A Holy Lent

Don't worry, I haven't given up blogging for Lent. I'm just in a fog of tired and grieved and am trying to pull the house together into some kind of order and function. Yesterday I managed to reorganize all the children's clothes and beat back some of the chaos of the laundry room, a task I hope to finish today. And the children mucked out the chaos of their rooms. It is all our intention and desire today to vacuum the entire house, and dust, and continue to put things back where they belong, and if they don't belong anywhere, to chuck them. And tomorrow, to carry on and finish up the whole job, hopefully with a trip to Salvation Army to close off the day, not to get more stuff, but to give them all of ours.

I seem to have fallen, organically perhaps, into year around homeschooling with six weeks on, one week off to clean and rest. I read about this way, I think on Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers (is that what its called?) and thought it was a clever but impossible idea. But it has happened to me this year through no planning by me, because every six weeks there's been something that needed immediately attending to. The more usual word is Crisis. But because I started the year in July, I've had the freedom to stop and attend to it, whatever it was. We're on track to finish all our curricula by Easter, which will be another sort of six week mark, and we will all very much need a week's respite at that point.

The main thing I've found, in the business of homeschooling and housekeeping, is that I cannot do two things at once. I cannot clean at the same time I'm doing school during the day. I cannot cook dinner and supervise spelling. I cannot clean the kitchen while children are drawing out maps. I cannot read out loud and surf the internet. And I cannot deep clean/declutter and run a school day. One thing at a time. Are we doing school? Then I am not on the phone. Am I folding laundry? Then I am not listening to a child read.

I am deeply grieved to face this reality about myself. Women, I have been led to believe, are supposed to be able to multi task. We are supposed to be able to do sixteen things at once–nurse a baby while cooking dinner and giving a spelling test and writing out checks, all at the same time. Isn't that what the words Proverbs Thirty One mean? But I really hope not, because I am a big failure in that way. I can only do one thing at a time. I can't deal with the house on a week that we are also doing school. I can't deal with the house on a day when I am covered in grief. I can't cook dinner while children are doing school work. And, to top it off with a cherry, I am really sad that this is the case.

But it is, so I'm not going to fret, much. I have finally, after much consideration, fixed on a discipline for myself for Lent. It came towards the end of Matt's sermon this morning. He instructed us, bleary eyed as we were at 7 in the morning, to “Rest on the finished work of Christ.” And I felt quite undone by the andmonishment. None of my works are ever completed, even when I only do them one at time. None of my rest is really rest. But Jesus has finished the work of Salvation. His work is perfect and complete. And his work is for me. I don't have to save myself. I can't even when I give it the good college try. I fail in all my doings. I have nothing and am nothing. So I will sit down, on his work, and stop trying. There is no holiness for me, this Lent, that doesn't come from Jesus himself and what he has already done and is continuing to do. So I will sit in the place of his mercy, and be still. And will fail at being still. And all the time, he will go on in his perfect completeness.

A good and somber Ash Wednesday to you all!