Sunday, June 1, 2014

How Many Hours in a Day?

The question that weighs on my mind is whether or not the choices that we are making for the kids and their schooling are being made out of necessity or out of selfishness.

I want to homeschool all of the children.  I really do.  And I feel as if it is a huge failure on my part if we choose to send one of our children to school.  I feel as if I am failing and as if I am being selfish by not taking the time and effort to make it work to keep them all at home.  I feel like if I would just get up earlier, if I would just plan better, take more time, have more patience, be more organized, be stronger, more faithful, more trusting, more...more...more everything that I'm not, then I would be able to make it work.  Am I being selfish by not pushing myself harder and getting more done?

But on the flip side, I look at the reality.  I am a full time working mom.  That is not my choice, but it is what I am right now out of necessity.  I can not cut back my hours, and I can not redirect my energy from there to home because my job is very demanding both physically and mentally.  It pays well and has great benefits, and I really do enjoy it, but it is very tiring, and I must go in well rested and at the top of my game or I will be miserable and in the end, probably lose my hours.  And by working until 1 or 2AM, that means that I can't realistically get up any earlier than I do now, which is between 8 and 9.  Even then, I am only getting about 5 or 6 hours or sleep at best, and by the end of my work week, I am exhausted, which just adds to the problem of dealing with a child who has a behavioral disorder and is physically and emotionally demanding as well.

And when you take 40 hours off the top of the week, and then you add in a little time for sleeping and whatnot, there's not much time left, and that small amount of time must be spread across 5 children and Jimmy with hopefully a scrap or two for myself as well.  And Hazel having a nurse almost complicates things even more because I find that I leave Hazel to the nurse so that I can take time with the other kids and then I look back at the day and realize that I haven't spent nearly enough time with her...except, of course, on the almost biweekly trips to the clinics at Children's Hospital which tend to take up a whole morning, if not a whole day.  And the laundry, shopping and errands still need to be done, too.

So as we move into this time of option searching and decision making for our children, I find myself at a loss of what to think and how to feel.  I find myself in limbo land once again, fitting in nowhere and everywhere, and with tons of questions, fears and doubts, and no real answers.

But the good news is that it's church time tomorrow (actually, in a few hours!) and Hazel Grace will be going with us again.  This will be the third week in a row that she's been able to go with us, and it's made such a difference to the other kids to *finally* have the whole family back together again at church!

God is good!

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