Drama Queen

So I'm really trying to be mindful in the moment of little opportunities I have to be joyful but more often than not I'm too crabby and irritated and would rather pout and complain about the stresses of day to day life as a mom in the Western world instead.

This feels really spiritually immature and makes me wonder when I will ever grow up.

I made such a scene yesterday I don't think I can leave my house without a disguise. You see, Wednesdays are the one day I have to be physically at work at a certain time (besides Sundays, of course) because we have a staff meeting. Now to get to the staff meeting on time it is crucial that I leave with Nicholas when he goes to catch the bus. Once the bus leaves I carry on - on my bike - to work.

You would not believe how organized I was yesterday morning. I was superhuman. Nicholas and I were both dressed, my lunch and laptop were packed along with a batch of freshly-baked muffins especially for the meeting (eat your heart out, Martha), and we walked out the door at 8:30am, exactly four minutes (four minutes!) early for the bus. Four minutes to make the ten-second walk to the bus stop at the end of our alley. Plenty of time, right?

Wrong. I stepped out of the garage to see a lineup of cars idling at the end of the alleyway. And those cars only wait for one thing: the bus!

Should I put profanities in this blog? No. I'll let you imagine what I was yelling while Nicholas ran and I hopped on my bike to try to catch up with the bus driver and make her stop. This sent Nicholas into a complete panic attack. So there he was, on the sidewalk opposite our neighbourhood school, neighbourhood do-good parents and their well-adjusted children everywhere, screaming and crying out to his mom who has gone completely beseerk, belting down the street on her bike, shouting profanities at the bus while it drives away.

I gave up trying to chase the bus when it turned the corner. I stopped my bike right in the middle of the street, waited for Nicholas to catch up to me and started to cry.

Why do I find it so hard to face minor (in the grand scheme of things) snags like this with grace and a positive can-do attitude? So I was going to be a bit late for my meeting. So I needed to find another way to get Nicholas to school. So we don't have a car. So public transit is too slow. So I had to get Nicholas to ride his bike. So what? Why did I have to go into hysterics in front of the neighbours?

Nicholas on the other hand showed exceptional discipline and managed to turn the morning into a blessing in disguise. I think he only freaked because he saw me freaking and swearing all over the place. Once we were both on our bikes on route to the school he grabbed on to joy and wouldn't let go. "It's going to be okay, mom," he repeated like a mantra. He thought riding together was fun - and it was. He was thrilled to have missed the bus. "We get to ride together!" We chatted about this and that. Curses and blessings. Joy and all that good stuff of the Spirit comes naturally to him. He doesn't have to work at it and be all mindful of reaching for it, like I do.

If I am learning anything in this quest for the Spirit's fruit in my life, I'm learning about what gets between me and the state of grace my children inhabit by default. Sometimes it's feeling rushed, sometimes it's feeling overwhelmed with demands, but more often than not the biggest barrier between me and transcendence is this feeling that I am somehow hard done by and I want the world to notice. I want a gold star, a pat on the back, a medal, and some sympathy.

Why can't I just let it go?

A Sticky Situation

One morning last week I opened the fridge to get the milk and found that the entire bottle of maple syrup had spilled and had covered the bottom shelf in a sticky pool of mess. This discovery was made with ten minutes to get Nicholas fed, teeth brushed, and on to the school bus. Needless to say spilled syrup was the last thing I needed. I yanked at the milk jug (now almost) cemented to the fruit and vegetable drawer and almost started to cry as big, gloppy blobs of syrup dripped from the jug as I carried the milk across the kitchen to the table and filled the cereal bowls. My house is messy enough as it is. I don't need these kind of complications that just make it worse.

"Do you know anything about this?" I asked Nicholas.

Of course he did. A couple of days before (what? The syrup had been slowly pooling for TWO DAYS and I hadn't noticed?!?!) Nicholas had tried to make himself a snack (cereal with syrup on top) and hadn't known how to properly seal the bottle (it has a fancy, old-fashioned lid). And then the syrup had somehow tipped over.

