School Marm

Hmm. Well, needless to say, I'm not finding a whole ton of time to blog these days. What, with my new career and all. Can I just tell you that I have gone seriously soft in the last 5 years? Working three days a week-well, I might as well be working 80 hours. I'm so far under the pile I'm thinking of calling up Chile to see if I could borrow that tube extractor just to come up for air.

Dramatic much?

People ask me all the time if I like working. Look, in a vacuum, the answer would be an unequivocal YES. I really like teaching and I really like teaching 3 year olds. I like the fact that they are such amazing learners. Can I brag on them for a minute? Because 6 out of 8 of my kids can name all of the fruits of the Spirit. Sure can. I make them do it all the time because it's so stinkin' cute. I like the fact that they think everything I do is genius and the most fun ever. I have amazing kids and they have amazing parents.

That said, I'm not really loving the trying to exist in two different ways part of it all. I know it's the working mom's cliche, but I feel like I'm not doing great at anything. The good news is, I have grown-up in this area quite a bit since my last job. My blood pressure doesn't get up about issues at school. I don't lose sleep or have nightmares about meetings with parents, even when it involves telling them that their child had a gigantic meltdown in the bathroom and refused to pull up his pants. You know, in case something like that ever came up. I'm not all twisted in a knot about my performance as a teacher. It's nice. I feel like I battle all the same things I always have in life, so it's nice to have a little God-given growth. My mom-self could learn a lot from my teacher-self. My mom-self still has trouble forgiving herself when she loses her cool. Again. My mom-self has nightmares about losing her kids or ruining them or missing out on _____________. My mom-self loses sleep over her choices and how they are effecting her family. Mom-self needs a swift kick in the rear from teacher-self.

So. I'm working on it. Letting myself off the hook as a mom is the hardest thing I've ever tried. Because, let's be real. The stakes are high. But, one of our teaching pastors said several weeks ago-"God's going to do what God's going to do." This seems like a no-brainer, but what this means is that I cannot single-handedly derail God's plan for the lives of my children. He is going to do what He is going to do.

Today I'm juggling preparing for this big beast of an evaluation we have coming up at school in a couple of weeks with snuggling and loving on two sick kids. I can PROMISE you I'd much rather sit on the couch all day and snuggle. However, the Little Monkeys need a nature sculpture, stat. Emily's asleep and Drew and I are headed out for a backyard adventure, collecting nature items. And then I'll fold the laundry.