Honesty and Support and Grace

So I wrote a few days ago, teary and frustrated and feeling desperate.  I wanted a raise, I wanted a babysitter, I wanted a cleaning fairy to come vacuum the dog hair off my carpet.  I wanted someone, anyone, to tell me that they’d been there, under that big pile of kids and noise and dirt and work, and I was not alone and that while it was hard to see at the moment, that pile of kids and noise and dirt and work was right where God needed me to be.

And someone did come.  Just like always.  I feel pretty stupid now, actually, for even feeling frustrated.  There was no raise or babysitter or cleaning fairy, but God stepped in with His grace just as clearly as if those things had appeared on my doorstep.

I wanted just one – just one – good moment with one of the kids and SweetPotato, my “challenging” child who is loud (we call that “vibrant”), defiant (“independent”), and continually messy (“creative”) and who will be the first to march up to you and announce, “Hi!  I’m SweetPotato and I’m very rude!” – well, she smiled sweetly and snuggled up for a bedtime story with no complaints, no whining, and was just all cuteness and love.

I wanted a sympathetic, supportive ear from someone who had “been there,” and while I grumped about the too-chipper-and-perfect moms of large homeschooling families, an old friend, a seminarian on the other side of the world who is decidedly none of those things, shared his struggle with his own vocation with me and I realized that he was a person who had been exactly where I was.  He could not have been more “there” had he been sitting in my living room and living my story.

I wanted to feel like my life had more breadth than dirty diapers and drippy noses, and a lovely friend showed up from hours away for coffee and a chat.

I went to confession and Mass over lunch on a blessedly slow work day downtown – the first time in months I’ve had a gap in my meetings to do that – and as I sat in front of a statue of Mary, I thought about how she was exactly there, too.  Being without sin doesn’t mean you’re not afraid, or questioning, or frustrated, or tired.  It doesn’t even mean that sometimes you don’t want to say No. Flippin’. Way. to what God is asking of you.  That just means you’re human.  Mary was human.  Jesus was, too.  The sin only comes when you reject the grace to do what God is calling you to do.  He always gives you the tools.  I just wasn’t seeing them. 

Mary was undoubtedly terrified by her task.  Being Jesus’ mom wasn’t easy.  She stood to lose everything – her husband, her family, the trust of her town.  She probably wanted to tell the angel “Nuh-uh.  No way.  Find yourself another virgin.  I’m outta here.”  And feeling that way would have just been human.  What made her Mary, Mother of God and not just Mary, nice girl from Nazareth, was her ability to accept the grace to carry out the job.

And as I sat there it became abundantly clear that grace had been sitting under my nose the whole time.  I don’t need a raise or babysitter or cleaning fairy.  I just need to take a deep breath, and trust, and know that God will help me find the answers and the patience and the strength when I think I’m all out.  The graces that I found were there all along – I was just so caught up in myself that I couldn’t see them.  Once I found the humility to get down on my knees and ask for help – they were right in front of me.

Honesty and Support

I have not written in ages, because Christmas.  The wee ones look extra cute when they are being forced to wait to open their presents until after Mass, see?

And because the three birthdays we have within two months of each other, right during the holidays.  And because the flu that took over the family.  But that is all drawing to a close now, and so I find myself fresh out of excuses to be away from the keyboard.

School is, on the whole, just super.  Sprout complains that no kid ever in the history of kids has had to do as much work as he does, and it's SO unfair, but they're all doing great and racing ahead and I have no complaints, really, in the academic department.  We've taken a Christmas break for two weeks and I am happier than the kids about it.  No lesson plans, no worksheets, no sorting through binders before bed... it's lovely.

But to be honest, I'm tired.  Some of it's pregnancy and hormones, some of it's the lingering flu, some of it's the getting up at 5am with a crack-of-dawn-type toddler.  But mostly, it's just being worn down and worn out.  I'm tired of wiping butts and wiping noses, tired of mediating fights and having every 30-second trip to the bathroom be interrupted by at least two or three children screaming my name, and tired of having "grown-up conversation time" be limited to the five minutes in between when the kids are finally asleep and when SSHH and I pass out in bed.  95% of the time I love the calling to be a Catholic wife and mother - or at the very least, I can keep the dignity and purpose of the job foremost in my mind.  The other 5% of the time - well, if I didn't truly believe the Church's teaching on families, there would be no way I'd have signed up for this.

