I have been blessed by conversations with friends old and new this past week. Phone numbers netted from Christmas cards allowed for much overdue catching up with women I dearly love. Those conversations and the events of recent weeks have helped me stop and take a deep breath once again. Life has this habit of speeding up in little increments until suddenly, despite the best intentions you are going way too fast. I am not sure what is more challenging to me – avoiding the speeding up or feeling guilty about moving slowly while my peers seem to be moving so much faster.

We did the big freezer cooking this week. It seemed to be a metaphor for so many other parts of life. I have lots of meals stored up. They don’t taste very good. You see I was trying to squeeze lots of cooking into a couple very short days in between baby dancing and laundry and school lessons.  The prospect of having to move this bunch has been hanging overhead so I dove into toy organization and a number of other spring cleaning chores. All at once. Not sure what I was thinking other than that I wasn’t doing enough. That is a thought that visits every now and then and tends to throw me into a tailspin. Enough. Maddeningly unquantifiable, that word.

My solution to the enough question was ‘more’. That never works. My food turned out like my power scrapbook sessions. Lots of volume, little satisfaction. This isn’t me.

I came to the computer a bit ago to visit Penny Gardner’s site. I figured some Charlotte Mason thoughts would help me refocus. She had this to say:

Georgia O’Keeffe wrote, "Nobody sees a flower-really it is so small, it takes time. We haven’t time and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time."

…like cooking a satisfying meal takes time. Like creating logical storage solutions takes time. Like greeting my husband at the end of the day takes time.  This week we are back to ‘slow’. I will be diligent, but I will be purposeful. I will remember that holding babies and typing narrations and making slow, messy meals together is ‘enough’. I will see the flower this week.

Yesterday I spoke with a few women who had seen the Jeub’s on TLC the night before. The consensus was that we all found them to be engaging, warm, and loving. To a number, each conversation eventually came around to the story of their oldest daughter. What was most remarkable to me is not that this young woman has had a rocky journey to Christian adulthood, rather that it was so remarkable that we learned about it at all.

Jen sent a link to a wonderful blog post from a fellow homeschooler who is launching young adults at a steady rate. Like most of us, some of these kids start off with a strong steady pace. Others falter. Still more rush headlong down alternate paths, determined to discover for themselves what was so wrong with the lives their parents rejected. While they journey in varying degrees of darkness their parents often torment themselves with shame, cross examine their parenting, and rarely if ever share their burden with others. Why? Because whether we admit it or not we have expectations of our major life decisions. Namely, we expect them to work out. Worse yet, so do our peers.

Perhaps it is naivete, perhaps it is self-preservation. Whatever the reason, though many of us are well-versed in the truths of our faith, we tend to fast forward to the happy ending, skipping over the problematic statements in scripture. The bible, for all its comforting promises, also pulls no punches. It tells us flat out that we all are sinners. All of us. The tendency among parents, especially those who have not weathered the storms of rebellion, is to follow up those sections with a subconscious, "Yes….but…" Surely we didn’t put all this thought and energy into creative, responsible parenting only to, gasp, FAIL??

The good news is there are no failures where there is sincerity and love. The even better news is that most of these kids will come around in time. Key words being ‘in time’.  Between the ‘now’ and the ‘then’ they may need to push the envelope in lots of undesirable ways. As OreoSouza wrote in the blog Jen sent today, some of them will have to "spend some time in hell to figure out that hell exists." 

In some ways I think the children who straight out rebel are in a bit better shape than those who don’t.  At least they are honest about their situation. What can be even more dangerous is the outwardly compliant child harboring far more insidious tendencies towards pride, envy, anger, sloth and the like. While rebellion did not make the list of the seven deadly sins those others did. Sometimes it helps to keep that in perspective.

Our kids, like the rest of us, eventually need to make their own way in the world. It is a terrifying truism. Sooner or later we have to let go and hold our breath while they take their first, sometimes wobbly, steps into the great unknown. They don’t go out onto this highwire of life with no safety net however. They have our prayers to buoy them back up when they fall. And while our peers may forget this, the other truth is that they can never fall so far that God cannot reach them should they just call His name. As the Jeub’s story shows us, while there is life, there is hope.

It happened! Tess has moved from newborn to interactive baby and smiled responsively late last week. Sigh! Its so incredible to see her respond when we make ninnies of ourselves coo-ing and crooning at her. Then again it’s so sad to see how relentlessly time marches on.

Go hug your kids!  They will be different people tomorrow.

Mark your calendars for tonight’s Kids By the Dozen show on TLC. Saturday’s newspaper announced that the Jeub Family and their Baker’s Dozen would be featured on tonight’s episode. It caught my eye because I met them about a year ago at a reunion picnic our midwives held (the Jeub’s homebirth as well). They were such nice people and I can’t wait to see their feature. Check out their website to learn how this supersized family gets things done.

Tess is six weeks old today! Which means, it’s time to start working on this baby fat. : p  I have to admit this has not really been a problem in the past. Usually I am pretty close to my normal weight by this time. Not so at the moment. Argh!

I have learned to be really REALLY cautious about overdoing in the postpartum period.  Strenous exercise can cause more damage than good. Several years ago I ran across Leslie Samsone’s Walk Away the Pounds program. Of all the workouts I have tried this is the only one I stuck with day in and day out for a lot of years now (outside of pregnancy). Hers is the video I pulled out again this week to hopefully reclaim my figure one more time.

These dvds require varying degrees of exertion. I am starting with the one mile and then will build to the two and eventually the power walks. Some of these employ hand weights as well. Not this week however. ; )  I have a walk tape from another source, figuring they would all be pretty much the same but no. It had awkward moves and pacing. So as of now these are tops in my book.