Keeping Score

Anatomically correct hamster on white and lavender

Oh friend! 

It has been a week.  Every time I turned around, someone was doing something weird, surprising, or both. You need to come over and have tea soon.

Monday morning found me with errands to do, so I assigned work to my youngest and left her at the kitchen table with instructions to remain seated until her math was completed.  I returned home, put the kettle on and we sat sipping tea correcting her assignment.

Math question: How many minutes are in one day?  Write a multiplication question and show your answer.

Me: "Darling, I see you have the answer for your question, 1440 minutes in a day.  The answer is correct but the work isn’t there…. How did you get your answer?"

Child: (looks at me blankly, as though I’m missing something) "Well, I just asked Echo."

Me: look of amazement, mouth open

Child:  "What? It was way easier Mummy, really."

Life 1, Karen 0.

Tuesday morning I was out the door early to take a youngling to physical therapy.  Rehearsing the situation won’t get us that far, but even I was surprised when I found myself entering the PT room to tell the physical therapist I found her rude.  No one was more mortified than my daughter who had turned scarlet and actually had her hand over her face.  That took some sorting out I assure you.

Life 2, Karen 0, Physical Therapist 10 (she phoned and apologized bless her sweet pagan soul.)

Mid-week I heard someone was trying to scalp tickets to the Homecoming dance. 

The home-school Homecoming dance. 

The Christian home-school Homecoming dance.   

Yep.  I want that to sink in, so we are pausing there.   

Not disparaging the kids I love the most but Christian home-school dances aren’t generally the hottest ticket in town. That was until this year.  When my girlfriend told me that someone was trying to move a dance ticket for an extra $25 I knew I was witnessing something from the book of Revelation.   Not clear if it was a trumpet, lamp stand or a horse but whatever it was clear knocked me over in shock.  Maybe my Canadian roots are showing but trying to make an extra $25 off someone’s lack of planning seems a bit capitalistic even for the right wing conservative crowd.  

That was Wednesday.

No wait!  I was rude to someone that afternoon!I had to text her later to apologize for being such a troll.

Life 3, Karen -1

Thursday started with a minorly major catastrophe that I brought upon myself.  If you were intending to bless a child by doing their laundry, you might be forgiven for taking the clothes in the laundry basket (on top of the washing machine might I add) and sticking them in the wash. It wasn’t as if I damaged anything by doing her laundry, unlike last week when I threw a purple shirt in with the whites and turned everything mauve. Apparently, the clothes in the aforementioned laundry basket were clean and I had washed them a second time much to my beasts' consternation.  She came into the room to give me a hug, “Mummy, I totally release you from needing to do my laundry.  You are nice to me but that is why I do my own, so it doesn’t go missing.”   I smiled and bit my lower lip. 

Actually, my girl does her laundry because some years ago I had a laundry crisis wherein almost every pair of underpants in the house went awol.  When I found them 24 hours later in a laundry basket in my car underneath a garbage bag of coats on the way to the junk store, I realized that for sanity’s sake, my girls should start doing their own laundry, or risk public humiliation. To be released from laundry duty by a child who started her journey in cloth diapers was a bit galling bless her precious twice washed socks.    

Life 4, Karen 0 (I had 3 cookies at tea time when no one was looking.)

Friday was all about biology.  In a conversation not to be repeated, nor the participants named, it turns out that a hamsters’ testicles do not reside under its arm pits. Not much to report except that by the end of the day, I had texted my husband diagrams of hamster privates.

Life 5, Karen 0, Husband 3 (because he didn’t ask for a divorce) Hamster 2

I could continue throughout the weekend and mention the gossip train that sideswiped my Saturday.  Then I would need to confess swearing at the bird on Sunday when it tried to jump into the washing machine.  Repeated failure gets boring and uncomfortable, especially when it is my own. 

And so, dear friend, life is rushing along, precious moment after moment.  I have no idea if I am effecting change, staying afloat or succeeding from one day to the next.  Do you ever feel like you are moving quickly but getting nowhere?

I heard the voice of Jesus say,

"Come unto Me and rest;

Lay down, thou weary one, lay down,

Thy head upon My breast."

I came to Jesus as I was,

Weary and worn and sad;

I found in Him a resting-place,

And He has made me glad.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,

"Behold, I freely give

The living water; thirsty one,

Stoop down and drink and live."

I came to Jesus, and I drank

Of that life-giving stream.

My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,

And now I live in Him.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,

"I am this dark world's Light.

Look unto Me; thy morn shall rise

And all thy day be bright."

I looked to Jesus, and I found

In Him my Star, my Sun;

And in that Light of Life I'll walk

Till traveling days are done.

Thank goodness we are not alone.  We have the friendship of one who is infinitely wise and eternally compassionate.  He understands the mundane, sees our failures and blesses our efforts.  I pray, that as you make your way through this week, you might know his presence in the ridiculous, the raw and the raging.

I’m praying for you this week,

xoxKaren   

**For those of you that don’t home-school, imagine someone trying to charge an extra $20 to get into the community center’s Christmas craft bazaar to buy crochet Kleenex holders.  It seemed a pretty bold move for a rather selective group of folk.