Monthly Archives: December 2008

Turn your eyes…

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It seems when God has something to say He says it over and over until a person takes notice.  This same message has cropped up repeatedly in recent weeks. Stacy Macdonald's article helped pull it together. She speaks of those fears that tend to strike in the night, causing us to doubt both ourselves and the One who strengthens us:


Then I idolize my friends and their families. I think about others who seem to have it all together and I dwell on how I will never measure up – then anxiety comes.

I have seen articles advising women to focus on their own work, versus coveting another's, but she points out that our own work is still the wrong place to fix our gaze.  How much better to turn away from both our work and others' and focus on Jesus and His grace instead as advised in Ps 119:

   Turn your eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways. 

Keeping our homes and carrying for others' are not worthless (nor less spiritual) tasks but using those things as a yardstick to measure our worth most definitely is.  

normal is just a setting on your washer….

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The one constant in life is change. Margaret Kim Peterson addressed the differences and challenges in large and small households. I think her observation about small households actually encompasses most larger ones as well:


There may be a few years (in a small household) in which there are young children and then many years in which there are none.  Children can feel like an intrusion in such a household; parents may spend the preschool years waiting for things to 'get back to normal."  But, young childhood is just as normal a state of life as adulthood; we just tend to forget that, in our age-segregated society.  Keeping house (in a smaller household)  calls for the flexibility necessary to see a variety of situations as "normal" and a willingness to repeatedly reassess the changing needs of household members and the varying contributions that household members can make to the work of the household.

Having a new baby, no matter how many you have had, can throw a person for a loop.  Previously fine-tuned routines can be turned on their ears.  Fatigue and the inability to predict baby's moods can knock a person off their game for a bit. If articles about how to 'deal' with preschoolers are any indication, that state of disequilibrium can last some time, at least until the child can be sat down with a pencil and paper or sent to school.  That is a state of things we often feel more comfortable with.  Many people spend the early years just hanging on, waiting for them to pass, until the children are less… childish. 

It is true that there are challenges unique to the baby and toddler years.  If you are in a larger household you may find yourself in and out of this time over and over. You may find that you spend a number of years never out of it completely, with some small person around at all times.  It is necessary to have a proper perspective either way.  

With my first children I assumed chaos was the best we could expect and housekeeping was kept to the bare despicable minimum.  I resented the intrusion housekeeping chores made on our life and figured no one could be expected to do them with any regularity given the peculiar demands tiny people imposed. I fell into the mindset Peterson describes – this will pass.  We would wait until some future date when things would get back to 'normal.'  As you can see 'normal' never came and chaos was not an acceptable status quo for the long haul.  Neither was resentment. 

We have never been the types to enforce a rigid schedule for little folks. We gently move them into a routine but the truth is there are weeks and months where life demands that we adapt to the unexpected and still carry on cheerfully one way or another.  This is our normal. There is nothing 'wrong' with this state of affairs that must be endured nor fixed per se.  It just requires a different outlook and plan of attack.  

When writing about our family life in the Catholic Homeschool Companion book I said we had learned to 'make hay when the sun shines.'  This is still our way of doing things. If the baby is resting and I am able to, I get to work.  When we are home and able to, we push ahead with school.  We do all we can, whenever we can, and then if life happens (and sooner or later it does) we can respond to that challenge without undo anxiety over what else is not happening. We know that 'normal' means babies might be sleepless, toddlers may get excitable and messy, and teens may sometimes be in a funk or prone to sleeping every bit as much as the babies are prone to wakefulness. Dad, who had previously been home at 6 each evening might now be out of town or out of the country. There can be new homes, new jobs, new health challenges. 

Even aside from those major upheavals there are inevitably the lesser ones which come and go. The child who was enthusiastic about math or doing dishes last year may balk at those things this year. In contrast the child who was unable to contribute much last year may suddenly excel at a chore today. The new driver may now be able to run errands.  Tasks that were once done reliably at certain time may now have to be shifted to another part of the day so mom can catch a nap when baby falls asleep.  We don't stop doing the things we must.  We do however develop flexibility about when they get done in the day and who is able to do them.  We don't consider this problematic.  It is just another sort of normal. 

In His divine economy God wastes nothing.  If the season of life in which you find yourself has its own set of unique trials, be assured it also has its unique opportunities as well.  Instead of clinging to our comfort zones we can embrace the change and ask ourselves how we might see and do things differently. We can be certain that we are able to thrive under many different circumstances. There is a reason for today. 

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What’s up around here

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Lots is the answer which is why I haven't been over here much.  It may not actually be as much as it feels like but coupled with nighttime parenting and nursing it is enough to keep my hands too full to do much blogging.  Instead I will share a visual tour of the past few weeks. 

