The Morning After Monday

I am beginning to love Monday nights
and really look forward to them. For one thing,
it's my one little escape.
I leave the house alone.
Those of you who do this all time,
who walk around parking lots and stores
and libraries and banks without a baby on your hip
and a child on your free hand,
or a stroller and an arm full of bags,
well, you don't know what you're missing.
(or maybe you do and you miss the days
where your babes were so dependent on you--feel free to
come on over if you want to relive those glory days).
Don't get me wrong.
I love my life with my children
---I'm just looking forward to the day when
I don't have to carry/hold on to them all the time.
The oldest two are at a much easier place.
And the first year of life is always so draining
to me as the mother. That's where I am, so don't think
I'm sour grapes about motherhood.
I'm just knee deep in what is, for me,
the most difficult part right now.


When I do find myself walking alone across a parking lot
or through a store, I almost always think to myself
"I feel taller today." I feel like I even have better
posture when I am not carrying twenty pounds
of squirmy person or bending over to hear what someone
three feet tall is trying to whisper to me.
It's just nice to walk alone sometimes.
I feel like Mary Tyler Moore in the beginning of her show
where she's walking down some city street and she's so happy
that she just flings her hat into the air.
It's a good thing I don't wear hats.

So I get to go out alone on Monday nights.
Hooray for alone-ness.
I am definitely the kind of person who recharges
their battery by getting away from people and being alone.
Isn't that a characteristic of an invert?

Once I get to where I am going on these Monday nights,
it is just the most enjoyable time.
I feel like a dry old sponge that
is dropped into a bucket of warm water.
It's therapeutic.
It's so good for me.
I sit down with these other ladies who are in some ways
very similar to me and in some ways quite the opposite.
But it is Christ in us that is the common denominator
and that definitely draws us together.
We discuss what we are learning from the Scripture,
we share stuff, we talk about our experiences,
we encourage each other, we pray together.
It is just exactly what I need at this point in time.
And then last night, after we finished with our study,
we got off on this other tangent and we laughed
so hard and so much.
You know how a group of women can be.
It was just such a good time.
It's like getting my little gas tank filled.

So now I have the week ahead to pour over
the assigned Scriptures and arm myself for next week's
discussion. It's funny how it's like what we are studying
on Monday nights and what my Sunday school class
at church is studying and the book of the Bible that
I am reading through on my own right now---they are all
merging into this one thing, different pieces of the puzzle.
It's like I am looking at something
from many different perspectives.

It's just a really good thing.