thankfulness in pregnancy

My head is tired but my heart is full.  God has been so good to me and to our family. 

I admit that I find it hard to feel thankful when the tears are a-comin' and the nausea is a-buildin'.  I forget my blessings and languish.  I become convinced that I will feel this way forever.  I gaze in dismay at the mounds of laundry, the scattered toys, the dirty floors.  I forget.

But God's mercies do not stop.  He brings me a husband who takes every chance he can to watch our daughter so that I can rest and yield to the solitude for which my soul and body are crying out.

He gifts me with the precious prayers of friends, who hold up my hands like Aaron and Hur holding the weary hands of Moses above the melee of the battle.

He blesses me with a daughter who (despite her bad days such as today) is really trying to be understanding of how tired and sick her mother feels.  Just last week, I was lying in bed with Burrito watching cartoons beside me.  She had not napped and now she wanted a snack!  I was near tears in exhaustion and self-pity.  Why couldn't everyone just leave me alone?  I got her graham crackers and snapped, "I wish someone would fix me a snack!"  Had I said that to my husband or to any man for that matter, they may have missed the request.  But my daughter is a woman in the making.  She gets hints!  (Hooray!)   "I can fix you a snack!" she said.  I requested yogurt and she went right down and got it for me.  And then I teared up again...she did care about me, the sweet girl!  It was just yogurt but it meant a lot more to me.

God has blessed me with friends who listen to me as I struggle through this first trimester, listen graciously, with compassion, and with the knowing that comes with having already walked this path.  Even my most negative feelings find a sympathetic ear.  These women understand.  They've been there.  And how precious to talk to them in flesh and blood.  Not on the computer.  Not on the phone.  They are with me.  They have time for me.  I am so grateful, for it has not always been this way.

God has blessed me with those who have offered to help.  Friends have offered to help me clean house, to watch Burrito, and one even brought me dinner (the first home-cooked meal I'd had in quite some time).  To ease my nausea, she cooked it at her house first so I didn't have to smell food cooking.  And that night the nausea began to abate.

God has blessed me so much.  I am grateful too that my friends have seen me when I was not such a basket case!  But nevertheless, they have loved me right where I am.  So has my husband.  So has my daughter.  I am blessed.