Ever had to answer the question: How do you "eat an elephant?"  Ever had to talk about, to, and for the "elephant in the room"?

I used to teach time management (those of you who know me...are you laughing?) when I worked in training and human resources.  I loved seeing co-workers' eyes light up when I sprang the "one bite at a time" answer.  And saying it always reaffirmed what I already knew about "Women Who Do Too Much"...that we open our mouths wide, stuff in every bit of what we feel is within our capabilities, and try to chew on it with Miss-Manners-like grace. 

Or...try wrapping your head around how limited our minutes of the day: 1,440.  There is only so much one person (and a kid or two or four or six) can fit into one day.  And yet we make elephantitish lists of to-do's and to-be's.  We even entertain the idea that we can, with zen-like efficiency (oxymoron?), complete one grade level's worth of work each day according to plan, without hassle, without tears, passionately, and creatively.  After all, we have a mission, or a perfectly orchestrated plan.  Perhaps what we have is undying, unconditional love for our children and the conviction that WE know what is best for them...and so we exercise our right to at least try.  And try we do.  I don't know about you, but my perfect plans don't usually pan out.  It is fairly obvious why-- we are home...and there is food to fix, laundry to wash, other family members to care for and about, special challenges, our own energy bursts and lags, our strengths and our weaknesses, planning, or the lack thereof, the UPS man at our door demanding a signature, the melt-downs (ours and our kids') and the water-meter-reader who can't do her job because the underground meter is over-run with the weeds, whose tending won't fit into our 1,440 minutes even if we try REALLY, REALLY hard.

So why?  Why oh why oh why do we put ourselves through such oft-misunderstood and difficult work?  We may be educating our children "at home" for various reasons...the thought that public schools are letting us down, learning challenges, physical challenges, the complete lack of desire to separate from our kids yet, the desire to focus on our kids' interests versus on someone else's idea of what is important (and dare I say, testable?), bad experiences elsewhere, spiritual convictions, and or the pure desire to teach our kids what we want them to learn...or based on who they show us they are.

So what about the elephants?  Well...the only way to handle what seems overwhelming to me many-a-day, is "one bite at a time" with as much patience, love, openness, humanness and prayer as I can muster.  Little by little my son learned to read...and little by little he will learn everything he needs to and more if I take time to chew and don't talk with my mouth full. 

As for that elephant-in-the-room idea?  That is a whole other topic...which I had in mind to blog about, but which got lost in my other thoughts.  Next post:  The Elephant in the Room. 

But now, I'm hungry for some organization and I'm going to tackle it....OB@AT!

“He came out differently!” my daughter exclaimed.  Hmmmmm.  My brain was whirring (yes it happens).  Actually, he came out of the bathroom “different.” Apparently I had combed his thick, gorgeous hair differently than his mom usually does.  Whir.  Whir.  Whir (my brain).

Soon the kids were coming in and out of the bathroom, one at a time, either different or differently, based on their personal secret mission or their assignment.  My son wrapped himself up in toilet paper and walked out like a chicken:  different AND differently.  My grandson put something on his head that isn’t usually there and proclaimed himself “different.”  My daughter came out strutting her stuff, doing a jump-dance, or simply cracking up: “differently.”  Soon, they all had it:  the difference between the words “different” and “differently.”  And we were all laughing our socks off.

That’s when it struck me:  THIS is homeschooling.  THIS is homeschooling at its finest…these teachable moments that happen when we just let it flow (suspend any specific curriculum), have fun and watch an innocent nugget of inspiration serendipitously turn into something great.

We’ll see how far this lesson went when we begin to study adverbs at more length/depth.  Hopefully we at least planted a seed…differently.

I bring my human frailties and foibles to the parenting plate, despite my best efforts to disguise them.  This morning I worked a bit on my thoughts about this topic and wound up with a rather eclectic list of things to work on--and to help me remember, moment by fleeting moment, how precious my children are:

1) Honor my children as I would a distinguished guest: the appearance of Christ at my dinner table, Thich Nhat Hanh at my door, or the child of a friend.

2) Release the past from its duty to inform my present with regret, fear, worry, pain, guilt, "shoulds" or mindless parenting (unless of course it's that time of the day when I am, well, mindless).

3) Ello lo hace a mano (I hope I got that right--it's excerpted from Claudia Pinkola Estes' book, Women Who Run With the Wolves) and means She makes and remakes her soul by hand--so, my version: "I make and remake my soul by hand--I am capable of positive change"

4) Embrace all that I do not know, and all that is to come.

