Six Little Bedheaded Boys

So the boys have been begging me for months to have friends over. I just couldn't find the gumption. Really? I have three kids already, and where I used to say, "what's one more kid?", I don't say that anymore. One more kid seems more than I can handle.

But since I have started my Great Adventure things seem different. Am I any less tired? No. I am however, not nearly as stressed out. I have also embraced the fact that things will never be in reality what they are in my head. My head is full of ridiculously romantic notions of a perfectly clean house with well behaved kids and amazing meals with memorable moments. I am nuts. Well, about everything but the memorable moments. That to me, is attainable without all of the orderly things.

I have been cleaning out an 8 year olds room this week. An 8 year old that has 11 years of hand me downs that stopped with him and never moved on. It is a small room, full of baby toys. Well...not anymore. I have cleaned it out. And with no job, I have proceeded to try to sell whatever seemed sellable. I am thinking about venturing onto eBay even.  Scary.

My house in cleaning out the room is a shambles. My ADD apparently is running rampant in the mountains of things not kept up with in the last 18 months. So, I have piles everywhere. Piles of old clothes, piles of dirty clothes, piles of clean clothes that need to be folded, piles of nerf guns, piles of Christmas decorations that need to be put in the attic. Seriously a focus nightmare. And the boys continue to beg.

We give in. I - in my normal overly optimistic way - thought I could get the piles cleared out and put away in one day. I might could have, but a friend asked me to lunch.  Well...I would much rather go to lunch than clean up piles. It's a no brainer. And I missed my friend. People are more important than things - always. And I rationalized that I could get it done in a few hours if I dropped my standards a bit.

So off to lunch I went. I came home refreshed and encouraged and full of wonderful ideas. It was such a good decision. But I had an hour to get the house clean before the SIX boys came home. A wee bit panicky - not for the boys sake - but for mine (I am still operating from that orderly idea in my head), I begin to do whatever I can to get the mess tamed.

Fail.

But come to find out, it did not matter. Within an hour of all 3 of our guests arriving and added to my own 3, the house was a wonderful, raucous, melee of arms legs and constant motion. It did not wind down until 2:30AM when I got up from my own bed and used my stern voice to yell, "GO TO SLEEP".

When I stepped down and saw six little bedheads this morning, laughing, playing and enjoying each other, I was suddenly very thankful I didn't clean the house any better than I had, because I would be doing it all over again today. But what a happy thing to hear friends playing capture the flag in my little cottage of a house. How happy it was to watch them as they grabbed pancakes and sausage and bowed their heads together to thank God for their breakfast, then scurry off to finish the game.

As I sat down to do my daily blog and Bible reading, I looked down to see the menu of the restaurant I went to with my precious friend. It is a Mediteranean restaurant and the menu is a gracious extension of the hospitality I felt when I sat down to eat lunch.

It says, " In our culture, "breaking bread" with someone is a signal of everlasting friendship. So as you break bread with us today, we genuinely hope that even though you came in as a customer, you will leave as a friend, and come back to see us soon." (Naji's Pita Gourmet - John Hawkins Parkway - Hoover, AL)

And that is exactly how I feel. I pushed aside something that didn't matter to break bread with a friend, and gave up on a perfect house and enjoyed the moment in spite of the monumental mess. I would say it was a decidedly perfectly guided decision. I feel my boys benefitted from it, as did I.

I am pretty sure the reality of a messy house and happy children, is much better then the ideal in my head. I thank God for the lovely, excited voices of these six little bed headed boys.