I Should Be Grateful You’re Irritating Me

Starting off the New Years weekend with an extra day off today, but there were several times where I felt a little stifled from the family time. Maybe it’s the overabundance of family time during the holidays. Maybe it was just a mood of mine.

Either way, I found myself getting irritated with my son and daughter. She’s crawling and growing in awareness where she understand what we are communicating but quickly enters frustration with a full on flexed and arched back when she can’t communicate herself.

I’ve grown to the point where I understand this irritation about others is actually in me, however I couldn’t quite pinpoint where my restlessness was coming from. And then God reminded me to count my blessings.

I received an email about a friend who miscarried her first baby. My wife and I are close enough to her that we cried when we read the email.

The perspective to be grateful for my two children, no matter how much they fuss or beg for candy or push the boundaries, is so elusive. If any of you hold a constant state of gratitude, I’m all ears to hear how you do it.

I must say from my perspective, I’m grateful more often than not, but this evening I think about how blessed I am to hold my pudgy nine month-old daughter. Her giggle when I nuzzle into her baby soft neck is priceless. I think about how blessed I am to have my four year-old son beg to build a Duplo castle.

There have been countless books about suffering, and the question of why evil exists in the world has been contemplated since the garden of Eden.  When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold S. Kushner has been a best seller for years. C.S. Lewis tackles the subject in The Problem of Pain. 

If there is one area that can insert doubt into my faith, it’s watching good people suffer or die for no reason. Why does a perfectly healthy woman suffer a miscarriage? Why do people die when a seemly perfectly stable bridge collapses? Insert any number of questions here about bad things happen to good people.

The only thing I can come back to is that God has a plan. I don’t know what it is, so I can’t really say what is good and what is bad. There is a plan for our friend. There is a plan for my healthy kids. There is a plan for me.

Maybe the irritation I feel with my family is God’s way of making me grow? Maybe our friend is losing her baby to make her stronger or alleviate worse pain that would have existed if the baby would have lived?

All I know is that through all the struggles of parenthood, that I need to remember it is a gift, as long as I am willing to accept it as a gift. It really comes down to perspective.