Juggling — the story of my life!

I'm up to my neck in editing. This managing editor job has so many angles on it, as I've mentioned before (here and here), but the one I'm up to at the moment mostly involves interacting with authors to get the best product I can from them (and the right sized one). This month has been complicated by the fact that my editing boss is in America, and barely stationary for more than a couple of nights at once. Add to that a guest editor for half of the magazine and a fairly new production team, we've had and got some significant challenges.


We are still in the throes of moving the burden of day-to-day management of the magazine over to my shoulders and there are still a number of things I need to ask him to decide. I'm thankful for the ease of email, yet it can build up unrealistic ideas that someone is easily contactable, no matter what they're doing. As it is, he's been less free (and with less internet time) than he imagined and it's been a challenging time.


I guess we'll have the reverse of this when I go to Australia next month. It is shaping up to be a pretty intense time of it, and I can't see myself doing much editing during that time, regardless of whether we have internet access or not. So many people want "a piece of us". We have a lot of friends. We also have family, who rightly want to spend time with us. Our families aren't centred in one spot, so just getting to their geographical localities at the right time is a challenge. I hope we don't disappoint to many people. For this is also our annual holidays: the time when we kick back and relax a bit, recovering from the year behind and preparing for the year ahead.


It is hard to get a balance when we visit Australia for a short time on holidays. That is one reason we don't go back every year (besides that it is very expensive for a family of five to fly). It is just too hard to find time to relax there when so many people expect so much of us. I also expect a lot of myself. I WANT to catch up with too many people, many who mean the world to me. Argghh.


So, having said all that — I'm up to my neck in editing, I'd better drop this and go and do it! See you.

Juggling

I'm juggling a bit today. Parent-teacher conferences these last two days (which means student-free days, but no teacher-husband-dad at home). This morning I went in and did the rounds of the teachers. Great encouragements! 

I had promised the boys I'd do some baking with them this afternoon. Then our youngest has a piano lesson at 3, only at school, so it isn't a huge hassle, but it's there. 

On top of all this action I am supposed to be co-writing an article for the magazine I edit. It was due on Tuesday (but I'm an editor, so I have some leeway). However it is essentially my co-writer's story and she is in the midst of intense mission leadership meetings in the UK. Thankfully she's great with email, but finding time to edit the article is hard. Yesterday I struggled to it at 9.30pm, which is getting to be my Cinderella hour, not a good time for editing, that's for sure! So I'm struggling to find good writing/editing time. On times when the boys are home my free times don't always coincide well with good writing/editing time.  And it isn't going to get much better till next Tuesday when they all go back to school. Arggghhh.

In the midst of all that I probably should be spending much time writing here! But I did want to share with you a blogging friend's short post quoting from a book called "Don't Waste Your Life" by John Piper. Take the time to read the comments after it (only three). It was shocking to read Helen's words, even though it was what I suspected.

Impulse buying

We went impulse buying the other day. Furniture, actually. Unusual behaviour for missionaries. It is probably more in character was that we did it in one of our favourite second-hand furniture stores. And it wasn't totally impulsive. The problems we were trying to solve had been hanging around for a while, but the solutions were new.

Old bed

Firstly our two younger boys' bunk bed has been very rickety for a long time. They are at least 20 or more years old. We on the end of a long line of missionaries who've used it, and even a boarding school. We were fearful that the boy on top would topple through to the bottom one night as the base under the top mattress was breaking.

Add to that the growing amount of stuff that our middle son has been storing on his bed. He's been asking for his own room for some time and this is his solution to the "not possible" answer that he receives. All "important" stuff, including his current book, Bible and devotionals, stuffed toys, special Lego etc. Really a child just trying to have a space to call his own. It was rearranged at night time down one side of the bed, reducing the space he had for sleeping by about a third! He regularly thumped the wall with his feet at night-time. We've been thinking and talking about solutions to this, but none seemed ideal.

New bed, with adjacent shelves.

The idea of an adjacent tall shelf to the bed came up at morning tea on Friday, then we looked at how we could rearrange the bedroom (for about the fourth time since we moved in 13 months ago). It was a logical step to think about a new bed too. 

Opposite corner to above.

We found a much studier bed that has a greater space between the bunks plus a ladder that the previous bed didn't have. And a tall shelf. And the price wasn't too bad, as compared to what you'd pay for something new. And an adjacent tall shelf as something of a bedside table to keep special stuff on that you can access from bed. The boys are happy and we are too.

The rearranged room looks great and there is even room for a desk for our middle son in the future.

So our "impulse" buying went extremely well. And now we're starting to feel ready to start a new school year.

Serving with the kids

Today we had the relatively rare pleasure of involving our kids in hands-on service. It is not that we stop our kids from doing things for others, or that they don't get that opportunity at school, but today both parents had things to do for others that were related to our jobs. Usually we manage to juggle it so that either one or the other of us is free to do something like that, but today we had a clash. Thankfully what we had to do was quite compatible with boys, so we were able to involve the boys with a little bit of effort. 

David went to the airport to pick up two new teachers for the school, he took our eldest with him. The main hitch was that they had to leave at 6 a.m.. I was impressed that our son didn't complain about that at all.

I took a train "down town" to join with the Japan Evangelical Missions Association (JEMA) office workers and my fellow editor to pack magazines for posting. It is largely a manual job and my 6 y.o. and nearly 9 y.o. did really well, working hard for 2 1/2 hours. They enjoyed being useful and I was so happy to see them being helpful. 

Here is another time the boys helped me out. They are "proofreading" my kids' newsletter. Checking it makes sense and the activities work out okay.

I once heard a speaker (Jill Briscoe, for those of you who've heard of her) tell missionary women to involve their kids in their work somehow, to prevent the kids from resenting the work that we do. That is hard for our particular situation. How does a teacher, an O.T., an editor/writer involve our kids in our work? When we've been on home assignment the boys often help set up our mission stand at churches we visit. Last time they did origami with some folk on the side too. But mostly I didn't push them (hey, I wrote about "pushing kids" recently . . . ), certainly not to do any performance stuff. That sort of thing has to come from the inside, I reckon. Pushing them to be involved would probably only result in resentment towards us.

I think probably, no matter what you do to serve others, you should involve your kids if at all possible. It is a great way to teach them with your actions.

Taking the bigger picture of what we do, I guess we have the ultimate of "involving your kids in your ministry". They can't but help be shaped by the fact that their parents are missionaries because they're growing up in a different country as a result. And to hear them talk sometimes, you hear (the younger two, anyway) their thinking is along the lines that "we are all missionaries, all five of us". 

But still, today was very satisfying – an opportunity to involve the kids in a more active way in serving others. I think (or I hope) that they encouraged others too, by their willingness to help out.

Juggling

I know that every mum juggles. Indeed most people do. It just seems that I am juggling more than the usual amount at present. Seems a good time for one of my favourite things - a list! I am juggling:

• Homeschooling
• Care of three lively boys and one husband (he's pretty easy)
• Writing our personal prayer/newsletter letter
• Editing/desk top publishing a mission letter
• Switching computers and operating systems (read PC to Mac)
• Keeping up with email in the meantime
• Preparing for a two day retreat, including choosing five songs and practising them.
• Organising the care of fore mentioned children during the day tomorrow.
• Preparation for home assignment (flying in 8 weeks)

Is that enough? It is for me! Actually I am very thankful for the retreat at this point. It seems like an intrusion, but it will probably be very refreshing to my spirit and just might give me the boost I need to get over the hump of the next eight weeks. I am incredibly thankful for the two friends who are covering the care of our two youngest boys from 8.30 till 3.45 tomorrow!