Late night visits

He calls & faintly my mind registers that I'm needed...

Another call ... it was late getting in last night.... a friend in need called & I went & didn't arrive home from the city until the wee hours....much too late for this sleep-needy mother....maybe the sound  it was all just a dream...

Once again I hear "Mummy, I've wet the bed"... I slowly roll over & raise myself out of the warmth and begin the stumble through the dark to their room to their bedside...

Again...I'm too slow...it's one of  my matching set that  needs me, but the fuzz of my brains makes the voice indistinguishable from the other.  I push the switch & as light fills out the dark spaces of the hallway all goes quiet.  They know I'm coming.... we've done this before... many times.  They will wait, happy in the knowledge that I will come..they will not be left in that uncomfortable state forever.

As I enter their bedroom a head appears above the bed's end... bright eyes smile when they see me... I was missed last night  ~ no last kisses or hugs ~ no reminders to "please be quiet" sprang from this mother's lips.  Instead prayers were said with a friend over her sick newborn babe... tears were shed & a shoulder offered... strength for one who has offered that for me when my own tears have overwhelmed.  Love reciprocated.... isn't that what friendship is all about?  

A second head appears on the level above the first... excitement fills his identical eyes... "Mum guess what we saw a kangaroo on our driveway & it was so big & it jumped right over the fence into Churchill forest"  the words are all run  into each other as his 5 year old brain relives the fun of the moment ~ the wonder of God's creation ~ the might of the creature just a breathe compared to the might of it's Creator.  And I smile as I remember just a few hours earlier... just as the clock was stroking midnight & I was by myself  on a lonely country road in a bumpy old farm ute... how out of the corner of my sleepy eye a kangaroo emerged & I managed to jam on the brakes & that crazy kangaroo jumped straight across the road  right in  my path & had it stopped  in the glare of my headlights I would have hit it, but God was good & allowed it to keep right on going.   Must be the night for  them.

Finally I lay my head back down.  Two clean, cuddly boys lay in between us & I manage to teeter on the edge of our much-too-small- for-visitors-during-the-night  bed.  I think about the blessings of safety, the blessings of friends, the blessings of children & the blessings of warm places to lay our heads at night.  As I drift off to sleep I remind myself to keep on looking.... look for those blessings in the everyday, in the unimportant.  For I don't deserve any of it ~ this life, this family~ it is all a gift!  

Keep on looking...