SO. I haven’t written in a week because the past seven days have been a roller coaster of emotions. I am not sure that I’ve had a more difficult season in my life, and I know I’m supposed to “Count it all Joy” (James 1:2-4) but that has been THE HARDEST choice to make.

Last Monday night or maybe Tuesday–my days run together–we got a call from our realtor saying our buyers wanted us to sign paperwork to release them from the contract. My initial reaction was shock and LOTS of tears accompanied by that lovely I-wish-I-could-go-throw-up-because-then-I’d-feel-better feeling. Thankfully, my husband and father had a much less emotional reaction and were able to calm me down. Twenty-four hours later, we negotiated some things in order to keep our buyers happy. Basically, we are giving them a little more money for closing costs and  had to do some more in the way of repairs/improvements. It’s funny how literally for 48 hours it was all I could think of–and yet now, it seems like it was weeks ago and things are moving along fine. HOWEVER, I will not be excited, celebrate, or spend a dime on a non-necessity until we actually hand the keys to someone else!

This last week has also been an epic disaster in parenting. One evening, the husband was gone and I attempted bedtime with the boys solo. Sometimes, I wonder why I even try? What would be so bad about letting the boys stay up all hours of the night? It seems that if I try the bedtime routines alone I end up hating strongly disliking the boys for not going to sleep easily and hating  strongly disliking my spouse for not being there and then hating myself for thinking such terrible things. I mean, people are suffering all around the world, but if it’s 8:30, and my guys aren’t asleep, I turn into a crazy person.

That same disastrous evening ended in a drive attempting to get the boys asleep, some crazy text messages to my man, and me apologizing to my boys for losing my temper. After my apology, rather out of the blue, my older one says, “When I get bigger we can get married, and you can wear a princess dress and have flowers, and I can have flowers in my big black pocket.” I’m always amazed at how easily children can forgive, forget, and move on to something else. They definitely point out my flaws, but they remind me of how blessed I am as well.

Hopefully the rest of this week and the weeks to come won’t be as much of a roller coaster…