Are you present? (Mama has left the building)

One of the things that has been heavy on my heart for sometime now is the fact that most days I feel like I’m not ‘here’ with my kids! 

What?! 

How can that be? 

You are a stay at home mom. 

You even home school your children. 

How is it you are not there?

Let me explain some of the things that keep me 'away' even when I am home.  

First of all, I have always struggled to be that ‘ooey gooey play on the floor all day with your kids' kind of  mama. It’s my heart, but a struggle to live it. 

Secondly, just the logistics of managing and keeping our home running keeps me very busy      and distracted. 

Thirdly, home schooling, while it actually would seem to cause you to spend time with your children, can keep you so busy with the ‘doing’ of it that you forget to be a mama.  

Last of all, but certainly not least, the things I derive great enjoyment from. 

Granted, many, if not most of them, are actually related in someway to the first three, but still have a lot of my enjoyment intertwined. If I’m not careful, they become an escape from the hard parts of being a mama. Things like, organizing, baking, cooking, blogging, writing, research,  etc...

Let me give you an example of something that seems so harmless and actually sort of noble.  I love, love, love to organize! The planning, the chart making, the decluttering, the cleaning, I love it! Now that seems noble enough, right? It’s part of my job! 

But, if I’m always organizing and planning or if I’m constantly distracted and busy, don’t I somehow miss the main point? Will God care that I had charts and schedules, containers with perfect labels, if I didn’t take the time to be sweet? To listen? To love?

Can you see that I’m not talking about always chasing off with friends, shopping, chatting on the phone? I’m talking about being at home, yet not really being there! From the outside it looks like you are doing all the things you are supposed to, yet somehow you are not really present for the children.

There is a time and a place for all those things I listed. I absolutely am not suggesting a ‘child-run’ home! I’m talking about making sure that those very noble things don’t stop me from being the mama I long to be.

When I see Jesus will He say, “I was hungry and you gave Me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite Me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe Me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after Me.”

May it never be!

He won’t care about my precious charts all typed up in a pretty little notebook. He just might ask, “Did you love them? Did you show them Me? Did you give your life and your time to the most important treasure I gave you?”

You understand what I’m saying, don’t you ladies? There is nothing wrong with those things in and of themselves.  You get that, right?

Let’s just make sure our focus is in the right place. Let’s not let one of those things keep us from truly being present for our children.