"'Living before the Audience of One transforms all our endeavors.'" (p123)
How do you handle "receiving care"? Do you view it as an acknowledgement of interdependence? (p 104)
How did the "stripping" process go when children arrived? When else have you needed to strip "back to a minimum" your commitments outside the household? (p 107)
Do you, daily, seek inner peace? What form does that seeking take for you? (p 123)
Do you live a driven life or a called life? (p125)
I enjoy 'receiving care' after I have a baby. I wouldn't say I readily accept help otherwise. Mostly, the help I would like people don't generally offer. I want to hang out with people, pop over, or clean with them.
ReplyDeleteI do see accepting help as dependent but that is a good thing. I should not think I can do everything myself. ...you caught me on a good day. There are often days when I just want to do it myself even though I know it could be better with help.
It is more difficult to do errands with children. They have to be in a good mood and you all have to have had sleep. Plus, everything takes three times as long with kids. I didn't do tons before the girls were born. I do enjoy working so when the move took that totally away it is difficult to see value in the short-term.
I would love to spend a whole week at home until I go crazy. I miss being stuck in the house because of snow. Stripping back is necessary with a little baby or when my husband's job situation was unknown. I really try not to schedule things. It is so difficult to say 'no.'
I try to lay on my bed and rest for an hour each day at naptime. I pray with the girls after breakfast and often in the car. If I am going really crazy, I hide in the bathroom for awhile. If the girls are just fighting, I put them in their room for 'sister time' to duke it out. The end up playing and giggling after five minutes of crying.
I have always wanted to be a mom but I don't know if I would call that a 'calling' in my life at the moment. I feel like I'm not great at anything. I want to see a goal reached, a checklist done, and a plaque on the wall. Motherhood is monotonous at times. Also, I feel like you aren't looked on as doing anything great as a mother unless you have a lot of kids. ...I'm being negative, I know.
I want outside validation. Mine is little but still wrong. I want to hear my children recite the books of the New Testament. I want to see a clean, organized home. ...OKay, I'm done for now. My words are revealing to me I require a nap more than I previously realized.
Love,
~Nicole
I recently commented to someone (Amy) that at Trinity, if you got a hangnail, someone would be bringing you a meal. I miss that. I miss having those opportunities to take meals for things less significant than having a baby. So, I plan and take anyway as I hear of needs.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, for myself, it depends on who is offering the care and what they are offering or pushing on me. My mom purchasing me a allergy free cookbook and buying the xanthan gum to do the baking and her even making the first recipe out of the book...SUPER SWEET!
My husband's mom telling me she is bringing a box mix cake to my son's gluten and dairy free birthday party so that way adults that want a bigger piece of cake can have one. It probably goes without saying, is leaving me trying hard to think positive about the situation. (We would have needed that second cake if everyone we invited had been able to make it.)
Stripping with the arrival of Jason was rough. With Luke, I had already planned to not go back to work. With Jason, needing to cut back more because 2 boys under 18-months is stretching a little thin all on its own.
I have needed to cut back recently, and God has definitely helped, over the summer, I didn't teach which allowed me to work on figuring out intolerance issues with my youngest. Now that fall and a new series have arrived, I'm struggling with maintaining all the balls I have in the air and wondering what I should give up or how I can rearrange stuff. This last Wednesday, I went grocery shopping while the boys were at AWANA instead of going to prayer meeting. It was a lovely way to spend the 1 1/2 hours, got something important accomplished, and was able to do some much needed label reading.
I aim to seek inner peace daily. It is one of the things I greatly appreciate about BSF and why I hesitate to give it up. I'm not as good without structure in having that quiet time daily.
A little of both. Driven in that my boys require care and our call to homeschool is not always a call feeling when it must occur each day. Same with grocery shopping, sorting out intolerance issues, being a SAHM, attending BSF, teaching childbirth, etc.
People did always get meals at Trinity. :) See for all the icky stuff there was good stuff too. I think, it is difficult to bring meals to people sometimes because they don't want to accept them. OR there are so many food allergies. I have to really think about what to take over.
ReplyDeleteYour gift from your mom was really sweet.
Were you nice to your MIL? I think, people just aren't very sensitive to food allergies. They just seem to be trendy right now but people really do get sick. You didn't give your child food allergies.
Two small people make it harder to get places. We have had two leaders leave at BSF because they were too stressed making it twice a week with two or three little people. I know that it is not the right season in some people's lives to do things but sometimes I judge them because I think they are stripping God's Word from their life instead of gymnastics class or preschool. I make it there every week with two small children.
What are you cutting back? Your schedule seems crazy to me.