Thursday, November 6, 2014

Raising Adults

We went in early Monday morning for Round 2 of chemo and on late Wednesday morning we headed back to have the pump taken off.  What happened in between is very much a blur.

The allergic reaction I had to one of the medications took hold almost immediately when we got home and I didn't leave my bed for 36 hours.  For about 34 of those I was in some state of sleep.  Shaun came in every once in a while to hand me pills or refill my water or look at me with love and helplessness.  But yesterday I woke up feeling worlds better and got to shower post-pump.

When I came down the stairs for the first time in two days, even in the condition I was in, I realized in the moment that it would soon be comical to me what the state of the kitchen looked like.  It looked like it had been staged, like the scene out of a movie....a movie about a mom being away for a couple days.  :)

(In fairness, I have to say that the next time I came down much of it had been cleaned up, without a word from me. :)

For the last month or so we have been incredibly blessed with regular meals being given to us.  This has been a huge burden off as we simply haven't been in a state of mind to attend to such normal life things as meals.  It also means the kids have had the run of the kitchen more than ever as they warm themselves plates of food and fix snacks.

Its all a process and everyone has definitely stepped up their game.  Shaun and I have always believed  that we should expect a lot of the kids and raise them as if they are going to be adults in a few shorts years.  We do not have anxieties about empty-nest syndrome....we want the kids to leave and go be productive, successful people.

Eventually we'll get the kitchen ironed out, but in the meantime we are enabling and empowering...

...Avery to teach Aiden
 ....Avery and Amanda to do laundry
 ...and R to rake leaves.
Kids are so much more capable than we give them credit for and they are all taking pride in the tasks that they own.

Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Colossians 3:23

3 comments:

  1. I LOVE this!!! So, so, so true! Besides the very main point of raising adults, there's other benefits too. Like, Mama is going to sit down and read her book! But you know, mostly the teaching them responsibility part. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Meg always beats me to it! I was going to say Amen! So wonderful that they will be prepared and ready. And I'm so glad and relieved to know that you were able to get up and start moving. Oy. That allergic-thing is terrible!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Glad you're feeling better! And yes, it's really good that they're learning these tasks now - I know that when I went to college I only had a vague idea of how to do my own laundry :)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the world.