« you ask, I answer | Main | more answers to questions »
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
answers to questions
yay, questions! (see the previous entry to know what the heck is going on).
First, from Trinity Sixty-Three:
What frustrates you most in life?
Wow. I actually thought about this for quite a while, and I couldn't think of any one overarching frustration as an answer... except maybe some political ones, and those are frustrating in a different way from the day-in-day-out tension-headache frustrations. They're bigger in scale, but less of an actual factor in my daily life. Here's a list of frustrations, though. :-)
- Finding clean laundry in the dirty clothes
- Spending hours cleaning the kids' rooms, or coercing them into doing it, and then the next day the messiness starts creeping back in, and a week later you'd never know we'd done it.
- My own idiocy and laziness about household stuff. If I would just keep up, my life would be so much nicer. But I seem incapable of remembering that when it's a choice between doing a little bit of laundry and a few dishes and running around with the broom, or sitting at the computer. Until it's a TON of laundry and a HEAP of dishes and a lot of tidying-up that needs done.
- Working hard cooking a meal and not hearing "thank you" for it once. Bonus frustration points if the kids complain about it (which is rare, but happens occasionally).
- The days when my daughter seems to fall down more than she stands up. And then I feel guilty because hello, it's not like she does it on purpose.
- When the car won't start.
- When unpleasant things take way, way longer than I thought they would.
- My *&^%$#! insurance and its *&^%$#! high copayments for every little step along the way -- $20 to see the doctor, $30 for labs, $30 for x-rays, etc etc. I miss the HMO we had before. boo hoo. Although I imagine the doctors don't...
- Repeating myself. It's stupid, but it's one of the things that shortens my fuse really fast.
- The way kids "forget" or "didn't hear you" when you've given them a job to do.
- When DVDs get left lying around instead of put away.
- A messy house in general. Just having the house messy (which it is a lot, and it's my own fault) brings me probably halfway up to what I call my "yell threshold", before anyone does anything.
And then from Beth:
Okay, What are your kids going to be for Halloween, what are you going to be for Halloween, and about the home schooling thing: do you have more patience than the average mom? What's your secret?
Well, the first two are easy; we don't celebrate Halloween, for religious reasons. I keep wanting to have a New Year's party with costumes and candy, because I LOVE COSTUMES AND CANDY. But it never happens. Someday. (My kids love to dress up and they have huge tubs of costumes and accessories and lengths of fabric and helmets and belts and who knows what. Making costumes for themselves is pretty much a daily occurrence).
Patience: I don't think I'm any more patient than the average mom, really. There are days when I am frustrated, and at times I even yell at my kids, although that's something I'm working on and I'm way better about it than I used to be. It's just always been my plan to homeschool, since before I had kids. Just like people who get up early and go in to work and face nasty bosses and high stress levels and deadlines and all that -- when it's something that is a necessary part of your life, you just do it; I'm blessed that the thing that is the main focus of my life is also something I almost always enjoy. I do enjoy being around my kids, more than many moms, I think, maybe partly because I have a positive attitude about being around them; I see them as little people whom it is an immense pleasure to get to know, and it's a privilege to be around them as they grow up. And also, it's probably a lot easier because my kids aren't away from the family every day, learning habits and attitudes that cause friction at home. Not that their attitudes or habits never cause friction! (choking with laughter). But I think it's less of a problem than it would be if they were around 300 of their peers for thirty-five hours a week. We fit better together than a lot of families, because we're not becoming strangers as quickly. :)
And then some questions from Jennifer:
Do you find that your faith has led you to discriminate against others?
We all discriminate every day of our lives. "Discriminating" just means choosing, using our values and beliefs to make decisions about what we'll accept, do, etc. We won't all like everyone; we won't all want to be intimate friends with each other. So in that sense, and in the sense of 1 Corinthians 15:33, yes, my faith is one of the factors on which I base my decisions about who I will allow to be an influence in my life. What you mean in asking this question is that you think that Christians look down on others and think we're some kind of super-special people and that everyone else is not "good enough" to be one of us -- which is not the case. Christians know that nobody is "good enough", ourselves included, and that's why Jesus came in the first place. Sinning is equal-opportunity. So is salvation.
Have you ever wondered if perhaps the way you treat people isn't exactly what Jesus wants of you, even though the common practice of your religion calls for it?
Again, you're trying to make a point here, not ask me a question, but I'll pretend that's not the case and answer it anyway. Every Christian wonders about whether our actions in every arena are what Jesus would have us do. We try to follow Him. We're also flawed human beings, and yes, we'll screw up from time to time, and we don't have all the answers so sometimes we're floundering around trying to figure out what to do. Sometimes, just like everyone else, we make the wrong decision, or make the right decision but go about things the wrong way, and hurt people. Sometimes there's no visible way to make the right decision without hurting people. We are all called to be compassionate and kind to one another. That doesn't always happen.
Did you ever find a dress for that scarf I made for you?
No, I have put off major clothing purchases (in other words, anything that isn't either absolutely necessary, or free) until I finish losing weight. Which I sometimes think means I'm just in denial, because I'll be a size twelve until the end of time.
