A Dandelion Garden

My day started so beautifully, but as soon as my husband drove away and I shut the garage door, that ended. Ten minutes and a low-carb breakfast later, Kevin was standing at her door, wide awake and ready for the day. I wasn't quite ready for her. I needed another twenty minutes or so to myself...but, since I'm a mom, I went up to her room, picked her up, and spent the next twenty minutes cuddling her and trying to feed her breakfast.

Less than an hour later, I was hiding from her in my closet.

Now, it isn't as bad as it sounds (or maybe it is). I made the mistake of going through yesterday's mail while she was eating and saw that we had a notice for a past-due medical bill I'd forgotten to pay last month. So I decided I'd better just take care of it before I forgot about it.

I tried paying it online, but once I saw there was a seven dollar processing fee, I quickly decided we were too poor for such luxuries, so I decided to call the billing office instead. The first time I called, I got as far as the holding elevator music before my call was mysteriously dropped. The second time, I made it through the elevator music, but by the time the outsourced representative answered, Kevin was "La-La-La"ing so loud I couldn't hear him, and when I tried to shush her, she started crying loudly, and somehow in the juggling of getting my hands free so I could get her out of her high chair, I hung up on him. 

So, for my third attempt, I ran upstairs, closed the door to my bedroom, and hid in my closet (this door also closed, as our 1980s house isn't soundproof). I got the bill taken care of within ten minutes (luckily I didn't have to wait on hold as long this time), but I stayed in the closet for twenty while she screamed outside my door.

Not my best mothering moment.

I've been having a lot of "not my best" moments lately. Too many of them. I just can't seem to shake them. I am so far from where I want to be. I am not the best mother, wife, daughter, friend, neighbor, Christian...take your pick. About the only thing that has improved lately is my swearing habit. 

So, perhaps it was more for me than for the sisters I visit teach (on the last day of the month) that Heavenly Father directed me back to this quote I first found and loved in high school:

"Our perfect Father does not expect us to be perfect children yet. He had only one such Child. Meanwhile, therefore, sometimes with smudges on our cheeks, dirt on our hands, and shoes untied, stammeringly but smilingly, we present God with a dandelion--as if it were an orchid or a rose! If for now the dandelion is the best we have to offer, He receives it, knowing what we may later place at the altar." -Neal A. Maxwell

I don't know about you, but my dandelion garden is growing strong (both figuratively and literally). 

Here's the thing, though...next to all those dandelions that keep springing up in my backyard, there are rose bushes that I thought I had killed when I pruned them earlier this spring. If you look closely, however, near to the ground, you can see new growth there--a promise of something more to come. It will probably take weeks and weeks and months for those rose bushes to fully bloom, but they will.

It gives me hope that someday I will fully bloom as well.

For now, I'll keep cultivating my dandelions.