Tag Archives: thankful

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Waxing Nostalgic: the thoughts of a recovering Stay-at-Home Mom

My Rock and dream maker

I was blessed enough to be a stay-at-home mom for 17.5 years. It was a time I could commit my time to family and home. It was a time that I cherish and as I sit at my desk, working, I began waxing nostalgic.

I now work for a church camp. Not only do I handle the marketing and communications for the camp, I am also the camp registrar. During this time of the year, I am busy inputting data, getting families and individuals registered for summer camp.

In the six seasons that I have been registering campers, I have never had the memories pop up as they have today. Today, I share with you, the joys of motherhood, being a wife and managing a household.  As in most memories, they are probably more glitter than actuality. BUT…

Our two children are presently 22 and 19. In less than two weeks, we will no longer have any teenagers in our home. We have been through many happy times and many trying times. Being a parent is not easy, but it surely is rewarding.

The church camp where I work, is also the church camp that our children attended. Camp Fontanelle, a United Methodist Church Camp, is located just 23 miles from our home. It is peace and quiet and yet full of activity. It was the place we sent our children to build on the faith lessons we taught our children at home and what they learned at church.

There are camping sessions starting in pre-school when a camper goes with an adult. Our son, started his camping journey when he was three years old. He attended camp every year, for 11 years, only missing twice, the year we were in Spain and his senior year because camp conflicted with his work at a Boy Scout Camp.

Our daughter started camp when she was four years old, only missing when she was three. She made up for it and attended two camp sessions her junior year and her senior year.

As I was typing in camper information for the 2018 camp season today, I started remembering and a rush of feelings came to the surface. I remember sitting with my children asking them which camp they wanted to attend (Not if they wanted to attend, but which camp.) I remember filling out the forms and getting the dates on my calendar. I remember trying to coordinate the kids going to camp the same week so I would have a break and a chance to get some projects done around the home.

I remember driving the kids out to the camp and standing in line to get them checked in, giving them a hug goodbye and knowing that they were going to have a wonderful time at camp. At camp, there is that opportunity to meet people you would never have the chance to meet; it’s a place where you can find peace and joy and love. One of my daughter’s best friends was met at camp. They never would have met if it weren’t for Camp Fontanelle

I am sure that over the 16 years I had children at camp, it was not always bright and sunny on check in day, but that is what I remember. I remember the sun shining and everyone so happy to be at camp.

Camp is a place for your children to learn independence in a controlled atmosphere. At church camp, it gives the campers an opportunity to learn about God and friendships in an atmosphere that is fun and yet very spiritual. I am so glad that we were able to give our children that experience.

There are many things I miss now that I work fulltime+. I miss doing laundry on my time, not just when I can fit it in. I miss the joy of cleaning the home and seeing the floors sparkle and the carpet soft from a fresh vacuum.

Now I clean the floors and vacuum the carpet out of desperation because it hasn’t been done for awhile. (I have never been one to wash windows, so I cannot bring up the glisten of a freshly washed window!)

I do take the time to bake and make a meal but it is a lot less frequent. My joy of baking and cooking obviously is stronger than the joy of seeing a spick n span home!

And how was it that I was able to stay at home for 17.5 years? It was because of the sacrifices that were made by my husband. He and I made the conscious decision to have me stay at home. That meant that he had a job which took him away from home. He traveled to clients. Right after our daughter was born, he started traveling every other week for two years.

Imagine the sacrifice of not seeing your toddler son ( 29 month old) or newborn daughter(2 month old) grow. But he felt it was worth having me at home, being the mother and not have our children in daycare fulltime.

When the kids finished first and third grade, we decided to homeschool. Homeschooling allowed us to take our children to museums and travel to places where their dad was working. It gave them the chance to see parts of the country that would not have happened if they were in public school. It was because of Kent’s sacrifice that we could homeschool.

Now, I may have been able to stay a stay-at-home mom but for two reasons: 1) I wanted our children to experience everything so I spent too much, got into debt and I needed to get myself out and 2) my husband was worried that if I didn’t find something to do before the youngest graduated, I would find myself depressed and not worth much, because I had not taken the time to fill what would soon be empty spaces in my life.

I have a love-hate relationship with my job. I absolutely love what I do and I know that I have a chance to make a difference in people’s lives by my work at camp. I enjoy the staff and the volunteers and the buzz of summer camp is life-changing.

But I miss reading for relaxation, making quilts and having a clean home everyday. I miss gardening and weeding and I miss canning the bounty from the garden.

The saying goes that you miss what you don’t have! It is true, there is so much I miss from my “previous” life.

I can never truly express how thankful I am for being able to be 100% focused on being that wife and mother for those 17.5 years. I don’t show my gratitude enough to my husband for all the he gave up so I could be at home. I have had a chance to live both lives and there are things in both that I relish.

I am coming up on my fifth year anniversary at Camp Fontanelle as an employee. I still have not been able to say that I have this life under control. I keep saying that some day I will be back gardening and canning. I keep saying that I am going to get these two lives meshed together so I can have the best of both worlds. That has yet to happen. I am still a work in progress.

As I get older, I find that I do not have the energy to work from sun up to sundown. I have to have down time. My husband will tell you that many nights, I fall asleep on the sofa before it is time to go to bed. There is just not enough time in the day and I do not have the stamina I once had.

I wish for everyone, the opportunity to live a dream-whatever that dream is. I did live my dream-I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I am now living a new dream, using my God-given talent to help people connect with God in nature. It is a ministry that warms my heart.

