By the Grace of God

**Warning** If you don't like reading stories about people getting sick, you may want to skip this one!

Over Thanksgiving, my family and I played a game called Loaded Questions. (It has now become one of my favorite games to play with a group because you learn a lot about people. Basically, one person reads a question, which everyone else answers on paper, and the person who read the question has to guess who put which answer.) Anyway, when asked "What makes you want to vomit?", my immediate answer was "the smell of vomit or watching other people vomit." And this is very true; just the sound or smell of it causes me to gag, and I've always said I cannot clean up other people's vomit. Well, God certainly has a sense of humor because I just spent the last day and a half essentially sitting in vomit. After getting home from mass on Wednesday evening, Elle turned to me and puked all over me and the living room floor multiple times. Thinking that she was surely done at least for a while, we immediately showered, only to get out and have her do the exact same thing. After the third change of clothes, I figured I might as well not change anymore. Being only 16 months, she is of course not good at letting me when she's about to be sick or at aiming. So, needless to say, it was a fun over 24 hours!

The amazing thing to me is that when all she wanted to do was have me hold her, of course often covered in puke, my thought was not about how gross it was or how I didn't want to get it on me or how I was going to gag from the smell. My only concern was making her feel better, even if that meant being surrounded by something that I hate. And all I could think of as I sat on my towel-lined couch was how funny it was that I had put that answer down during the game and how God was really trying to teach me something here. It is so true that being a mother really helps in that whole dying to self thing! God certainly had a purpose for putting Elle in my life, and He continually shows me that He will always provide the grace for any situation. And Elle is finally getting better this morning. It is so hard to see your little one sick!