Best

Tears the other night.  Despair.  My new teenager has been fighting against doing anything.  The latest is homework.  She's decided she doesn't like science or maybe just the science teacher.  Not a big deal normally, but my husband has fallen prey.  If we know she's a real smart kid and can handle middle school science, is a B good enough, when clearly she is putting in zero effort?  He posed the question, not me.  I know she's faking it, but he's thinking that maybe it is too hard.  So he asks - does it really matter what her grades are?

I kid you not, I just asked a similar question in my small group that morning.  I have been struggling greatly of late with my role in this world, and I asked - I'm not using it any more, what does it really matter that I spent all that time in college?  Some good it did me.  So his question really pounded the nail in a little further.  Does it really matter how hard we try?  Especially for us girls, who mostly seem to end up watching the kids, cooking the dinner, and doing the laundry.  I could do all of that when I was 12.

I've had some time to think about that - yesterday it was while edging the lawn and weeding the beds, today while doing laundry and cleaning house.  What does it matter?

I've also been reflecting on a lecture I heard on Galatians from a retired doctor.  The speaker was a woman who was head of one of those review panels where doctors go to rehash cases that went bad.  She's seen a lot of bad things, but she stressed that the focus of the panels was not to point out the errors and chastise the maker, but rather to discover how the situation could have been handled to produce a better result.  Sometimes there was nothing that could have been done, the doctor had done the best that could have been done.  How does this fit into Galatians?  5:7 says - You were running a good race.  Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?  Running a good race - what does our God want from us, to run a good race for Him.  God wants our best in what ever we do.

Now I'm not going to lie.  I have never done my best at being a housewife.  Not even close, I have fully put in D-effort.  "Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?"  I have fully bought into the feminist mumbo-jumbo that tells me I can have it all, I should be on the corporate ladder doing great, successful things.  They tell me I am so much more than a housewife.  A housewife is from the repressed decade of the fifties, where a woman's only place was in the home.  We are modern.  But in reality I am a housewife.  Just a housewife, and I've been a pretty crappy one at that.  When I think about it, it's pretty lame to say that I can't keep a clean house.  Is it hard?  Well, no, not really.  So why am I pretty crappy?  Just because I haven't felt like it.

So why am I surprised that my daughter acts the same?

Get Back To It

Why am I so frustrated all the time.  Too many questions, no one to talk to, too much to do, bored, not doing things quickly enough, etc.  A myriad things just frustrate the snot out of me.  I keep wondering when I will get it all together.  Frustration seems to indicate a lack of contentment.  But I am content generally, I guess just not specifically.  Like my role in life, a housewife.  What kind of mundane junk is this?  Wipe the counters, sweep the floor, pull weed out and out and out and out.  Yell at the kids for not making their beds, for not wiping up the toothpaste that was just spit all over the counter, for beating each other up.  I should be content in all things.  My life is good, but the everyday bothers me, frustrates me.  Take a breath, I know.  Get back to it.

Good King

I have been in a slight panic.  Nothing serious to be sure, but I am confident of my nervousness to come.  Since becoming just a housewife years ago, I've mostly put my violin down.  Pre-kids I was getting rather ok.  (Good is debatable in music and depends too much on the company one keeps, so I'll label myself, ok.)  Post-kids is another world.  Who has enough time, and I ran out of opportunity.  Well, Christmas season is upon us, so opportunity has found me.  It's crazy ensemble time at church.  A matter of what instrumentalists are available, so what can be put together that Bach would have never arranged for?  Well, how 'bout a trumpet, horn, violin (ME), viola, and cello?  Hmm, not too big a shock that there's nothing written.  But one of these is a more regular and serious musician (she's single and has no kids) who has found music for four, but nothing remotely resembling Christmas.  This is now real, and I've been seriously practicing: daily, for close to an hour.  (I was good enough to know that I stink these days.)  I was taking a break today, playing some pretty Christmas tunes on the piano.  Several years ago, I arranged "Good King Wenceslas" on the piano.  I keep trying to remember what I did each year, but it slips my mind, or more my fingers.  So, I finally decided to write it down.  I enter the song into my software and begin to play it back.  My mind starts rolling, and before I know it, I've warped this into a 5-part version.  I pull a recorder part from some website, quiet a stanza to just horn & viola with the cello bass line, find another descant on youtube, and away I go.

I know I'm not all that talented, but every now and then, I get whisked away into something that might actually be good.  It makes me wonder, how can my Good King use me?  What if I ever let Him use me to the potential He has given me?  "Attempt something so great for God, that it be doomed to failure lest He be in it."  Yet can I stand up to attempt anything?  The king of the song was really a duke, and he had it in him to care for a poor man.  He is now remembered for all time because of a simple good deed.  Do I over-great what my actions need to be, and therefore know that I might never measure up?  This good king reminds us that it is the simple acts bestowed to those less fortunate than we that can be divinely transformed into life-giving heat being in the very foot steps we leave.  I shall continue to practice my violin for now, and maybe I can chase a little of the nerves away.  Who knows what may come of it?  Perhaps my crude notes will bring something greater to those who hear.  I'll leave it in the hands of my Good King.

