What's your mantra?

My little sick cherub!

My baby is sick. It's sooo sad! He coughs and sneezes and is cutting a few teeth at the same time.

Last night Andrei would rock him and put him down and he would start crying right away, or sleep for 30 min. at the most. It's like having a newborn! He would call for me and then nurse and nurse without really falling asleep.

Nursing is kind of a "blessing and a curse" at this point because I reeallly wish he had another comfort object, too. I want to cuddle him as much as he wants, but he immediately starts patting me and asking for you-know-what and then if I try to make him stop, he acts like I've broken his heart.

Little teeth, I hope you make an appearance soon.

So we didn't really sleep last night and then we all slept for a few hours in the afternoon. Andrei was working to meet a deadline in the morning and then in the afternoon I hinted that I wouldn't mind a 20-minute break. He said I could have an hour, but I thought that was too long for doing nothing, so we decided on 30 minutes. :) I decided to get under the covers with a book.

I was trying to decide whether or not to do chores today, because I didn't want to have to play catch-up for the rest of the week. I had a fussy baby following me around whimpering, but I figured I could just put one dish away, and then another, and see where it went from there. 

Then I remembered that oft-quoted (popularized by Elisabeth Elliot) poem about doing "the next thing." I have a lot of questions at this point in my life, and not the least of them is wondering how the rest of this week will turn out if David is going to be sick for awhile. And how Andrei is going to get his work done if we're not sleeping at night, and what the future holds for us in general.

But if I just do one thing and then another, I might be able to push all those thoughts and worries out of my head. And I might find that the pile of tasks diminishes (though not while blogging, I realize. Hmmm...). 

It's a nice kind of life mantra, this "Do The Next Thing." But then I asked myself...do I really need a "mantra"? It doesn't quite satisfy my spiritual hunger. Should Christians have mantras? I'm not really good at them anyway-I never did quite get the hang of shining my sink. But I guess you could say that our ability to use coping mechanisms is a testament to the miracle of the human brain and the way we tackle the challenges thrown our way.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. -Matthew 6:34