A Precious Gift by Natalie Weaver

This has been another hard month.  I don’t feel it to be hard.  I just know objectively that it is.  The typical challenge of balancing my work with the children’s needs and the management of a household has been intensified by the onset of a serious medical condition in my family.  I now enter that phase of elder care, which I understand is more or less bound to bankrupt the average household.  I have become the much-begrudged adult child, compelled to make decisions for other people’s lives and regarded in the fog of suspicion. My intentions are now under scrutiny; my time is usurped; my efforts are thankless.  I’m not complaining really.  I am just describing.

In the midst of things, I have managed to take my older son to the seeming ends of the earth to visit potential high schools.  I am managing a Destination Imagination team for my fourth grade son’s class.  I am teaching six courses, and my home is relatively clean.  I am running a weekly lecture series, I volunteered at the Church this month, and no one has missed any meals.  I even managed to sew a blanket for a friend’s new baby. There are many more serious family, medical, and economic issues that underlie my day-to-day, but along with everyone else, and perhaps a little more so than some others, I just accept that I am amazingly over-extended.

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