5) Stay open.  Stay open.  Stay open.  Stay open.

6) Smile

7) Laugh

8) Breathe

9) Practice gratitude for each part of my body and mind that still functions well.  Where did I put those keys?  What happened to those Marcy Cook pages we were using?  Dinner, what dinner?

10) Honor the creatures (human and not-so-human) that live in my home.

11) Enjoy each task I am blessed to perform.  There is joy to cultivate in all that seems menial or mundane.

12) Let it flow - my breath, my love, my creativity, my offering to those I encounter each day.

13) Live in the light...

14) Frustrations and foibles aside, my children know they are loved...and sometimes, that is just enough for one day's work.

I have a few of my grandfather’s old books, including Rhymes of Childhood by Edgar A Guest.  I like to flip to this comforting one found on pages 73-74 when my children are smiling but I am stressed by the mess:

The Toy-Strewn Home

Give me the house where the toys are strewn,
Where the dolls are asleep in the chairs,
Where the building blocks and the toy balloon
And the soldiers guard the stairs.
Let me step in a house where the tiny cart
With the horses rules the floor,
And rest comes into my weary heart,
For I am at home once more.

Give me the house with the toys about,
With the battered old train of cars,
The box of paints and the books left out,
And the ship with her broken spars.
Let me step in a house at the close of day
That is littered with children's toys,
And dwell once more in the haunts of play,
With the echoes of by-gone noise.

Give me the house where the toys are seen,
The house where the children romp,
and I'll happier be than man has been
"Neath the gilded dome of pomp.
Let me see the litter of bright-eyed play
Strewn over the parlor floor,
And the joys I knew in a far-off day
Will gladden my heart once more.

Whoever has lived in a toy-strewn home,
Though feeble he be and gray,
Will yearn, no matter how far he roam,
For the glorious disarray
Of the little home with its littered floor
That was his in the by-gone days;
And his heart will throb as it throbbed before,
When he rests where a baby plays.

Heading out for a swim yesterday, my daughter (5) implored me to make it short.  I assured her I would be back “soon”.  Moments later she called, “Mom, can you put your hair up?”

Needless to say, I traveled away from the front door and toward the bedroom instead, “What?  Put my hair up?  Why?”

She:  “I’ll miss you less that way.”

A prosem (prose-ish poem?) from the archives.

Dedicated to all my jelly-donut eating friends:

there is magic i cannot muster
i see it in your eyes
yet you have no face
i taste it on your lips
though mine are parched

you tempt then delude
as if nothing is amiss
as if this longing is sweeter
than what i already have
what He already gave me

depart dark-winged angel
your deception is unveiled
the sugar you proffer is tainted
the vision you paint has dried up

your lies are scattered
in the hot wind of blackened flames
disintegrating in the white hot light
of Christ in me
praise Him!
and Him alone!

I finished three books this week.  Francine Rivers’ Atonement Child was the only one I hadn’t started weeks or months ago. I read it, and it alone, to its satisfying end.  It’s about a college girl who goes through a horrendous experience (I won’t go into the details here since I do write a mostly PG blog) and comes out the other side having followed her very strong Christian beliefs and rescuing no small handful of people in the process.  The book is a well-written attempt to reach out to women who have been in “less-than-PG” circumstances.  From my view, it succeeds quite stunningly. 

I started Augusten Burroughs’ Possible Side Effects a few weeks ago, upon the recommendation of a friend.  This book is not specifically written to reach out and help others, nor is it written from a Christian perspective.  It is a wide open and starkly honest look at a large handful of the author’s experiences, with dry, wry, self-effacing humor tossed in alongside large handfuls of “take-it-or-leave-it-this-is-my-book-and-I-needed-to-write-it”.  This is a great read—unless you require prim, proper, or the religiously-correct.  I liked that Mr. Burroughs does not apologize for the fact that he is not prim, proper, or religiously-correct.  He just is…who he is.  Refreshing.

