As we are moving toward the end of an academic year, I am looking at what is keeping us so busy this month. We have just completed a successful piano Guild presentation(10 pieces) , we have spring choir concerts, the end of Activity Days (Montessori and Good Shepherd Catechesis), finishing up fourth grade, and Joseph is now playing soccer, beginning baseball practice, performing in a spring piano recital, and attending Spring montessori science classes at the park. So the chauffeur hat is on. Mom is completing spring cleaning, overseeing the kids's learning and doing the usual homemaking and teaching little ones to participate and cooperate. We are continuing on the quest for cooking ever healthier home cooked meals (the kind the kids will want to eat and transition for on-the-go events), giving pre-schoolers appropriate activities that fit their changing needs, along with disciplining or redirecting them as they learn to be more independent around the house.
On the looming horizon of each day is trying to fit in good exercise, sleep, and prayer, the golden triangle. I know exercise and sleep are a must for the body, and prayer for the soul, and they all give us strength to live and love well. So this should be no problem, yet somehow it is the toughest to balance these into busy days. The kids, the house, they speak loudly, and they are always in perpetual motion. The golden triangle can be easily swept aside, it often is hard to get to any of these, much less all three. Yet the days I do, and we do, we get twice as much done with more joy. This has been an especially exhausting week and I feel it. Dad is gone for 11 days and Mom has dealt with all three kids with fevers of 103, one trip to Urgent Care (waiting for two hours at bedtime) to treat strep, and a host of other normal life hassles (like the sitter canceling and carpenter ants / bees and a mean Orkin man). So there has been no time to really get to exercise, and we had to miss going to mass on Sunday, which is a real sadness.
So sometimes (like tonight) must remind myself what a good choice this life is when it hurts so much to drop into bed exhausted. These past few weeks are a struggle to make room for basics, along with true leisure, which is important to create culture and avoid burnout. So like a recipe with missing ingredients, my life isn't tasting as good as it could. But like any faithful cook, I will tweak the ingredients until I make it more palatable.
I know this busy season will change, and as I try to rebalance and shuffle obligations I am reminded there are even on the hardest of weeks so many wonderful moments of joy and satisfaction. I do admit I really miss some of the things I used to have time for. But if I added back even some of the leisure pursuits of another season of life, I could never do what my present vocation and situation draws me to. I have to choose, and the choices mean letting go. I think that's what real growing up is, as I age. Learning to let go, of so much, of things you are attached to that you weren't even aware you are attached to. When you are young, you choose how to exercise, at this stage, I am very happy to sit on my bike on a trainer, with a book, just to get exercise. Never mind picking the most fun type of exercise.
I wise friend and I were talking at the park the other day, and musing how the world advertises the unspoken message that you as a woman can "have it all." That can leave women really feeling pulled in many directions and very divided. It's hard to wear many hats well. Plus "having it all" is at least for me sometimes a lure for simply placing ones personal ambitions first, or longing for what others may have and you don't. Often children, or marriages suffer from choices made this way, which in the end causes the women to suffer too. I think in this real world, which is so very short, there just isn't time to pursue "everything" well, at every stage of life. Plus of course, no one really does "have it all" usually least of all those who work the hardest trying to look like they do.
When children are young, they are more demanding than you've dreamed and it's tough to choose full time motherhood in a culture that doesn't promote it as a fulfilling role, much less really respect it. It's even tougher to home educate, although I would say it too is a very rewarding job if you are called to it. We full time homemakers, the non-glamorous, happy, hidden women, have chosen to place little people first, and found great peace in the decision. It is like tending a large garden, it takes time and patience, hard work, good friends, and some divine help. Once in a while there is a need to remind each other what a beautiful choice it is, especially when the days are rough, and the gardener is tired. I know I needed that today. I also know we shall not regret sowing in the gardens of our children's lives, it is never a waste. When they are older, there will be time for more balance, more leisure. And we will miss fun, crazy, hectic moments of little people who demand so much but love so fully in return.
No comments:
Post a Comment