Monday

Why are Mondays SO hard.  Today was the official start of our preschool, so we got up late, strapped on our cement boots, and slogged our way through about 15 minutes of meaningful content and 12 hours of managing personalities.  Not the start I had hoped for.

Kinda like how we start out in the Kingdom.  Baptism.  Cool segue huh!  Ok, I'll explain.  The Kingdom of God is one of those ideas that become too glossy to attain, like homeschooling.  As I scan the blogs, websites, and (gilded) memories, I get this Waldorf/Montessori/Mason fantasy going.  It looks like this:

But somewhere along the way, it becomes clear that toddlers go through the terrible/terrifying/terrorizing twos, the house goes the way of a landfill and my beautiful plans end up here.

Remember your baptism.

The Southern Living version of the Kingdom of God (happy people loving each other and reaching out to people of all nations, ages and races, smiling with really good teeth) is not the place where Jesus stood.  He stood with the prostitutes, junkies, gang members, and lepers (fill in any social periah).  At least for now, the Kingdom is gritty.  A place where desperate people come to find hope.  Desperate people make me uncomfortable.  I don't know how to help.  I don't want to have to give up my comfort.

Baptism isn't just a place for a beautiful baby to wear a nice outfit and get oohed and ahhed over.  Baptism is a passage THROUGH death into life in the Kingdom of God.  Often I hear it said FROM death to life, but it isn't.  We symbolically drown ourselves to enter into God's Kingdom.  Pretty serious stuff.  In the moment that a person undergoes baptism, he or she touches the grace of God and is brought through death into life.  We did this to our children.

So, I have visions of my children playing sweetly together and marveling over new discoveries.  Learning and loving and laughing.  But they have to go through the baptism of self-discipline first.  So do I for that matter.  I feel truly called to being a mother and teaching my children at home.  Like any other calling I have to allow God to be the author.  I must allow God to baptize my plans so that God's call can rise up.

And be thankful.