A mom's daily bread

This is us:

Can you see the tiny baby brother? He is still very tiny ;-) Isak is about three months old. He was born on 29 December 2017, which is a whole story (blog!) on its own. Katelyn is seven years old and Isabelle is four, going on five years old. Our daughters are (really!) very good friends, see:

And they play nicely together most of the time. So, while I was pregnant with Isak, I mostly felt that I had everything (read: "our daily routine") under perfect control. Though I'm  still working on my husband to fit nicely into any routine. Since Isak's birth, however, I am very out-of-sinc. I just think of it as being "in-between-routines", which sounds a lot better to me. I really do not like not knowing when he will be hungry, when he will fall asleep and when he will wake up. I sometimes do think that he has got a routine going and will very excitedly tell everyone about this, only to have it to be totally different the next day. I therefore have not yet found a new routine in my spending time with God, so I downloaded the "sermonaudio" app and I listen to the sermons of David de Bruyn (from the New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg)  in my car on my way to somewhere (anywhere!! - I love an outing). The most recent sermon that I listened to was his sermon on "our daily bread" - part of The Lord's Prayer series. And while I was listening, I immediately realised that we as moms tend to worry about how we will cope with all the "tomorrows". When Isak struggles to fall asleep after his bath/feed-time, (I'm trying very hard to get this routine perfect ;-) I think "How will I cope with this every evening?!" and immediately be ungrateful and upset. Or, if my husband is working late (which happens quite often) and I have to make dinner, organise the kids, get Isak to fall sleep etc, I  think "How will I be able to cope with his long hours for the rest of my life?!", and immediately be silently upset with him for choosing his profession. By the time he comes home, this ungrateful feeling has taken over my attitude towards him, and have the ability to spoil the rest of our evening together. With "give us our daily bread", Jesus was teaching us to be dependent on God for ONE DAY at a time. Think of the manna God provided to the Israelites in the desert. The manna of those who gathered more than a days' need, became rotten and could not be eaten. God was teaching the Israelites to trust Him for one day at a time. God wants us to come before Him in each new day and ask for that days' worth of our physical needs, as well as our spiritual needs. If we only, in any difficult situation, realise that God will give us the necessary strength for that situation, and not think ahead, we will learn to appreciate the soft cushion that God has provided for us in that moment - to give thanks for a child, to give thanks for a husband, that my husband has a job and can provide for his family, to give thanks for the ability to put my baby to bed and to give thanks for the knowledge that this baby phase will pass and that Isak will fall into more of a routine :) David de Bruyn also said that our level of gratitude is equal to what we feel we are entitled to. If we realise how little we are entitled to, the world will be a wonder of giving thanks for every abundance that we have. I often feel that I am entitled to a baby that falls asleep easily, or to daughters that never fight, or to a husband that is home for dinner every evening. And then I feel very very ungrateful. Ann Voskamp has said in her book, "One Thousand Gifts", that giving thanks to God preceded every miracle that Jesus performed in the bible. Isn't that amazing? If we give thanks, a miracle (usually in the way we feel and respond) will happen! It is the start of the school holidays, the middle of colourful autumn and Easter weekend. May we see miracles this Easter holiday - in between keeping our kids busy, constantly picking up toys and making snacks and thinking of holiday activities and driving to holiday destinations and stopping for the tenth time to take our kids to the bathroom (or, in our case, me, as I will be drinking lots of on-the-road-coffee!) and...For me, in Olaf's words, this is "The most wonderful time of the year!" - Martine