Count Your Blessings…Instead of Fish!

My moment of motherhood bliss shattered like a china tea cup on a marble floor. I had just poured hot water  into a favorite mug and breathed in the soothing aroma of peppermint tea.  My two cherub faced youngsters played with their kitchen set in the next room.

“Scottie, why is your arm wet?” I asked our five year old who had come into the kitchen. He gave me a blank stare like someone who has just witnessed an alien abduction.

I rushed past him into the family room, which at eight months pregnant was not very graceful. My eyes rested on our 20 gallon fish tank. The lid was off. Plants were shoved aside, and the little castle had toppled over in the multi-colored gravel.

The two large fantail gold fish were gone.

“Where are they?”  I stammered.   

Scottie, who had followed me to the crime scene, looked at the floor next to my feet. Following his gaze I gasped to see one of the fish inches from my foot. I saw its mouth move in little gasping movements as I scooped up the little pink tray it was on and plopped it back into the water.

“Where is the other fish?” I inquired.

Amy, his three and a half year old accomplice proudly held out a plastic frying pan, and announced,  “It’s ready!”

Her little thumb gently kept the gold lump from slipping onto the Berber carpet. The fish lay unmoving.

“What happened to the plastic peas and fake eggs!” I demanded. “Whose idea was this?”

Both Scott and Amy pointed a wet finger at each other. After a “burial at sea”, I sent both crying kids into their rooms. By this time I was crying too. Was I fit to bring another fish mangler into the world?   I reheated my cup of tea and sank into the couch.

“Mommy, can we come out now?” they asked peering around the corner.

“Sure,” I said, then hugged them both, wet sleeves and all.

Maybe if I spent more time counting my blessings instead of fish I would realize that God never puts more in my tank than I can handle.