Passing Judgement

If you don't want honesty, then please stop reading.  I'm going to be honest about myself here because God expects me to and I know there are a few others who feel this way, but are ashamed of how they feel as I have been in the past.

There are hours, days and weeks that I just don't like being a parent.  I especially don't like being a homeschooling parent who never seems to leave her house.  I really don't like being a homeschooling parent of teenagers with issues.  There are days that I don't like dealing with my children at all.

Now before you scoff at me, you need to take a walk in my shoes.  Let me describe my day to you.  This may seem like complaining and in a way it is, but there are enough people out there who would judge me and I feel the need to explain.

My kids are in bed by 9pm every night.  The boys fall asleep pretty quickly and so do the teens depending on several things, but most every night they are out by 10pm.  This means I should be able to get some good sleep, and for a normal person this would be true.  It isn't for me.  Most nights, meaning I took something to help me sleep that worked, I am asleep by midnight.  This would be ok if I didn't wake up every hour or two tossing and turning.  I can list a handful of times that I have slept well and woke up refreshed.  Most mornings I feel like I have been run over by a truck and that is after 2 cups of caffeinated tea.

My boys are up by 6am at the earliest, but it is usually about when the sun rises.  This means if I want time for myself and for bible study I have to be up by 5am.  So even if I do go to sleep by midnight that means 5 hours of sleep a night. You see how this is setting up for a bad situation?

I drag, awaken, my older two children by 7am so they can be up, accomplish their chores, and be ready for bible at 8:30am and school can begin by 9am.  They have no idea how spoiled they are to be up that late as they are up after the public school bus has already been through our neighborhood.  They would love for me to change their sleeping schedules to let them stay up as late as they want, but sleep is important and they would miss half of their life if they stayed up late all the time, and they would be completing school work instead of valuable time with their dad when he is home.  My children NEED their dad.  He is vital to keeping balance in this family.

So now they are up and the arguments begin.  The older two are tired, "I never let them get enough sleep."  According to their doctor they are fine and the sleep they are getting is plenty.  By 7am, Pip has asked me 12 times what is for breakfast, and my nerves are running thin because I have told him it is baking in the oven those 12 times.  Eating gluten free is hard, when you make everything from scratch everyday for every meal. If you have food allergies or children with food allergies you know what I'm talking about, but you do it because you know it is vital to their lives.

So while breakfast is cooking I look over the menu for the day to make sure I have everything I need for lunch and dinner, finding out half the time that "someone" has eaten something that I needed for a meal later that day.  I'll foolishly ask, but an argument ensues as no one remembers eating it themselves, but are sure that someone else did it.  This means I have to either leave out that ingredient or plan something else.  At this point I am ready to go back to bed and praying the day will start off differently, but I know I have to keep going on.

So breakfast has been eaten and the chores begin.  It is usually a quiet time in the house as we are all busy, except for Pandora playing in the background.  Each of my children have their assigned chores and I go through making sure they are "done to the list."  Yes, I have a list for each room so my children know what the standard is and it keeps me in check to make sure I don't change the rules.  It has worked well for our family, but I still have to check their work and if it doesn't meet that standard then the complaining starts about the stupid rules, stupid chores and how their friends don't do chores because "their mom's are good moms who keep a spotless house all the time instead of being lazy and useless."

All of this is before 8:30am. UGH!  We stop at 8:30am and sit down for our family bible lessons.  I've tried starting school without it and the day goes down hill FAST if we don't start our day off with God.  Some may think I am being over dramatic about this, or I'm using our family bible study as a crutch, but I say to you YES IAM!  It is THAT important and it is my daily crutch.  Everyday God seems to know exactly what our family needs for the day.  When attitudes get out of whack, when we start complaining, grumbling, having a lack of grace for each other, that we KNOW God has for us, we remind each other of what we studied.  It is HARD to take criticism from my children about my bad behavior, but God gave them to me to help me grow and be a better person, and so I better accept this with Grace or not only will I not grow, but they won't either.