The next step is to find the balance between the two. But until that happens, I will wax nostalgic, bake/cook and clean the floors when it is out of desperation. Oh, and maybe I’ll start gardening this spring!

Christmas2002

2003 Christmas

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2017 Trip to Spain

 

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Complaining to complain

And, no, I am not going to complain…well, I guess I am. But I am going to complain about complaining, We all complain – about people, about situations, about our body, our job, and the list can go on. Sometimes, you complain (vent) just to get things off your chest. Other times, the complaining is because of an injustice to you, a friend or family member, a religion, on and on and on. Possibly, you complain about other people/situations to raise yourself (which does not work by the way). Maybe you are a Negative Nellie. Whatever the reason, complaining is a negative, not a positive and being negative only pulls other people down with you.

What brought this to my attention was I recently listened to a poem recited by three teenage girls. The poem talks about certain books being outlawed from schools (“Catcher in the Rye” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”) while guns are not outlawed. And the girls recite the fact that the United States was built on the bones of the Chinese, the Native American and the African-American. The other item that comes to mind was the girls’ comment that the “Preppies” shop at thrift stores because it is cool, while others shop there because it is all they can afford. It was a bunch of complaining without any solution.

First of all, I hate generalities. Not all white people are racist, although everyone has an opinion. Not all people with tattoos or saggy pants are thugs. Not all rich people are snobs and not all poor people are lazy. You get the idea.

This poem was full of generalities and it propagates falsehoods. The high school students, in my community, read “Catcher in the Rye” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” and the school does not allow weapons on property. And how can you generalize a “preppy” from anyone else? Unless you are that person, you have no idea their place in life. People are people. Do not pigeon-hole anyone into a category! If it is wrong to point out someone deficiencies to “say who they are.” It is also wrong to look down on someone or categorize them because of their abundance.

The character of a person needs to stand alone. It should not be determined by your race or ethnicity. Although, if you hang around a group of people of bad character, you will be categorized with that group, whether you have bad character or not-“birds of a feather, flock together” as the old saying goes. I may be naive, but I just abhor, any writing, speech, or allusion that infers a certain race/ethnicity/faith/political association are all the same.

Secondly, I love how the country is built on the bones of only minorities in the poem. Indentured servants from Ireland were treated worst than slaves from Africa. But because they are not a minority group, they are the forgotten group.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076. Specifically, the poem tied the Trans-Continental Railroad to the Chinese, inferring deaths during the construction. I just recently watched a television show called “America: Facts vs. Fiction.”  It stated that it is fiction that thousands of Chinese were killed during the construction. Once again, the Irish suffered more death than the Chinese for various reasons. Irish deaths. The Chinese did suffer deaths but many of them were due to Smallpox. Click on “perished” on the website.

But for now, enough about the poem.

I live in a housing development that is run by a resident association board. At one time, my husband was the president of the board. He would get phone calls day and night from people complaining to complain. My husband finally got to the point that when people started their rant, he would say to them, ‘Do you have a solution to your complaint, or are you calling just to complain?’ If they didn’t have even an idea to solve an apparent problem, he would tell them he was done with the conversation. He didn’t want to hear people complain just to complain.

I think that is what is wrong. People want to complain, commiserate on circumstances, and not look at solutions to situations. OR complain about the past, in which NOTHING can be done to change it!

Being effective is looking at a problem and looking how you can better the situation. It is taking a negative and positively looking at how the negative can be turned to a positive. Complaining about injustices does not work towards a positive solution; Reliving the past, does not improve the future. I know that when I look at things negatively, I begin to see all things negatively. Being pessimistic takes away positive energy and you find yourself with a dark cloud over your life.

I am sure these young ladies think that their poem is a positive force to the injustices in the world. The only problem is they are only complaining; they are not providing solutions, or looking to the positives in the world. Not only that, they are only providing part of the story and putting everyone in the same category.

Maybe these young ladies are coastal. I have found that, living in the Midwest, our families may not face the same situations. I can only speak for my family, but we are church-going, service-minded, active in the community kind of people. We understand that there is a correlation with consequences to actions and respecting individuals is huge. We believe that book education is equal to life experience and the size of one’s wallet does not define one’s character. We believe that hard work is better than laziness but hard work does not always equate to “big bucks!”

I have written this before and I live it everyday. Find something, every day, in which to be thankful. Whether it is large/important, or minute, find at least one thing to be in praise.

People complain. If you look deep inside and find that you are a complainer and not a solution finder, try to change. When you want to complain about something, determine the reason for your complaint. Are there steps that can be taken to improve the situation? Is it just an attitude adjustment that needs to be made?

If there is a legitimate complaint, what can be done to make things better? Is it an attitude adjustment that someone else needs to make? Is it something that needs to be brought to people of authority-people who can make a change? And if someone needs to be approached, try to make a positive spin on your feelings. I know it is hard,but in trying to make things better, you will feel better and let’s face it, the world needs more positive actions, the negative seem to be taking over and that causes fighting, bitterness and ugliness.

Proverbs 17:22 “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”

I have set a goal to write every week. Some of my blogs may be frivolous but I hope that I can help make a difference. I am in praise that God puts situations in my life that I feel are relevant to real life. Today it is to be positive, next week it may be a recipe that I find fabulous. Whatever I write, I hope I make people smile, think, take action or just get away,for a short time, to another place in time or space.