I am an organizer, an administrator, and alphabetizer of anything. My mind thrives on order and predictability. I seek out the efficient, the quality, and the right. However I am also a mother of six, the wife of a musician and Pastor, a household manager, a homeschooling teacher and a believer in and follower of Jesus Christ. This is me. I know I was fearfully and wonderfully designed to be these things. This is where I have been placed for purpose and for good. It is not necessary that I understand this placement, only that I seek to honor the one who ordained it and to work diligently in it. And yet these parts of me do not co-exist naturally. Order is not a bedfellow of chaos. And everything about six children is chaos. So what am I to do?
Today was a good day. I accomplished exactly two items on my to do list. Granted, I did feed babies, manage children, teach school, make and clean up meals and actually get dressed before noon, but those things don't provide the sense of accomplishment at the end of the day for which I am so desperate. I am a list-maker and I find deep satisfaction in the crossed-off list. I have been known to write unscheduled items on my list that have already been accomplished simply for the joy of crossing them off. This life of mine, full of babies, does little to stroke that particular personality quirk. I nurse my newborn and helplessly watch the minutes tick by and the laundry reproduce like lop-eared bunnies in the basement. My carefully laid plans for meals fall apart because I haven't found the time to go grocery shopping. Simple obligations are overlooked in the midst refereeing sibling arguments, looking for the lost sneaker, and endless baths and braiding of hair. Yes, I hear the comments that are circling like vultures just waiting for their chance to dive-bomb this blog. Reminders to appreciate this time because it's so quickly over, those precious babies are only babies once, and they grow up so fast. Oh, and my favorite: sleep when the baby sleeps. Whoever came up with that jewel ought to be drug out in the street and, well, I don't want to promote violence, so how 'bout we drag them out in the street, pour pureed butternut squash on them and then pelt them with biochemical-warfare-quality diapers.
Yes, I dearly love my children and appreciate and acknowledge the gift of their lives. I would never give them up or trade them in. I value them and all the wonderful things they bring into my life and I am thankful for the blessing a child is. But sometimes, in the midst of all the blessing, I'd like to actually remember what "my life" was before - to remember who I am. Mommy-hood means forgetting the "my" and the "me" in everything and I willingly signed on for this uphill journey to temporary identity loss. But in traveling this Mt. Everest trail, I have come to understand that the trek becomes what I make it. No, there isn't some formula to making it easier. There is no book or parenting guru with the answer to a well-ordered home. But there are foundational answers and I have been ignoring them.
It's time to get back to base camp and re-visit a couple of those foundations. Here are a few.
In my weakness, He is strong.
Trust and obey.
I will never leave you nor forsake you.
All the days of my life were ordained before one of them came to be.
Whatever you do, do it heartily as for the Lord and not men.
And the one that is hitting me today:
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us and eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
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