Saying Goodbye

This is my Chelsea girl.  If you are a dog person, you will know what I mean when I say that she was my heart dog.  We lost her on Thursday night and if you have been there yourself, you know what I mean when I say that my world was turned upside down.

You don't need the whole story but suffice to say that this is the dog who changed my life.  When we got her, we were living in a tiny apartment in the city and as we said goodbye, we now live in a small town near to nature, in a house and we have a car and a huge host of friends we would never have had without her in our lives.  Getting her ended up changing the entire trajectory of our lives.  It's a lot like when you have kids - you lose yourself and you find a new self that you didn't know was in there.  I am so happy to have the life that I do where I do and it's almost all, directly or indirectly, because of my girl.

I don't know if anyone else feels this way but sometimes, I get these little glimpses of myself 10 years ago (or 20 sometimes).  Generally, my life is so chaotic that I'm not pondering things or thinking bigger picture, my focus is almost entirely immediate.  Then, once is a while, for one reason or another, I have an experience that makes me realise who I used to be and that I still have that person inside me, despite the way my life has gone.  Before we had the kids, we spent a lot of time doing dog stuff - endless road trips to dog shows, hours and hours and hours of field training and obedience classes, hours spent with people who we would never, ever have encountered otherwise.  I can think of so many special memories - meals shared in odd places (e.g., barbecues outside at dog shows at dusk, a roast beef dinner in a barn in the middle of nowhere that was one of the loveliest meals of my life), amazing bathroom adventures (hunt test washroom facilities that sometimes bring new meaning to "rustic"), trips to new places, several anxiety-inducing border crossings, being in an RV at a dog show in New Hampshire as we had tornado warnings that went on for several hours... They may not sound as magical to someone else but they were such a huge part of my life and Chelsea shared that.  She also shared many nights up with a crying baby, hundreds of hours of hikes in all kinds of amazing places, hours and hours of drives to all kinds of places and naps, lots of cozy naps together.  Saying goodbye to her the other night truly was one of the hardest things I have ever done but, as was so typical of Chelsea, she gave me a little gift, too - a glimpse of a part of myself that I have discovered that I miss, a bonding time for Dh and I, as we both realised that we want to get a puppy and put a toe back in the water with training again, now that the kids are old enough to come along.  I love my new life as a mom and driver to activities and a "working mother" but I also still like parts of who I was and I'd like to try to make time for some of that again.

It's funny how tragedy can be good for the soul.  I will miss my girlie more than words can express and Dh and I keep catching each other having a little cry about something - looking to one of her favourite spots and not seeing her there, walking by the leash collection in the hallway and realising that it's pretty excessive now with only one dog, the empty crate downstairs.  I've also had the wonderful reminder, though, that I am surrounded by thoughtful and kind people who have been so wonderful and supportive, a husband who truly is my best friend and who shares the same vision as I do about how these things need to go (it was so clear to me that I couldn't let her suffer and that we needed to send her on her way and I don't know what I would have done if he had refused and we had to prolong the agony), a passion for dogs that he and I both share and that adds so much richness to our lives and a host of wonderful memories that had been dormant for such a long time.  

Thank you, my sweet girl, for the many years of love, loyalty, naughtiness and laughter.  Our family will never be the same without you and you have taken a piece of my heart that will never again be filled by anyone else.  I'm sure that you are now eating dog cheese with Mike (a story for another day), rolling in the grass in that special way that you loved and napping on the softest pillows.  Bless you, my love, and I look forward to seeing you again someday.

On Bafflement...

I haven't been here for a LONG time and I'm kind of glad because I very much doubt anyone is going to read this and if you do, you are probably someone who understands me well-enough that you will forgive me if I say something that bugs you.  I seem to be specializing in that lately and let me say in advance, if I do, I'm sorry.

Sometimes, the world seems like a place that makes relative sense to me and things bump along fairly o.k.  I'm reasonably sure that I'm on the right path and that I have found where I'm supposed to be.  At other times, I feel like the world is one big mystery and not in an exciting or fun way.  It's a bit like when we do something and one of the dogs gives us that head slightly cocked to one side, utterly baffled look as if we are entirely bizarre and incomprehensible.  That's how the world, and people in particular, seem to me sometimes and when life gets like that, I struggle.  I really struggle.  I am in one of those stages these days.

