading my Bible shortly after 7:00 a.m. as my habit had been, he smiled tenderly and simply said, "Rough night?"  And later in the morning, when I was having trouble getting my sluggish body in gear to do anything, David cheerfully exclaimed, "We don't mind if you take a nap!  We can just watch movies and play video games without time*!"  He's a helpful chap, all right.  ;-)

* Josiah and David are allowed one hour a day to play non-educational games on the computer.  They both have a timer to use to track their minutes, and they rarely use up all their time.  But David especially enjoys it when he has the freedom to play without the timer--in his words, "without time."  ;-)

Even when my discouragement was at its highest this week, I couldn't help but begin to count my blessings when I compared my lot in life with that of the countless others who suffer exponentially more than I ever have. The women who cry their eyes out as they bury one of their children, for example...or the women whose bodies yearn for a child of their own but who are never given that blessing...or the women whose husbands go off to fight a war they didn't start, or are taken away to prison.  My pain is a drop in the bucket compared to how those women feel.

Not long ago, I finished reading another book by Bess Streeter Aldrich; it was called The Lieutenant's Lady and was one I had never read before.  In this book, the heroine, Linnie, was married to a lieutenant in the U.S. Army back during the pioneer days of the old West.  They were stationed in an isolated fort on the Missouri River, and conditions were spartan, to say the least.  At one point in the story, Linnie's husband was sent away for a while on an army expedition; and she had to stay behind in the fort with the other soldiers and wives, etc.  During that time, a band of Indians came and attacked the stockade which was, of course, running low on ammunition (the author had to heighten the tension as much as she could, right?).  :)  Linnie's husband had previously warned her about how vicious the Indians were when they captured a white woman, so she was aware of this when the commanding officer in the fort came to talk to her.  The story continues...

Then he turned to Linnie, "If there is no way out but capture, Lieutenant Stafford [that's her husband] wants you to be shot by one of our officers before surrender.  Lieutenant Lane would do so," he snapped and left.

Now I know this book is fiction; but I also know that situations like this did occur in real life.  Can you even imagine???

With these thoughts in mind, I have been working on readjusting my thinking:  decreasing the internal complaints that swirl around in my mind, and increasing the level of gratitude that flows from my heart.  And now, I'm ready to heave my lethargic body out of this chair, clear the table of lunch dishes, attack the piled-too-high laundry, gather the library books that I need to return tomorrow after the boys' swimming lessons, and maybe even make a little more progress on my big project of the week:  organizing the homeschool closet and continuing my school planning for next year.

But what I'd really like to do is lay down and sleep for about 24 hours.  ;-)