28 November, 2010

Gagging on the day

I read this quote on Catherine's blog some time ago. 
 
"The mothers agree that indeed the years do fly. It's the days that don't. The hours, the minutes of a single day sometimes just stop. And a mother finds herself standing in the middle of a room wondering. Wondering. Years fly. Of course they do. But a mother can gag on a day." Jain Sherrard  

I really like it and it describes today - I gagged on today and in fact, many of our recent weekends. 

I could describe the awful behaviour that we've been suffering, but I won't spoil your day. I'm just praying that our boys will move through whatever stage it is that is making them so poor of hearing, so rude of speech, so short of patience and so full of complaints, that it makes them extra difficult to live with at the moment.

It is a pity, really. Today was a gorgeous autumn day and we even took the time to go on a picnic (and it took time -- driving around Tokyo on a Sunday is a pain). Unfortunately we didn't really enjoy the outing, mostly because parenting is just painful at present. 

And that takes me back to the quote above. I couldn't help but long for these painful formative years to be over, to long for days when we can take a picnic and enjoy being together instead of struggling in random directions and in the meantime hurt each other. It is, of course, a longing for what cannot be until heaven, but that doesn't mean I don't still long.

3 comments:

Meredith said...

Oh Wendy, I shall definitely pray for you this evening that this phase will indeed pass and in the meantime, that you will wake up tomorrow fresh and ready to do it all again and with joy. And also that while the children are at school you might be able to carve out some time that can be put to something that truly refreshes and restores you, even for a short time.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for being honest about this, I sometimes feel that Christian parents in particular are under a lot of pressure to "keep up appearances", and then we start to assume that we're the only ones having difficulties. By hiding our problems from each other (often with good or seemingly good motives) we find ourselves in a position where we're not able to give each other the help that we might have been able to.

Caroline

Wendy said...

Thanks Caroline. I think we try to cover up, partly as a defence mechanism. I've received criticism of my parenting when I've been honest about struggles and those comments rate as about the most painful thing I've experienced in the last five years.

I expressed my thoughts on honesty in this post: http://mmuser.blogspot.com/2010/10/to-tell-truth.html. You'll probably enjoy it.