Jan 13

Jan 13 The Gift of Enjoyment

God spoke to me today. He told me to “get over myself”.

It wasn’t at a moment that I had expected to hear from God so clearly…or directly! I had once again missed my morning alarm and therefore missed that small sunrise window of quiet coffee time with Jesus on the back porch. I instead woke up confused with two tiny humans who needed me- needed me more instantly than I needed a Keurig coffee.

I was doing that multitask dance around the kitchen- trying not to trip over my slippers, trying to breastfeed my six week old with one arm, and trying to remember how much time the oatmeal was supposed to cook in the microwave… too little and crunchy oats, too much and an overflow of gooey oats and water everywhere! In the middle of my frustration with warm breakfast oats (and sympathizing with the momma bear whose “porridge just right” got eaten by an intruding Goldy Locks), my toddler is grunting, demanding that the process of putting breakfast on her tray be quicker.

Dropping a handful of “O’s” on my daughter’s tray, I sit down to take a breathe and nurse my baby properly. As soon as I sit down I can feel it. That familiar unwanted friend. The heavy, weighty whisper that says “this is how the beginning of the day feels, how are you going to survive the remaining twelve hours?” and “you’ve only been awake twenty minutes and you’re already disappointed.”

Reading it now I can clearly see the voice of the enemy and want to say to my own protagonist “don’t put up with that!” But the tired me in that real moment just stared off in space…letting the thought hold me there like one of those weighted blankets. I let the noises of my eating children and the beeping microwave fade into the background and let myself soak in the self pity, honestly enjoying it for a moment.

Then I heard a statement loud and clear. “The Lord wants to pour on you the oil of joy….”

It wasn’t a holy voice from Heaven. It was from my lap top. On the mornings that I don’t wake up in time for my usual Bible reading I like to play a video teaching of one of my “YouTube mentors” while we eat our breakfast. One had been playing in the background but it wasn’t until I heard the words “oil of joy” that I looked at the screen.

Right then the teacher spoke directly to the camera and said, “You are looking at me right now. You have been taking care of children and they are taking all of your time. This message is for you.”

At that statement they had my attention…

“…God wants to restore joy to you but you need to get over yourself. You are being too hard on yourself. If you will only enjoy the journey then you will receive the oil of joy. The Lord is saying, ‘I want you to enjoy Me.’ ”

I sat there and pondered what this meant…

“ENJOYMENT”

It was like the word kept repeating in my head over and over, trying to remind me of it’s meaning.

…

Remember that scene from Disney’s classic Bambi when the young fawn is wondering the forest learning his first words from the endearing little rabbit named Thumper? It’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. Bambi has just smelled his first flower when he comes nose to nose with a skunk and shouts, “Purty!…purrrty flower!” Thumper the young rabbit is in an uproar, laughing and thumping his foot on the ground. The irony of the situation is that Bambi has come across the smelliest of all forest animals, but in his young eyes the skunk seems to be a beautiful, smell good flower.

What if, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is enjoyment?

Whenever I look at this picture of my daughter smelling the black eyed susans, it takes me right back to that moment. We were in Maui visiting garden fields in up country on one of our last days vacation. The entire ten day trip my daughter had been obsessed with the flowers! I mean who isn’t captivated by the tropical paradise right? Especially when your home town is the desert! But she was truly obsessed. Everywhere we went there was a hibiscus to find on the ground or a plumeria to be picked. When we went out to eat she would point at and ask for the bright little umbrellas in our Mai Tai’s and Pina Coladas then hold them up to her nose and take a big sniff. Just like the little fawn she didn’t take notice of an absence of smell. She sniffed and sniffed to her hearts delight.

And we let her! We stopped as many times as she wanted to smell the flowers…we were on vacation! But here at home and back in the rhythm of everyday life, I have to remind myself to be patient when my daughter spots a flower or anything interesting on our morning neighborhood walks (which is often a rock here in AZ!) and wants to stop and examine. What she sees as a grand adventure in a big world, to me is another circle around the same ol boring block that I want to hurry up and move onto the next thing. But when I watch her exploring and discovering new curiosities and I take note of her reaction, that twinkle in her eye or that funny expression, suddenly another stroll is a new moment.

As a mom, my adventure is to watch my kids grow.

…

Some days watching our kids grow may be more like my moment of insanity in our kitchen… they must be growing cause they are all demanding food in their moves right NOW! But as moms we can either choose to look at our day and see a smelly skunk or we can choose to look at our day and see something beautiful blooming.

Yeah it wasn’t very fun when my infant was grunting at me and demanding my service… but it was fun watching her spoon that sticky oatmeal in her mouth in between giving me scrunchy nose grins of appreciation. Yeah it gave me anxiety when my newborn was crying to be fed and I had to make him wait, but it gave me joy as I held him and watched him make those milk happy smiles.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and enjoyment is in the process of seeing it.

…

The definition of enjoyment according to Oxford Dictionary:

ENJOYMENT (noun) . 1- The state or process of taking pleasure in something. 2- The action of possessing and benefiting from something.

Mommas be encouraged! Enjoyment is a process. We are constantly going to be learning how and getting better at it. So please don’t read this and count up the amount of times you’ve been stressed or anxious today or this week and missed the moment. Don’t be too hard on yourself… in fact, “get over yourself”! Because enjoyment is also a gift, something we can possess. We only need to take the action of grabbing it.

Whenever I look up the definition of a word in the dictionary, I also like to ask God what His definition would be. This time He told me…