Parable of the Frog

Last week, I had a bad day. Not just a nothing-is-going-right-I-need-chocolate kind of a bad day. It was a heavy, heavy day. Full of unexpected devastating news, and a lot of big BIG decisions needed to be made pronto to even attempt to remedy the situation, and those were very hard/expensive/time consuming decisions to make. The future seemed so bleak. I cried most of the afternoon. Then I cried to a good friend while our kids swam at swim practice. We came home and I choked back the tears while I got the boys dinner and then we headed to mutual at church. I was thankful for the distraction, but when we came home, all I wanted to do was go to bed. It was 9 pm already and I just wanted to do the bedtime thing as quickly as possible. As things were winding down, Will went downstairs for something and he yelled, "There's a frog in our house!" Of course everyone swarmed downstairs and saw the sizeable frog jumping around our dining room. Both older boys chased it with jars. I knew bedtime plans were foiled and it would take forever to get to bed now. But there was so much fun commotion going on, I couldn't help but giggle watching this poor frog leaping for his life from two boys who would likely squeeze him to death. Most of the time in my mothering, I think of the end result--respectable mature men--and everything is progression towards that end goal. But on that day, my future looked so hard, I had no idea how to get to the end goal. It felt like I was supposed to climb Everest, and I'd never even be able to make it to base camp. As the boys were jumping around the room with the frog, the thought occurred to me that this was a magical memory for them--the time they found a big frog in the house after historic rain storms. Something they would remember for a long time, maybe forever. Maybe I didn't have to stress so much about all the end goals in my life. Maybe I needed to spend more time on the now, and right now my boys were giddy and joyful. At that moment, I didn't need to think about the future, or even tomorrow. I needed to think about the NOW and if my family's needs were being met NOW, and they were, and then some. The future would take care of itself.

Will named him Toad the Frog.