Decluttering

OK, so this is the time of year for deep contemplation for me. (The rest of the year I don't do much thinking at all!) I have a compulsive tendency to declutter our house on a regular basis. But right now it's time to declutter my life.

I've been spurred on by what may seem an unrelated experience. Library story time. It's been a couple of years now since I attended library story time since Miss Curie has really outgrown it and - well, there are so many other things to do during the week. I was shocked at the chaos that greeted us at the library. Almost all the people there - adults and children alike - were carrying on conversations as if there wasn't a poor young lady trying to read to an undisciplined group of children. Kids were wandering around, fighting unchecked and apparently unnoticed. When I asked the librarian about it later she said that this is what it's like every week now.

So what on earth does this have to do with mental decluttering? It really drove home to me how socially acceptable it is becoming to look out for number one. It really drove home to me how rapidly our level of concern for our fellow human beings is degenerating. It really drove home to me again how disconnected we are becoming from one another.

It got me thinking about how I spend my time each day, and really intensified my urgency to focus on character in my girls. I spend way too much time and energy on selfish pursuits. If I let myself continue on that path the outlook for my girls is grim. If they don't see me sacrificing my wants for the greater good, they're not likely to go out looking to learn it elsewhere.

The pressure as mothers is to give our children "the best". (OK, I know I'm repeating myself, but repetition IS a great form of emphasis.) What we get duped into thinking is that a never-ending whirl of extra-curricular activities is what is "best". We start to truly believe that the important thing for our childrens' futures is to achieve a particular academic level (preferably well above the average for their age) along with a mile-long list of skills ranging from tying shoelaces to speaking several languages fluently. I've jumped on that bandwagon many times. There are many things I passionately want to teach my children. Of itself I don't think this is a bad thing, butI can see I've just got to keep a steady focus on what will see them through any coming storm. The extra-curricular activities truly are extras that need to fit in around the business of real living.

The most important thing is to ground my girls firmly in faith, hope and love. These are not sideshows - every activity, however exciting or mundane - needs to revolve around these principles.

So what does it look like to focus on character? For me, it means slowing down and paying attention. It means not ignoring one sister hitting the other on the head in frustration. It means not pretending not to see when The Chatterbox defies orders and pops out of bed for a play. It means not being too busy to answer questions about why we have standards for how we treat others. It means not being too tired to guide a reluctant child through writing a letter to someone who needs encouragement. It means not squashing the creative spirit of Miss Curie because it's just too much hard work to guide her ideas towards something productive.

I get tired just thinking about it. That's where I need to give up some of the things that I like to do in order to stay committed to my number one responsibility. Some of the sewing projects may gather dust on my desk for years to come. I may never find the time to buy a perfect matching set of glasses to replace the many that have broken in the last eight years. I might not get all my garlic planted before May. Trivial things, but hard to give up because I'm selfish. If I remember where we're headed and Who we're trying to honour it doesn't get easy, but it does get worth it. Dresses and glasses and gardens will all pass in time. Character lasts. Too often in the battle for our attention the trivialities win. Today, in this house, character wins. The challenge is to make sure it wins every day.

Reconnecting With Reality

Reality. Usually when someone loses touch with reality it's because they're getting in touch with a fantasy that seems a lot more enticing than real life. We live in a world that sends us thousands of invitations to disconnect from unpleasant realities.

I have a habit of disconnecting. Usually I detach myself from my present life because I'm trying to make it better. Looking for ways to buy stuff online so I don't have to venture into real shops with my three very real children who like to touch and try and taste all the real stuff on the real shelves. Searching for other homeschoolers close to me so I don't have to travel so far to social events. Looking for new craft and sewing ideas. Looking for the perfect curriculum so I can spend less time planning and thinking and more time doing with the girls. The theoretical goal is to have more time and energy to invest in relationships.

The thing is, real relationships happen in the real world and disconnecting from the people I love doesn't exactly foster those relationships. The natural drive for many human beings is to make things better. That is good. As long as we choose the right kind of better. So often I don't. The perfect curriculum is an utter failure if the search for it robs my children of our relationship. The perfect educational opportunity is worse than lost if by the time it eventuates my girls are traumatized by Mummy's traffic temper. The end doesn't justify the means if the means destroys the end.

The right kind of better is better understanding of each other. Better focus on the needs of others. Better ways of investing energy into the character development of my children. By the way, right now one is asleep and the other two are out at Bunnings with Daddy, so I'm not detaching myself from my family to write this!

If I'm honest with myself, I'm trying to fill myself up with my searches for better things and better ways to do things. I'm trying to fill up a great, gaping, bottomless hole with more emptiness. There's nothing wrong with shopping online or looking for people of like mind or admiring other people's handiwork or looking for better ways of teaching - not of and by themselves. There is something seriously wrong with unconsciously looking to those things for a sense of fullfillment.

So... it's time for me to reconnect with reality. Time to get back into the mucky world of actual human interaction. Time to invest myself in the relationships that won't disappear when the power fails.

Rise Up In Submission!

Submission is usually viewed as a dirty word these days. It smacks of out-of-date values and patriarchal oppression. What could possibly be good about submission?

This isn't entirely about submission, but the negative emotions that tend to be attached to 'submission' are representative of a troubling trend. See, I've noticed something about my generation of women. It may be true of the men too, but since I have the most to do with other mothers, that's who I'd like to write about. We don't like to take advice. More specifically, we don't like to take advice from those who out-of-date values would urge us to call our 'elders and betters'.

We don't mind our friends reassuring us that we're doing fine, but when someone older suggests that there might be a better way to parent, we muse that they can't possibly remember what it's like; or we shrug off their comments as old-fashioned, misguided or downright wrong. What makes me think that my six years of parenting three children is superior to twenty years raising five or six? Certainly it's not a good idea to listen to everyone with an opinion - we'd spend our whole lives going round in circles. However, I think we need to carefully examine what makes us reject what our 'elders and betters' have to say.

Having come out of a medical research background, the latest research is not a good enough reason to close our minds to different ideas. Researchers are still human, they have unavoidable biases - ALL of them - and at any given time most researchers are really only looking at one variable. At one time, the latest research showed that soft drinks caused polio. Later on, another scientist found that polio and soft drink consumption were two unrelated effects of the same cause - warm weather. So how do we choose who to listen to?

The book of Proverbs tells us that there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of it is death. I fear we are all too ready to follow the trends of what seems right today, instead of going to the source of Truth to find out what is right today, tomorrow, and ever more. Instead of simply embracing parenting styles that seem right, we need to ask ourselves honestly if they are in keeping with Biblical principles. And before we object to the parenting styles of the past that don't seem right we need to be ready to consider that they may also be in keeping with Biblical principles.

Finally, I think we young mothers need to be ready to accept that we don't already have all the answers and be willing to listen to someone older and wiser than ourselves on the off chance that they might actually teach us something. Submission isn't voluntary slavery, it's the freedom to let others have the right answers once in a while. There are many other contexts for submission that I'm not even going to touch right now, but I think it's worth starting a revolution. Let's rise up against the trend of knowing it all, and submit ourselves to the possibility of being wrong once in a while. Let's rise up in submission.