We have been busy lately. We recently sold our house, and the very hot July weekend that we were moving, a wave of insane tiredness hit, and I took a pregnancy test, and, sure enough, I was pregnant! I had a miscarriage in February, and we had been trying to conceive again since then, with nothing doing, so it was definitely funny that at the busiest time of our year I found out that I was pregnant. God just really orchestrates life in such a way that we are constantly thrown onto Him, forced to let Him carry us and take us through!
Before we sold our house, I read an excellent book by Barbara Curtis entitled Small Beginnings. Barbara is a mom of a bunch of kiddos, and before she became a mom she was a Montessori school teacher. She has some really neat ideas in her book for playfully encouraging our toddlers to build certain skills. So, when we moved, I was excited to implement some of these activities. But first trimester being the way it is, I hardly had the energy to make it through each day. Then I went shopping for the materials I needed for the activities, and I couldn't find all of them. Yawn. Sigh. I started feeling hopeless and guilty. If I was a good mom, I would find a way to work these activities into my day.
I cried to my husband about my failure as a mom. He, of course, told me I was doing a great job and to trust God. Grudgingly, I decided, yet again, to let go of my ideas of who I needed to be as a mom, and what I needed to do, and trust God. Then I started noticing some things. While I cook, Aydon plays with some measuring cups of mine. Carefully, he pours water from one container into the other. It dawned on me: here he was practicing eye-hand coordination, concentration, and motor skills! I was at WalMart, and this cute little rug with a car track painted on it was on sale, so I picked it up for my little guy. He spends forever sitting on that rug, driving cars around, pretending, focusing. I hear him verbalizing: "put gas in the car, open the door, turn the key, drive away"! Aydon loves to draw with markers...he has always drawn spirals, but he just discovered how to draw lines. He draws dozens of lines all over the paper: fine motor skills, concentration, pre-writing, here we come. If he spills water, or when his toys are a mess, we clean them up together: servanthood, orderliness, here we come! I realized that we don't all fit into a mold as moms, and we shouldn't feel guilty about what we can or can't do. If you ask God, He can open your eyes to the things that are going well...and this gives you energy to make it through to the next day.
God is good! All the time! May our children see us trusting God as they learn about trust from us!
sigh, this is a lesson I have had to relearn continuously... =)
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