weekends with rascals

I’ve worked hard to develop a new habit of carving out Monday mornings to sit and think and pray and grasp for some semblance of sanity before I cannonball into the week that will eat my lunch if I let it.  It’s a rebellious act of counter-intuition as weekends are supposed to be the very thing that serves us this way.  Now, I love my weekends at home and all- but it’s not a peaceful-cup-of-coffee-type of experience currently. If I had to measure, I would say it packs about the same rest as being chased by a pack of wolves.  In full disclosure, I have never been chased by wolves, but I think it fits.

I am kind of prone to enter a weekend as an opportunity to fix everything that the week has scattered in pieces across the floor.

 Ginny is tired and I will try to enter in and help her more over the weekend with what she shoulders all week.  Most likely this will backfire and she’ll kindly do it all anyway because that’s most efficient and we don’t have time for me to figure it all out. Hopefully we’ll pull off a conversation whereby we’re both awake and there are no interruptions.  But setting a goal that high most likely leads to unrealized dreams.  But I will try and she will fall asleep as we talk.

 Hazel will start sweeping the deck off at some point and I will remind myself that I need to be sure to tell her that she needs to be a kid; because I know that siblings in families with disability are over-achievers and constantly trying to relieve the stress they see on mom and dad.  I’ll talk to her about how it’s hard sometimes but we’re fine and she doesn’t have to worry and she doesn’t have to do anything to make it better.  And when I finish, she will ask if she can have a piece of gum.

 Anders will fall at some point and bleed.  And I will go to him and scoop him up and he will tell me that I did not come fast enough.  He will tell me how my reaction is his confirmation of what he thought all along- I must not love him.  And I will talk for 10 minutes of how I love him bigger than the house, bigger than the world and more than he can understand.  He will interrupt me to ask if he can have a piece of gum because Hazel got a piece.  I will say yes because if I don’t, he will close the case on my lacking love.

 And I will laugh deep with joy I never knew as I love on my favorite people on the face of the earth.  But I will fear for them because I love them so much and I know the world is waiting on them and the world will not be like their father to them.

So Monday mornings are now for me.  To sit and push back on the kind fear that is not helpful and to give these over to another much larger and more loving than myself.  I will remind myself that I cannot fix it.

But I will spend next weekend trying to all over again.