Answered Prayers ROCK!!

I'm amazed by the times that God answers prayers very quickly and clearly.

Today was a ROUGH day. When Nick called around 9:45 to see how I was doing, we were about 45 minutes into a dual child meltdown. This was the second such meltdown of the morning. I was about ready to dissolve into a puddle of tears myself, so he hightailed it home from work to help. While he gave the girls their snack, I went into the other room to bawl and emerged rather bummed and listless. I sludged through the early afternoon, and all of his praise and pep talks did little to help. I was feeling horribly overwhelmed, to the point of yelling at God "why did you ask me to do this?"

After picking up Big Bro from school, we hit the Walgreen's for a couple of errands and when we got the whole brood back to the car Nick said "Let's just go for a drive in the mountains." I was so glad he said that, because I honestly didn't feel ready to go home and try to engage in being mom right yet.

During our drive I told him "Right now, the prayer of my heart is this - 'God, I know it's all going to work out and be okay, but I need you to say it right now. I need to hear it, from you, that everything will be alright. I know it's in the Bible, I know it's in your character, I know all of that but I've just got to hear it from you right now.'" Now, I'm not nutty enough to mean that I thought God would split the sky to say in a booming voice "It's all good, Lauren. Chill," but I was hoping for some sort of sense of peace or a feeling of reassurance or something. We headed home, my heart still heavy in my chest.

When we got home, I felt a sudden burst of renewed emotional energy and I brought our new little Princess into with me while I cooked dinner. Then, at dinner, she decided to start exploring her food. This is VERY new for her, and it's a very nice development. She even ate with her hands a bit, which is huge. And yet, the best was still to come. After all that food play, I realized she was going to have to have a bath. This has been her hardest area - bathing. Baths are spent screaming and crying, then getting on her PJs causes more of a fit, and it puts her in a miserable mood until she falls asleep... which takes longer when she's so unnerved. I decided a new approach was in order, so I tried something a bit different.

If you are in the above situation, I invite you to steal this idea because it WORKED. I sat her in the empty tub, turned on the water and use the hand sprayer to spray water over her feet and legs. At first she cried, but soon she was reaching for and splashing in the spray. I stopped up the tub and allowed the water from the sprayer to slowly fill it. As the water rose, so did her confidence and the amount of fun she was having. Eventually, she was splashing in the water and playing with bath toys. We even put her sister in the tub with her (Baby Girl needed a bath badly) and the two of them played together. It was amazing, watching her have so much fun in the bath that had scared her to death before. She remained mostly calm during the PJs and was in a great mood for bedtime. In fact, it took forever to put her to sleep because she was so pumped and happy that she was having a hard time settling down! She was feeling too playful to sleep!

God is so good, and I'm so grateful that He answers prayer.