I've written here before about feeling like I don't belong and about the fact that I think to some degree, that's related to my childhood.  Over the last year, I've seen that more and more and more.  I grew up in a very devout Christian family but a Christian family that was decidedly left-wing and whose guiding principle was Luke 10:27:

He answered, "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'"

 

This was taken very literally in our home and I have clearly internalized that because it's making life harder and harder.  I keep being thrown into situations in which this fundamental belief throws me into conflict with others and it's so uncomfortable.

 

For many years, I have dealt with this profound internal struggle.  On the one hand, I honestly believe that some things are fundamentally true (such as that we need to respect other people, that people have a right to their own beliefs and that we need to do the "right" thing).  On the other hand, I have this intense fear and guilt related to having conflict with anyone.  When I am in conflict, I feel sick, I can't sleep and I can't think of anything else.  It's utterly devastating to me and it taints every moment in my life when I feel as if there is something wrong with someone.  It's hard to live life conflict-free, especially when you are coming from a life view and a faith that preaches beliefs and values that are entirely in conflict with much of what is culturally dominant.  It's even harder when you are often in conflict with people who supposedly share your world view.

 

I was so grateful a few months ago when someone with whom I am friends on Facebook posted a link to an article on being INFJ.  Myers-Briggs is a personality categorizing system that breaks the world up into sixteen distinct personality types and I am an INFJ, the least common personality type.  Basically, it means that I am an introvert with a very strong sense of justice and rightness in the world who makes decisions based on intuition and feeling and who happens to struggle greatly with conflict.   Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa and Jimmy Carter are a few INFJ's - incredible company but not exactly a path to an easy life.  While it doesn't make life any easier, at least I feel like a bit less of a complete freak when the conflict and yet the need to see things be right gets overwhelming.

Of late, I am feeling more and more like the world is a baffling place and I have really struggled with how to remain true to my basic beliefs while also being respectful of other people.  I have gotten caught in a firestorm more than once and it's taking years off my life in terms of stress.  I have worked so hard to speak diplomatically but at the mercy of so many who don't seem to feel the same need to hold back.  It's my blog and you don't have to read it so I'm feeling the need to express some of the things that baffle me.  Ignore this and stop reading if you are going to be offended (if there is anyone who has made it this far).  I need to get some of this off my chest, knowing that the people from whom I am feeling judged won't be reading this:

1.  Vaccines - I vax my kids.  I am baffled by people who claim that vaccines directly cause autism.  I am baffled by people who claim that measles is not serious.  I am baffled by people who think that they can go to their naturopaths and get weird dietary things that will heal everything and keep them safe.  I am baffled by people who refuse to admit that vaccines are not entirely safe - they are not and have serious side effects that are admitted in their inserts, even if they are very rare.  I am entirely baffled by the fact that the vaccine debate is allowed to overshadow the fact that there is SOMETHING WRONG WITH OUR KIDS.  They have ADHD, allergic to everything, autism is rampant, we are seeing a rise in certain cancers, they are riddled with anxiety and they are killing themselves.  SOMETHING is causing that.  We need to stop calling each other names and start asking where this is coming from.  The sound research I have read would indicate that it's a combination of environmental factors - chemicals, radiation, too much time in front of a screen, overly busy families, contaminants (quite possibly some coming from vaccines) and stress.  Why are we so afraid to talk about what we are doing?  Why are people asking about it either screamed at from the health nuts for not eating nuts and berries all the time and using good vibes to heal themselves or screamed at by the pro vax people for being ignorant of science?  Clearly we can't just heal ourselves and science has been known to let us down in a big way.

