Outnumbered

Overall, being a "single mother" hasn't been that difficult. Most of the time, it feels like things are pretty well under control. That doesn't mean that my house is perfectly clean - it means that I've been able to keep up with laundry enough that everyone has clothes to wear each day, and that there aren't too many dirty dishes in the kitchen. Most of the time, I'm not stressed, and I'm not overwhelmed. But there are just certain times that pop up every now and again where everything comes rushing at me, and it's just so hard. Yesterday we stayed home from church because the boys' colds were very bad, but Alyssa, even though she has a cold too, was feeling fine. She was so busy yesterday. It's not too much of a stretch to say that she was jumping off the walls. By the end of the day I was so tired and frazzled from all that busy-ness. As I was getting the kids ready for bed Alyssa was doing kung foo, Ethan and Marcus were running all around the dressing room, and my mind was screaming, "There's three of them, and only one of me! What am I going to do?!?"

Luckily, there haven't been too many moments like that, and once I got all three kids settled in bed, things were much better. I've really had to adjust my attitude over the last few months. Even though my house has never been spotlessly clean, I'm not the type of person who normally leaves dirty dishes to sit overnight. I usually like to go to bed with a clean house, so I can wake up to a clean house the next morning. But right now, that's not where all of my time and energy needs to be spent.

I really enjoyed President Monson's talk this last conference titled "Finding Joy in the Journey." He only spoke a few words to mothers with young children, but those few words made such an impact on me. He said, "If you are still in the process of raising children, be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled will disappear all too soon and that you will—to your surprise—miss them profoundly." I don't think I'll miss the piles of laundry, but I will miss the children who wore the clothes. When he said that, I realized that I need to take advantage of all the opportunites I have to really be with my children while they're young. I've had to let the dishes slide, because if I didn't, I wouldn't have the time or energy to do things with my children.

One of our traditions is to make sugar cookies in the shape of pumpkins and decorate them just before Halloween each year. This year, Halloween kept getting closer and closer, and we hadn't done that yet. Finally one night I decided that we would just do it. I was still working on costumes, so we were already behind on the dishes. I almost wanted to do dishes, and then make and decorate cookies, but I realized that if I did that, then we would never get around to the "decorating cookies" part. So the kids and I decorated cookies at the dining room table, and we had to work around a pile of our dirty dinner dishes. It wasn't easy. It wasn't ideal. But I am so glad we did it.

If I was on the outside of my life, looking in I would say, "Oh that must be so hard to take care of three children while your husband is away." I would look at it as a simple, difficult situation. But being on the inside, I feel that it isn't that difficult at all, because I'm choosing to look at it as an opportunity to really focus on my children, and that, to me, is a blessing.