The Back to School Blues: Ready, Set Go

  • By Trish Berg
  • August 13, 2014
  • 373
                        
Struggling with loads of laundry, clutter in the kitchen and chaos in your life? Stress can easily steal our joy. Trish Berg reminds us to simplify the small stuff and find Joy in the Journey. There is a line in one of my favorite movies that comes to mind every time my life as a mom of four children seems to be racing out of control. It’s a line that I understand, from a father who is at his wits end with life, chaos, and stress. It’s an emotion from a man who is good at heart, but who can’t seem to get his bearings at the moment. It is a line from one of my fictional heroes: George Bailey (It’s a Wonderful Life), and it goes like this: “You call this a happy family? Why do we have to have all these kids?” Now keep in mind that when he said this, he had just discovered that his uncle lost all the money that his family owned savings and loan, they were facing closing and he was facing jail time. He felt all alone, even though it was Christmas Eve and he was surrounded by people who loved him. So I get it. I understand George’s pain. Life as a parent is crazy and chaotic at best. Like a train barreling down the tracks near one hundred miles per hour, life seems to race out of control sometimes and I simply try to keep it on the tracks. With four children and two adults in our family, parenting has become a job for a logistics engineer, managing all of the sports schedules, doctor appointments, homework assignments and youth group activities. We start every week by simply looking at our family calendar and figuring out how we will accomplish all we have inked in over the next seven days. Then there’s the occasional cross country meet to attend, Friday night football games and who can forget school picture day. Well, I have once or twice. I face daily laundry loads and dirty dishes, and then the “What’s for Dinner” question looms like a dark cloud overhead. It’s enough to make me cry. Someone once mentioned wishing there was a dinner fairy. Now that would be awesome! I wonder what I could leave under my pillow that would make her visit me? A menu? A recipe? Ramen Noodles? It feels as if I am standing at the starting line of the back-to-school race in the ready position, looking up waiting for the “set” call and the blast of the gun to launch me back into our crazy fall schedules. I hear the starter yelling “Ready…….Set……” and the anticipation of what comes next burns in my heart like indigestion. Let’s face it. Life with kids is busy. It is stressful and daunting. And as mom of four children, it sometimes races out of control with chaos and stress. And though it does feel like train barreling down the tracks at a hundred miles an hour, parenting four children is definitely the ride of my life. So, as George Bailey once asked “You call this a happy family? Why do we have to have all these kids?” I now have the answer: We had these children to fill our home with love and our life with meaning. Leading our children to faith in Christ has been the greatest eternal privilege we could have ever imagined. Along with four kids comes a little crazy and a lot of chaos. I know that someday, when we are empty-nesters, we will miss it all. Until then, we keep the faith, do our best, and wait for the inevitable….. Ready….Set….GO! …always looking towards the finish line with hope.


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