On My Mind

If any of you don't know what I do....I am basically a mom by profession to (currently) 9 children (ages 2 to 9). I have a blog lifeasaprofessionalmom.blogspot.com if any of you are interested in reading I will need your email to add you to the list of readers. You have to sign in every time due to the privacy of the children. Anyway, back to the job...it is very stressful. But I love it. I love not sitting behind a desk bored as heck. I love not staring at a computer screen all day. I think I may have what was formerly Shawna's dream job. I wake kids up in the morning for school. I get them dressed, make them breakfast, and take them to school. I then have until 3pm to myself (sort of). From 3pm to bedtime I am helping the kids do homework, I am cooking dinner, I am playing outside with them, I am bathing them, I am cleaning up the house. Because we are a licensed facility we have a lot of cleanliness standards we have to keep up with. The bathrooms are cleaning twice a day, the floor is mopped twice a day. It's kind of ridiculous. We have to disinfect everything. The job also entails quite a bit of paperwork. Every time a kid gets a scratch, scrape, bump we have to write an incident report. Every time a kid decides to lose it and tell you you are a f***in (i hate that word) bitch who should get the hell outta here, you have to write an incident report. Basically all injuries and extreme behaviors are documented. This helps the courts decide the best place for the child.

Do some of you find it hard to keep track of everything going on in your life? Well try multiplying that by 9 children who have therapy twice a week, visits with parents, and doctor's appointments. I'm not sure how I do it. Thank God for calendars and for grace.

Can you imagine that I am enjoying it?

It is very time consuming. I get Tuesdays and Thursdays off (meaning 9 to 11pm). If I'm not back by 11 I turn into a pumpkin and the dream ends. I sleep every night here and wake up every morning here...except for 4 weekends a year when I am off Friday through Monday at 1pm. I love those weekends and usually I get the hell outta here! Haha!

But truly I enjoy being the consistency and structure in these kids' very chaotic lives. Many have been physically abused and many have been sexually abused. Some have been abandoned or neglected. They have never lived a "normal" life (whatever that is).

So I say all this because a couple weeks ago at home group we were encouraging each other. One of the girls there had started dating a guy that goes to church with us and had left the church she had grown up in to go to church with him. Everyone was complimenting her on how well she had made the transition, that no one viewed her as John's girlfriend, but as Marie. She is so sweet. The other girls talked about how easy it was to hang out with her and they started mentioning all these memories with her. I got really sad. With 2 nights off a week it is so hard to be able to hang out with people...especially these two days being Tuesdays and Thursdays...days normal people work. It was the first time I seriously contemplated leaving my job. I miss being able to hang out any night of the week. I felt like I was missing out on community. There is so much I would like to do, but I am so limited in my time.

Then yesterday at the weekly houseparent meeting, Siggi started speaking. She has been a houseparent for 11 years and is leaving to move to Hawaii (not too shabby!). She will be working with the illustration school that YWAM has there. She shared with us that over the 11 years people would mention to her how great it was that she was giving up her life to work with the kids. But then she said something that really struck me. She said, "It was never my life to begin with." What life have I given up? This is the life that God has for me at this time. I am experiencing life. When I thought about this I felt selfish for being sad at home group. I felt selfish for wanting more free time.

Now I am struggling with what is right. I am considering going to grad school. But then the questions. Which one? Do I work and go to school? Do I just take out loans and go to school full time? So many decisions. I suppose I just have to wait until the Lord shows me the next step. One door will close and another will open. Mollie is now in Miami going to school. I would love to be able to live with her and go to school. So maybe that could happen.

So what is life?

-Kath