Same Title As Before

I seem to keep feeling like I need inspiration.  Today it's about being active.  I am now the assistant coach for the girls basketball team.  They need inspiration.  Today's first game was better by far than I expected, but I seem to remember knowing a good deal more about the game when I was that age.  How to motivate them, and me.  I'm feeling old and slow.  Sprints in practice wore me out.  My hind quarters were sore more than a week later.  Then I tried to run in the Turkey Trot.  My butt was ON FIRE for the first mile, then it was just slow going after that.  I was at nearly 29 minutes to finish 5k.  Bleh, bogus, not inspiring.  Even worse is people asking how I did.  I feel the need to come up with something quippy to say, a great yearning from deep inside for some great words to diffuse my shame, but nothing comes to mind.  I've just got to swallow my pride and say that I'm slow, both in body and mind.  I keep asking myself if I even want to be quick anymore.  I do nothing quick.  I feel complete drudgery over my daily chores, so me and molasses get along just fine these days.  But I'd like to be inspiring to these girls.  I'd like to show them what joy can be had in a great effort, and decent sweat, and a game well played.  Keep Pushing - another run tomorrow!

Inspiration

I used to be a runner.  Ran in HS & all through college.  Continued on sporadically to my first marathon.  It was hard, really hard.  Then it tapered off.  I tried again when the first one was young.  Ran a few halfs, got under two hours, but then more children came.  Little time to run, but more likely, little inspiration.  It's hard to get back; a few miles hurt.  But not just physical hurt.  I'd lost my inspiration.  There's the heat and the sweat pouring down within the first few minutes (oh, how I despise south Florida), and the lack of something...beauty I guess.    I've been getting "Runners' World" again.  Within the first few pages is the "Rave Run".  It sounds so beautiful, rave run.  I don't have that, rave - there's sun beating down and pavement.  Little more.  My goal for the new school year is to find my rave run.  Where can it be?

My daughter is struggling; she’s so unsure of herself and thinks we are against her.  Where do I go with this?  She is a product of me and my parenting.  She is influenced by her father who has taken his clues from me, for lack of any better source.  He seems to see me when I am struggling most, when the day has wore me down and there is little left of any patience I could have had.  I am more frustrated with myself for not being stronger, for wasting too much of my time on me and not giving it away to those more needy.  I want to engage and connect with my kids.  Not to be their friend, but to mentor them, to train them up in the way they should go.  But I so just want to be left alone.  Just leave me alone, give me my time, my leisure.  I try to remember when I had that.  It was lonely, and I wasn’t really all the more productive.  It still took me four years to paint my living room.  Never did finish that trim.  My inherent laziness comes out.  I don’t want to be responsible, and I surely don’t want to keep working when everybody else doesn’t have to.  Yes, it took the kids 12 hours to clean their room, but I’m still not done.  I tried to pawn it off on them.  Bribery didn’t work, cold hard cash wasn’t enough.  How can I direct them down the good path, when I’m such a poor example of the way I should go?  I partake judgment on myself.  I see myself in them, all the nasty, biting language.  All the conviction of the wrongs is reflected in them, right back to me.  They are a clear mirror of how awful I am doing, a spotlight shining down on my flaws.  How do I love my children?  No, not the “I love you” rhetoric.  But how do I truly love my children?  I am to lay down my life for them; I just hang on tighter to mine.  So no promises to do better tomorrow, no resolution that I will love.  I will go to bed tonight, heavy-hearted.  The weight of my own failings will drag me down.  But sometimes we must go way down into the pit before we even realize we are there.  Then once we know, we must wallow in it for a spell.  That’s where I am now, actually have been for a long while, wallowing in the pit.  Knowing that I suck, but unknowing and unwilling to do anything about it.  How long have I been ashamed of my own behavior?  How many more times will I be speaking, well really yelling, the words and hating that they come out of my mouth.  My seventy times seven has long past. I am into, ad infinitum.  When do my kids grow wary of me and my flaws and write me off as a bad mother?  Is it time in my life to finally step out of the pit?

Regularity

No not that... but doing the same things over and over.  Some of it drives me nuts, like wiping the kitchen counter and laundry, other stuff I can't seem to handle very well.  Like right now.  My halo is showing; the gray hair around my temples and forehead.  I feel a nice glow, yet how often do I take care of it?  Let me pause while I go do it right now.  Alright, I'm processing and I've just swapped laundry loads.  I've given into vanity, because my goal was to get out of the house by noon, but I'm going to see someone who certainly takes the time and money to do regular hair maintenance.  I have this innate need to buck the system.  Always pushing the limits, never wanting to be tied down. I have boasted many times that there is nothing I do every day aside from go the the bathroom.  Not eat, not sleep, not run.  Hey man, don't fence me in.  But the really weird thing is I like rules.  I majored in math - they gave you the rules.  Follow them and every problem could be conquered.  Easy A.  But real life?  I don't know.  If I followed the life rules, could I conquer every problem?  I suppose we'd have to define what the problems really are.  Hair color - what's the real problem.  If I dye my roots every three weeks, what do I solve?  I loose the halo, but do I really gain anything?  I used to tell my hair dresser (yes, I have one, I can't give myself a good cut, and a good cut is the secret to not having to do your hair every day.) that no one will ever die (no not dye but come to the end of life) and wish they had spent more time doing their hair.  So now that my processing time is nearing completion, I guess the only real thing I've solved is the crown of gray around my face, but the kicker is as soon as that is gone, I've got plenty more vanity problems to look at instead.  I guess I'll see you in three, no make that five... well maybe six weeks.