Surviving Lent as a homeschooling mom can be challenging. The huge challenge as a homeschooling mom is that I have to make the holidays more exciting and appear differently than the regular school year. Otherwise, it just becomes a long narrow road of boringness. The one thing that truly distinguishes one from the other is that my children are allowed to have a bit more liberties during the holidays, as long as they complete their age appropriate chores and homework each day.
Despite all of our best efforts in trying to keep our living room tidy it was a complete disaster. I was in a panic because I had a zoom community meeting in a few minutes and a holiday party immediately afterwards. At that moment I only had 5 minutes to spare and my anxiety started to rise. But, let me start at the beginning. An hour before my home was cleaned and everything was in its place. Our home was ready for guests to arrive. Overall for the past 6 weeks, I have been cleaning and working on minor home improvement tasks around our home. As we got closer to Easter I could finally see the light because my home was almost perfect. I was exhausted and the only thing I wanted to do was rest. My family and I had spent the past few days painting our living room and we finished decluttering the entire house.
Today, I had finally put almost everything back together and I felt marvelous because now I had a clean and clutter free home. My four year old princess wanted me to help her with a special project. She knows that to-do lists and schedules are my favorite things and my superpower. She asked me to add her one thing to my to-do list. She wanted to clean her bedroom walls. I tried to ignore her request, but since it was a relatively low key kind of day up to this point I decided to concede. Prior to Holy Week, I promised myself that I would try to do more things that my kids wanted to do and were passionate about doing.
I also figure that it seemed like a reasonable request and it aligned with my parental goals for my children. I am usually okay with activities that appeal to their curiosity, encourages progress and independence, and community awareness. After all, who am I to discourage this behavior of taking initiative. In fact I reasoned to myself in the long run when she is a teenager I want her to feel fully empowered to take an active on cleaning tasks such as this and any other community project she is interested in participating in. As a progressive parent, I followed her lead. To top it off, I was secretly tired of my girls constantly fighting over toys and whatnots.
In the end, I have to say that she did complete the task far better than what I had anticipated. It was a project she adamantly wanted to do alone. But In full honesty I had to complete the project, because she and her sister had moved on to greener pastures after about 15 minutes. In hindsight I am glad that my eldest is already a leader. She had her little sister cleaning alongside her, not in the same room of course but in the hallway. As an enabling overachieving helicopter mom I tagged myself in and finished up the job; and of course while cleaning the walls I suddenly remembered from yesterday the clutter of toys, books, and torn art projects that had been stuffed behind the toy chest. I decided to tackle that too. While doing that I accidentally fell backwards onto two plastic storage bins. When I got up I opened the crushed lids to discovered piles of spring and summer clothing that I had overlooked when I was reorganizing their closets for the spring/summer season at the beginning of Lent. "Now, I have more work to do that will need to be sorted by me," I screamed in my head. By the time I pulled everything out, the clutter that was hidden was far more than what I had anticipated and it spread into the living room making my tidy space a complete and total disaster. Thank God for Jesus!
I want to say that I accepted these additional tasks with so much ease, grace, humility, and pose. Instead I roared to the heavens, "Really, why do I need more work to do? I've been cleaning and reorganizing nonstop for the past 6 weeks and I'm so tired. I can't wait until this freaking Easter holiday is over so I can sleep, eat, and do whatever I want again. This is nonsense rubbish combined." I bet you were expecting more of a holier response since it's Holy Week. But nope. I have been doing all of the right things this Lent season and it hasn't made me a better person. In some ways I see a lot of the old me popping back up into the picture. The old me had a lot of rough edges, a gigantic attitude, and a potty mouth. In efforts to be holier I find myself speaking tongues so that my children can't repeat the horrible things I say when I am trying to pray or talk myself into doing difficult things that I have to do. Things I should want to do but I don't anymore. Things I would be so ashamed to admit to anyone. You see, I'm human and I would rather be tinkering and having my own kind of fun. Instead of showing up for my responsibilities as a tired wife, mother, writer, and community member.
In full disclosure, prior to Lent I had enjoyed a long long full season of being fancy free and I loved it. I'm looking forward to resuming my fancy free life and integrating some of my new and creative ideas into it. I am still struggling with learning how to take the good with the bad, which I often struggle with. I want only the good and the best and not any of the bad things like guilt, responsibility, trust, and emotional entanglements that my obligations sometimes bring. That's why I'm so glad we have Jesus. May He wash us clean. May Jesus continue to bless us and bring us peace as we trust in Him to guide us and drag us through the Easter season and beyond. I pray that He helps us to read the Bible upright and not be so quick to read it upside down so that He can lead us according to His riches and glory. In Christ Jesus Name Amen.
P.S. You are probably wondering how things went with the zoom meeting and the party. Well, I had my daughter sit in for me while I cleaned up. I'm not a saint. I really don't like messes. The Easter party was a huge success and our guests were well pleased. :)
From the desk of Esther Kamoche Robinson 4/06/23-4/07/23
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Wix pic
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