Life hasn't been moving along as smoothly as I had hoped since we have moved back to the US. We are all happy to be home in fellowship with our friends and family, even meeting new members, born in our absence. But things have not gone according to "my plan". We are living in a church. We have half our belongings stored in a room two floors down from our living area. We have boxes half unpacked and frequently find ourselves looking for belongings that could be in one of several locations. My dreams of having a cozy house decorated to my liking are on hold and I miss having a kitchen where my family can hang out and eat together. I have not had a dishwasher for over a year. But this blessing of living in a church has allowed my husband to pursue a career path suited to his talents and giftings. It has given him time to seek and listen to the will of God in his life. For this I am thankful.
Last week we started our 8th year of homeschooling. It was not wonderful. My kids have been out of school since the end of April and they aren't falling back into the routine as smoothly as I had hoped. We weren't able to have the kids start math because we had to set up 3 different computers and find working keyboards and mouses (mice?). Last night my wonderful husband was able to get the computers working and this morning all 3 kids completed 2 math lessons (it's mostly review in the beginning anyway) so I was hopeful that today would be a good day. But we started my teaching portion of today by yelling (OK, it didn't start as yelling, but escalated to yelling) at the kids to clean up the mess from yesterday. Later on the Holy Spirit convicted me about my response to the mess.
After school was over I came across a link a friend posted on Facebook called Exposing Major Blind Spots of Homeschoolers by Reb Bradley. It's a great article that really should be about Parenting Blind Spots, since it applies to all parents trying to raise kids that know and love God. There is a lot in this article and it is worth a thorough read. As I was reading I realized that my conflict with my kids (mainly one) wasn't about an issue of disrespect or disobedience. I was angry because it stresses me out to teach in a cluttered environment. My kids didn't clean up after themselves yesterday and they should have. The level of my anger and frustration, however, wasn't in line with the infraction. They weren't refusing to clean it up, they just weren't doing it well enough or fast enough for me. They should clean up after themselves. But I need to check my heart and figure out what is going on with me. I have some struggles of my own I am working on. I struggle with anxiety. My anxiety level has been high for the past few days and while I have not reacted inappropriately (until today) to my kids that anxiety has been seething under the surface and today it came out, not just about today's infraction but everything that has been bugging me this week. While there is nothing wrong with expecting my kids to clean up after themselves and have personal responsibility for their things and their space, it should not be more important than the love I have for them. It is my job as parent to teach them responsibility but I do not need to make it my idol. It is not more important than having a relationship with my kids. I need to work on my own "junk" and not put in on my kids and make it their fault. I can barely handle it myself and I have been walking with the Lord for 16 years, it's not fair to put it on them. I want my environment to be peaceful but more than that I want to teach my kids that we can have peace in an environment that is not peaceful. It is not our circumstances that dictate our attitude but rather how we respond to our circumstances. You'd think that after losing our house and living in a foreign country for a year I would have learned that one. I thought I did too. But today it was brought to my attention that there is still work to be done in this area. I think I will start with an apology to my kids....
