I woke up this morning to the words It’s not supposed to be easy running through my head. It made me think of the P90X guy saying in the arm circle warm up…“We’re going to be here awhile. It’s going to burn. It’s supposed to.”

Life this side of Heaven: We’re here for an appointed time. It’s going to burn. It’s supposed to.

I know this, but somehow the creep happens. The comfort creep. I grow weary of fighting the same battles over and over again, so I start hunting for the cruise control button to make life easier.

But I forget ease and comfort are not the goal here. Life takes tenacity, endurance, perseverance. All those words you hear in cross country training and insinuate it’s going to be hard!

You don’t need endurance when you’re taking a stroll through Central Park and it’s sunny and 71 degrees. You need endurance in the middle of the Mohave desert or when you’re climbing Mt Everest.

Or when you’re raising…homeschooling….teenagers.

Why does it seem, just as I start to figure something out, it changes?! My preschooler turned 5 and started Kindergarten and hasn’t quit growing! And now, that same kid is 14 and all of a sudden loves football, pizza and youth group.

I don’t know what happened. It seems like yesterday I was telling him “You need to eat 5 more bites before you can have any dessert.” And now I’m saying “Please remember there are 4 more people behind you that haven’t got their food yet! Save us some!”

My cowgirl princess who used to dress up in miss-matched stripes with 5 necklaces and 12 bracelets dangling down from her limbs, now loves shopping at Aéropostale, baking cupcakes that could win Cupcake Wars and rearranging her room once a month.

What happened? Why does life keep changing? When is it going to get back to normal? And where do I fit in all this? What does my role as mom look like as my kids get older? And how do I find time to write a weekly blog post?!

Just when I thought my kids would need me less they seem to need more of me, just not to cut up their meat or start their shower. They need me fully present with them. Everyday.

Instead of telling my children, “Obey first and ask questions later,” I’m the one asking questions and guiding them to figure out how to solve their problems.

What will happen if you stay up till 11:00 tonight? Do you have enough time to complete that project before we leave in an hour? Is right now the best time to ask me that question?

And when they make a stupid decision, I have to  move out of the way to allow natural consequences to teach them greater lessens than my words ever will.

All of this requires more of me…and because of that I must make it a priority to fuel myself so I have something to give them.

Tell me how I do that again…?

The answer used to be spend more time with Jesus. Jesus is always the answer, but even my relationship with Jesus changes. I say changes, maybe takes a different form is a better explanation because He never changes.

 

It reminds me of when my kids were babies. Finding uninterrupted time to pray and study His Word was hard. Almost impossible. Because if there was a bare moment, I usually took a nap.

I’m not up all night with babies anymore, but I’m often just as tired. It’s a different kind of tired, but it’s still t-i-r-e-d. Which in turn takes a toll on my relationships, and my time.

Instead of trying to get back to how it used to be, I’m asking myself, How can I see God in the interruptions, the questions, the conversations, the hard decisions, the full schedule?

Which brings me back full circle. It’s not going to get easier. Life is hard. Homeschooling is hard. Raising kids is hard. It’s not supposed to be easy. If it was easy, we wouldn’t need Jesus. If we could handle it all on our own we wouldn’t need Jesus. If we only did things that came easy and natural to us and never breached our comfort zone, we wouldn’t need to rely on supernatural, raising the dead kind of power.

That’s why God calls us to do the unthinkable, the unattainable, the impossible. Not because we can. Because He can. And thankfully, it doesn’t end here. Heaven awaits us where all wrongs will be made right and the deep aches eased. That is our hope and the anchor of our faith.

The word I’m focusing on in 2018 is Delight. My prayer is that through the changes of life, I will find delight in it all – in Him, in my children, in teaching them. I don’t want to sit by and just be ready for it all to be over like a dreaded doctors visit. I want to delight in where God has me. No matter what happens how can I delight in the Lord and delight to do His will?

That is my prayer. What about you?

Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.

-Hebrews 10:35-36

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