Something's Gotta Give

And so we begin again.  The hustle and bustle of the school year.  Let the chaos ensue.

I did, this year, enjoy the luxury of a slow ease into the schooling. The kids were at their grandparents' two weeks past our planned start date.  I'm on break from my school right now due to a lucky 'oversight'.  And the activities only actualized this week.

And this week is where I feel it.  The stress, the tumult.  Summer and her peace is on her way out.

Might I retain peace throughout the school year?

 True has his second Tae Kwon Do class tonight.  I don't want to take him.  Can you hear the whine in my voice?  I don't want to take any of my kids to any activities.  Honestly, because I don't like being in crowds of people and because it's boring.  How's that for candor?  But I do want them in activities.  Because they enjoy them and its good for their social lives and because they're being exposed to culture and learning skills I can't teach them.  I just wish there was a bus that could drive them take them.

What's wrong with me?  Why don't I jump at the chance to be self-sacrificial?  Why don't I live for these moments when I can selflessly give to my children?  I think because being self-sacrificial means we're choosing to do it even when we don't wanna.  This doesn't make me a bad mom, just a truthful one.

But still, I can find myself grappling guilt with these thoughts.  Just the thoughts, by themselves, can make me feel substandard as a mother.

 So, I have to write it out here, to acknowledge it, to get over that goofiness.

Something strange happened to me when I turned thirty.  I found myself again.

 My twenties were surrendered to my husband, my children and my home.

At thirty, I discovered that I still liked to write, to draw, to act.

I learned how to have a servant-heart in my twenties and now, in my thirties it's a practice.

 I want to pour myself into all I've found myself with a passion for.  But I don't care what anyone says; there are not enough hours in the day.  I simply can not homeschool, run my kids to activities, tend to my house and my husband's needs, do my own homework, write my novel, paint a still-life, blog, act in community theater and participate in nano.  So something's gotta give.  And it can't be my family.

 I need to remind myself that I won't lose my voice or my talents or my abilities if I don't nurture my creative side in all ways every day.  I can't forget that this is all God's.  That it is God who allots time.  God who needs to set my priorities and my goals.  And I need to recognize that with the beginning of the school year for both me and the children and the inclusion of sports and activities, some things will have to be cut out.  Some of my things. For example,  I have three blogs.  That might be a little OCD.  I started Confessions In Stories because I became daring enough to share my fiction.  I started Self Anonymous to share a message.  But I simply don't have enough time to keep up with all three every day.  I guess three blogs isn't OCD; it's the thought that I have to write on each of them every day which is obsessive. So fine, maybe I'll do a Fiction Friday.  A Sober Saturday.  If I do choose to attempt namo, maybe here, I'll share a sentence or two.  I don't really think the world will suffer without my voice coming at them from fifteen different places and angles.  Wait, wouldn't that be ego?

The time will come if I allow it to be a gift.  The patience will come if I ask for it and practice it.  This here, helps me work out perspective.  The confessions bring me into and then out of all I struggle with.  It truly is all God's.