2.  Shades of grey (or abuse or violence against women) - I made the mistake, when the Jian Ghomeshi case came out in the media, of saying something on Facebook about how I thought that needing to inflict violence on one's partner to get one's jollies was indication of mental instability.  I'm sorry, I did NOT imagine for a second that it would be anything other than normal thought.  It would seem that I am wrong.  I was totally impaled for being judgmental, close-minded and lacking understanding for others.  I am sorry that I offended anyone but I can't get away from the fact that violence is intended to inflict pain, injury, to create a power imbalance and to hurt someone else.  While middle class couples might think it's fun to pretend to "be bad", I can't help the fact that I associate violence with the women who ARE victims and that needing to inflict pain on other people and "love" that involves such a power imbalance is unhealthy and goes against Luke 10.  There is so much violence and abuse in the world and bored white people needing to find an outlet seems kind of pathetic at best and signaling emotional damage at worst.  Sorry if I offended you but I am entirely baffled that people think this is normal.  I heard crazy things like equating that homosexuality used to be in the DSM, too.  That offended me - two consenting adults in a long-term, committed relationship should NEVER be equated with someone who is hurting people for pleasure.  I was too scared to say that but I'm saying it here.

3.  Labels - I read a post this week about a school board that says that one board is trying to eliminate language that might be offensive to some.  Included are terms like "husband and wife", "father and mother".  I WANT to be inclusive and respectful.  I want to be kind and supportive.  I want everyone to feel "o.k." in the world.  On the other hand, at what point do I get to say that I feel disrespected?  I love being "mom", I am honoured to be "wife" and those are words that mean something to me.  I don't want to align myself with people who are homophobic or who bigoted but I also think that I need to be allowed to define myself, as well.  Just because our labels aren't the same doesn't mean that I see that one is of higher value than the other.  When I am against stuff like this, I worry about the company that I might be keeping but when we are SO extremely, it just makes everyone involved look ridiculous and as far as I can see, pushes progress backwards rather than forwards.

4.  My faith -Am I the only person out there who REALLY struggles with how to be true to my faith but to also be compassionate and supportive to those whose beliefs aren't mine?  I have some personal feelings about some things that I will never speak out loud for fear of being attacked or misunderstood but at the end of the day, I have decided that for me, I try to stick with "until I have walked a mile in someone else's shoes, I can't understand."  I've never had an abortion, I have never sat beside the bed of someone who was painfully dying, I have never had a child who felt convinced that he or she was in the wrong gendered body, I have never had to make the decision about whether to terminate a pregnancy or carry to term a baby who will be horribly deformed.  I will never take a public stand on any of these issues because I can't tell other people how to face these challenges when I haven't been there.  Sometimes, I feel like a moral coward because I know that many Christians would tell me that I was choosing a flexible morality.  On the other hand, I just can't reconcile myself to judging others based on my standards.  It's hard sometimes, though - I DO have my opinions and I really don't ever feel safe expressing them on some issues and that's tough, too.

5.  Parenting - aren't we all baffled by this one?  My personal struggle tends to be in finding the balance.  I read articles about how we aren't giving our children enough freedom to fail and about how they need to play outside unsupervised and that we try to fight their battles for them.  I get that and we try not to do too much of that (sometimes, I think, at the expense of taking a stronger stand when sometimes, we should).  On the other hand, I know that some parents think we are crazy to let Pk do horseback riding (she has been thrown twice) and we are not afraid of some of the things parents around us fear.  I also struggle on the "not having children with no free time who do too many lessons/activities" vs. "not giving them the opportunities to find their passions."  I feel judged by people on both sides. 

Anyway, there is my senseless rant and since some of this post was written with a little boy jumping on the bed in my room, I'm guessing that I don't make all that much sense at the moment.  If, by some chance, I have a reader and even bigger chance, that my reader has made it to the end, I am sure that I have offended you somehow.  Rest assured, I won't sleep because of it but the words were bursting to get out...

Finding My Tribe

I have always had this struggle with church.  I have always wanted it to be home - my tribe, my people, my family, my place to belong.  In an ideal world, the church should be a place where we walk in the first time and feel "this is home" and feel surrounded by love and acceptance and this sense of God's presence and of being where one is meant to be.  Obviously, given that the church may be divine but also is populated by human beings, this desire is slightly ridiculous and also unfair.  I have a hard time shaking it, though, and it has probably made it harder for me to find that "home" - unrealistic expectations rarely lead to comfort and joy.

