"...Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."
1 Corinthians 10:31
I'm currently reading a wonderful book called Ever After: Life Lessons Learned in my Castle of Chaos. It's written by a woman named Vicki Courtney, mother of three and current empty-nester. Her book is hilarious, but it's also chock full of great advice for us moms who are still "in the grind." I decided to include one of her chapters in this blog because a) it's funny as heck and b) it's such a reflection of what us busy moms are like.
Chapter 10: School Daze
I am convinced that teachers are engaged in a secret conspiracy to make all mothers certifiably crazy by summer break. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they get a finder's fee from the state mental hospitals as part of their bonus incentive package. Priority for admittance should be given first to homeroom mothers and PTA officers. I realize that some you may be a bit hesitant to believe my teacher conspiracy theory, which, of course, means that your children are not yet school-aged. The truth is, teachers begin this "survival of the fittest" experiment the first week of school. What else can explain the three dozen required forms (per child) that must be filled out by hand and submitted the following morning? And while we're on the subject of forms, is this really the best time for teachers to include a questionnaire to "better get to know your child" and ask for a detailed bio of their strengths and weaknesses? (Here's what I put in the weakness column: My child is adversely affected when his mother goes whack over all the paperwork she has to fill out the first night of school.)
And let's not forget that those required forms come home on the same day as the school supply list. Or make that lists (plural) if your child is older than grammar school and changes classes throughout the day.If you didn't crack while filling out the mounds of paperwork, you most certainly will begin to fall apart when you attempt to track down the composite notebook with graphing lines. One year, I had to hit 3 office supply stores in my search for this elusive item, only to discover it was on the endangered species list of office supplies. I was on the verge of taking a stack of graph paper to the local Kiinko's and paying $24 to have them bound together when, alas, another mom hit the jackpot and picked up some extra notebooks for me. I thing she got them from a guy who operates the school supply black market from his garage on the bad side of town. His primary customer base, you may wonder? Crazed mothers, of course! The business has been so successful, he's about to start a line of franchises across the country.
Just when I thought I could kick up my heels and sink into my favorite easy chair in celebration of surviving Day One of back-to-school mayhem, in walks my youngest with an announcement that he has a "family shield" project due. The next day. AND he gets five extra bonus points if he brings in three extra boxes of tissues with the project. I might have had the tissues on hand, had I not used them up the day before while bawling my eyes out over trying to find graphing paper. Time to pu on a pot of coffee and get to work! After, of course, I made a late-night run to the local drugstore to get construction paper and markers, since I wiped out the emergency stockpile at home to fill the school supply lists the day before.
Unfortunately, my son forgot to mention the part about the family shields being on display in the hallway outside of his classroom on Back-To-School Night. I learned this detail the hard way when I arrived at my child's classroom and was greeted by a group of parents oohing and ahhing at the long line of children's projects on the wall. If I had known the projects were going to be displayed for every other parent to see, I would have called up our black-market buddy to see if he had a family shield project he could rent me for a few weeks! My husband and I quickly spotted our son's project. It was sandwiched between two family shields that looked like they were on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One project was a hand-sewn family shield that doubled as a windsock to hang proudly over their front porch as a permanent reminder to the awesomeness of their kid...or mother...or whoever made the project. Another one was made out of actual scrap metal and mounted on a small piece of plywood. It looked like it weighed over a hundred pounds...Clearly, this child's mother was a welder with access to a front-loader. And then there was [my son's] project -- a montage of haphazardly cut pieces of construction paper mounted on a half sheet of poster board. Oh, the shame! His poor little project looked like something a first grader would turn in. Oh, but wait! He was a first grader!
I had to pull myself together before entering the classroom. I couldn't let on that I was cracking this early in the game....
The week of the school-wide Thanksgiving feast arrived, and I announced to my family that they were on their own, barring any emergencies. I further defined "emergencies" as blood and broken bones and made my way to the kitchen to report for duty...I'm happy to report that I made my assigned 2 dozen rolls from scratch and cooked up a batch of the homeroom mother's sweet cornbread dressing, as per the enclosed recipe, and I did it with a smile on my face....There was no time to fall apart. While the dressing was browning and the rolls were rising, I had to whip up a pilgrim costume for Hayden to wear to the feast, review 50 math drill cards with him before sunrise, and somehow manage to be nice to be husband and 2 older children in the process. Is it just me, or have you noticed that the teachers who often assign the projects that require sewing are the young ones who have yet to have any children of their own? Their biggest worry at the end of the day is feeding Mr. Jingles, the house cat, and remembering to pick up the dry cleaning by 5pm. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!
The pace is crazy enough for parents with one child, but for those of us who have two or more kids in school at the same time, may heaven help us! And I do mean that, literally. You will need heaven's help to survive. Take my advice: if you're still in the family planning stages, stagger your kids, oh, say, ten years apart to make these years a bit more manageable...
As I reflect back on those crazy, chaotic school years, I remember wondering if I was the only one who was struggling to keep up with the pace. I would run into other mothers who seemed so calm, cool and collected. Were they just better actresses when it came to hiding the nervous tic brought on by the school-daze frenzy? Was there stress in their marriage related to the pace? Were they crumbling behind closed doors in the privacy of their own homes?...
Yet, when I read through the Proverbs 31 passage, I see a similar chaotic pace in play. The virtuous woman was buying vineyards, sewing bed coverings, selling sashes to the merchant ships, and reaching out to the needy. And on top of that, she was doing her husband good and not harm, all the days of her life. All of them? Every single one? We get a glimpse into her attitude in verse 25: Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. Aha! Maybe we're onto something here. She accepted the chaos that fell outside of her control with a calm attitude of "it is what it is." The truth is, you can't laugh at the time to come until you first learn to laugh at the day at hand. At the end of the day, we're all just doing the best job we possibly can to survive the whirlwind of school-daze activity...in order to lighten to load and make it a more manageable pace. More importantly, we need to cut ourselves some slack when it coems to the pressure we feel to measure up to an impossible standard to do everything and do it perfectly.
...We've all had our Martha moments. Distracted, worn out, tired, weary, always doing, doing, doing. But are we doing too much? If we are missing out on the one thing needed, we most certainly are....Too often, we bring more to the table than is necessary when it comes to helping our children prosper. Maybe we should aim for "enough" rather than "too much."
...I am grateful for what the Scripture DOES not say about being a parent. There is nothing in the Scripture about being a perfect parent. There is no 13th commandment about making sure your children's school projects look professionally tailored. There is no lower level of heaven reserved for parents whose children only make Cs. And praise God, he didn't base our salvation on whether or not our children win a ribbon at the science fair....
Time flies. Our lives are short. The things that matter so much to us in this moment, like the best Pilgrim costume ever seen on any child in the state of Texas, won't really matter 20 years from now. That project you're flipping out over? It'll be in the trash can by the end of the year. (Unless you decide to sell it on the black market!)...
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