A Long But Beautiful End To The Day

This post is occurring so late tonight because it was a long day.  It was one of those long days where I thought, "Maybe I should listen to my son when he says he just wants to be bored."

My husband has been working late a lot this week- which means my son pretty much refuses to go to bed until he gets home, or close to that time.  Which means he's horrible to wake up.  It's fun.  No- not really.

After waking him up this morning and he did not have the strength to go to school I reminded him we were supposed to go to a Christmas Concert tonight at one of his favorite churches.  I hadn't planned this into our already busy December schedule, but a well-connected friend got us tickets to sit in the VIP section.

Several times today I considered aborting the plan.  My day at work was hard- I actually got kicked by a 3 year old human (I've found out I have more patience with being abused by people's pets than by their kids).  The trip to get from work to pick him up from school took an hour and a half instead of 45 minutes.  My son was not the most cooperative and I feared traffic would be bad on the way to the church that was on the other side of town.  As I was doing a mad dash to let the dog out and change and find appropriate clothes for my son, he decided to have a breakdown when I told him, "No- you may not wear sweatpants to Church!".  We got in the car and several times I considered turning around.  I could tell the little guy was tired.  I could tell this could be a recipe for disaster.  He cracked me up when he told me he was "cooped up in Church clothes".

Getting a little pizza into him lightened his spirit.  He must have picked up how worried I was that we were going to be late because he became worried that we were going to be late.  We actually arrived 45 minutes ahead of time to hear the carillon.  The church was decorated beautifully and our seats were at the front, right below a beautiful dome.  My son excitedly pointed out, "What's a sister doing up there?"  It made me happy to see him think of Mother Teresa as one of the religious sisters he knew.  He then saw St. John Paul II on the ceiling and said, "Hey, I know him".  He died long before my son was born, but he has gotten to know him through pictures and books and his parents talking about him.

The concert started and my son was on the edge of his seat.  I sat back for the first time all day and just tried to take it in.  The singers, orchestra, carillon and bells.  It was magical.  I remembered the last time I had been to a Christmas concert was when I was pregnant with my son.  That was the first time I had felt him moving inside me.  It was beautiful to have that memory and then see this 4 1/2 year old in front of me enjoying the music and wanting to sing along.

There were some ups and downs tonight.  At one point, I started to take him out of the Church, so he wouldn't disrupt the other people in church- he quickly figured out that we had the best VIP seats and that is where he wanted to be.  I had told him at one point that I used to go to sleep during concerts, a family friend actually called the nice dresses my mom dressed us in our "fancy pajamas" because we spent more time asleep in them than we did awake.  I told my son he could rest under Jesus and the sister and the friendly man and go to sleep.  According to him he drowsed off at one point.  The sweetest thing I've heard in a while came out at one point, "Mommy- I could just stay here with you and God and the Angels and Mary and Jesus for the rest of time".

Yep- sometimes it's good to push through a day and to work a little extra harder to have precious moments.  I have a feeling my son will remember this night for a while.  Thank you God, for giving me the patience to push through.