It is only 9am and I'm already tired.  I've had my personal bible study, made breakfast, Pip and William are up, got the other two up at 7am, ate, chores, the daily chore argument, and had bible study.  By this point I know how the day is going to go.  You can tell me I'm being negative, and I will say again, walk in my shoes, because there is a lot I'm not talking about here.

You see in among all of this I am dealing with William.  He can wake up feeling great or he can be grumpy and will never see the light of day.  My William isn't your typical child that you can just say get over it and he is over it.  We have to walk through things.  If something in the schedule changes for him that is the worst thing that could happen.  He falls apart.  Since we have changed up his medicine and gone gluten free, sugar free, it has gotten better, but he is still sensitive.  This is part of his autism.

William is my cleaning buddy while the others work on their own.  This can cause jealousy and has caused a meltdown a few times of the other three, but if I don't stay with William he will not complete his tasks.  I've explained it to the older two, but they don't care.  While Pip, he seems to understand it better, but just wants time with me, so I've added two buddies and the boys do their work together.  The jobs are perfect, but they are accomplished and if I wanted perfect I would do it myself and my children would NEVER learn anything.

By 9am I am emotionally and physically drained.  I've already drank a pot of tea, prayed more times in 3 hours than I do in month and shed more tears that I do with a sad chick flick, all this and my day has just started. This is my typical morning.

When we decided to have children, I NEVER realized how exhausting it would be.  I mean I knew I could be a brat as a kid, ok a real brat, but this is beyond my scope of understanding.  Then you add Autism into the mix with teenage hormones and you have insanity.  I thought I would be like these women who are always well dress, always smiling, never bothered by anything.  That somehow my joy would always be filled up and nothing would ever get me down.  This is the life I wanted isn't it?  I wanted this and it would make me happy, right???

Why is it instead I find myself exhausted, emotionally?  Why is it that I find myself just wanting to stay in bed with the covers over my head, crying myself back to sleep?  The answer is this PARENTING ISN'T FOR WIMPS!!!

Parenting isn't for the faint at heart.  Being a parent of a "normal" child will stretch you to your limit, add a couple of children with learning disabilities and you are crying to God daily asking Him if He is sure He chose the right woman for this job, because you are pretty sure He didn't.

I am the one who disciplines my children on a daily, no hourly, no minutely basis.  I'm the one that has to not only tell the teenager why they can't do it their way, but why it has to be this way. I'm the one who hasn't been able to use the bathroom on her own for 14 years, unless they were all gone for the day.  I'm the one who is suppose to have a good attitude and not allow their bad one affect mine.  I'm the one who is suppose to be awake and being mom even when I've not slept for two days due to a migraine.  Finally I'm the one who usually has to hand out the consequences when there is bad behavior from selfish attitudes.

All of this is hard on me.  I'm tired.  I sometimes really hate my job.  I sometimes wish I could dump them in public school so someone else could raise them for me. I sometimes just want to quit. So why do I get up every morning and do it again and again?  Because I hear my grandma telling me that Parenting isn't for wimps and she KNOWS I'm no wimp.  Well grandma I hate to disappoint you, but I am.  If I wasn't a wimp I certainly wouldn't be posting this here.  I certainly wouldn't be questioning my job and I certainly wouldn't be a disappointment or as someone once said a poor example of what a Christian woman is suppose to be.

Maybe I'm not your idea of what a virtuous woman is suppose to be.  I KNOW I'm not the best at the job. I will tell you it isn't my prayer either.  Each morning I get up and pray to God that I will live up to HIS standards.  I will live my life showing the grace, love and mercy He has shown me.  That I will not grow weary in doing good.  That I will finish the race that is before me.  That when I lay my head down at night, I know that I have, while not being perfect, have given my family and my God everything I had to give.  That I am drained of all I am and have poured it onto the people who matter most.

