Get My Kids to the Church on Time

My life is full of amazing moms. My friend Kristen works professionally part-time but always engages her children in heartfelt & informative conversations, giving them her un-divided attention whenever the opportunity arises, no matter how big of a headache she may have from her stressful day. My friend Chrissy uses cloth diapers, communicates with her babies using sign language, and cooks gourmet organic meals using flax seed and wheat germ. My friend Colleen takes her kids to weekly music classes, serenades them with her beautiful voice on car rides, and has instilled in them at an early age an inspiring passion for music and dance. To top it off, they all have rockin’ hot bodies, immaculately clean houses, and solid Christian marriages. I know that they will be angry at me for comparing myself to them in a belittling blog post, but that just further proves my point that they are truly amazing people! And it’s not just them. My friends Erin, Laura, Heather, Joy, Lindsey, and Shelby are all amazing women raising young children who continually go above and beyond. They take my expectations of what it means to be a mom and raise them.

Now I’m not one to back down from a challenge. I am eager to improve. I love to strive for bigger and better things and I am thankful to these women for their rousing examples of motherhood. BUT….

Being surrounded by amazing moms makes me conscious of my own perpetual shortcomings. I don’t sing to my kids, I don’t use cloth diapers, I rarely have the patience to answer my kids’ endless questions, I don’t make them eat all their veggies, I don’t take them outside to play every day, and the list could go on and on and on. At the end of every day, I am filled with guilt thinking of the things that I did not do but should have, and I am ashamed at the ways I am constantly depriving my beloved children of the upbringing they deserve. Sometimes it’s enough to make me want to throw up my hands in surrender.

And in that moment, when I am tempted to admit defeat and accept that I will never be as amazing as Kristen, Chrissy, and Colleen, I decide that it’s important to stop focusing on the things that I don’t do. I have to give myself credit for those things that I do do.

One thing that I do- and I do it well!- is get my kids to church on time. It might not sound like much, especially to those people who either don’t have kids, don’t attend church, or who aren’t without a spouse, but there’s something to be said about getting a family or four fed, dressed, and out the door by 8 AM. My mornings usually start around 5 AM, when I am dragged out of bed by the hungry cries of baby Johnny. By the time I am finished nursing him (for what is usually the third or fourth time of the night), Josie and Jamie have pulled themselves out of bed and are waiting for me by the nursery door. We all herd downstairs together in a big pajama clad mob. My first line of business is to crank up the furnace, then let the puppy outside before he does his business on the carpet, and finally to turn on some Sunday morning cartoons. Sesame Street doesn’t air this early so thank God for DVR’d episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. One twenty minute episode is enough time for me to email James and inform him of any and all important family developments (which is a vital responsibility of a supportive Navy wife) and I can usually sneak in a facebook status update here too. Next we shuffle into the kitchen for breakfast. I have found that it’s important to make a big breakfast on Sundays so that the kids don’t accost me for food between Sunday school and worship service. Of course, the kids want to help cook so Josie cracks the eggs and Jamie whisks the batter and I clean up the resulting mess. While the pancakes are on the griddle I empty the dishwasher, run upstairs to plug in my curling iron, flip the pancakes, fetch some meat from the basement freezer to thaw for dinner, and start a load of laundry. Some mornings I have to throw a sausage casserole into the oven because it’s my turn to provide snack for the Sunday school class. We all finish our food and after wiping the sticky syrup off little fingers and faces it’s time to head upstairs to get dressed. Picking out outfits is one of my favorite parts of the day and if at all possible I try to color coordinate the kids and sometimes even me. It never fails that an accessory or two of the chosen outfits has gone missing so I spend the next ten to fifteen minutes upending mattresses, combing the closets, or wrestling the dog to retrieve socks, belts, and curly hair ribbons. Around the time I have Josie, Jamie, and Johnny in their clothes, the littlest one decides it’s time for a nap- which actually works out perfectly to give me a chance to get myself dressed. I can slip into an outfit in minutes and then I twist some curlers into my hair. If mother nature necessitates it, this is the time that I pull my snow boots on over my dress slacks and head outside into the freezing cold morning to shovel my car out of the snow or chop the ice off my windshield. Once I’m back inside there is just enough time to pull the curlers out of my hair, slap on a thin layer of make-up, and then cram some fresh diapers into my diaper bag. On especially efficient mornings I am able to put all the toys that were pulled out that morning into their appropriate bins and run the vacuum over the living room floor, because there’s nothing worse than coming home to a cluttered house and tripping over a Potato Head as soon as you walk in the front door. Finally, we all line up in front of the stairwell and put on our boots, jackets, hats, and gloves and scurry out to the car. Off we go!

Six days out of the week I feel like a disappointment, but on Sunday mornings I feel like an amazing woman. I walk through the church parking lot carrying Johnny in one hand and holding Jamie’s hand with the other, who is holding Josie with his other. I am proud to be me in that moment. There are a lot of things that I don’t do, but I do get my kids to the church on time….and that’s really saying something.

Shameless plug: If you need more amazing women in your life then you can find lots of them here, at The First Baptist Church of Ballston Spa. Come join us on Sunday mornings! Sunday School @ 9AM followed by Worship Service @ 10:15.