Using my time

There are ways in which being a stay-at-home mom to an infant feels a lot like teaching, in terms of the way I think about my time—questions that I’m asking myself all the time that are very similar to the questions I faced regularly when teaching. Here are a few that I’ve noticed:

1- I have ____ minutes until the next period starts, or until the baby wakes up. What do I have on my list that I can accomplish in that particular amount of time?

2- There is more on the to-do list than is humanly possible to accomplish today (or even this week). Which things must I do NOW? (like getting papers for next period photocopied, or eating breakfast before it becomes lunchtime…) Which things do I NEED to get done today/tomorrow? (like choosing sections for the test I want to give, or doing a load of diaper laundry) Which things are next in priority if I get the time, and which are simply not important enough (yet?) to spend my time on?

3- I have several things I could work on right now. Which of them are things that I can ONLY do when I am alone in my room, or when the baby is asleep? (like laying out a unit plan, or taking a shower) Which are things that could wait and be accomplished while a student is around taking a test, or when the baby is up and hanging out, or eating? (like grading a quiz, or folding clothes)

I got quite good at asking and answering these questions with respect to my teaching, over the past 10 years. Now I’m finding them an important skill in using my days well as a mom. Of course, I sort of suspect that just as I figure out how to best navigate my time, Kaitlyn will grow and change her habits, and that will change all the rules. But at least for now, it’s nice to know that some of my previous life has transferability to my new one!

My life is not that hard, really...

I have stumbled upon one unexpected way to keep self-pity at bay in this rather difficult time of transition. (Transition with Kaitlyn, as she changes every week, and transition back to Manila life, and transition into stay-at-home motherhood. It's all a little much some days!) The other day, I picked up Beyond Jungle Walls by Sandy Thomas to read while eating lunch. It’s been on our shelves for several years, but I’ve never read it. It’s a missionary autobiography, and it sure puts my problems in perspective! This couple arrived in Congo in 1955 and spent the next 30 years in a jungle village. I haven’t gotten very far into the story yet, but… When they landed on the Congolese shore, they were very ill with malaria. (Already? Ouch!) In the hospital where they spent the next several weeks, they found out that the wife was 3 months pregnant. (NOT the timing they had probably planned on...) Their mud house, where they lived during their first 4 years in the village, had gaps between the walls and ceiling. I’m sure it made the ventilation nice in that tropical climate, but it also let in all kinds of creatures, especially at night. I’m picturing raising an infant, a toddler, in circumstances like this… Yeah, definitely God has called me into a far easier life situation than that one! It’s not a terribly well-written book, but I think I’ll keep reading it anyway. It’s a story of God’s work that’s worth hearing, regardless, and I suspect that this timing, for me to read it just now, is not coincidental.

Truth

This has been a rough weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, Kaitlyn has had some nasty periods of crankiness where she won’t sleep and nothing pleases her. As is normal, I think, for these kinds of moments, her periods of wakefulness seem to correspond to when I’m crashing and ready to take a nap with her... During these times, I have found myself becoming afraid. I feel my fatigue taking over, my temper rising, my patience draining away. I know what I’m like when I’m too tired—I’m clumsy and I make bad decisions because I can’t think. And I know what I’m like when I’ve lost my temper—it’s not pretty. And I’ve realized that I’m afraid of being in charge of a baby when I’m truly exhausted, frustrated, and feeling helpless! What might I do?

Sunday was the worst of these times—the longest set of bad hours with Kaitlyn at her least-consolable. I’m incredibly grateful that Seth was here for that whole time, since it was a weekend. We needed each other for that one. But even with the two of us, I was at the end of my rope. My fatigue and frustration were peaking, and those fears were taking over. I knew that there was a lie in there somewhere, and that I should not be consumed by fear. That’s not how God’s children ever have to be. I know that, and I knew I desperately needed truth to fight back against the lies in my thoughts. God answered and gave me truth. He brought it to mind, and Seth read it to me while I stood and rocked my finally-sleeping baby and cried. I hadn’t read it in the ESV before, and that translation was exactly the right one for God to speak to me that evening. Psalm 121 is the truth I’m hanging onto this week while I face the hills of taking good care of my baby, hanging onto my temper, getting enough sleep, etc. The LORD is my keeper and hers.

