Chop

It's been an intense week.

Jensen caught the virus that has been going around school and was down over the weekend. Then Pruitt got hit hard by it and spent a couple of days in bed with a fever of over 102. He ended up missing a whole week of school. Austin had off work on Sunday, since it was a Buddhist holiday, which was extra special because it was also Mother's Day. He made breakfast at 6 a.m. and had his family over too, so we could eat together before the boys got on the bus ( it ended up being only Riley then, since the others were sick). Then Austin spent the next several days in Mymensingh. I was very thankful for family near by and a father-in-law who was willing to buy a ton of juice for my sick boy and deliver it to my door! In the middle of it all, we had a repair guy here to fix the screen door that Riley broke in his efforts to escape being caught by one of his brothers. Austin got back in time to stay with Pruitt while I took Jensen to the dentist to have a tooth pulled, which he was quite brave about. When I dropped him off at school, the kids were all talking at once, wondering how it went. They thought it was quite cool that he had to have a tooth pulled and he was a bit of a hero.

Needless to say, we were all quite ready for the weekend! We spent time with friends, relaxed and finally got that date in that we had canceled twice the weekend before. I also took some ladies shopping, bought some lovely clothes that don't fit, sat in stifling noisy traffic and felt like I was becoming a human chop. Chop is the Bangla word meaning pressure. To chopan is to squeeze together, like on a bus so that you can get more people on. An aloo chop is a potato patty, the potato has been mashed and fried (often with yummy spices inside). A meat chop is made of meat that has been ground and pounded and mashed with spices and then fried. So if I say that by the end of the week I was feeling like a human chop, I think you will have a picture of what I felt like. Those were my thoughts as I sat in traffic and heard the noise all around me and had hands reaching out to receive from me and I was hot and tired and had a splitting headache. I came home and took a little nap before my guys all came home from their morning outing. As I was taking lunch to the table, I dropped it and it splattered all over the floor and the cupboard. That truly was the last straw. Now I can chuckle about it, but it sure wasn't funny at the moment. So I stood there and cried before picking up the pieces. I am so thankful for a husband that doesn't yell at me and that is full of grace in moments like that. My youngest was a little taken aback when he saw his mother burst into tears and he gave me lots of hugs. Even now I'm laughing and crying at the same time. Being under chop can do strange things to a person. In spite of it all, "hope stands in defiance" to borrow the words of Sara Groves. I've lived long enough to know that when things are extra hard and it feels like everything is going wrong, it is a signal that somewhere, either in my life or in the lives of others that I care very much about, something good, something truly amazing is going on. Life is never all bad. Even though I can't see it at the moment, I've been given precious glimpses of a larger picture. And that picture is beautiful and it has given me hope.