I've had a few moments in life of feeling "at home."  When I was a kid growing up and church was Grandma passing me Lifesavers and going to church picnics, it felt like home.  I was too young and too blissfully unaware to know what was going on behind the scenes (or to know that our mainline inner-city church was always mere steps from closing).  I hit youth group at an established, still urban but much more secure church and the full impact of how unwelcoming a church can actually be hit me in the face.  After several years of struggling there, I gave up on church until Dh and I moved back to the city at the end of our undergrad degrees.  We did some church exploring and ended up at a very eclectic little inner city church that had an eccentric minister and while it was a mainline congregation, it was populated largely by immigrants who had struggled in life and had a firm sense of the present of God and had no qualms about sharing their faith.  Even there, I never entirely felt as if I belonged but it was the closest I have ever come.  It was hard to say goodbye to that church when we left the city.  Up here, it's been even more of a struggle.  We tried one church that seemed like it might have been a fit thanks to a wonderful minister but the congregation turned on the minister after we had been there a few months and we ran (Dh claimed that he was waiting for someone to stand and start shouting, "Crucify Him!")  The church after that we tried was just too big and too child centred (while we understand how important it is to have an active children's ministry, if the church seems to exist entirely to minister to families with kids, something is wrong).  Then, of course, there was the church we attended for the last 6 or 7 years.  At times, it really began to feel like home, especially when we were active in small groups but then, all of a sudden, it began to feel like there wasn't a place for us there and we weren't welcome.  For several reasons, we felt like the door had been closed on us and it was time to find a new place to journey.

We've been trying a new church over the last 8 months or so and to this point, it's been good for us.  The preaching is terrific (I'm big on wanting to learn and be challenged and amazingly to me, while I have basically attended church my entire life and heard "Bible talk" around the house all the time, the pastor consistently is showing me new ways of seeing things or new texts that I had somehow missed each week and I'm really excited by that).  My children LOVE the programming and participate in a weekly kids programme, Sunday school and have performed in two kids choir presentations.  Dh is happy there (although he's not a joiner, so the fact that he is now on the sound rotation is about as "joined" as he will ever get).  I'm still a bit lost.

I hang out with the moms at the kids rehearsals, I chat with people after church on Sunday, I've got some Facebook friends now from the church and I go to the monthly women's group meeting.  Everyone has been nice and there have been flashes of feeling a sense of belonging but they are still just flashes.  I know, that if we got into a deeper discussion, that people would find me weird or controversial or a bit crazy.  I know that while I ADORED the book, "Red Letter Christianity", that if I participated in a discussion about what it has to say about Muslims or homosexuality or the military, and how it makes so  much sense to me, that I would be received with a distinct chill. Honestly, it leaves me feeling inadequate, sad, wondering why there is no place for me.

It's been bothering me quite a lot lately and I've been doing a lot of pondering.  I find it interesting that many of those who speak to me most tend to be Christian women bloggers, many of whom border on (or just are) somewhat controversial - Rachel Held Evans, Addie Zierman, Sarah Bessey, to name three.  In terms of the men whose writing I am drawn to, they are equally controversial - Donald Miller and Shane Claiborne, to name a couple.  Something has dawned on me in the last couple of weeks - maybe, just maybe, they are all bloggers because they don't "fit" in church either.  Maybe those of us who tend towards the "evangelical progressive" are really just that rare.  We don't fit in the mainline churches (at least not the ones I have attended, where, often, people are so quiet about their faith that I don't know what they believe or where I have a sense that most are attending because it is what their families have always done).  We don't fit in the evangelical churches because we don't see the world in black and white, we aren't comfortable with the "in" crowd with everyone else "out" and ours is a God of love, who demands more of us than judgement of those who don't conform.  These bloggers have helped me to begin to see that perhaps I am not entirely alone but that we are a tribe that is somewhat doomed to wander because the "church", as it exists now, struggles with us.  

 This has led me to a conclusion.  I am going to try to stick it out at this new church for a while and see if it can become like home to me after a while.  I won't force anything, I won't try to push too hard at it, I'll just let it be what it is and I'll see where I fit.  In the meantime, I'm going to work harder to find my "tribe" online.  I decided today that I would start by looking at who some of my favourite bloggers read to see if I connect to anyone and already, I found someone - Leigh Kramer whose post on being an introvert in church grabbed me right away Introverts in Church (she references a book here that I have been meaning to read forever and I think I NEED to read - I'm hoping it will give me some insight into myself).  I'm going to devote more time in the evening to actually reading from my feed and try to connect more with those who seem to speak for the church that I feel called to be part of.  I'm going to try not to try so hard - not to expect so much from church and to just let it be what it is. 