Some days are better than others.  Some days I wonder why I got out of bed in the first place.  Some days I go bopping through and don't realize the time until Pip tells me, mom it is 6pm and you have dinner ready. LOL

I am sure I am no one's ideal woman, wife, parent or child of God, but I am thankful that I don't have to measure up to the standards of humans who don't walk in my shoes.  I have to measure up to the standards of God who knows my life, heart, desire, pains, sorrows, weakness, and love.  He is the one that will fill me up each night making me ready to face another grueling day of being a mom.

I was up one night when all of this fell into place for me.  I was reading about another mother who had opened her heart and talked some about her struggles.  I start judging her when it was placed upon my heart that I was doing the same thing that others do to me. It's easy to look and and just KNOW how the other person should live their life, isn't it?  I came to realize that God will be a righteous and merciful judge.  I also realized that I was like her and all I wanted was for someone to understand, for someone to not be one more thing that tears me down in the world of parenting and being a child of the King.

So here before the world, I say I am a SINNER.  I put my foot in my mouth all the time.  I say stupid things that make sense to me, but to others is foolish and immature.  I lose my patience with my children all the time and I mean ALL the time.  I do not set a perfect example to my daughter of what it means to be a godly wife and mother.  I have tired, and beat myself up emotionally, but I can't ever seem to have a perfect day. I don't treat other people the way I want to be treated.  I pass judgement on them. I some times refuse to forgive wrongs that have been committed against me. I don't always like being a mom.  I certainly don't always like being a homeschooling mom.  I get jealous of other women who have careers and make wonderful money, thinking that could have been me, if I had wanted it too.  I could have been somebody instead of just a punching bag.

These are just a few of the things that are in my head and on my heart.  I'm sure most of you will have just one more reason to look down on me.  I know there are some that already do, they have made no bones about how I am unfit as a Christian wife and do not want their children around me, especially their daughters.  This path I am on is hard at times.  There are times I just want to quit.  I know that if I want to see my God in the end I have to keep moving forward. Even if there are people passing judgement about me and my choices, I have to keep moving and let them fall behind me.  It is the painting of how God sees me that matters, not that of the other "Snoodles," that are weighing down my backpack.

I will end with one last thing as I know this is already long enough.  I have a friend who told me about her last time talking with another mom.  This mom was having a hard time being a mom and wife.  She was tired, worn down, and feeling desperate.  She didn't know what to do, so she turned to her "perfect" friend to help her.  Well, instead of taking this opportunity to build this woman up, she told her that her "attitude was awful and that things will never change unless she stopped being so selfish.  Her husband and children deserved her best not the waste that she had allowed herself to become.  If she stopped worrying about herself, stopped being a wimp, and lived for her family things would be fine."  This woman ended up telling her how ashamed she was to call her friend, that she didn't want her children to come over and be infected by her, that she would pray for this woman's children and husband and that the world would be a better place without pathetic people like her.  That night this woman had her husband take the kids with him while he went to the store.  While he was gone she quietly slipped into their bedroom and shot herself.  She was there when her daughter age 10 found her.

This "godly" woman, who claimed to be her friend, was the last person she really spoke to.  This woman helped Satan destroy this other soul with her judgement and cruelty.  This woman helped Satan set up a legacy of destruction that will go for generations.  The sad thing is that at the funeral all she could say was, "well her children will heal faster without her there to bring them down with her negativity."  I wanted to SCREAM!  I wanted to SMACK this person!  I did neither, but I did stop having much to do with this person and over the years I have lost most contact with her.  I do know that her children are NOT faithful to God in anyway at all.

I guess my warning is this, Do NOT pass judgement on others.  You have no idea what it is like to be them. You have no idea what is going on in their lives, bodies and heart.  You have no idea if they love God and are trying to serve him, but just don't meet your standards.  Not only does passing judgement on others destroy them, but it also allows you to play at being god, which will destroy YOU as well.