The Path

My days and nights with the brood have been nothing short of exhausting lately. Persistance is key. Having a little bit of a thick skin doesn't hurt either.

The birthday season is fast approaching my home and so today I'll be making one of my annual shopping frenzy trips to the local cheap mart. The goal is to supply various assorted sports equipment--later to be lost, cool clothing--to be left on the floor, declared uncool, or simply destroyed by boy wear, an assortment of plastic junk waiting to become foot schrapnel--I mean, action figures, and probably a few books or games to make me feel like I've done somthing besides burn money and harm my kids.

They enjoy getting the junk, enjoy opening up the packages, and usually play with the stuff for quite a while before it just melts into the pile of left over stuff hanging around in the play room and under the bed. With all my labels, though, and trying, really trying, to be a good parent, I often feel some guilt about all the presents. It's really have the same issues as everyone else. The stuff is going to break, it costs too much money. Clearly it's not educational. They already have more junk than a child could ever need.

Sometimes, I have to fess up to just not being super mom, and admit that we're not the super family. We aren't ultra put on a pedistal Christian home school material.

Don't missunderstand. We're a great family, in my humble opinion. In fact one of the greatest compliments I've ever gotten was from a friends daughter after she spent some time with us. She told her mom that we were fun and we laughed a lot. What she probably meant was, "Wow, those people are really loud and scarry! Don't leave me there again!" But I took it mean, that we aren't doing too many things wrong.

We're like everyone else. We're trying our best to do what's right by each child we've been given. Sometimes, it's easy and clear what to do. Often times it's like walking a country road on foot in the fog at night. You know that one foot in front of the other will move you forward and that the dawn will bring light.

Carry on, carry on.