The hardest part?  I'm going to try not judge myself as being inadequate for not feeling that sense of "home" that I crave so badly.  I can't remember where I read it (it might have been Max Lucado) but I read somewhere and it really spoke to me that perhaps we aren't really meant to feel at home here because we aren't at home - this is just a temporary stop on the journey.  Maybe that feeling of homelessness is a gift.  I'm going to try to think of it that way.

Our Passover

I had a terrible (!) week at work this week and I came home so tired tonight that I really debated just giving up on my plan to do a Messianic Seder with the family and getting pizza but once I got home, I thought that I needed to do something positive to end this crappy week.  I often find that when I try to make up a special celebration, it backfires on me (the harder I work, the less willing to humour me the kids seem to be).  I am so grateful that I kept with the planned Seder.  I followed the outline from Ann Voskamp (clink link here) and it ended up being beautiful and a memory maker for our family.  I will never forget LB's face when he tasted the matzah dipped in horseradish (and I made my own matzah this year - hooray for me!)  Both kids adored being allowed to drink from "real" wine glasses (although Pk did ask several times whether they were real glass or just plastic) and many toasts were done, complete with glasses clinking.  The kids were interested in the story and fascinated by the change to dip the parley, drink from Elijah's cup and taste the charoset.  The lamb Dh grilled was mighty tasty, too!

This will definitely be an annual tradition and was a beautiful way to remind us of what this weekend is all about.  It might be too much to expect that much cooperation two years in a row...

Ripping Off a Scab

I don't know whether I have mentioned here that last fall, I lost a friend.  It was a friendship that probably would never have worked anyway - I value my privacy way too much and I get scared of people who see the world in black and white.  This friend was the mom of one of Pk's good friends and for a while, we had fun together, although I sometimes found myself feeling a bit... well.. claustrophobic.  Any of my closest friends will tell you that while I adore them and I love spending time with people who are ideas people and who are wise and fun and who are compassionate, I still need my space and that people who are overpowering, especially those with REALLY strong opinions who don't leave room for other views make me afraid.  I don't know where it comes from but it actually gives me a bit of a nauseous feeling.  On several occasions, this person turned on me (and I never saw it coming) when I held a different view and it shocked me when the attack came.  I AM someone who doesn't need to have my friends agree with me (well, that's not entirely true, compassion, kindness and a willingness to extend mercy are qualities that I need to see in friends but you don't have to share my religion or my politics or my way of parenting) but I do need to have friends who are willing to allow me to have my own opinions and who won't always push me to tell them they are right and I am wrong.  Being a teacher and as a member of a union at times puts me in positions where people feel they can take shots at me and this friend had a tendency to do that.

While I will not get into specifics, last fall, I finally couldn't handle the constant stress and self-doubt anymore.  I had actually stayed out of an angry lashing out she did at another friend of ours and then, out of the blue, two weeks later, I was accused of being disloyal for not immediately coming to her side and soothing her wounds.  At that time, my dad and Dh had pneumonia, my mother was in the throws of what was suspected to be a heart attack and both LB and I were sick.  My daycare situation had blown up (due to nothing to do with me) and I was doing a new job and feeling so much uncertainty.  I wasn't in a good place and I wasn't up to being attacked yet again.  I did something that I have never done before - I took a stand and said that I wasn't up to being the target for her rage anymore and that I needed to back away.  I discovered that I had been unfriended on Facebook and after several very intense emails listing all of my failures, I stated that I would no longer be continuing the conversation, I needed some peace.  I cannot tell you how hard that was for me, conflict-avoiding, insecure little me.  Dh was thrilled (he actually said something about Marty McFly finally punching the bully in Back to the Future) and he said that life would get much easier without that constant stress of a relationship that was evidently harming me more than it was giving to me.

