We're not a church-going family. Coming from a Mennonite background, I've tried my best to make us so, and we may attempt Sunday school again this fall (AB enjoys it), but we don't find ourselves naturally drawn, on Sunday mornings, to our church. Other religious rituals have found a comfortable place in our home, including singing a prayer before our family meals (led forcefully by F, age 3), and, for me personally, humming hymns. I've had the first line of a hymn in my head these past couple of days: "My life goes on in endless song, above earth's lamentations." So yesterday afternoon, while the children were splashing outside in the wading pool, I sat nearby with the hymnal on my knee and sang the whole of that song. F came and sat in a chair beside me, cuddled in her towel. She wanted to know why I was singing, and I said it was because it made me feel happy and comfortable and peaceful. She said it made her feel the same way. Baby CJ was nursing, and it was a really joyful and calm moment for the three of us, in our beautiful shaded backyard, in the humidity of an August afternoon in Ontario, the leafy canopy overhead, the big kids splashing gleefully (the neighbours love us, I am sure!).
We have managed to give our kitchen and dining-room that just-moved-in feeling. Everything's cleared out for painting purposes, and it echoes. I picked up take-out pizza for supper last night, and as we sat eating together, it felt exactly like it feels when you've just moved in somewhere new, that very first meal in a brand-new house. I like that feeling, actually. I'm glad to discover it's as easy to replicate as ordering take-out and taking the pictures off the walls. The smell of fresh paint added to it too.
Did I suggest in my last post that I'd actually finished all my (house)work the other night? Yah, that didn't happen. Literally, by the time I came down the next morning, the kids had replicated the disaster in the living-room. I shall either have to ban all creative play (art projects, puzzles, games, and Playmobil), or live with the consequences of having fostered such fabulous creativity in my chiildren. Hmm. The latter, I think. If only I were just slightly more slovenly. How's that for a personality trait to work on.
Labels: chores, kids, spirituality