you owe me a dollar!

     Each new year, I choose a spiritual goal.  Anne Simpson told me that her church's staff would choose and share their spiritual goals with each other, and I thought that was a fantastic idea.  Ever since, I have done the same.  The first year, I worked on humility; the next year, (since I had mastered that one! hee hee) I chose trust in God (an absolutely depraved point for me at that time).  Each year, I am offered opportunities to plow through that rocky terrain in my life, and it is painful but salacious work.  It always feels right, and I like cultivating what at first seems so impossible for me.  Since they are spiritual goals, I do not feel that I am on my own; I feel like I am opening the door for God to teach me, and God sure takes me up on the offer.  "I thought you'd never ask!" An interesting observation is that it often takes 2 or 3 years for the real fruit to be born.  During the year, I see the work; but it is often later that I have an abundance of trust/faith/joy/peace, etc. in my life.
     Last year, 2009, my spiritual goal was "getting upset well."  I did not know what that would look like, but I knew I did not have it yet!  I was weary of my own upset, and I thought everyone around me would be so pleased if I would take that on as my new goal.  As usual, I ended the year with some gains, laboring hard through the year to deal with bouts of depression and emotion deregulation.  The improvements were marked, esp. as seen with Ron and by Ron regarding others, and we both thought I had made some advances.  
     But it was not until this past few months that it extended (finally!) to my children.  Inspired by the Imago retreat we had gone on, I realized that, while I do lots of problem solving with my kids, the last card that I held in my hand and used when "necessary" was to get visibly upset.  It is "the last straw syndrome."  When I had told them to line up their shoes nicely nine times, on the tenth, I shouted.  And I always felt rather justified.  After all, nine is too many times.
      I came to realize, however, that it is frightening to live in a house with a Mom who seems pleasant but could blow up at any moment without warning.  So I determined to eliminate this trait from our household.
     I told the kids: "One punishment I have used on occasion is to shout or act scary to make you do what I want.  But I am going to get rid of that option.  So instead, to get you to do what I want, I am going to charge you a dollar ($.50 for Leigh and Clare) instead of shouting.  And then you have to do what I have asked.  BUT, if I fail to do this punishment, and shout instead, then YOU charge ME a dollar!"
     The kids eyes bugged out of their heads and their jaws dropped to the ground.  It takes A LONG TIME for them to earn a dollar--five cents to put away one pile of laundry; one dollar to rake and bag a professional grade bag of leaves and haul it to the curb.  They could not BELIEVE how much money that they could earn so quickly, if I messed up!  They glanced at each other and snickered.  The fear dissipated from the room and I could see physical transformations as they relaxed from head to toe.  Justice was replacing tyranny (Plato's Republic, Bk. X)!  I even helped them practice: they would wag their finger at me and say, "uh, uh, uh!  No scary Mom!  You owe me a dollar!"
     It was the last main area that needed transformation, and almost two years after the initial resolution, it is finally a family where "scary Kathryn" mode is not in the arsenal.

     Happy New Year's Eve, everyone!                  
    

Mountain Climbing

The Ascent to Mount Carmel

(for those of you who do not know, the ascent to Mt. Carmel is a description of the spiritual journey of the mystics from the discalced Carmelite tradition of the 17th century) 

it's baking day!

     One of the things that keeps me riveted is how a little flour and a rolling pin makes little people's spirits open up like no other time.  It is "peace on earth" and good will to EVERYONE when a tiny tike is playing with dough.

     We have the Hayeses here for a few days (the holy family that arrived at our home on the Feast of the Holy Family!) and we decided to have a tea party.  So we made finger sandwiches, peppermint tea, and of course, cookies.

     Cooking with NINE small children plus a baby?  Yes!  Okay, there were a few sprinkles on the floor.  But the joy is all mine.  How I think about it: if my intuition says, "Don't make a mess!" say instead, "Messes are the small, forgettable price for peace on earth!"  If my intuition says, "Hey, that's too much flour!" say instead, "Look at how much she is enjoying all that flour!"  It's not about the cookies, it's about the fascination, the learning, the creativity, and most of all, the JOY.

     Speaking of delight, look at this tea party!

     Happy fifth day of Christmas, everyone, and may there truly be peace on earth!

worst moment in recent memory

Mary, Clare, Leigh and I were walking into the facility where they were about to do a ballet performance.  The woman directing us to the dressing room was a midget.  My girls responded to her direction saying sweetly, "Merry Christmas!" and I was so proud that they did not embarrass the lady.  But just as we walked past her, Clare looked at me and said in a normal, audible voice, "She must have drunk too much caffeine when she was a little girl!"

riveting? really?!

  

     Ten years ago, I taught myself to cook from scratch, and now I am learning all over again how to cook without wheat, chicken, milk, or refined sugar.  (Yikes!) This "from scratch" thing seems to be theme with me. Somehow, my parenting, my being a wife, my having a home, and what I do all day long feel very new--like I am making them up from scratch.

So much about home life is new to me.  Yet I am so absorbed in the fascinating undertaking of "reinventing" home life, that my home has been a sort of magnet for me.  I do all things at home: home birth, home school, home-grown food, even a home gym--you name it, it happens at home!  I am riveted by reinventing home life for myself in a way that brings fulfillment.

I suppose that is the catch--ten years ago, I would have imagined that being a full time wife and mother would be synonymous with sacrifice, tantamount to giving up my "real" ambitions.  (As many of your know, I am trained to instruct on the college level.)  But for me, I am shocked to discover my truest self as I do all this laundry--it is authentically empowering and abundantly satisfying.

favorite moments this Christmas

1. Clare baking Leigh birthday cupcakes in Clare's new cooking set.

2. "Silent Night" at Midnight Mass.  Cried.  So beautiful.

3. Old Maw Maw telling me that I had baked the turkey "to perfection."  She was only being nice.  The turkey was actually a disaster--I had taken it out of the oven when the thermometer read 180 degrees, but it was undercooked.  So when we were all ready to eat, we carved into it, and it was pink.  I mean bloody.  So we put it in the oven and sat around for an hour and a half and watched all 10 other dishes get cold--including Maw Maw's.  So when MawMaw made her comment to me, it was almost tongue in cheek.  You could practically hear the ensuing phrases that she was deleting as they passed through her mind!  But I decided to take the compliment anyway, and so it ranks in my top 3! :)

up-side down thinking

     One main goal of my life is to have a peaceful, joyful home in which all the people belonging to it become their best selves (including me).  That means, in part, constantly turning conflict into something else with creative, up-side-down thinking.  Of course, that usually is applied to two little girls who want to hold the same doll.  So my creative responses have seemed to me sort of forgettable, and I have not written them down. Yet I realize they have value and can be applied across all areas of my life. 

happy blogging

So what is this all about anyway? It's about me. It's about my personal discoveries of how I do home (and how I do NOT do home, based on my mistakes!), how I do kids (and how I do NOT do kids), how I do happy marriage (and how I do NOT do marriage), and how I do happy-on-the-inside.  WHAT I CAN'T BELIEVE IS THAT I AM (happy on the inside)!  I am not the author of this happiness--like a child, it has just plopped in my lap.  Clearly, it is not mine for keeps, but rather, something to share.  And so I shall...AS KATHRYN-UNFILTERED.

I have GREAT friends and extended family whom I adore, and who are the ones who prompted me to do this in the first place. It makes me happy to think that my beloved sisters who live so far away--even in Europe--can be closer in a way through this blog. I love to think that my brothers can be a part of my life in a new way.  My parents--well, my parents are probably the only people who will ever read this blog anyway (I love you guys)!