It's also when my husband works 72 hours/week. When we were first married, before the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) breathed down their necks, the power plant my husband works at required 84 hour work weeks - which were worse, admittedly than right now. However, all those days (or nights - whichever 7 to 7 shift he happens to be assigned) can take their toll on all of us. Admittedly, the quality of parenting around here slides.
I used to worry for our safety when he wasn't around as much, but we have had added some security options around here lately - not the least of which was a Ruger .38 special my love bought for me. I never thought I'd be a "pistol packin' mama," but we had some incidences of concern this past Spring. Long stories short - I ended up at the gun shop with my husband and the "gun guy" (who supposedly has a name, but I only ever call him the "gun guy"), who were showing me a few models of gun I might like. I can't say I "liked" any of them, but the pink pearl-handled revolver caught my eye. However, after closer inspection - which included gun guy telling me to pull the trigger a few times to see how it felt in my hand, I said, "Well, it's a hard pull, and I think I won't be able to pull it 4 or 5 times in a row if I need to, you know?" Mark and gun guy looked at me agape for a few seconds, and gun guy got to work showing me a few other revolvers. I decided on the Ruger - which was a little more intimidating in appearance. When we left - ammo in hand, Mark mentioned my comment and how he and gun guy had been stunned by my imaginary shooting of an intruder several times with a medium caliber handgun. I said, "Well, I don't want to have to go to court." He laughed, and so did I. I'm not sure how much I was joking, but I don't really like my gun. I've had several shooting lessons - courtesy of Mark and Austin. I can load and unload fast, and I can shoot it, but I don't like it. I like the sense of security I get from it. This isn't a blog about guns or about second amendment rights or even about home security options. It's about my weekend.
It's at this point that I'd like to use the phrase, "It started out innocently enough," but that wouldn't apply here. Last Friday, our local home school group had a get-together/picnic lunch. [Background: A few days prior, on my husband's one day off/week, we took the kids to Brookfield Zoo. Like any trip to the zoo with young children, it never goes how you have it pictured in your mind. Rides on the carousel, cotton candy, feeding peanuts to the elephants and corn to the goats... It really consists mostly of parking and fetching strollers/wagons; exchanging tickets and money for every, possible attraction; dragging a cooler along to avoid $8.00 sandwiches; trying to scrape up quarters for wax mold machines, goat feeding machines, and whatever else the zoo can think of to literally nickel-and-dime us to death; watching your child screaming as she either runs toward or away from the peacocks, geese, and guinea fowl roaming the zoo; and thinking your child is tugging at your leg when it's really a petting zoo goat eating your shorts like they're salad. Levi and Violet spent much of this trip chasing the more helpless of the creatures roaming the zoo into a tizzy.]
Back to the squirrel at Friday's home school picnic... not as much a captive audience as a peacock with a tracking device/zoo prison anklet. She began the squirrel chase with a bellow that would've impressed William Wallace himself. This squirrel had her number. He scampered up a tree. She followed. He went around and down the tree. She went around the tree. He went back up the tree. And so the taunting went. About the time I turned back to start talking with some friends, my friend tapped me on the shoulder and turned my attention back to the tree, where my 3 year old daughter stood, back to the tree, pants at her knees, butt pointing squarely up into the tree, mooning. the. squirrel. I don't think anyone would have called that - least of all the squirrel. At this point I would like to use the phrase, "I was shocked and mortified," but that wouldn't apply here. I've ceased being surprised by much when it comes to some of my children. I thought, "How would I explain to everyone here that I have no idea where she came up with that idea? I doubt they'd even believe me." Ah, well. I posed the useless question anyway... and all were, of course, very gracious. The idea that the Slagters must spend their days mooning one another in gibbon-like displays of displeasure is an amusing picture in my mind - and probably in the minds of others now too. It's gotta be good for something, I figure. If I took my days too seriously, most of them would end in puddles of tears. |
| attitude plus |
