Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Disaster Days

Bad days. You know, the days where you want to pull your hair out and scream. Things are very NOT perfect, and you feel like a failure. You swear somebody gave something to your children to make them act this way.

You become unhinged, and lose patience. There just does not seem to be enough time to do everything, an overwhelming feeling comes on. If you homeschool, the school up the street looks very appealing to you or you try to calculate if you can afford private Christian school. You search desperately for When Homeschooling Gets Tough.

It is true, we do not have enough patience. We do not have enough of anything. In order to succeed as Christian parents we need God to change our hearts. Since no one is perfect, we all have refining to take place in our spirits. We cannot do this without Jesus. This is not a sign of weakness, but a recognition of the weakness found in all people.

The Psalms that David wrote while he was being chased by Saul remind me the battles of motherhood. I am not alone in my struggles, God is with me. I may feel exhausted, but I can find rest in the Lord. Though as hard as some days can be, I know life can be much harder than not getting my way. I also loved reading the same passages during my husband's strokes and recovery. Our bad days are really not that sort of bad, they are really about our own desires not being meant the way we would like them to. The desires are usually good ones, like having respectful children, but they are our wants none the less.

When I cry out to the Lord, He show me where things went wrong in my day. Here is a list of sure fire disaster day starters the Lord has shown me:

1) Getting up late - You get up late, you are behind all day. If there is not enough hours in the day to start with, making less is really going to make a mess of things.


2) Failure to Pray - Start the day with prayer is a MUST DO. Get on your knees, cry out to the Lord, because the day will be hard, your patience will be tested to the limit, and you need the Lord to give you strength and wisdom.


3) Not Reading God's Word - His Words will refresh you like nothing else. Read it in the morning and at other times in the day. I love reading the Bible before/at breakfast and after putting the kids to bed. Sometimes I need to read it in the middle of the day during my refreshment time - if I get one (that is another blog post!).


4) Scheduling too much in one day - When you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else, which may be dinner or laundry or some needed rest.


5) Losing focus - You can only really do one thing well at a time. Multi-tasking is a myth, except maybe if it is listening to an audio book while you do the dishes. If your focus is homeschool, you need to focus on that one thing - you cannot answer the phone, and fold the laundry too. While you are folding the laundry one of the kids will start coloring instead of doing math and the other will reenact the Flood from Genesis in your bathroom. Kids do need to work independently, hovering like a helicopter is bad too, but you still need to check on them (expect = inspect) - which is hard to do if you lose your focus on something else.

I remember one homeschool mom telling me, "I can either clean the house or homeschool, but I can't do them both on the same day. If I do, then I end up feeding the kids cereal 3 times a day."


6) Forgetting to Eat - My husband cannot believe that I could get so busy that I completely forget to eat a meal, but I do. A hungry mama is going to be less likely to have the patience needed for her task.


7) Insufficient amount of rest - This could be staying up too late, and not getting enough sleep. Or it could be not taking a refreshment time during the day. You can't pour from an empty pitcher! If an infant is the reason, it best to simplify until the baby's sleeping habits improve or get some help - both would be better. It is a season, enjoy your baby while you can - they don't keep!

What are some causes to bad days that God has shown you?

4 comments:

  1. I couldn't have read your blog at a better time. I've had such a discouraging week...thaks for the pick-me up!

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  2. Awesome encouraging post. Beautiful.

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  3. Those are great ideas for thinking of what went wrong with the school day.

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  4. Thank you Lord! I know you guided me to this post in my google search! I am guilty of all 7 burn out reasons listed in this post! Tomorrow I am calling a babysitter and getting some frozen dinners..........I can go back to healthy eating later.

    Thank you for the encouragement!
    PS.....My google search was for "snoopy, revolutionary war, video"

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