Question. What’s the one thing you wish about your family that feels like it would make everything better? That finally, your parenting could really sing?
What’s your “if only”?
Question. What’s the one thing you wish about your family that feels like it would make everything better? That finally, your parenting could really sing?
What’s your “if only”?
This week has dabbled in the frenetic at my house. Uh. More than usual.
Rather than writing you a half-baked post, I’m pulling from the archives some chalkboard art of a printable prayer–an artistic version of this challenging Franciscan benediction:
May all your kids come home, and may they get along with each other. Or at least fake it.
May you have a white Christmas to the point that you feel Christmas-y and can say no to an activity you didn’t really want to go to, but don’t lose electricity and heat. May everyone wipe their boots.
As part of the premise of this blog, I commit to uncomfortable conversations worth having. And the onus of that falls on me—toward authenticity in the midst of my own doubt and weirdness.
So today, I’m opening the convo with something I regret.
My 16-year-old was recently awarded his driver’s permit–okay, yikes–and with it, was pre-registered to vote. We don’t fall down the line politically, which I’m generally okay with. (You may remember we’re a lot different: see When Your Child is Different from What You Expected.)
As my kids grow older…so do their opinions. Sometimes I’m unprepared for the ways my boys and I don’t see eye-to-eye.
May all your kids come home, and may they get along with each other. Or at least fake it.
May you have a white Christmas to the point that you feel Christmas-y and can say no to an activity you didn’t really want to go to, but don’t lose electricity and heat. May everyone wipe their boots.
So I’m thinking about a peaceful home lately. Mostly because mine isn’t?
But I think it’s in a happy way. -Ish. My home is more the kind of Nerf gun-toting, “Mom, can we have a cooking contest?”-messy (and “Gross! Who dripped jam down the cupboards?”), and”Shoot! That appointment’s today!” -kind of reality. Especially with summer. Summer can be a little about survival. (Guess I could have named this post “What peace?”)
But sometimes “having peace” can be tangled up with myths I have about peace in the first place. I once pictured having peace as kind of floating around in a tranquil abode where my children answer, “Why yes, Mother! Whatever you want!”
This week, I’m moving back from Africa to the U.S. Rather than writing you a half-baked post, I opted for chalkboard art–an artistic version of this challenging Franciscan benediction:
God, give us discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that instead we may live deep within our hearts.
I toppled into it this morning without a clue. Actually, it was before that: The electricity had snapped off sometime in the middle of the night, my husband and I groaning as the fan’s blades slowed and quieted, leaving a stuffy heat beneath our mosquito net that I knew would make it challenging for him to sleep well.
In the morning, I cooked pancakes and eggs by candlelight; by 9 AM the lack of electricity to the water pump at the bottom of our hill meant we were without water in the kitchen sink, too—after nearly a week of alternating lack of power and water. Grr. The kids had forgotten to plug in the “school” laptop last night, so mine was the option for homeschool, i.e. getting my own work done in the afternoon did not seem in the cards. I scrambled through phone calls before my phone battery died. The power company wasn’t picking up.
© 2024 THE AWKWARD MOM
Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