I know it's digusting, but I decided to ignore the syrup (on the floor and in the fridge) for a little while longer. The bus! We had to go. But after lunch we went grocery shopping and before I could put anything away I knew the syrup would need to be cleaned up. I had to deal with the mess. Nicholas was on his way to the playroom.

I could just clean up the syrup myself, I thought, it would take ten - maybe twenty - minutes of hard labour. Not much time, really. But then, I thought, this is an opportunity for Nicholas to learn - to grow! - and to come to an understanding of natural consequences. So I called him back and braced myself for imminent whining and complaining and yelling.

"Nicholas, before you go off to play we're going to clean up the syrup in the fridge together." I stood looking at him like a deer in the headlights - paralyzed - unsure of what to do next. I was ready for the onslaught of something horrible. But instead he just said, "Okay, mom."

We filled up a mixing bowl with dish soap. I showed Nicholas how to wring out his rag and mop up the syrup. We mopped and rinsed, and mopped and rinsed again. And then he stopped wringing out the rag. "I want it to be really watery," he said. Slopping masses of water now lay around the bowl and the interior of the fridge looked like a muddy, brown pond. I could feel myself beginning to grumble. What a mess! It was almost worse than the syrup. I wanted to grab his rag and swat him. Just looking at the water sloshing everywhere made me want to scream! Why on earth couldn't he just do what I wanted him to do?

But then I remembered my plan at the outset of this month. No more tantrums. Time to be a big girl, Kristin. You're trying to grow. You're trying to change. You have a choice: transcend or regress. That still, small voice inside of me was calling out amidst the storm: ""reach for joy, lassie! You're going down without it! It's all you've got! Reach for joy like it's all you've got to hang on to!"

Time for a deep breath. I asked Nicholas to grab a towel to soak up the water, which he did. And I took a good look at him, scrubbing the fridge. The water and the non-wringing of the rag was just him really getting into it: having fun and still getting the job done. He was clearly enjoying himself and there was an aura of pride about him; engaged as he was in such an adult job. I had to admit to myself that it wasn't so bad, working along beside him. I had snagged a front row seat at his show of capability, responsibility, and independence. And that's when I felt it: the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.

It didn't stay, but that moment was enough to make me feel ten feet taller, spiritually speaking. Anyways, spiritual growth is always a work in progress; just a series of small successes that gradually accumulate beyond our big failures and make us into the people we were created to be in the first place.

Next month I'm going to focus on love, which means my challenge is to try to be conscious of all the opportunities I get moment by moment to choose to be loving or to show love to my family.

But before then, there'll be on more post on JOY.

The Joy of Cooking

On Sunday we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner with my brother and his partner and invited over a couple of our good friends. Both my husband and my brother love to cook and I like to bake and since we were all inspired by a little book I had bought the kids called "A Pioneer's Thanksgiving in 1840," we decided to make the entire meal from scratch - including cranberry sauce and ice cream to go with the pumpkin and apple pies. And just to make the preparations even more complicated than they already were, my husband and I decided that the kids were going to help us with the cooking...

We look so peaceful in this photo, don't we? The kids look cooperative, but here's a rough approximation of what happened in the moments leading up to this photo being taken:

Nicholas: "Mom, I want to watch my Scooby Doo video."

Me: "Not right now; I want you to help me cook this afternoon. It's important."

Nicholas: "Mom, please, I don't want to cook - it's going to take forever! Please just let me watch Scooby Doo!"

Me: "No. Get in the kitchen."

Nicholas: "But I want to watch Scooby Doo."

Me: "No. Mommy and Daddy need your help in the kitchen."

Nicholas: "Then I hate you and I'm not being your son anymore!"

Me (in yet another Jekyll/Hyde moment): "GET IN THE KITCHEN RIGHT NOW! I DON'T WANT YOU TO EVEN MENTION THAT VIDEO AGAIN. WE'RE GOING TO COOK TOGETHER...AND IT'S GOING TO BE FUN!"

