A New Season

 Bills to the left of me,

Laundry to the right,

Here I am.

Stuck in the middle with you...

{And yet I write, for it helps when I'm feeling squeezed in the middle} 

***

This morning I read tens of status updates on Facebook written by both the teary eyed and jubilant mother as their child(ren) was sent off for their first day of school. Pictures of smiling and brand spankin' clean children in outfits that just had their tags torn off. Mama's who wondered if it's cool to stand at the bus stop with their preteen sons (yup, I mean you, Tonya) and one whose heart is rendered into a consistency of grits at the thought of her little guy sitting in a big, lonely cafeteria for lunch (you know who you are, Laurel).

As for me, the only noticeable change in season so far is the Apple/Cinnamon Glade Plug-In I bought from the discount grocery store. Oh, and a small section of leaves on our towering Maple in the backyard is turning shades of yellow. Other than that, it's a seamless transition from summer to fall. All my birdies stay in the nest for another year.

Last year I was yearning for what will be now next year. While I was and am satisfied with deciding to keep our five-year old (who just turned so in July) home and send him to Kindergarten when he is six, another four seasons with every one of the littles at home seemed to stretch out endlessly before me. They still do. I am, however, seeing the choice I have to view this time as a gift, not a drag.

Early morning swing, wearing her very favorite articles of clothing and shoes.

In fact, to be perfectly honest (as I always strive to be, and perhaps am too much so at times), this past summer was a hard one for me..."hard" only in a daily "trying-to-stay-afloat" sense of the word. Especially August. I do recognize that perhaps the one week out of the four I was operating under the influence of a monthly hormonal phenomenon (in which I sent off our "beloved" dog, Bingo, to a new home in the course of a few high-stress hours.  My stepson was so devastated when he discovered she was 'gone'. She came back the next morning. My husband is concerned he'll be the one "sent away" next month). It was not just that week, though. Overall, I felt like I was struggling to stay ahead of and above the ever-increasing demand.  My spirit sagged and my jaw started to grow sore from all the clenching. I kept saying to Curt, after sitting down for the first time on any given day at 8pm,  "I don't know how I can keep going at this speed" (and that's staying on the home front with MINIMAL social commitments...no preschool, no play dates, etc.).

I felt defeated, deflated and horrible for the thought that sometimes flitted through my head "This job is for the birds!!", when so many are wishing they had even 1/5th of mine.

 

I have decided that I do not want to stay defeated. I do not want to begin a new season discouraged. The quote I shared on my last post was one that made me stop and pay attention as I was working through my discouragement:

"Life is manageable in the moment.
Don't worry about what was or what will be.

God gives you grace for the moment".

~Mary Graham

GRACE for the MOMENT.

GRACE for the SECOND in which:

~I find human feces on the arm of the couch. Again.

~Am begged for a snack (by three children) right after I got done serving a nice breakfast.

~Have a child throwing his or her body on the floor because I said "Not right now" and screaming as though I had said "I now how have to sever your right femur bone off with a hand saw".

~Find pools of chocolate milk that twin boys sip from their sippy cup all to promptly spew it out. Just for kicks.

~All of the above occurring within the same set of "seconds".

Holding up the perished 'treasures' he found along the recently flooded (but now subsided) walking paths at our local park. There was no choice but to bring them home to show dad when he gets home from work).

The start of school might mean nothing new for our children, but I want it to be the beginning of a new season for me. It will not require a new set of pencils, lunch money or clean socks. It requires keeping perspective and in doing so, making second-by-second choices to view what I have by the bright light of His promise to equip me for whatever (or whomever!) He has for me.

Practically, getting myself out of bed and out the door for a walk with a fellow God-follower at five o'clock every morning has helped my outlook tremendously . In doing so, I get back early enough to take a shower and plopping in my contacts, thus feeling human and able to see clearly for when the children come down. For the elder children, we are enforcing a 7 o'clock rule, in which they each have alarm clocks and may not come downstairs until the music starts playing. I am still figuring out what to do with the twins who easily crawl out of their cribs and can not understand alarm clocks. There is a whole lot of "figuring out" I have left to do...and I suppose I will do so by the time I'm 90 years old, if I should prevail that long!

You will admire {ahem} our parenting skills in that we have started promising a piece of chocolate to the first child who falls asleep at night. Once this helpful hint goes public, I totally expect a call from Focus on the Family, and am already clearing my calendar for any radio interviews they will want to conduct.

Whatever season of life we find ourselves in, it is amazingly easy to give in to selfishness, feeling overwhelmed and/or self-pity...even when, in reality, our list of blessings far outweighs the list of woes.

Every second of every day (which equates to 86,400 of them!), I have the choice to explore or ignore the words that now hang just inside my back door (thank you ReUzit shop!)...

...and to let my mind linger on the countless ways He does just that (and provides for me to do the same for the children He has generously given me)!