I had no idea how much harder walking away from a friendship would be than I had imagined.  Every time I hear a sermon on forgiveness, I wonder about whether I am a bad person.  I have tried to continue to be kind without actually reinitiating contact.  I still drop off Pk's outgrown clothing for her girls, we delivered Christmas gifts for the girls, we sent a card and I sent a birthday greeting text.  On the few occasions that I have seen her around town, I try to be friendly and to seem as at ease as possible.  I pray for her and her family every single day, hoping that my sincere prayers for their happiness and well-being will take my pain away and help me to disconnect.  Honestly, though, it still really, really, really hurts and brings up all of the old feelings from high school of worrying that it was all my fault, that I was somehow to blame or that I am in sin and need to somehow repair the relationship.  I start feeling that way and then, just the mere thought of having to sit with her in a room terrifies me.  It's amplified because we live in a small town and our girls are roughly the same age and we have several contacts in common.  I start to feel like I have moved on and then, I see her comment on someone's Facebook page or I realise a contact that she has with a friend (in one case, a friend about whom she said TERRIBLE things and it was our first big conflict, when I said that I wasn't comfortable hearing her speak about my friend that way - I would never pass on the things that she said but frankly, I wish the friend somehow knew - I wouldn't want to see the friend hurt and it starts to feel as if the ex-friend is trying to take my friends).  I would like to just forget her and I honestly have come to wish so intensely that I had never met her.  I wish that I could pass her on the street and smile a vague hello and not know her story or feel like my life had been altered by this severed relationship.  I have never had anything like this before because, frankly, I avoid people who I sense are angry for this exact reason.  Conflict is draining and toxic and to me, scary.  I don't know what early life trauma made this so horrid for me but it reduces me to a miserable mess.

My big issue?  Every time I have a renewed contact, I feel a mix of guilt (for possibly being unforgiving and for not initiating full contact to show that I am not harbouring anger), fear about what she might be saying about me to others and this overwhelming worry that perhaps, just perhaps, despite the fact that I tried and tried to get along and that she has a track record of short friendships and hurt feelings around her, that the problem was me - that I am not a good enough friend and that I am the problem.  Every time I see her name, it's like the scab that signified my moving on and starting to heal has been ripped off and I realise that the pain is just below the surface.  It's a hard place to be.

It makes me see why forgiveness is such a constant issue - it's so much easier said that done and while it's easy to see others holding grudges or getting angry about something that seems like nothing to me, when you are the one who was hurt, it's so much harder to let go.

Holy Week

 

What are your plans for Holy Week?  Yet again, I have been frantically pinning to by Easter board on Pinterest and trying to make plans but sadly, a combination  of a horrid bout of strep throat (is there any other kind) and a general lack of direction on my part have led me, yet again, to having no great plan.  I'd so like to make Holy Week special - for me, anyway, it is at least as significant, if not more so, than Christmas and we do SO much to prepare for Christmas.  I'd like Easter to be the same.  On the other hand, though, as my father raised a few years ago, when a blogger I was reading had suggested that we listen to Easter music  in the period leading up to Easter to prepare, as we do before Christmas, it doesn't seem right to be singing about resurrection when the horrible stuff hasn't happened yet.  Personally, I'd rather experience each part as it comes so that by the time we make it to Easter, the full import of the sacrifice made and the power of the gift given seem so much more real.  Decorating and the joyful Easter music need to wait until Easter Sunday morning in our house.

So, what WILL we do?  Well, we began with Palm Sunday at church today.  It was wonderful and PK has been so excited because they had been told last week that Pastor S was going to call them up and they would get to sing and march around the church.  She couldn't wait!  We got up this morning and watched out kids Bible DVDs to see the triumphal entry and I tried to be sure that the kids had some understanding of what was happening (although, frankly, it's taken me probably most of my 40 years to really develop my own understanding of all of the complexities of the sin offering and what it meant to the Jewish people in their relationship with God).  It was wonderful to see the church so filled with children (and to have my son decide that he was going to be the life of the party, laughing his head off and deciding that while everyone else was going around the outside of the church, he was going to proudly march down the centre aisle, making sure everyone appreciated how cute he was and how exciting this was).  It made my heart sing to see the kids so excited.  I have to admit, it was a Sunday, though, that also made me the tiniest bit sad.  As you know if you have been around here a while, we have been in the process of probably making a church shift (no final decisions have been made but it's feeling like we are where we need to be, at least for now).   Our new church is very contemporary in terms of music and at times like this, I sometimes really miss the old favourites that were such a part of my childhood.  My dad and I have this odd tradition of sobbing through, "Ride On, Ride On in Majesty" when we come to the line about the angels looking down in horror at the sacrifice to come.  I missed that.