I already had the beginnings of a pretty miserable cold. Between the cold and sleeping with 5 other people in the same room, I resorted to Nyquil. Ah, Nyquil... the only kind of socially acceptable drunk a mother can be. Between that an a Benadryl for some awful allergy symptoms, I slept pretty well - considering I went to bed at 9:30 - which is the earliest time I may have gone to bed since 5th grade. I woke up in the morning to explain to Levi and Austin that they could go to breakfast at the breakfast room in the hotel without us girls and that we would go to breakfast when Violet and Sadie awoke. (Pay attention, because this fairly benign instruction will bite me back on Monday morning.) After breakfast, the kids went in swimming awhile. We got ready for the reunion and met my grandparents to follow them to the community building. When we got there, the small reunion was attended by only one other child - a five-year-old boy - an astute little fellow whose only phrase directly to me was about Violet when he came over to me, pointed to Violet and said, "You see that girl? SHE does NOT listen!" (Tell me something I don't know, kid.) Levi had a buddy - one who understood his "pain"... until... I didn't see what happened. I heard some screaming and looked over to see Levi's buddy screaming and holding his head. I saw Violet running toward me saying, "I didn't do it! Levi did it!" The buddy was screaming and holding his head and pointing to Levi. Levi had tears welled up in his eyes, and he said, "We were just wrestling, and he fell down! I didn't mean to hurt him!" I told him I believed him but that he still needed to apologize. After some coaxing that it was okay, he told his buddy (presumably an only child) that he was sorry - at which point the boy's father lectured Levi in an angry sort of way and told him, "I told you boys that you shouldn't be TOUCHING each other!" At which point I thought, "Yeah, you can tell YOU only have one kid, rookie." That's all kids do when they're together... touch each other, touch everything else, and especially touch the stuff you've told them explicitly NOT to touch. So there was his first mistake - telling them not to touch each other. If we learned nothing else from God, Adam, and Eve in the garden, it was not to tell human beings the things they're not supposed to touch. Bottom line: "buddy's" dad banned him from playing with the Slagter children (the only other children at the reunion) for the rest of the day. I'm not saying it was a bad decision - just not a very nice one. So I had to encourage my kids to try to give "buddy" a rest from them for the rest of the day.
But our day wasn't over yet. Chinese food started to kick in, and my stomach was a wreck. Nausea and stomach rumblings started to overtake me. I spent the last hour (give or take - mostly GIVE) in the Belle Rive Community Center bathroom - crossing my fingers that the kids were staying away from "buddy", his ice pack(s), and his imaginary friends. As they closed the building, I had to leave my "fortress of solitude" and head for the cemeteries. Yes, the cemeteries. The traditional visit to the cemeteries was one I dreaded as a child - the awkwardness of adult grief, the rules about not stepping on the grass in front of the gravestones or touching flower arrangements, etc. However, I've come to appreciate the importance of these visits as an adult. That is, unless I'm sick. As I was chasing Violet around telling her not to pick flowers off grave site arrangements, climb monuments, or otherwise desecrate grave sites, she announced, "I have to poop!" As her urgency grew, grandma said we could go. So I thought we were headed back to the hotel... and sweet privacy (or at least relative privacy). The grandparents took a detour and headed to a second cemetery where - who else was there, but buddy and his overprotective parents. His dad glared at us as my children unbuckled and began to run over to buddy - a friendly face they recognized. In buddy's eyes, bygones were bygones, but I could tell that not so in his dad's eyes. So I suggested strongly that the kids should come back to the car with me and wait till grandma and grandpa were ready to go back to the hotel. About 5 minutes later, they meandered back to their car, and we started gratefully following them toward the interstate... as Violet was continually complaining about her need for a bathroom, and I was feeling the same sense of pain myself. About 3 miles on the interstate (and only 6 more miles till our hotel exit), I saw a sign for a rest area. I believe I forgot to mention that we had an incident on the way down when Levi (who insists on using men's restrooms now instead of accompanying me and his sisters to the ladies' room) got out of the restroom before we did and dialed the emergency call button on the police telephone outside the restrooms. We were met with a flashing blue light and an operator asking what our emergency was. SO... rest areas were not places of good luck so far this trip. I set Violet up in a stall and proceeded to grab the stall next to her myself. Not 5 seconds later, Violet announced from her stall throughout the bathroom, "Well... NOW I CAN'T GO!" At this point, I'd like to say that I was mystified by this turn of events. I'd also like to say that she ended up changing her ways when I said in my quietest yet most threatening voice, "You're not leaving that stall until you go poop!" However, I heard a toilet flush, and a stall door open. Had there not been a solid block wall between us, I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't have grabbed her ankle and made her stay in that stall. I then heard her asking strangers for help washing and drying her hands... along with adults asking where her mommy was. UGH... I was seriously conflicted between rushing to get out of my own stall and back out with her to make sure she made it safely back to the van and just tossing the dice and hoping for the best. Fortunately for all of us, motherly instinct won out (as it usually does)... yes, even over physical agony.
