Looking In

Some nights Baby Brown Eyes goes to sleep really easily and sleeps for hours. Other nights, it takes hours to get him to sleep and he wakes up constantly until the wee hours of the morning.

On nights like that, I tend to grumble.

Tired and sore from constant nursing, I silently wish for a toddler that slept on command.

As if such a thing exists.

When I get grumpy about Baby Brown Eyes not sleeping well, I get grumpy about everything. The plant Mr. Brown Eyes got me for Mother's Day that is now brown and dead despite all my best efforts. The spiderwebs strung outside my window that I swear I just swept away yesterday. The bills collecting on the kitchen counter that we have yet to pay. My horse that won't eat. Our car and its dying battery.

Last night was one of those not-so-easy nights.

After getting Baby back to sleep for the second time, and a good deal of grumbling, I spent some time on my knees, praying for strength and patience and an ability to see my blessings.

Then I crawled into bed and pretended, for a moment, that I wasn't me, but a stranger looking in on my life.

I saw Baby peacefully sleeping, his little hands tucked under his head.

I smelled the delicious breeze laden with the scent of rain as it drifted through the open windows, stirring the curtains. I heard the rain steadily pattering, dripping from the eaves of the house and the trees.

I saw a big, warm bed and my husband quietly snoring, arms flung out to the sides, exhausted from a long day of working and playing.

And then I knew, if I were a stranger standing outside in the warm yellow glow of my back porch, looking in through the windows of my rain-dripping house, that I would want to be me.
In answer to my prayer, Heavenly Father opened my eyes to everything I have. Overwhelmed with gratitude, I fell asleep in peace. And didn't mind too much when Baby woke me up again fifteen minutes later.

Gratitude. It's all a matter of perspective.

And don't worry, there aren't any strangers peeking in my windows.

That I know of.

The Brown-Eyed Girl