In Quietness and Rest...

Sometimes I think my life is downright crazy.  I have four children.  If that alone isn't enough to render my life crazy, I home school my children.  Then there are things like church and Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and piano lessons and soccer and doctor appointments and play dates and house cleaning and cooking and, and, and...  There is, as the saying goes, "always something."  So sometimes I can't help but utter a sighing, "You have no idea, " when someone tells me I have my hands full.  And yet...

Perspective.

The past two weeks have changed my perspective a little, hopefully lasting bit.  First, over the span of one week, our household went from six to nine to fifteen to twelve and back to six, as family came from Florida and then from Canada to visit with us.  Then, Vacation Bible School began at our church.  This year, VBS is from 9-3, with the preschoolers going home at noon.  Both of these events - company and VBS - are wonderful things.    I love my family and enjoyed having them here, and I am very thankful for the members of our church who have put so much time, thought, and energy into VBS.  I truly, truly appreciate their love for my children and all children.

But my kids are fried.  Our schedule is almost forgotten, as are dietary guidelines that promote peace and well-being.  The kids have been going nonstop and one of them, for whom routine and diet are most important, just can't handle it anymore.  When I brought all of my children home from VBS at noon yesterday, I felt a twinge of... inadequacy, maybe?  As if maybe we're depriving our children of some essential life skills by not sending them to school everyday from 9-3...  as if we ought to have done more to prepare our children for the rigors of an entire day away from home, mother, each other, and for one in particular, books.

One thing you might not realize if you don't home school is that while we are fully committed to what we are doing, believing it to be the best choice for our family, we are sensitive to our weaknesses, frequently evaluating our children, our methods, our lifestyles, ourselves...  really, anything that can be evaluated is evaluated... in the hopes of identifying and correcting short comings in the nurturing and education of our children.  This near constant evaluation does not spring from a lack of faith in our decision to build a life a little different from the standard, but from a realization that we aren't perfect and a commitment to preparing our children for life.

So, I wasn't questioning our lifestyle, which happens to involve a rather strong dislike of early risings and rushed mornings and a rather strong like of quiet reading times and predictable routines, as much as feeling very much on the outside as I drove home with my exhausted children and spent the remainder of the afternoon bouncing between scolding and holding a young man so overwhelmed by the past two weeks that he didn't know what to do with himself.  I suspected that we might be considered a little weird, a little wimpy, to be calling it a day at noon, especially since by doing so my oldest two children would be missing out on a fun afternoon of Bible School.  But I knew that I had made the right choice in taking them home.  I knew they needed rest and would have defended my decision fiercely if necessary.

In the course of my mental defense of rest, I realized something.  However crazy our life may be, through our regular routines, we maintain a level of sanity.  However loud our home may be, through times of reading and independent play, we enjoy moments of restorative quiet.  However much we may run, through the structure of our lives and our time together, God grants us rest.  I fell back on Isaiah 30:15:

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:

   “In repentance and rest is your salvation, 

   in quietness and trust is your strength, 

   but you would have none of it. 

Actually, what popped into my head yesterday was a misquote.  I kept thinking, "In quietness and rest is your salvation."  But it's the same idea.  We shouldn't trivialize repentance and trust, nor should we ignore the reprimand at the end.  As far as structuring our lives, though, we start with quietness and rest.  In quietness and in rest, we are not rushed from one activity to the next, pushed and pulled till our brains short-circuit.  We find the time, the leisure, the openness to repent and to trust.  We have the time to think, to feel, to listen, to recover, to respond. 

So I find, through the busyness of the last two weeks, that while I may need to train my children in stamina and stability, we have a different good thing going on already.  We have space for quietness and rest.  I appreciate this more than ever, and will not feel lacking - or like my children are lacking - when I see the need to intervene to give them the quietness and rest that are so often lacking in the structure of ordinary American life.  In fact, I want to do more in this area of quietness and rest, steering it from the aimlessness into which we sometimes slip, into purposeful moments of restful repentance and quiet trust, instilling in my children and in myself awareness of and appreciation for the presence of God and one another.

We don't need to encourage frantic busyness.  That comes naturally.  Quietness and rest, so easy to sacrifice yet so essential to our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, are habits we must practice and practice some more.  We can't afford to miss out on them.

Interestingly, our Sunday School just started a study of Sabbath...