Heading Out Again.....And Distractions

Here we are again only hours away from hitting the road. I do love when we are not having to leave at the crack of dawn.......literally. It makes for a much more peaceful day and not having to worry about having the van loaded the night before. And for some reason it's always more peaceful when we leave when Brad is home and not trying to get out the door at 7am on our own without his help. It's definitely been done and, in doing so, having managed to only have run 20 minutes behind at that. Just not something I prefer to do.





To some it may seem as if I have completely fallen off the face of the earth for now. I can go for 3 entire days now without checking email and then when I do check in only manage to read briefly without ever a minute to respond. This is so totally unlike me in every aspect and I hate knowing how behind I am falling in more than one area. Overwhelmed? Not really. Just extremely preoccupied and.......well, just busy. I went from not ever really thinking about how close this baby is to being a bit consumed with it, I suppose. And with school on a roll and Aubrey now reading it's become so much more than just sitting them down with instructions...though they do have their self taught assignments laid out for them. As anything goes though, it still requires some attention. And as we get closer I made a to do list of things that have to be done. Cutting everybody's hair was one of them. So, yesterday all 5 boys were lined up and went through "the barber shop...which would be bathroom-turned-barber facilities" while the girls got their homemade "salon" appt today. While cutting the boys' hair is now a no brainer and turns out a better haircut than any I have ever paid for the girls' hair is a different story. But, as always, practice makes perfect....eventually. And today I was quite impressed, despite the amount of cussing I did while in the midst of the hair cutting process. Not bad and I even managed to layer it a little.......yes, intentionally........and frame around their faces. Not bad at all! I'll get the hang of this in the end.



I was thinking today.....prioritizing really..........about the busyness of life and what I would like to accomplish over the next year. With the constant of our life right now.....the day in-day out school stuff along with readying life and home for a new baby what is it that I really want to pursue beyond all else. So, I made a list and began to ponder what seemed to be all of life and the essence thereof. What is truly worthwhile, life enriching endeavors and what it just trivial stuff that creates a busyness that does not need to exist and only manages to makes our lives crazier and me more insane than when I started it all. All of this done in the hopes of finishing it and seeing a task to the bitter end.........so like myself in everything I take on. Yes.......there are many things that need to willingly be laid down for a season for the sake of my children. There are many things that just do nothing but produce stress in an already filled day of just keeping up with hearth and home. I have no greater joy than to see my children seated around the kitchen table every morning with heads bent low writing out their Scripture verses and toiling away at their spelling. It truly brings me such inner joy as I watch them discover the world around them and just how big it really is. As we dug into Spain, Norway, Germany and Tokyo this past week they all reveled in the marvel of the culture and what exactly life is like in these different countries.



I sat for a moment in the busyness of the morning routine............amidst the lively chatter of younger ones, the questions posed by older ones and the happy squeals of a baby now walking like a pro and playing squealy, happy games with a toddler sibling and I am again reminded that this is my priority. Always...........first and foremost. "I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth." That they are surrounded by love and security in their worlds. That we are here, free, studying the Bible, practicing pretty cursive using Scripture verses, talking openly and including everyone in the school day happenings. I watch as they all take a break and get some fresh air as the boys run and tackle each other, laughing and hollering............sounds that emanate and resound happily through open windows. The girls run with the wind blowing through their hair and I see our freedom. I hold it dear to my heart. Again , I am reminded that even though some days I am tempted a bit to be a little disappointed at all of the things I aspire to do and accomplish that there is definitely a season for everything and a time for everything in life. This time is so fleeting. They are little for only so long. They are young and teachable and absorb like sponges for only so long. They are captivated by life and what is around us for only a period in time before they leave my care and start to discover this life on their own. I only get to watch them discover for a very short season the butterflies, bees, flowers, ants, chickens, twigs, blades of grass and the many everyday things I so often take for granted. When looking at life through their eyes my world is changed and made into a better place. And when I take the time to declutter my day and discover life alongside them I realize how trivial the other stuff really is. This time is short........so very short. And when I look back and maybe having accomplished everything I wanted to check off my life will I have wished that I had just settled and reveled in the life of my children a little more???? And will the children remember me out tracking the ant with them or guiding them on how to nurse a cat back to health...or will they think I was preoccupied and busy on things. I want them coming into smells of warm bread rising, clean bedrooms that they can take pride in having been taught how to keep their things, where they feel organized and safe and secure knowing everything has a place and everything is in its place. Knowing that I will help them and discover with them with their best interest at heart.



