How do you feel about death? Repulsed? Fascinated? A sense of longing? Fear?
I’ve always been fascinated by death, with a small side of fear and revulsion. My faith teaches me that death will be a relief from the longings and struggles of earth. The thought of leaving my earthly body behind while my spirit sails off to heaven to dwell in God’s presence makes me sigh just thinking about it. While life earthside has its pleasures, much of it is just hard.
Years ago in college, a friend who worked with the dying as part of her social work degree described her experience with those patients: “as the body becomes less, the spirit becomes more.”
I loved that description and it has rung true for me.
I haven’t encountered death in my family recently, but as a nurse, I come into contact with end of life with some regularity.
Recently, I was bra shopping with Two. As we walked up to the display, she exclaimed, “Mom, shopping for bras is so embarrassing!”
“Why?” I asked. “Half the world is made up of women and girls. They all have breasts or will grow breasts as they get bigger. How is that embarrassing?”
Her response was something along the lines of, “Well, when you put it like that…”
I remember being a preteen and teen and how Embarrassing so many things felt. It felt Embarrassing whenever I thought I said or did or wore the wrong thing. It felt Embarrassing just to exist in the same space as my parents, perhaps because I was more aware of my self-absorption when they were around.
The image above is from the Boy’s Body Book, by Kelli Dunham. You’ll find a brief review, as well as a bunch more titles, in Homeschool Sex Ed, Part II, coming next month.
When it comes to sex ed in our house, there are a lot of considerations in play. First of all, we have a ton of kids and they are all different ages, so I need to have appropriate ways to talk to each one. Second, one of the most important things to me – maybe even more than giving my kids accurate, useful information – is creating a culture in our house where normal things are normal, and we can talk about stuff that we have questions about. And I’m not embarrassed to say that we hope to delay our kids having sex for as long as possible, with the ultimate goal of them making it to their wedding day, although I recognize a lot of that will be up to them.
Having a healthy view of sex and a functional sex life is foundational to having a successful marriage. We know it’s a tool our kids need to have, and we have to figure how to get them started with the information they need, long before they are having sex themselves.
I was so excited about the first load of laundry in this story, I hung it on the line. And then took a picture.
I’ve been working nights for more than ten years. During that time, we’ve added 6 kids to our family, for a total of seven. Laundry started out being primarily my responsibility, with unloading folded baskets of laundry delegated to whichever kids were capable of delivering piles where they needed to go without unfolding everything again.
As our family grew, I taught my big kids how to do their own laundry. That starts at age seven. That leaves me responsible for laundry for my husband, the four Littles, myself, and whatever family laundry is generated, including bedding and towels. It ends up being a minimum of two loads a day on most days.
On weekends that I worked, I understood that whatever shape I left our laundry room in when I left for work, it would be the same or worse when I came back to it later that weekend after sleeping off my shift. That was ok for a long time.
This July 4th felt a little icky.
I’ve been thinking about it, trying to nail it down. I know it began with the Election Season last fall and the toxic atmosphere online that caused me to take a step back from the news and finally be ready to quit Facebook.
My big kids are out of town staying with their aunt, and I have been home alone with the Littles. Granted, I was only alone with them for one day, Tuesday, since Monday was a travel day. Today, the Chaplain had off for the holiday and was here to help me out.
But Tuesday was the day I needed to recover from that traveling over the weekend and using a TON of social and emotional capital that I didn’t really have to spend. By the last day of the trip, I was feeling full of the meaning that comes from spending time with people with whom you have shared memories and a certain understanding.
I was also completely exhausted and had lost my voice.
And once we were home, my First Day Back was home alone with the Littles.
