The Holiest Holy Hour

The Holiest Holy Hours are when I bring Christina.
Is it because she inspires me by her love of Our Sacramental Lord?
Weeellll . . . sometimes, but, more often, it's because she is busy wreaking havoc, and giving her mother precious opportunities to learn humility. Not that I volunteer for them, I avoid being embarrassed, and disturbing the prayer of others as best as I can. I assume, for example, that since where is a crying room, we are covered. This works, if we are alone, but tonight it filled up with devout elderly people, for whom Christina feels compelled to put on:
The naughty show.
Let me smile angelically into this lady's eyes, so I can sidle close enough to grab her hymnal. (She graciously smiled and struggled to recover it).

Let me run circles around the room, laughing (why didn't she do this when the room was empty?)

Let me get busy in my diaper( oops, Mommy left the diaper bag five blocks down the street!)

Let me play hide-and-seek, ducking under Mommy's long skirt, and keep checking back to see if the crowd is watching!

Let me chew on my mother's rosary beads, breaking them in half, and spitting them out on the carpet, till she recognizes the sound, and takes them away from me.

At the end of this hour of torture, er, prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, I was inspired that a blessing with Padre Pio's glove would provide her with enough grace to help overcome her naughtiness, I asked her sister Gabbi to wheel her in her stroller towards the front of the Church, while I waited on line for confession. I watched lovingly from afar, praying for them both with tears of joy springing to my eyes.
What I didn't notice from that distance was that: Christina pushed the wheelchair of the infirm lady in front of her, tried to kick the priest offering the relic for veneration, and laid hold of the skirt of a hapless passerby. All this while restrained in a stroller, so she couldn't race up onto the altar.
My dear Gabbi was getting a lesson in humility as well!

God is such a loving Father, to teach me that it's not important to look holy at Holy Hour.
It's important to be holy at Holy Hour, offering up these humiliations in the spirit if the Little Flower, as gifts for my precious Jesus hidden in the Blessed Sacrament. Especially when you are on your last thread of patience, hair askew, scapular flying, forehead beaded with perspiration, and in desperate need of that confession you are in line for.
That's when the graces really flow.
That's the secret of special motherhood.