And so it begins...

We wanted to get this initial post up for New Year’s, when everyone makes their resolutions.  But, somehow, once again, we got in our own way!

We are tired of being in our own way. We start projects with all the vigor of “DIY to the Rescue”, but then fade, gloriously but without sticking the landing.  Picture a wounded, yet somehow confident, Kerri Strug flying down the approach, ready to make her heroic Olympic winning vault…and  then flying over the horse, missing the pad and breaking her other ankle.  That’s us.  

We chase four kids around, pursue two careers, car pool, raise elderly parents, care for the house…yadda yadda yadda.  The same things everyone else does.  We’re no different. We’re not complaining about anything…other than ourselves.  We are a 550hp engine with a bad clutch-  lots of power, plenty of noise and very little forward progress. These four spinning wheels are getting a little old.

So, tired of ourselves, we have engaged a process.  Thus, inspired by the successes of friends (WE LOVE YOU ANGIE HAUBE!) and the renewing of our spirits, we are ready for something new, something better.  We are ready to get out of our own way.

We didn’t get in our own way overnight, and we don’t expect to extract ourselves from our own foibles overnight, either.  We are not looking to throw darts and hit numbers, nor are we goal oriented in any other way than we just want to get the kids’ bathroom finished. 

Sometimes the things we over-educated parents need to learn don’t come from self help books, or gurus, or New Year’s resolutions.  As a matter of fact, we resolved not to make any resolutions at all.  Sometimes life’s best lessons come from the most unexpected places- like the mouth of your six year old.

When Paul wrote about putting away the childish things he probably didn’t mean for us to think of that as something connected to a singular transition, something we do once and forget about.  Putting away things which aren’t doing us any good, or are even hurting us, is a continuous process.

Sure, we all make the jump from “kid-dom” to adulthood and can’t wait to sink our choppers into the things that await us. Our dreams and aspirations for the next stage fuel our jump to what’s next.  We imagine the grandness of growth and just can’t wait to get to where we are going.  We all had things we had to give up in order to make the transformation complete.

Our darling daughter, Emmie, is all of six (and going on twenty seven).  The other morning in the rush to get everyone ready for school she absolutely refused to leave the house with her favorite lunchbox.  She used to carry this thing around all day long, like a treasure to behold. It was her prized possession.  This poor, battered box had received some serious lovin’ along the way!

When we would go to Chick Fil-A she wouldn’t eat her meal unless it came from the lunchbox. She would carefully remove the food from the bag, or tray, put it all in the box and close the lid.  Then she would open the box like it was Christmas morning and exclaim, “Look what I’ve got!  

Now, and very suddenly, she was ready to abandon the thing she had once held so dear.  “Darling, I thought Dora was your favorite?” I asked. “Daddy,” she replied very seriously, “Dora is soooooo toddler.  I’m in first grade now and I just can’t do Dora anymore.”

Sometimes when we get to where we thought we were going it hits us that the grass is not so green.  Other times the transition produces positive results that are beyond our best dreams.  In either case we have probably brought with us some baggage that we don’t really need anymore.

Our walk with God is an on-going process of building, tearing down and rebuilding. With each stage we enter we have to put away some of the things that are no longer relevant.  These things that once seemed so important, so self-defining, are no longer necessary.  In fact, these very things that we hold so dear may, in fact, be holding us back. 

Sometimes we have to give up our lunchbox.  

Our train is leaving the Station of Mediocrity.  Not sure where the next stop will be, and we are sure there will be many whistle stops along the way, but we are hoping that the end of the line is in a place where we are not in our own way ever again.