A Road Less Travelled

James and Theresa were in Atlanta from Thursday to Saturday last week. I was home with six children. Now, you should understand that the five older children are all capable of being more help than they are bother. Not they always are, but they’re capable of it. All I really had to do was step up a little in my general awareness of what needed to be done around the house, make sure it got done while constantly maintaining an awareness of who was watching Margary, and make monumental efforts which only kind of worked not to get annoyed with the children over the odd noises they constantly make or the silly arguments I kept having to break up. How hard could that be?

About Friday afternoon I knew I could make it through until James and Theresa got back, but I was having serious doubts about my ability to do this for the rest of my life. I mean, this is what I’ve always planned to do with my life–stay-at-home mom, homeschool mom, homemaker… But somehow in my plans I was always better at it. I was only just getting done everything that needed to be done, and that was with five children who were big enough to help. I remembered in the morning that I needed to brush Elsie’s hair and finally got around to it at four in the afternoon. And that was doing pretty well with my time magangement–a lot better than I normally do when Theresa’s home. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to do this for the rest of my life; I was just pretty sure I’d never be able to handle it.

Saturday afternoon I realized that I’d just about made it through. I’d been the equivalent of a single mom of six children (though at least I didn’t have to have an outside job…) for three days, and I’d even kept the kitchen mostly clean. I learned once again that what I can or can’t do is irrelevant to what God calls me to do, because even when I can’t handle it He has it completely under control.

Now if I could just remember that for more than five seconds at a time….

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Because of a BlogPeoria server change we have unexpectedly obtained a new template. Gabrielle and I agreed that we both like this one, which is pretty impressive considering how long it took us to agree on the first one. So now the rest of you are stuck with it whether you like it or not.

This new template actually allows for a tagline/subtitle thing, which was still set to “A record of our non-college adventures” from several templates ago. This really doesn’t seem to fit anymore. We’re leaving it blank for now, but will be considering an updated tagline to fit our newly renovated blog. If you have any suggestions for a tagline feel free to leave a comment, though I say that more because I’m curious what our readers would say than because I expect it to be useful.

Incidentally, if you’ve had any trouble visiting our blog recently, it’s probably related to the server change, and it should be all better now.

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A midquel to this post.

I can vouch for that particular night’s lack of sleep having nothing to do with sleeping on the treadmill. I must have fallen asleep just fine (on Gabrielle’s nice, soft, comfortable bed) because I was in a deep sleep for the first intrusion on that sleep. I slowly drifted toward an awareness of something, which my still sleeping mind finally identified as a sound. Yes, sound, that’s what that was called. I was nearly awake when my mind discovered what the sound was and began a slight panic. Panic, because the sound was unmistakably that of something trying to break through the door and eat us in our beds. (Or bed and treadmill, as the case may be.) With much growling and snorting and slavering it pounded at the door, trying to tear through it with rasping claws… That is until I completed the waking up process and realized that it was Kitty asking to be let out.

I gave up on panicking and turned my now mostly functioning mental processes to ignoring the dog and going back to sleep. About this point I noticed it was raining. I sleepily thought this was lovely. I like rain. Rain is… THUNDER! Okay, thunder’s okay too. Just kind of loud. Maybe if I just ignored it…

The air conditioner started making an odd buzzing noise, and Gabrielle started helpfully thumping it. About this point my mind discovered a small reserve of mild panic unused by the Attack of the Full Bladdered Dog, and realized that I had electronic devices plugged in during a thunderstorm. This was obviously bad. (I mean, look at what had just happened to the air conditioner!) I started rooting around for the cords by the side of the bed and unplugging them. One of them belonged to the charging cellphone, which deedle-eedle-oo’d as my (slightly late) contribution to the buzzing and thumping symphony.

Relieved at my responsible care for various electronic devices, I rolled over and went back to sleep. More or less. Somewhere in here there was more thunder and another attack on the door, but my mind had used up it’s extra reserves of panic, and was now just slightly annoyed to have so much going on in the middle of the night. I mean, didn’t they all realize it was time to stop panicking and go to sleep now?

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“Take off your shoes, we’re going outside.”

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this morning
bacon
with scrambled thoughts

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alone
in the lamp’s glow–
distant thunder rolls

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too much daily life
too little brave adventure
just give me dragons

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once again
with some distress
aware of my tongue

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Things break. That’s hardly a deep thought. Things break. Moths eat cloth. Rust corrodes steel. Thieves steal valuables. (Sound familiar?) Add to the list: toddlers rip paper, floors (with a little help from gravity) shatter glass. Etc, etc, etc.

This small and obvious fact has been brought to my attention quite often lately. Like when my favorite nifty pen slips out of my bag and shatters on the floor almost before I knew it had dropped. And I just sigh, because it’s a familiar sound that doesn’t surprise me at all. But for some reason I stand there and think about how often I drop things. Or how often my tongue trips and the words slip away and just a split second too late I try to catch them, but can only wait to hear the shatter on the floor.

And as I look back at all the things I’ve broken I can only wonder why there weren’t more. As often as my tongue slips, why do have any friends left? And I realize how often God must step in at that vital split second before the friendship shatters, and He catches it, and then hands it back to let me slip and drop it all over again.

And I sweep the shards of ceramic into the trash without a second glance.

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my pen full of ink
it’s my thoughts
that run dr

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