Out of the mouths of babes...

This week (and last week, too) I've been overwhelmed, as does happen... with balancing work and motherhood, with concern for the trials of friends and loved ones, with lack of sleep, the ever-growing pile of "to be graded"... This morning I arrived at my tutoring job and before we got started, one of the girls told me she had finished her Bible memory work. I asked her to recite it for me, and this was the passage:

Isaiah 40:28-31
28 "Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.

29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.

30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;

31 but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint."

Amen and amen.

Motherhood: the great re-prioritizer.

About this time last year William and I were discussing when we were going to start trying to have kids. I was the hold-out, but after a lot of prayer and thought we talked and the conclusion was we would wait a year. Little did I know I was already pregnant. I was chalking up the exhaustion and the crazy to the fact that I was teaching 100 adolescents a week. Fast forward a year. I have a beautiful 3 month old son, and I’m teaching only about 70 adolescents a week. This year has been a huge learning process. Learning to trust God more deeply, learning to ask for help, learning to be a mother, and learning to be a mother who works outside the home part time.

Now that I have Edward, I am learning to let go of a lot of stressors I had before. I have always worked in jobs where my priority was other people’s kids, as a babysitter, teacher, youth group worker. Even though I’m still teaching, other people’s kids are not my priority. My child and my family is my priority. And I see now that it should have been that way before God gave us a baby. When I’m teaching, I give the best I can, which with the lack of sleep, isn’t always that great. When I’m at home, I give the best I can to my family, which with being exhausted from teaching on little to no sleep, isn’t always that great. But I’m not still giving my best to my job and putting my family second when I’m at home. My best is for my husband and son, not the stack of papers sitting next to me at the table. And that’s another blessing. My idea of a successful, accomplished day is very different from what it was last year. At the end of the day, the most important question is not “Am I all caught up on grading?” but “Did I serve my family?” If the answer to the latter isn’t “yes”, then it doesn’t matter how caught up I am at work, if the laundry is all done, or if the kitchen is clean. In this new responsibility I have a freedom I never knew before, which is to just let go.