Coughs and runny noses filled our December with the visiting baby triplets. Our tribulations were persistent but low-grade most days—like their fevers—until this past Sunday when into our home came something dreadful: a gastrointestinal virus.
I sacrificed my lunch to the sewer system and faced diapers pooling with sickness. The babies wailed, no words to communicate how they felt as the bug flooded their bodies with pain before escaping any way it could.
My own girls had taken to their rooms with buckets, leaving Husband the only one still standing despite a stomach ache of his own. He passed the bathroom where I crouched on Sunday evening, my head dangling for the umpteenth time over the porcelain.
I raised my gaze to his, wiping my mouth. “This is hard.”
He blew out a breath. “Yeah.”
Babies’ screams shattered the atmosphere of our home. Illness raged through our systems for hours. Discouragement pummeled my hopes. Could it get any worse? It didn’t feel like it.
Later when we could stand again, Flicka and I swayed the still sick, crying babies in our arms in the living room.
“‘Count it all joy when you face various trials,’ right?” I said, quoting the verse in James. “So, this is joy, I guess.” I chuckled, but felt the smile slide off my face.
Her expression sober, Flicka nodded, her wisdom showing through. “Yeah. It is.”
And I knew she, like me, remembered the rest of it. Trials are an opportunity for patience, and patience, having done its job right, makes a person complete, a cause for joy—joy, a close sister to peace and not at all resembling her fickle relative, happiness, who makes unrealistic demands that all must go a certain way to be good.
Beneath the cramping stomachs and countless diapers and crying babies and Clorox wipes and extra laundry and bottles of Pedialyte, there it was: an undercurrent of peace. This hardship was temporary. My patience was growing; my joy was near.
My phone pinged with a text from a friend. She had been thinking about her word for the new year. And what was mine?, she wondered.
My word for 2020? I had forgotten my usual end-of-the-year pursuit to find one. What would my word be? What word would help me hone my gaze and sharpen my intentions this new year in this new decade?
Maybe I wouldn’t pick just one but instead choose four to propel me through the twelve months ahead.
Count it all joy.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.