Which brings me to my soapbox of the day, which is that this path - the big-Catholic-family path, the homeschooling path - can be very, very lonely.  I know that every parent, whether of one child or ten, has moments of feeling alone, lost, and without support - but it's multiplied when the children outnumber the adults exponentially, when there have been years and years on end of pregnancy, nursing, and toddlerhood - sometimes all three at once - and multiplied when the sheer financial burden and technical difficulty of clothing, housing, and feeding that big ol' family means that not once - not one single time ever - have you paid a babysitter to watch the kids while you went out to dinner or a movie to recharge your batteries.

When the initial response of most people is to think that the very existence of your family is proof of some sort of clinical insanity, it's hard to find a safe place to vent or look for a sympathetic ear.  When being tired at the end of a pregnancy leads acquaintances and colleagues to wonder out loud why you don't just decide that "this is the last one," you're put in the situation of forcing a smile and pretending that everything is great, when you feel like you're about ready to crack.

And my complaint is that none of that is helped by the Catholic or homeschooling communities out there.  While every parent, big family or small, homeschooling or not, has moments of desperation and meltdown under the stress of raising children, leading a large, homeschooling family is like being in a crucible at times.  Handling a vanful of kids going crazy is at least a two-person job, so there's no just handing it to one's spouse for the moment while you step out to compose yourself.  Day care is out, babysitting is (at least for us right now) out, "taking a break" is out - forget about a weekend vacation.  A large family doesn't mean less quality time with the kids, it means less quality time for yourself and as a couple as you stretch to cover what the little ones need.  Homeschooling can create great relationships with your kids - but it also makes for very intense, constant interaction that can be overwhelming.

It's intense - and not always in a happy smiley way.  But I don't read or hear a lot of stories that reflect this.  The Catholic and homeschooling blogosphere and conference circuit is filled with stories of delightful chaos and well-adjusted people.  No one talks about the moments when you lock yourself in the bedroom and sob into your laundry pile, or the effort of wrestling your preschooler onto the toilet, begging her to "just TRY to pee before we go," while the toddler clings to your leg and you breathe through the braxton-hicks contractions the whole episode has just brought on.

When your day looked like that - and the "support" you can find is full of happy and chipper - it's easy to feel alone.  And I know, at least anecdotally, that everyone is emphatically NOT happy and chipper all the time in this endeavor.  So why the heck aren't we talking about it?  Is it that some are so filled with the need to defend and explain our counter-cultural choices that we feel there is no other option than to make them appear blissful all the time?  Is it that other people are able to keep the thought of family as vocation foremost in their minds all the time and truly are happy and chipper every day?  'Cause if so, they're better folks than I am.

And when you have a large family and homeschool, it's hard enough to find support.  Most of my mom-acquaintances have one or two children and feel - and sometimes say out loud - that I've "asked for this" and can't complain.  It's a pretty long, complicated explanation to go into why exactly this view of family is a part and parcel of our faith, what we hold and believe to be true as the foundation of our being, and not a "lifestyle choice."  It's harder still when your own parish - where you, theoretically, should see some big Catholic families and where that support should be coming from - has very, very few large families and fewer homeschooling ones.  I know I'm not the only one whose noticed - two of those large families who offered friendly faces have started going to Mass at other parishes just in the past year.  And now even going to Mass feels like we might be the circus sideshow of the day, and that we stick out like the loud, chaotic bunch that we often are.

So I'd love to hear more about the hard days from those bloggers and conference speakers and community leaders out there.  It would make the road feel less lonely.  It would be more honest.  It might, ultimately, be more supportive to offer a shoulder to cry on than a beaming smile.  Because sometimes, that's what this reality looks like.