One of the things I was most thankful for this Thanksgiving was children who cook, and cook well.  I had absolutely no part in dinner prep this year.  Allen made the turkey and Alannah outdid herself with pies – lattice and all.  
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Another sign she is growing up – Alannah had a dinner and dance with old friends. They hold these locally every year. They shared a potluck dinner and then have instruction in ballroom dance.  Dad was along to chaperone. : ) 

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There was also a lot of outdoors work.  He and the kids rotated the goats to the back pasture

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and travelled up into the mountains to chop the Christmas tree.

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While they were out and about Abbie and I spent a lot of time manning the couch.  My view the past few weeks looked a lot like this:

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light streaming in the living room window, my stitching nearby…

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and a now very bright eyed baby

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We did venture out for Abigeál's baptism.  

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Which brings us to date more or less.  We have scout meetings, Christmas play practice, and groceries and sooner or later that enormous tree in my living room will be decorated. : )  Meantime we are taking days by the moments, enjoying every one of them – even the ones when we feel like we are jogging through water.  Before long this baby girl will be the one off to the dance and there will be no giggling, chocolate-moustached toddlers to chase.  

Tradition of Omission

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Once again the advent wreath was missing this first Sunday of advent.  It is an annual tradition of sorts. The advent wreath always ends up packed with the Christmas things which we fully intend to unpack in the days after Thanksgiving.  Those days inevitably end up being filled with other activities. The candles don't generally survive the summer so sometime the first week in advent we remind ourselves to replace them. (we did!)  We are usually reminded of the need to do this when we read the lovely advent articles and realize that we really should have begun preparing our prayers and practices sometime LAST month. 

What WERE we doing last month?  Just having a baby I guess. ; )  That is my excuse this year.  Actually it was my excuse for 3 of the past 5 years but the truth is this is a longstanding reality for us – one I tend to beat myself up over year in and year out.  I was in the process of doing just that today when Keeping House came. It has been on my wish list since Rebecca listed it on her sidebar way back when.  It had been all but forgotten until I was on baby rest and needed new books for company. It came just at the right time.  In my funk, I opened to the first chapter and read gratefully:

"Forget fantasies of "accomplishing something." Perhaps somewhere in the world there were people who measured their days by how much they got done – at work, in class, wherever. I measured my days by whether at the end of them the members of my household had been dressed and fed and bathed and put to bed. If we had been, then that was a good day.  I had done what mattered most." 

Though there are so very many beautiful ideas for the holidays, the truth is that the majority of my waking hours are spent on much more basic feeding, bathing, cleaning, and schooling chores, most of which do not break for holidays.  I have become rather adept at sneaking in little spurts of crafting and decorating between my more pressing tasks.  There is always that list of all I am not doing in the back of my mind however, particularly this time of year. So much more I wish I could do but can't.  Part of the frustration stems from a wrong understanding of what IS being done instead – namely caring for people near and dear to me. 

It is tempting to view meeting their most basic needs as somehow less valuable than doing the extras.  "Basic" doesn't mean "barely acceptable minimum" though.  It means core necessities that are absolutely essential to growth and prosperity.  Extras without basics is like frosting with no cake. Or worse, cake with no dinner. 

"Housekeeping – cooking, cleaning, laundry, all the large and small tasks that go into keeping a household humming along – is not a trivial matter but a serious one. People need to eat, to sleep, to have clothes to wear….. These are the needs housework exists to meet."

The past several years of homeschooling and homemaking have shown me over and over the beauty of 'basics'.  A good example was that the children had no need to break from their learning to wait on me for school during this baby season.  (They did break to play some dozens of board games with their big brother and to work outside with Dad during his time off and to baby gaze.) Simple systems enabled us to carry on. Laundry got done, learning happened, two and four legged creatures were fed, watered, and sheltered. While it is easy to take that for granted it is important to remember, as Ms.Peterson says, these are the things that Really Matter. Meeting true needs is never a small thing, it is everything. 

So we may limp along with our advent devotions but we remain fully devoted to caring for one another. We will continue to fill our pew on Sundays and holy days through this season.  We fast, we pray. We do the simple, though not easy, things we always do and we will eventually get all the visual reminders in place – the nativity, the wreath, the tree – or at least most of them. When we get discouraged by all we are not doing, we will remember that these practices are meant to serve man, not man the practices. Ours is not a faith of clever crafts and object lessons (though these are absolutely fine and can be helpful when you can swing them!) but rather we walk in imitation of One who came to serve. He met basic needs in those He met and admonished others not to get sidetracked by the extras. (remember Martha)  

"Jesus has very strong things to say… about the Christian duty to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless…..  Housework is all about feeding and clothing and sheltering people who in the absence of that daily work would otherwise be hungry and ill-clad and ill-housed."

I have to think that taking our cue there is a fine thing this time of year.  As the author says, there is more to Matthew 25 than just our households, but we must start here.  We must also realize there are many seasons in life, some of which are more conducive to extras than others. If we find ourselves in one that is not we can rest assured we are doing exactly what we ought to be by simply doing what we must with a glad heart. 

It is better to have a little with fear of the Lord than great treasure with turmoil. Prov 15-16