At this point, I'd like to say that was the end of a long weekend. I'd like to say that when we finally made it back to the hotel to the swimming pool and jacuzzi that it wasn't cold from some sort of malfunction that couldn't be fixed on a Sunday evening. I'd like to say I didn't spend the rest of Sunday evening nauseated beyond belief, fitfully sleeping, and unable to go get the kids some supper. I'd also really like to say that Levi didn't wake up early Monday morning and quietly yet skillfully manage the bolt lock on the top of our hotel room door (without waking anyone else up), walk himself down to the breakfast room, and start eating breakfast all by himself. But I can't say those things.
What I can say - with any degree of confidence, is that I fail. Life is full of glittering victories and - quite possibly more often - utter, dismal failures... for all of us. I know people who shy away from the words, "success" and "failure". I don't. I fail. I can't feel good about myself if I lose my temper with my kids. By God's grace, that rarely happens. I happen to have become blessed (or plauged - depending on who you ask) with a thing called forbearance (or even laid-back-ed-ness). I wasn't always laid back, but since my first marriage ended, I was brought to surrender... in that I cannot possibly control my circumstances. From time to time, I try to grasp that control back - an act of habit, but I'm always gently reminded that it's futile. As I imagine what people in that breakfast room must've thought when my 5-year-old wandered into the room barefooted in his football PJ's, helped himself to a box of cocoa puffs, popped the top, and started chowing down, I imagine maybe they thought we were into "unparenting" - letting our kids ride the subway unattended and things of that sort. Little did they know it was more like nausea followed by Nyquil induced parenting... reminding me that I wouldn't be a good actual drunk.
I read a devotion by Charles Spurgeon (19th century British minister). It started out, "A living dog is better than a dead lion." - Ecclesiastes 9:4 From there, Spurgeon goes on to say that worst things of life - the absolute most awful of its circumstances - are still brighter than the best death has to offer. He says that same thing applies to our spiritual lives. The least amount of grace exercised is far superior to the best of the unregenerate nature. "The thief on the cross excels Caesar on his throne; Lazarus among the dogs is better than Cicero among the Senators," because of the fact that there is beauty in admitting failure, weakness, and need - in a very human way - to One greater than self. You see, even Caesars and Ciceros are weak, needy - pathetic even. They need - even if unwilling to admit it.
Life happens, and as Spurgeon writes, "Life is the badge of nobility in the realm of spiritual things, and men without it are only coarser or finer specimens of the same lifeless material, needing to be quickened, for they are dead in trespasses and sins." Life - and how I rise (by conscious choice) to meet it or fall to be conquered by it - are badges of honor unique in all of creation to humanity. In addtion, "A living, loving gospel sermon, however unlearned in matter and uncouth in style, is better than the finest discourse devoid of unction and power. A living dog keeps better watch than a dead lion, and is of more service to his master; and so the poorest spiritual preacher is infinitely to be preferred to the exquisite orator who has no wisdom but that of words, no energy but that of sound." My actions toward those around me (most often my children) are more effectively used in loving, grace-giving, surrender than in blustering, controlling words and deeds that end in the hardening of hearts.
