Being a parent and a pastor is the hardest thing I’ve done to date.
Well, being those things and being married to a camp director…that’s like the trifecta!
Summers are always crazy for us, though recent summers have been marked by more pain that usual. Two summers ago, as we waited for Mary’s arrival, Dad died. Last summer, as the summer camp season was beginning and I was on a break before beginning my new appointment at Arden, Dan committed suicide.
Both events happened just as I was thinking I would get a mental and emotional break from the challenges of work (maternity leave in 2013, and time off and a new appointment in 2014).
I’ve stopped looking forward to down times so much.
This summer started getting crazy in the winter, when I was invited to be part of the trip to Zimbabwe, then after being decided I wouldn’t be able to go on the mission trip, feeling strongly that I should be here for at least some of it, even if that meant bringing the girls along.
Balancing work and family is hard. No decision seems ideal when trying to do so.
Being away from the girls for two weeks brought questions of what would happen if something happened. You can’t dwell in that place or you’ll go crazy. You won’t be able to function. Being alone with the girls for the better part of a week, well, again, what if something happens…
It’s hard enough trying to balance things and take care of the girls when there are two of us…God bless single parents. I don’t know how they do it.
Today was the first of two whole days we’re here on the mission trip. We’ll probably have a day like today tomorrow, then early Thursday we’ll leave early for home.
The work site is an hour away from Logan, the town where we are all staying. The girls and I loaded up and went to the church to caravan with the team to the site. It definitely took an hour.
I’d brought a few things along for the girls to play with at the work site, though Anna was just so excited to help. Trying to corral them to let the team work—especially Anna—took all my attention, though the team was great and let the girls help some. I plied the girls with Cheetos to take long breaks outside the house. You gotta do what you gotta do!
The house is right on a main road, so any hope of letting the girls run (my girls do outside play well!) was gone.
It rained pretty solid for part of the morning as well, which my girls would happily have played in…as it was we all ended up pretty wet. The drywall seams the team had done the previous day had not all dried, so it wasn’t long before the work inside the house came to a standstill as we figured out what next. A couple of our team worked on an addition at the back of the trailer while the rest of us just hung out inside. Eventually those of us inside decided to leave early (on way to lunch at a church in town) to stop at a couple stores to pick up supplies—including a hair dryer to try to rush the drying of the seams so sanding and priming could be completed today.
A couple stops later, and we got to the church for lunch. Anne and Ginny have been doing an awesome job preparing meals, and they met us with food. Of course, the girls had been snacking on junk food all morning so, yeah, lunch wasn’t a big thing for them.
After lunch, the girls and I headed out, to drive back to Logan and so the girls could nap in the car. The rest of the team headed back to the site, where (we later learned) they were indeed able to finish sanding and priming.
I thought I’d gotten wise to the girls now, and we headed straight to Walmart on the way home, to pick up a few toys to try to buy us time both at the church for dinner and at the work site tomorrow morning. Back at the hotel, we laid low, the girls played and watched TV, and I hung out online.
Then, back to the church Indeed, the new stuff from Walmart worked well enough, but I didn’t watch the time, and sometime during devotions after dinner, bedtime (well, bathtime) came and went. My girls are like gremlins if you mess with their routine…which I did…and they went a bit bonkers. Cultimanting in Anna trying a sommersault on the hard floor as devotions wound down.
Cue the ten millions things a mom things about, including, “God, how bad is she hurt?” “I need to get these girls back to the hotel,” “How quickly can I gather out things,” and so on.
The good news is, though Anna was sore, she seems fine (and she and Mary got to stay up even later past bedtime so I could keep an eye on her to be sure).
Sheesh. Parenting is hard.
But then I remember how proud Anna is to be here. How much it means to her to be able to help. I struggle with balancing, “You need to follow directions, pay attention, and sometimes even sit still!” with remembering that she still isn’t even 5 yet. Mary, well, I can’t believe she’s almost 2, but even still sometimes I have to remember that what I’m expecting from these girls this week is, at least to me, a lot.
Some day I may look back on this trip and think it was a really cool thing, it was great we got to do it, and so on. I’ll probably forget how worried I was at times, or how I had to quash those thoughts that I couldn’t do it.
But then, isn’t that all what parenting is? I, at least, don’t know another way to do it.
Sometimes being a parent is incredibly scary and terrifying. Who, after all, agreed that you were responsible enough to care for other peoples’ lives? That’s pretty insane, if you think about it! There are so many ways to mess these little people up. So many decisions to make on a daily basis. You’re pretty much guaranteed to get some of those decisions wrong. We all just pray we get the really important ones right. The problem is, sometimes it’s not clear which ones the really important ones are…
Sometimes being a parent makes you feel proud and accomplished. Other times it makes you feel like an immense failure whose parenting skills rank at the bottom of the list of people you know. The answer is probably somewhere between those two, but the pendulum sure does swing, doesn’t it?!
Sometimes, whatever it is you are trying to balance with being a parent (whether work, community involvement, keeping the house, keeping your sanity, taking care of yourself, etc.) seems terribly out of balance. Sometimes you come face to face with the reality that “balance” (at least in any given moment) is generally a lie, and you’ve got to find a way of being present for whatever is important to you that helps you keep going. And yes, sometimes you have to revisit your priorities.
Sometimes, trying to do all of this while a pastor feels like (at least to me) an impossible feat and the stories of our colleagues’ kids who took some whacked out path seem legion. Of course, there are those stories from all parents, but somehow we’re convinced our work will scar our kids more than most, right? I have no idea if that’s true, but it feels that way. Sometimes, trying to raise our kids to love God, and maybe even not hate the church while we work in it, seems really difficult. What if we try too hard and our kids push back at us by pushing back at God? What if we don’t try hard enough and they miss what is really very important to us, our faith in God, even beyond our professional careers?
At any rate, it’s all difficult. And there are people who are walking a path right now which is very different than mine who also have great challenges. The truth is, I am very blessed. Times like this week, while difficult, are for me a reminder of that. I have an awesome husband (whose absence is all the more noticeable and difficult this week while we’re away). My girls love people, and they love helping, and I hope that never changes. They also love what they’ve learned at church, at VBS, and even at home, about God. I hope that only deepens and grows.
I don’t know what challenges you’re facing this week. I don’t know if this is a normal week, busy or calm, or if this is a week you are wondering how you’ll get through. I know, though, that our God is faithful and that as tough as all this is, God is tougher. And because of that, you are too. You can do this. God can make even of this season in your life a beautiful thing. I hope that you get to see glimpses of that beauty in the days ahead.
Grace and Peace.
Sarah
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