Finally, I finished Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia.  This is another irreverent read (she cusses well and unapologetically) that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Since I find putting dinner on the table a great challenge, Julie’s endeavor to complete (in one year) all 524 of the recipes included in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, has my vote for top 100 bravest undertakings of all time.  That said, this is not the cookbook I would have chosen.  I’m not all that into beef marrow, kidneys, brains and deboning ducks without breaking the skin…but the feat itself…come on!  I find it particularly inspiring that she cooked each day whether or not she felt like it…and regardless of how late it became.  She didn’t give up.  Also, her husband, Eric, is a gem of a man, just like my husband, and inspired my favorite line from the book, which says (I’m completely paraphrasing here) that her husband catches the umpteen balls she juggles out of range of her waiting hands and somehow keeps them in the air so that she can continue along in her crazed journey without failure.

A final note:  I am a reader who has many books going at once (think ten), and so finishing three of them this week has given me great satisfaction, as well as a good dose of inspiration: from book one that no situation is too big for God, from book two that someone-else’s straight-forward honesty encourages the open-mindedness in me, and from book three that I have an incredible husband who will one day revel in the fact that he has dinner waiting for him when he arrives home from a long day at work.

Fewer rules

Fewer expectations

More reverence

Less “I'”

More “they”

Less efficiency

Less judgment

Less analysis

More acceptance

More tolerance

More humanity

More silence

More peace

More joy

More faith

More hope

More love

More Him

I am always struck by how complicated we like to make faith.  We like to surround it with stifling rules that don’t apply to everyone.  We like to judge others but then say that we don’t do that because we are Christians and, well…Christians don’t do that…but if we do we are “only basing it on the Word of God”.  We are godly after all, made in His image, following His decrees.  But are we?  When I read and absorb simple faith, it is then that I hear the hypocrisy inside myself--inside the constructs of Americanized Christianity.  It is in finding a personal relationship with God that I can understand what it is He wants of me.  Only in this place can I operate without an agenda I find suspect…

photo courtesy of Klaus Graefensteiner/www.tellingmachine.com

Think “O” is for Ocean, several kids, and lots of birds at the sea frolicking, scavenging, feeding…

These were the words to a song I was listening to today on my Pandora station (Nichole Nordeman).

This life.  The one I’ve been given.  Despite what I do and do not believe.  Despite how it happened.  Despite WHY it happened.  THIS is the life I have been given…to do with what I please, what I will, what I won’t, what I shall and shan’t. 

So what DO I believe?  Some days I am sure of this.  Other days not so much.  I read a lot and keep myself open to the opinions and beliefs of others.  I am frequently touched and intrigued by all things spiritual.

I am not offended by much (obvious things aside…like child abuse, vulgarities, general meanness, etc.), and I am open to possibilities of body, mind and spirit.  I am intrigued by the pilgrimages of others, and fascinated by all that we are learning and all that we refuse to acknowledge (I like to honor Galileo by entertaining beliefs about things that have yet to be fully embraced or proven). 

Some people, upon reading of my thoughts might say, “Uh-oh, she is leaving herself open for attack, not being faithful to God’s Word, not protecting herself as she should.” Others might offer a tongue-in-cheek, “Amen sister!”  Still others may roll their eyes and think, “Jibberish!” Thank goodness my beliefs don’t have to please anyone but me and my Maker.

Which brings me to my POINT: I believe I have a maker…an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being (for lack of a better word) who created me for a reason.  Try as I might not to (I could adopt a strictly scientific viewpoint), I still believe.  Ignorance?  Perhaps.  Wishful thinking?  Perhaps.  Doesn’t matter.  The CRUX is that I believe.  There is of course evidence (scientific as well) that supports my view , but I am not versed in it yet.

How the details flush out are not important here.  What IS important is the offering…the way the words struck me to the core: “I can only give you what you’ve given me…this life.”  And so, this is my offering as well.  Take my life and use it.  Hone my gifts for Your purpose.  Silence my doubts with Your earsplitting truth and protect me as my inquisitive mind travels boldly.  I can serve You without naming what I am doing, right?  I can partake in your gifts (peace, grace, love, hope, faith) without being perfect, and even without standing on a mountain top and professing my faith, right? 

Each morning when I greet You, You answer.  How can this be?  I have flaws; I resist labeling my faith; I am unwilling or unable to proselytize on Your behalf; I refuse to believe that believers in other faiths, gays, lesbians, non-believers, or the unrepentant are excluded from Your mysteries and miracles. 

Perhaps you should deny me the chance to speak with you.  You don’t.  And because of this, and this alone…the fact that you speak to and with the likes of me, I believe. And I’d like to give You that which You have given me:  this life.