Jellybeans, Massages & Prayer

What do these three things have in common?

Well, tonight, God used those three things to bring me out of a funk.  You know, that funk I wrote about yesterday.  Well, truth be told, the issues surrounding the hard day of yesterday have been going on for quite some time - the details will remain shrouded in secrecy to protect the guilty, but life's been hard around here.

Now, I'm a fairly positive person, but when the mountains keep getting bigger and bigger, I turn tail and crawl in a hole.  When I'm in my hole, I'm not a very happy or hopeful person which, by the way, does nothing to improve the atmosphere of the home!

Anyway, I've been in my hope-less hole a lot this week and today was no different.  However, despite feeling quite ill, I knew I needed to go to church tonight, because Wednesday nights I go to a very special parenting class at church.  A parenting class with people who "get it."  Some of you are asking, "Get what?"  :-)  Get what it's like to parent children who's needs are above and beyond what your average child needs, who can't be parented the way "most" children can be parented, who, despite the best intentions and efforts of the parents, continue to resist the love offered them.  Now some of you read that and still don't get it, and that's okay, but those of us in the trenches every day parenting wounded kids need to occasionally be around people who do "get it."

Anyway, back to my trio of jellybeans, massages and prayer.  I went to my class tonight and shared (in more detail) what has been going on around here of late.  After class, one woman came up and just started giving me a back massage (turns out she's a massage therapist - how convenient), while she was doing this another woman offered to pray for me (us) and so a few people gathered around and prayed while massage-lady targeted pressure points in my back.  After the prayer and massage (and a few jellybeans) I felt totally encouraged and hope-filled again!  I kid you not, I feel like a new woman!

Funny side note: the massage lady started to give another mom a back massage as well and she told us, "Your backs are more tense than the construction workers that I work on!"  That doesn't surprise me!

So, thank you, God, for people who pray, people who give massages and people who put bowls of jellybeans on the table!