I lift up my eyes to the hills.

From where does my help come?

My help comes from the LORD,

Who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;

he who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is your keeper;

the LORD is your shade on your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day,

nor the moon by night,

The LORD will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

The LORD will keep

your going out and your coming in

from this time forth and forevermore.

God bless the inventor of the baby monitor...

I had no idea how crucial a baby monitor is to a mom’s sanity. I know there were many years where moms didn’t have them. I begin to wonder how they managed it. In this apartment, the bedrooms are upstairs; everything else is downstairs. This means that whenever Kaitlyn is sleeping, she’s upstairs and most of the stuff that I need to do is downstairs. The bathroom, stove, and washing machine are all downstairs and around several corners—the farthest possible place from the bedrooms. If I’m there, I can’t hear my daughter unless she gets really upset and starts yelling… I have climbed those stairs to check on her SO many times in the last week. I spend my time on tenterhooks, anxious about whether she’s waking up or unhappy. To add to the challenge, the neighbors also have a baby. Not surprisingly, sometimes their baby cries! So when a baby cries, I freeze and try to figure out whose baby is upset. It’s been a stressful time!

The first half of our boxes arrived today, and the baby monitor was in one of them! I was terribly excited all day that I would be able to use it tomorrow. We have many wonderful and useful things in those boxes (pots and pans, favorite books, dishes, pictures, a carseat, etc.), but it was the baby monitor that was on my mind! Then when we got it out, we discovered that it only works on 110 current… and the Philippines uses 220. :P So I will NOT be using a monitor tomorrow. But a transformer has just been added to our urgent list of things to buy, and hopefully I’ll be set for NEXT week, at least.

Update- 1/22- We did buy a transformer this weekend, and charged the monitor. Monday morning, I took a shower in peace and calm, actually knowing that Kaitlyn was sleeping happily, rather than just hoping she was. And life is better!

Today’s devotional reading: a conversation

Scripture: Hebrews 11, starting at v8- “It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance.”

Me: “Hey, I did that! The Philippines really will be a kind of inheritance for me and my family—a new place that will be our home, given to us by God. It is by faith, and some of it is hard!”

Scripture: “He went without knowing where he was going.”

Me: “Oh. Well, that was way harder than what I did. We knew where we were going—Manila, and Faith Academy. And I was definitely anxious about where we would stay until I knew about this apartment. We had it all worked out before we flew. Yeah, I guess my situation’s not so bad!”

Scripture: “And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner…”

Me: “Well, he WAS a foreigner! And that, again, I do relate to. Living as a foreigner in somebody else’s country is a different kind of thing, not always easy.”

Scripture: “…living in tents. And so did Isaac and Jacob, who inherited the same promise.”

Me: “Oh. Right. Again, I don’t have it so tough as that. There is something impermanent about our lives here, though. It is not guaranteed that we can stay, and we know already that we will be moving house at least one more time in the next year. Missionaries are rather nomadic. We’ll move, or the people around us will, many times in the next years.”

Scripture: “Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God… All these people… agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. Obviously, people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

Me: “This needs to be me too.”

I will be making my home in Manila for the foreseeable future, with the US as the place more of my history than of my present. One of my main jobs, as I see it, during the next year (and more), while I am teaching part-time and staying at home more, is to make a home for my family. We will be putting down roots here, and it’s essential that we do so—for the sake of our students and our ministry, for the sake of our daughter, and for our own sanity. However, because we are foreigners here, and because of the nomadic nature of missionary life, I think we will not lose our sense of being strangers. We will remember that this is not our ultimate home, and it will sometimes hurt. It will hurt to be away from the US; and when we are there, it will hurt to be away from Manila; and sometimes nothing will satisfy! When I feel that, or when Kaitlyn does, I need to remind myself and teach her that our true HOME, our city with foundations, is heaven. Our home here is where we are, as a family, but our real home is where God is. And in the midst of the chaos of home-making, stressful and sometimes unsuccessful as it can be, there is a precious promise here for me. God HAS prepared a city for us. And it is a BETTER place than anything here. I do have a heavenly homeland, and one day I will be there and be at rest.