Room at the Inn Banquet 2011

On Thursday night we attended the annual fundraising banquet for Room at the Inn, a local maternity home. Our wonderful babysitter, who knows me pretty well by now, may have been right when said, "I'm not sure how many more years you're going to be able to go to this thing." Unspoken in that is because I'm one of those crazy mamas whose babies are all super clingy and don't take bottles and blah blah blah. All's fine and well with some babies (like Mary who flirted her way through the banquet she attended at 10 months old), but just wait till one of them can't settle for sleep in public . . .

I go out for a fancy date with my husband twice per year, which I shouldn't take for granted. That's twice more than a lot of people! What this fancy date looked like was this:

Get all dressed up. Oh, still have lots of baby weight to lose. Have, um, oh yes, one nice outfit I can chose to wear. Okay, I guess that frees me from agonizing over clothing decisions.

I hadn't owned pumps in about four years when I bought a pair last year and wore them one time before hobbling around in crippled pain, remembering why I don't wear them anymore. These are sensible pumps, with a thick heel that isn't very high. Well, I pulled them out of the box in which they reside at the back of the closet. Mary, almost three, grabbed them from me and turned them this way and that, asking of the heel: "Mama, what is this thing on these shoes?!" 'This thing' indeed is some bizarre contraption to make women unstable and somehow look prettier, I don't know. Anyway, I wore them.

And I wore the pocket sling I don't like because it looked a little more crisp with my outfit and my major, glaring accessory: the baby!

How was the food? Hhhhmmm, I can't really say. In between repeated dashes out of the room, I ate half my salad, a few bites of my vegetables, and a slice of cake, plus some sips of water. Dash, crying baby! Dash, crying baby!

Then poor Margaret really let loose. Nothing would soothe her and she would not fall asleep in my carrier. She was screaming so loudly that even though I was way down the hallway in the convention center, personnel closed the last remaining open door to the ballroom so my baby wouldn't disturb people. Even had the doors remained open, I couldn't have heard any of the speakers over the screaming in my ears. Finally I gave up all the pacing up and down the hallway in my clickety clack heels and just sat in a chair with my screaming baby in my lap. But, seriously, I didn't even feel that dejected. I just felt like a mom and that it was One of Those Nights. "I guess God wanted me to miss this one! I'm sure there's a spiritual lesson in this somewhere." I've come a long way!

I couldn't have left Margaret with a babysitter at home because we don't pay a sitter enough to hold a crying baby for five hours. I suppose in hindsight, the only sensible thing to do would have been skip out on the whole event this year. And when I reach a new level of sacrificial motherhood, I will do that. :)  God is working on me.

But . . . drum roll please . . . I desperately wanted to be there to see one of my favorite ministries, Be Not Afraid, win the Msgr. Wellein Award from RATI! What a well-deserved accolade! And now 1,500 pro-life people, probably most of whom had never heard of this ministry, know about Be Not Afraid and can spread the word that this kind of support exists. Babies will be saved and families will experience joy because the word is spreading.

Bonus Reading

If you're read this far (wow!), please enjoy this delightful and encouraging and incredibly true article: Why I Never Should Have Had Eight Children by Leila Miller.