mo betah mothering

So, I’m still going through our home… regathering, resorting, redistributing, refusing and recycling. But the one thing I don’t want to spend anymore time on is rearranging the same stuff – trying to figure out how to keep the same stuff I still won’t need later.

It’s been good… I’m thinking that at the end of the week I will finally get down to some serious paring down. Now, paring down for me or for us would be like drowning in cluttered chaos for a few of our friends who are the epitome of order and define minimalist decor. But for us, who have most everything we ever bought or were given (except for the things that broke or were stolen) doing a de-cluttering of the home is major surgery. What needs to go on here is akin to an amputation or something. Actually… what I really think needs to happen is that the walls need to be pushed out about 12 feet on all sides of the house – but then, that would sound greedy and discontent and, really, I strive to be neither.
So, the re-righting continues. I’m missing Hannah as she’s still in Idaho staying with a family and helping at the home of a young mother after the birth of their fifth child. O, how grateful I am for the opportunity for Hannah. I am remembering when that young woman was in her teens and how incredibly industrious she was (and is, still) and what a blessing she was to her family and to ours—so to now be able to send a little help to her at this time is really quite endearing to me. I tell Hannah that she is much like Becca was at her age… so it’s sort of melancholy to me as I think of what the LORD may have ahead for Hannah.

With most of the olders gone, the youngers have to “step up to the plate,” so to speak, and both fill in the gaps and learn the diligence that makes the work and lives of their older brothers and sisters valuable to others. I like to see these “life lessons” in play as they always increase the importance or reason for learning what they’re studying – they see the application and how God uses lives dedicated to Him. As a mom, I’ve needed to see the imperative to press on and not be weary of the repetitive nature of motherhood. I’ve needed to reemploy the creative enthusiasm as I train and retrain and retrain so that the last will be as skilled and capable as the first—and that the last will receive the same (yet, hopefully more) fresh, wonder-filled, awestruck passion that it seems only new moms possess.

So then, both the rewriting and the re-righting continues. Hopefully mo betah as the days go by.