Cool cat

With his mom's sunglasses on.

The kids and I spent Labor Day at Busch Gardens Williamsburg. It was a gorgeous sunny day and the park was surprisingly uncrowded. Thomas and Annamarie would get off a ride and holler, "Can we ride again?" as they ran by me to get in the short line again. I would look up briefly from the book I was reading in the shade, nod and turn up my iPod.

It's not hard to be an Awesome Mom on days when you can provide amusement park rides and overpriced sodas and bags of $2.99 a quarter-pound candy. Yesterday we were back to the real world where the PlayStation 2 is grounded in the garage and rooms had to be cleaned, and I needed a Word. (Beth Moore often says that when she's concerned about something, she prays, "God, I need a Word." I wish I could say that the Words that sustain and comfort me unfailingly come from the bible like Beth's do, but truthfully they often come from the pages of bloggers far more eloquent than I. I don't think that necessarily means that God isn't giving them to me, though.)

The words that I needed to read today were written by the amazing Jennifer Mattern at Breed 'Em and Weep. An excerpt that made me weep because I could have written it myself assuming I had Jenn's talent:

I yell. You yell. We all yell. We are absurdly loud, at times. Even the dogs flinch and stare.

I hope you will be all right, now and forever. Your hearing, and your hearts.

I love your hearts very much. I yell because I love you. I really do. That can be true, it turns out.

I yell because I know you can do better.

I yell because I know I should do better, be better to you, but I don’t always know how. And I hate that. More than I can say.

It's not just that it's nice to be reminded that I'm not the only imperfect mom in the world. It's more that even in Jenn's posts about what she sees as failing her children, her overwhelming love for them is what shines through the most. I hope that's just a little bit true of me sometimes.