what I am and who we are

We visited a new-to-us park in a neighboring town yesterday.  It was lovely.  The first not-blistering hot day in quite some time.  Fall is sneaking in, and I am not completely dreading it.  I played with our camera and the manual settings.  Realized I have so far to go in that arena.  The girls threw sticks and rocks into the pond, and Travis played the cautious-Dad role, as he is prone to do whenever he gets little-to-no time with his two daughters.

I thought about how much I love our children, and how I long to have another.  I thought about how difficult mothering is - good mothering - and how it frightens me to have more children.  Travis and I talked about his job and how stressful it's been.  Such long, draining hours.  How does one avoid that?  Or does one roll with the punches and plaster a smile on one's face?  Before he leaves for a deployment, he works his tail off. Then he's gone, and he realizes how God and family are the most important things of all.  We vow to make changes.  Sacrifice work and extracurricular instead of God and family.  Then, the Homecoming... and life inevitably falls back into the same routine.  How do you stop the cycle??  We don't know... it's a heavy burden.

I've been thinking much about who I am and what I do.  I'm a mother.  A wife.  Those most over all.  My children are growing and with their growth, I need to grow too.  This is Bella's last year before kindergarten. We've never enrolled her in preschool, and I'm treasuring this last year of "laziness" and togetherness.  I'm beginning to school her a bit every week with reading and numbers... and it's helping me decide what we want to do in the future: homeschool?  Public?  We still need to know where we'll be living in order to make the final decision.

If we homeschool, I know life will look different.  I need to be more organized and scheduled with my time.  I already feel a need to pour more intellect in to my girls' lives.  I'm here, caring for their needs, but now they're growing beyond the basic needs.  They need teaching, and direction, and answers, and how-to's.  They need the Lord, and every-day looks into how He is almighty in our lives.  They need music and reading and outside.  Which, in turn, means, I need less computer.  Less internet.  More reading and asking the Lord to pour into me, for Heaven knows I have no strength on my own.

Not quite sure what life will look like in these coming years... but I know I'm ready for a bit of change too.  I'm ready for Fall... in many senses of the term.