Ups and Downs

Did you miss me? They say ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’, but my motto is usually ‘absence makes the procrastination longer’. A non sequitur and one sentence later, I’ve been feeling a little bit like an ostrich lately. Heavy, flightless, and not good at making decisions. Due to the six circumstances that have given me the title ‘mom’, I’ve preferred to keep my head stuck in the sand this week.

Remember my advice from last time? ‘Don’t have kids’? Yeah, I should have specified by saying,  “Don’t have the female kind. Also, don’t have the male kind.” It’s not like I didn’t listen to those parents in whose footsteps I am happy to follow; I listened, I gleaned, I questioned, I prepared. But you really don’t have any idea until you’re actually in it for yourself, do you?

Having difficulties with teenagers is not new to anyone. It’s a tale as old as Cain and Abel. But how did we go from those sweet-faced, pudgy-fingered, elbow-dimpled toddlers we raised to these cantankerous, hormonal, teary-eyed parents they’ve turned us into? 

I have more questions than answers. I have more prayer requests than humorous stories. I have more roller coaster rides in a day than even a thrill-seeker would wish upon themselves. I have more kids that will someday become teenagers! 

Did you know that ostrich eggs are incredibly tough to crack? Any person weighing up to roughly 250 pounds wouldn’t even make a dent in the shell if they stood on top of it. A saw or some other hand tool is typically used to gain access to the prized yolk. I just think it’s so fitting that while it is hard for any of us to break open the shell, the chick inside has absolutely no difficulty whatsoever cracking the egg and hatching. It seems like there must be something here I can learn from this. If I can just pull my head out of the sand, maybe I can figure out what it is…

To pick up on the roller coaster analogy, there have been some ‘ups’ in the last little while. It’s a good thing, too. Normally I’m terrified of the ‘up’ on the roller coaster because it means that we have to come back down, and that’s the part I really don’t like! However, we don’t think like that with real life events, do we? If things are going well, we’re typically not walking on eggshells, waiting for life to fall apart (especially if that egg is an ostrich’s). Anyway, getting back on track here, Danny and I have been thankful for some successes and joys the kids have experienced recently. 

There have been very high marks on an important test and job applicant acceptances and first-time sports team players and dog-training developments and self-advocating-while-making-big-decisions moments. Yet despite all of these accomplishments and exciting events, none of these kids know how to change the toilet paper roll! Below is photographic evidence of a real scene I stumbled upon in my house, in which there are children, half of whom are teens who should know how to figure this out. 😑

If you need me, I’ll be the one with my head in the sand.