So, how are we going to spend the rest of the week?

Here are a few things I have planned:

1.  I found a terrific printable resurrection scene and the kids and I have already starting putting it together.  My mom always did this with us as kids and my own kids are old enough now to enjoy it as well,  Click here to print off your own copy and a huge thank you to Catholic Icing for sharing this wonderful resource.

2.  We will hang our "Names of Jesus" banner which I found several years ago at "The Homespun Heart", which has also become a thing that we treasure each year.

 3.  The kids and I have put together little gift bags for all of their friends for Easter.  If we are sharing little gifts at Christmas, it just seems more appropriate than ever to do so at Easter, a time when we should be sharing the good news.  Pk will take them to school and LB will give them to his friends at daycare.  I wouldn't want my kids to force their faith on others but I think that giving an Easter treat is a nice way to instigate a conversation with someone who is interested.
4.  Pk is singing in the kids choir for Easter Sunday morning and so we have been deep in listening to "When I Survey," "Nothing but the Blood" and "Amazing Grace" for weeks now.  While we aren't going to be able to go to a sunrise service (which I would have loved to do - there is a local Salvation Army core that does it on the shore of a lake and we have gone to that before and loved it!), at least the concert at church will ensure how special it will feel.
5. I am hoping to find a local Maundy Thursday service (this is something from my home church in childhood that was always part of Easter and both the church that we were attending and our new church don't hold a service Thursday night, which makes me sad).
6.  Of course, we will be visiting family a lot and trying to remind the kids that Easter is about much more than the bunny and candy.  We do have the bunny come and we have friends coming to go to an egg hunt with us Saturday but we tell our kids that the bunny is celebrating the resurrection, too.  I know, some people think that's a cop out but I'm fine with being Christians who have fun.  If the time that our Saviour was resurrected isn't time for joy and celebration, what is?

I'd love to hear any suggestions that you have or to see some fun links.  I'd love to add to our repertoire and make this meaningful for my family.

"Shoulds"

I don't know about you but for me, this mothering job of mine is somethings extremely hard.  Yes, there is just the daily managing and the busy-ness and the neediness that can be so very draining and there is the fact that sometimes, I feel a bit as if I have ceased to exist as my own being.  That is overwhelming sometimes.  For me, though, there's another side that is even harder - the managing of how my children "should" be.

In theory, I will tell you that I believe that we need to allow children to develop into the humans they were intended or designed to be.  Your child may be gifted academically (I'll write another post someday on how strongly I object to that term).  My child may or may not be a strong student but he or she can be a passionate, kind and loving human being and that is equally of value.  I would tell you that we, as adults, can't impose our own desires on our children (or, as I know I do so often, try to correct flaws in myself by directing my kids).  I have told countless parents over the years that it is about how the child is improving and developing, rather than how he or she compares to others that matters.  I would tell you that on the report card, it's not the grades that matter but the learning skills and the effort that the child is putting forth.  I honestly thought that I believed all that.

I've come to realize that while I would like to believe all that, in practice, it's not how I feel with my own kids.  And it is a hard thing to face in myself.  Very hard.  I am so jealous of the moms I know out there who don't care and who accept their kids for who they are.