Distractions occur so easily. They seem to sneak up on me and take hold. I began to realize one day when I looked up that I am growing increasingly irritated at them for what I want to accomplish but feel that I cannot due to "interruptions". As I sat contemplating all of this and feeling the Lord tug at my heart in so many ways I began to see that what I am viewing as interruptions are not at all interruptions but what I have been called to do that I am so easily being distracted from. The world constantly screams that one needs time for ones own self. I cannot count the number of times I have been told this by curious and, sometimes just downright, outspoken people. Usually the questions are posed, "How in the world do you ever get time for yourself??????" But sometimes the ones come that are not always so encouraging. "Honey.....you need to go take some time for yourself. You deserve it. You need to get yourself a maid and a sitter one day a week and put some of the boys in a mother's Day Out where they can run and interact and make you some shopping time. 5 boys???!!! Isn't that considered insanity????" As I have evaluated and contemplated it over these last few months and study in the Scripture I can find no where in there that it says to dump your responsibilities and make some "me" time. In fact...I find all of these opinions to be self focused and self centered. All in the light of being able to "cope". I am not opposed to alone time or a date night with Brad. In fact, those are indeed healthy. What is sad is the mindset of the modern parent. I LOVE my children....but I guess what could even go farther than that is that I LIKE my children. I love their company, the joy they bring to me when they are around me, the gifts that we have been given in them. I have no desire to stick them in a Mother's Day Out for "me" time. I don't really even have a desire to have a sitter one day a week. We leave them rarely. It would be fun every once in awhile to have a day to go shop in FW with Mother but this is the rare exception to the rule, I suppose. But in this modern theology I do not find myself wanting to get "rid" of them but rather find myself growing irritated with what I wish to accomplish that little hands and feet impede. As I made out my list I laid it before the Lord. Some of the top aspirations were learning more and growing better at photography. For years I have longed to take a class at the local college.....something that is completely impractical to do at this point in life. Just to be able to take incredible pictures of my own children as they discover life and to see life as a whole through a different perspective. I see so many things in the everyday here and now that scream things to me. Old faded red barns that we drive past, deteriorating houses that once were home to probably many children...many of whom were probably born inside those crumbling walls, trees with branches outstretched in the fading sunset, the intricate grains and texture of a screen door that fell to the ground many years ago, the look on one of my children's faces as they watch as snake slither swiftly into its hole, the laughter in their eyes as they play with each other, oblivious to the world around them or who watches, the color of sunset in their hair as they sit, eyes upturned to the sky as they converse about the array of colors. I Long to freeze frame these moments in time. These innate objects that scream the handiwork of God and speak to me in some way that day and these very living objects that I hold in my arms for such a short time.

So, photography was at the top. Along with becoming more and more efficient in sewing. Though I have come a long way and now have the ability to indeed sew dresses to pj's to even some easy maternity patterns I grow weary or the slow moving, painstaking process of taking the time to get good and fast at it. It comes with time...but there again, where is the time to be borrowed from? Another was bow making for the girls..especially now that Ivye is well on her way to joining us. I absolutely cannot anywhere within me bring myself to spend 9.99 on a hairbow that is simply a piece of ribbon tied lavishly and extravagantly around a hair barrette. These are just to name off a few of the many things and hobbies I have begun to take on and then grow frustrated at not being able to finish. This does not even begin to include what I long to become really good at it to instill into my children in order to both be frugal and in order for Brad and I to teach them financial freedom and responsibility, how to serve the Lord with their finances and save what they can in order to both be responsible adults but also in order to be able to bless others, as they have been blessed in their lives. This would include areas in which I am still very much learning from bread making, to cloth diapering to sewing the girls longed for Sunday dresses and even day dresses to making their hair stuff to cutting everyone's hair to simply organizing in order to be the most effective and efficient I can be to be successful. I want them to grow up knowing these things instead of having to learn them later on in life as they plow through it in their finances, marriages and personal growth.

Enough of the soap box, I guess. I could go on forever about what I wish to accomplish but find myself recently hearing even more clearly that still soft Voice that says to simply sit down and enjoy what it is before me. Just as the seasons change so fleetingly and summer so swiftly turns to fall so do the days of my children pass before my eyes.....my unseeing eyes, at times. I know that I can no doubt pursue these things I aspire to do and the God given desires but I have need to keep it all in perspective and my life balanced. So, as I make my list and it continues to grow I grow excited about all the things before that this new year holds and what I can teach myself and learn. But I also hold dear in my heart that none of this is worth sacrificing my children over or letting these things subconsciously get in the way of what my main job really is...and that is loving them, raising them, teaching them, guiding them and instructing them in what is really the Truth in life. The rest will fall into place as I am successful in this area.

As I think back through everything I have just thought out I discover that once again I am finding it hard to follow. This jumps around just as my thoughts jump around moment by moment from one to the next. This post, despite the difficulty of following it anywhere to any real destination, is just the inner ramblings of what I find that my heart is being pulled toward and the tug, and conviction, within to focus. Sometimes I find it so easy to put thoughts to paper and other times it seems as if the hardest thing in the world to convey myself. So, I close this feeling as if I have conveyed absolutely nothing but feeling better at just having put this part of the story in...this part of me that has so easily been distracted.