Church- a luxury??

I never thought that church would be a luxury; but with 4 little kids that seem to revel in sharing cold, flu, and any other germs that they come across that's what it seems to be for us around here- a luxury. I never thought that Korey and I took church for granted or didn't make it a priority. But, I don't think I ever appreciated how much our church and the fellowship of the "body" meant to me and my spiritual life. It's easy to get bogged down in life. It's easy to feel like we're in this walk and this struggle alone- and it's doubly easy to do all that when you're not in church every Sunday- or doing a Bible study during the week. This morning I was so discouraged that we were too sick to make it to church this morning (nasty snotty noses and diarrhea for the babies and a nasty snotty nose for Jackson). I feel like we're on the tail end of this cold, but our church has so many young babies in the nursery that we just didn't feel like we would be welcome to leave 2 crawlers and 1 walker in there to slobber on the toys and other babies and 3 kids is a lot to try and corral in the cry room, while trying to be respectful of the other parent's trying to listen to the sermon. So, it was home for us, once again, this week. I really was having a hard time and feeling rather sorry for myself and feeling so lonely and disconnected, but as I was reading in Psalms God spoke to my heart. 

Psalm 72:18 

Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only does wondrous things.

I think I just needed that reminder that my children and my circumstances aren't a punishment; they're not a burden; they're not something bad- they're a wonderful gift from God! This season of life isn't going to last forever. My kids won't always be so good at sharing germs. These 4 children aren't always going to be at the stage they are now. Someday we will be "moving on" from wiping butts and noses. Someday when they're sick they can stay home by themselves. Someday, soon, we'll be back at church every Sunday and missing it will be a strange and rare occurrence- just like it used to be. But, for today, we reveled in the fact that we have 4 babies that need us to do everything for them and that we had the blessing of another low-key day at home, before Korey started another long week of working 5 10 hour days. We took 2 walks, we ate a special lunch, we made muffins and granola, we snuggled babies, we played games, 2 of the 3 "littles" took a nice long nap and we're gonna take Allie to the park to throw a stick in the water, after they wake up. Somedays it's just hard to look at life and remember it's just a stage and it won't last forever, because it seems so overwhelming, but I'm thankful that God often meets me where I am and brings me to the right place- a place of thankfulness and trust that He has our best planned in advance for us! I'm mostly thankful, though, that He give us the grace to have fun and to enjoy this journey that He planned out for us!