Grace

Last night, Claire hung onto the back of my skirt and cried and cried and cried while I scrambled to finish broiling the fish, roasting the veggies, and rolling out the biscuits. Halfway through this noisy and harried process, Aubrey fell and cut her lip. Then a full-scale football game started in the other room and my calls of, "Too rough in the house, boys!" were ignored until somebody got hurt and the lamp got knocked over.

Daniel came in the door and I was beyond tears. It was almost 7pm and had been a very long day. Half of dinner was sitting on the counter, untouched and getting very cold, while the other half hadn't even made it into the oven. The table wasn't set. My baby was covered in snot and it reminded me every time I saw her that I'd been ignoring her (more or less) for the past 30 minutes while I ran from one emergency to another.

Yes, beyond tears is the nice way of saying "spitting mad."

"How are you?"

I glared. I started throwing plates on the table, leaving mine off. There was no way I was going to let myself sit at that table. I knew two things:  first, I needed a major time out and attitude adjustment; second, I didn't really want to endure the noise of a busy meal table.

"Aren't you going to eat?"

I'm sure my eyes were shooting darts at this point.

Daniel is very gracious. He jumped right in and kindly excused me once everyone was at the table. I sat in the family room and closed my eyes. In that moment, I struggled between just repenting and moving on and welcoming condemnation (which, as any good Christian knows, can be a convenient excuse for the accompanying pity-party).

I never did choose last night which route I would go. After that deep breath, I just plugged back in like nothing had ever happened and got through the evening before collapsing into bed.

The bad thing about not choosing is that I never did repent and I never did tap into grace. And this morning when Daniel hopped in the car at 6:40am and I stood there, sleepy-eyed and raw from the previous day's unresolved bad attitude.

For the next few hours, I went through the motions but felt completely weighed down by my sin and my failure as a wife and mom. I am a fairly silent grump when it comes down to it, but my mood is still prevailing in my house and, boy, could I see how my children were suffering for it. Complaints, emotions, and fighting were escalating all around me. And I felt helpless to deal with it.

Daniel came home again and just in time. I had forgotten about Bronwyn's ballet that was switched to today and my barking reminders