I wasn't sure whether I could find any joy in this Thanksgiving cooking experiment, but Steve and I were convinced that it was much better to involve our kids in the whole process than to have them sitting in front of the TV - even though I would have been able to put the ingredients together much more quickly without their help. And it turned out that standing firm in our convictions - though they inconvenienced us and made our kids extremely grumpy - eventually filled the afternoon with joy and happiness and a deep sense of personal satisfaction.

Nicholas and Emma sliced all the apples for the apple pie, prepared the mixture of spices, milk, and eggs for our pumpkin pie and made the pastry - with only a little help from me. While I peeled the apples and they sliced I talked about their great Grandmother - my Grandma Bernice - and how she taught me how to make pastry. I shared her pastry secrets with the kids and told them about great Grandma Bernice's life growing up on the Stoney Plain farm. It was a joy to cook with my kids. I felt whole; I felt happy. I got that, "This is What it's All About" feeling.

I think I'll make it a tradition for our family to cook together at every holiday. I'd much rather their Thanksgiving memories involve cutting boards, apple peels, cinnamon, and raw turkey, than movies on the TV. Midway through slicing his pile of apples Nicholas looked up and said, "this is fun!" I guess that's why they call it the joy of cooking!

Transformation Happens in the Kitchen

I assume that if you're reading this blog, you go to church. And why do you go? If you're like me you go for a whole bunch of reasons, my number one reason being that, having gone to church, I just feel better - it's like exercise for the soul.

I also go to church to be transformed; I want to be the best version of me that I possibly can be, hokey as that may sound. At the moment, traits like peacefulness and compassion don't come naturally to me, depending on the circumstances, and I don't like that about myself. I think the ultimate goal of being a part of a community of faith and taking on a set of spiritual practices is a transformation of the heart. I want my heart to blossom and grow in the fruit of the Spirit. I think Jesus achieved this kind of transformation. Virtues like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control just oozed out of him and I'd like that for myself.

Traditional practices of Christian spirituality - practices like reading scripture, praying, attending worship, fasting, calling ourselves to account through confession, and offering radical hospitality - are meant to open our hearts and minds to Spirit so that transformation can take place. But most of these practices require a consistency and time commitment that many parents can't give. So what do you do when you want to practice your faith (because you want to be transformed) but the traditional tools of spirituality just don't mesh with the reality of your life right now? As a parent any spiritual practice I take up needs to be flexible and adaptable to the needs of my family.

In my first post I shared the story of the night I behaved really badly towards my children. The only good to come out of that night was the revelation that absolutely every interaction I have with my children held within it the potential for the kind of transformation I had been looking to receive through traditional spiritual practice. I realized that - with a little perspective and a lot of discipline - I could actively choose to grow the fruits of the Spirit in my heart. The way in which I engaged with my children gave me every opportunity to be more loving or kind or gentle. It turned out that Transformation was right there waiting for me - in my kitchen.

So this is what I've decided to do: every month I'm going to focus on one fruit of the Spirit - one Christian virtue that I'd like to have more of in my heart. As I go about my day I'm going to look for opportunities to invite that spiritual "fruit" into my actions and intentions and responses to whatever gets thrown at me. My hope: to be the best me I can be and to grow more like Christ, who seemed to have these virtues at his fingertips. And ultimately I guess I hope - like any beauty queen, politician, or bleeding heart activist worth their salt - to make my little corner of the world a bit more loving and joyful and peaceful and generous and faithful as a result. Of course, I'm also doing this because I want these virtues to be as close to a part of my children's DNA as possible and any parenting resource will tell you that example is the best teacher.

So here I go...off to sow some seeds and grow some fruit.... This month I'm looking to grow in JOY. I will choose to be joyful; I'll laugh more with my kids; I'll rely on humour to diffuse testy situations; I'll notice how full and happy I feel with the joy of motherhood!

Needless to say how easy it is to have the best intentions when it's 2a.m. and there's no one around to "bother" me. We'll just have to see how "joyful" I am when the kids wake me up in a few hours...

Let Me Pencil You In...