I take the kids to a local ceramics shop sometimes to work on projects and learn new skills. The proprietor, a lovely woman - and well-put-together, loves to use the word, "Perfect!" when referring to how a color combination or new skill we try turns out. I love it when things turn out, "perfect". What a delight that a side-effect of a fallen world - full of error - is the frustration of would-be perfectionists. Striving for perfect pleats, perfect hair, perfectly matching colors, perfect decor, and perfect weather for a perfect vacation, we can miss the joys of living in the imperfect.
Perfection is a requirement fulfilled only by God, and that not through effort but through His very nature... not something earned or accomplished, but something intrinsic to His very being.
Yes, I'd like to say a lot of things about how our weekend went, but in the end... I'd do it all over again. Experiences that teach are far more valuable than easy ones. I can say this for sure - there is grace abundant and free for all of my mistakes and yours.
But our day wasn't over yet. Chinese food started to kick in, and my stomach was a wreck. Nausea and stomach rumblings started to overtake me. I spent the last hour (give or take - mostly GIVE) in the Belle Rive Community Center bathroom - crossing my fingers that the kids were staying away from "buddy", his ice pack(s), and his imaginary friends. As they closed the building, I had to leave my "fortress of solitude" and head for the cemeteries. Yes, the cemeteries. The traditional visit to the cemeteries was one I dreaded as a child - the awkwardness of adult grief, the rules about not stepping on the grass in front of the gravestones or touching flower arrangements, etc. However, I've come to appreciate the importance of these visits as an adult. That is, unless I'm sick. As I was chasing Violet around telling her not to pick flowers off grave site arrangements, climb monuments, or otherwise desecrate grave sites, she announced, "I have to poop!" As her urgency grew, grandma said we could go. So I thought we were headed back to the hotel... and sweet privacy (or at least relative privacy). The grandparents took a detour and headed to a second cemetery where - who else was there, but buddy and his overprotective parents. His dad glared at us as my children unbuckled and began to run over to buddy - a friendly face they recognized. In buddy's eyes, bygones were bygones, but I could tell that not so in his dad's eyes. So I suggested strongly that the kids should come back to the car with me and wait till grandma and grandpa were ready to go back to the hotel. About 5 minutes later, they meandered back to their car, and we started gratefully following them toward the interstate... as Violet was continually complaining about her need for a bathroom, and I was feeling the same sense of pain myself. About 3 miles on the interstate (and only 6 more miles till our hotel exit), I saw a sign for a rest area. I believe I forgot to mention that we had an incident on the way down when Levi (who insists on using men's restrooms now instead of accompanying me and his sisters to the ladies' room) got out of the restroom before we did and dialed the emergency call button on the police telephone outside the restrooms. We were met with a flashing blue light and an operator asking what our emergency was. SO... rest areas were not places of good luck so far this trip. I set Violet up in a stall and proceeded to grab the stall next to her myself. Not 5 seconds later, Violet announced from her stall throughout the bathroom, "Well... NOW I CAN'T GO!" At this point, I'd like to say that I was mystified by this turn of events. I'd also like to say that she ended up changing her ways when I said in my quietest yet most threatening voice, "You're not leaving that stall until you go poop!" However, I heard a toilet flush, and a stall door open. Had there not been a solid block wall between us, I'm not entirely sure I wouldn't have grabbed her ankle and made her stay in that stall. I then heard her asking strangers for help washing and drying her hands... along with adults asking where her mommy was. UGH... I was seriously conflicted between rushing to get out of my own stall and back out with her to make sure she made it safely back to the van and just tossing the dice and hoping for the best. Fortunately for all of us, motherly instinct won out (as it usually does)... yes, even over physical agony.