Almost the moment my daughter was born, I began to face it - the weight of the expectations and the comparisons.  Is she a "good" baby?  No, she was a horrible baby in the scale of the "good baby/bad baby" spectrum.  She never slept, she had colic, she cried all the time, she wouldn't nap.   Other moms offered advice (particularly on sleep training) and the ones whose babies had come home from the hospital sleeping through the night on their own were the greatest experts.  There were the moms at play groups who would talk about how their babies were starting to talk, rolling over, walking and doing all kinds of amazing things that Pk wasn't doing.  I tried not to let it bother me but honestly, it was overwhelming.  I felt like such a failure.  In my life to that point, I had always been able to control things by working harder.  Now, it didn't seem to matter how hard I worked, it was never good enough and never got me the desired results.  It didn't help that Dh was no help - me, the person who worries about what everyone thinks, is married to the man who really doesn't care what anyone things as long as he feels he has done his best and his constant refrain, when I mentioned my concerns, particularly those based on what other mothers were saying, was, "Well, you know this from teaching - parents lie."  I would argue that he was being unfair and he consistently answered that they might not be intentionally lying but that they were inflating, imagining or didn't really know what they were looking at.  It didn't help and I found that I only had one friend who I could really talk to about this stuff and she would understand and she was far away and trying to manage a schedule as crazy as mine so we didn't connect much.  She's also much saner than me and better able to see through crap than I am.  What a lonely time.

For a while, it got better.  I got back to work, we had LB and life just got so busy that for the most part, I was able to just keep pushing forward and ignoring other people's expectations.  I saw a counsellor who really pushed me to stop, in her words, "buying into everyone's perfect PR".  She said I bought too whole heartedly into what other people put forward as being true, rather than seeing that we all have flaws and that everything comes at the expense of something else.  I thought I had come to terms with trying to please and be good enough.

Then, PK started school.  Ouch, that hurt.  (As an aside, I will say that it has completely changed how I approach things like writing report cards.  I really didn't grasp the impact that that evaluation had on families before - now, I know).  It happens that we have friends whose kids are MENSA candidates, it would seem, and they were always quick to share how brilliantly their children were doing.  Pk did well and her teacher kept telling me that she was bright and doing just fine, but I wasn't hearing the raving praises that these other moms were and they were constantly posting on Facebook and raving about.  I got to the point that I dreaded report card time and all of the comparisons.  I was having a hard time not feeling like everyone thought Pk was a lesser shadow of their own children and I am ashamed to say that I think we put a LOT of pressure on her to achieve.  I was still telling other parents that character mattered more than academics, that straight A's don't necessarily lead to a happy and fulfilled life rich with friendship and love but somehow, yet when it comes to my own children, I have a different set of values.

It just keeps getting harder for me.  Grade 1 is the year that actual letter grades are introduced here and I've been listening to these friends going on about how brilliant their children are.  I go to the church women's group and I hear about how several of the mother's kids are just doing SO WELL and there is always the unspoken idea that other kids are somehow lesser.  I encounter other mothers whose children's report cards were PERFECT (whereas for us, the report card marks were strong, we were a little shocked at the learning skills and discovered that Pk has a major problem with talking non-stop - something that should not have surprised us).  I've been hit hard with the knowledge that Pk is not the dedicated student that I want her to be and then, this past week, her teacher mentioned that she was having trouble with a friend in class because the friend says she is too bossy.  Ouch again.  I really, really want her to be that kid with all the friends who gets the straight A's and is the all-around perfect child.  And she's not.  And it bugs me so much more than it should if I believe what I say I do.  (For the record, I also know that the "perfect" children are not so perfect - I can think of several who definitely have "issues" that their parents aren't willing to see).   I still can't shake the fact that Pk should be more of what she "should" be in my mind.  As a teacher looking at how she's doing, I should be able to see that she is doing very well academically and she is doing well in terms of social-stuff, too but she does have some things to learn because she is only 6.  I can't believe that, though - she's not doing well enough compared to everyone else, is how I am feeling (which upsets me a lot).

It's kind of ironic really - I'm upset with myself because of all of the "shoulds" - Pk "should" be more of the perfect child and yet I believe that I "should" not be so concerned by the "shoulds".  I'm trying and failing to deal with all of the "should-ing" in my life.  I don't really have the answers and it's a hard thing to talk about with people because I feel guilty and like more of a failure for feeling the "shoulds". Part of the "should" as mom is that we "should" accept our kids for who they are and we "should" never compare them to other kids.  I can't seem to help it and I know it's bad for my kids.  I guess that all I can do is to try, as hard as I can manage, to just let go, pray a lot and try to model and support her in being who she is and in developing the character that we believe to be so important.

I know that I should but it's easier said than done.  And it's painful sometimes.