Have you ever noticed that the greatest spiritual leaders of all time were single? It's probably not a coincidence. Jesus, Buddha, Mother Teresa - they weren't changing diapers or nursing a baby at two in the morning. They didn't have to figure out how to get three kids to three different schools and 27 extra-curricular activities on time. And when they had a moment to spare I bet they never thought (like I do), "great, time to fold some laundry!"

No, it's probably not a coincidence that single people like Jesus soar to such amazing spiritual heights, and that's because single people have the one thing we need in order to grow closer to the Divine. And what, you might ask, is that one elusive thing we need for such spiritual growth? It is, quite simply, unhurried time.

The spiritual practices of any religion are those things we do to open ourselves up to God. Traditional Christian spiritual practice includes things like reading scripture, praying, meditating - practices that require one not to be interrupted.

For those of us with young families finding unhurried, uninterrupted time for spiritual practice is like winning the lottery. I don't know about you, but some days my only uninterrupted time is the time I get to go to the bathroom. And there are some days when I don't even get that.

Is it possible to soar to the same spiritual heights as Jesus when you've got a family that takes up most of your time? I actually have no idea. I do, however, think spiritual growth is possible - even without daily scripture, prayer, and meditation. Maybe we just need to think of parenting as a spiritual practice in and of itself.

The Jekyll/Hyde Incident (well, one of them...)

The idea for this blog has been on my mind since the horrible night I completely lost it on my children a couple of years ago.

Here's what happened:

We had just moved into a new house and I was trying to unpack and figure out where to put all our stuff. My husband was working late - maybe even a night shift if I remember correctly. The kids were really young - still toddlers. I had tried my best to ignore them all day; bringing order to our new home was the priority. By the time we finished dinner I could tell they were desperate for attention but I was equally desperate to wash up the dishes; it was one less mess to face the next morning. Well, the kids didn't understand it when I asked them to leave me alone. They started to cry and I turned into a monster, right there in the middle of the kitchen. My veins bulged, my neck throbbed, my eyes turned red and I growled at my kids to "just shut up!" I scared them so much they stopped crying (for about a second).

Ironically, it was earlier that year that I'd been talking with some people about producing a resource for parents on how to teach their faith to their children. On paper I was all about making my home into a home for faith, but in reality I felt like such a hypocrite - ignoring my children and screaming at them. I realized that it really didn't matter if I taught my kids how to read the scriptures and how to pray if I wasn't an example of basic human decency to begin with.

Scripture tells us that the "fruit" of the Spirit (read: "proof" of the Spirit) within us is the extent to which we embody love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5: 22-23). If these virtues flow naturally from our hearts then we know we're in touch with the Spirit. Our homes are only homes to faith to the extent that our bodies are homes to faith. We can't house faith in our home if the Spirit is not at home in our body. When I came to this understanding I realized that it was me who needed to learn how to live out my faith at home, and my children would learn from my example. In fact, it is my children who are my spiritual teachers.

After that horrible night (and many others like it) it dawned on me that my children, by their very nature, are ideally suited to help me cultivate the fruit of the Spirit. From the moment they wake me in the morning, to the moment they are finally asleep at night, oftentimes minute by minute, they present me with opportunities for spiritual growth.

I gave into the "flesh", so to speak, that fateful evening, but what if I'd been more conscious about reaching for the Spirit? That evening I was offered an amazing gift, but I turned it down. My children offered me the gift of spiritual growth, but I was too wrapped up in the dishes and how tired I was and how much I hated all the chaos around me to see this. What if I'd taken a deep breath, got down on the floor and played with the kids for twenty minutes, and then pulled over a couple of chairs and filled the sink with the dirty dishes with some extra bubbles and plastic toys? I would have grown in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I would have felt a whole head taller.

So now I'm trying to be conscious of those moments where I am presented with a choice: transcend or regress. I've realized that the best way to teach my faith at home is for my kids to see me reaching for the Spirit in my own life. So, yeah, parenting with "Spirit"...that's what I'm trying to do.