At this point, I'd like to say that was the end of a long weekend. I'd like to say that when we finally made it back to the hotel to the swimming pool and jacuzzi that it wasn't cold from some sort of malfunction that couldn't be fixed on a Sunday evening. I'd like to say I didn't spend the rest of Sunday evening nauseated beyond belief, fitfully sleeping, and unable to go get the kids some supper. I'd also really like to say that Levi didn't wake up early Monday morning and quietly yet skillfully manage the bolt lock on the top of our hotel room door (without waking anyone else up), walk himself down to the breakfast room, and start eating breakfast all by himself. But I can't say those things.
What I can say - with any degree of confidence, is that I fail. Life is full of glittering victories and - quite possibly more often - utter, dismal failures... for all of us. I know people who shy away from the words, "success" and "failure". I don't. I fail. I can't feel good about myself if I lose my temper with my kids. By God's grace, that rarely happens. I happen to have become blessed (or plauged - depending on who you ask) with a thing called forbearance (or even laid-back-ed-ness). I wasn't always laid back, but since my first marriage ended, I was brought to surrender... in that I cannot possibly control my circumstances. From time to time, I try to grasp that control back - an act of habit, but I'm always gently reminded that it's futile. As I imagine what people in that breakfast room must've thought when my 5-year-old wandered into the room barefooted in his football PJ's, helped himself to a box of cocoa puffs, popped the top, and started chowing down, I imagine maybe they thought we were into "unparenting" - letting our kids ride the subway unattended and things of that sort. Little did they know it was more like nausea followed by Nyquil induced parenting... reminding me that I wouldn't be a good actual drunk.
I read a devotion by Charles Spurgeon (19th century British minister). It started out, "A living dog is better than a dead lion." - Ecclesiastes 9:4 From there, Spurgeon goes on to say that worst things of life - the absolute most awful of its circumstances - are still brighter than the best death has to offer. He says that same thing applies to our spiritual lives. The least amount of grace exercised is far superior to the best of the unregenerate nature. "The thief on the cross excels Caesar on his throne; Lazarus among the dogs is better than Cicero among the Senators," because of the fact that there is beauty in admitting failure, weakness, and need - in a very human way - to One greater than self. You see, even Caesars and Ciceros are weak, needy - pathetic even. They need - even if unwilling to admit it.
Life happens, and as Spurgeon writes, "Life is the badge of nobility in the realm of spiritual things, and men without it are only coarser or finer specimens of the same lifeless material, needing to be quickened, for they are dead in trespasses and sins." Life - and how I rise (by conscious choice) to meet it or fall to be conquered by it - are badges of honor unique in all of creation to humanity. In addtion, "A living, loving gospel sermon, however unlearned in matter and uncouth in style, is better than the finest discourse devoid of unction and power. A living dog keeps better watch than a dead lion, and is of more service to his master; and so the poorest spiritual preacher is infinitely to be preferred to the exquisite orator who has no wisdom but that of words, no energy but that of sound." My actions toward those around me (most often my children) are more effectively used in loving, grace-giving, surrender than in blustering, controlling words and deeds that end in the hardening of hearts.
I take the kids to a local ceramics shop sometimes to work on projects and learn new skills. The proprietor, a lovely woman - and well-put-together, loves to use the word, "Perfect!" when referring to how a color combination or new skill we try turns out. I love it when things turn out, "perfect". What a delight that a side-effect of a fallen world - full of error - is the frustration of would-be perfectionists. Striving for perfect pleats, perfect hair, perfectly matching colors, perfect decor, and perfect weather for a perfect vacation, we can miss the joys of living in the imperfect.
Perfection is a requirement fulfilled only by God, and that not through effort but through His very nature... not something earned or accomplished, but something intrinsic to His very being.
Yes, I'd like to say a lot of things about how our weekend went, but in the end... I'd do it all over again. Experiences that teach are far more valuable than easy ones. I can say this for sure - there is grace abundant and free for all of my mistakes and yours.
