Team Wendorf Report

We have 4 kids ages 5 and under. Its a circus on a good day, (and literally on the days when they wear their animal masks). But I live most days in denial; I like to think I am organized.

I use a label maker. Often.

I secretly try and convince myself that if things are labeled then surely I must have it all together. My kids are great. They have their own personalities, sinful issues, and qualities that make us adore them. Our second born just turned 4. He moves at his own pace….extra slow. So true to his nature it took him 2 weeks before his 4th birthday to move into big boy underwear full time. Our third born moves at a pace completely opposite. He is fast and stealth like. He escapes every confined space with ease and speed. Lately it has been a struggle to balance the 2 in public places. Kai, please use the bathroom before we leave…Otto stay here and wait.

So as much as I try and keep things looking labeled and organized it is crystal clear in these situations that it is only by grace I survive each day and the label maker is only an attempt to seem like I have control and order. Example… We neglected to buckle Otto into his car seat AGAIN last week and he walked up to the front of the van while we were driving. Sheez!! Come on mom get it together. But I have a label maker….

In the last 2 weeks I have received an email and a phone call regarding my kids and their safety. One was to show concern over Otto. He had escaped a room in a safe place and found his way into a room with expensive equipment. He was found and brought back to me. I was mortified to find Otto had quietly and quickly found his way into a place (that really should have been locked) where he could have caused hundreds of dollars worth of damage. For the love of socks I was embarrassed because I can’t keep an eye on all 4 kids at once. In a safe place my guard drops and off Otto goes. Here comes the guilt….

Trying to shake this off when a few days later I get a phone call. My 2 younger boys had been sick with the flu. While I tried to manage them I was still bringing the other 2 to school since they seemed symptom free. I was challenged on this decision by a person who assumed on false information I was bringing sick kids to school. Even though I explained I was not bringing sick kids to school I immediately felt like I needed to validate my parenting decisions. I couldn’t believe they thought I would be so negligent as to bring sick kids to school, not caring about my kids or others I could be infecting.

If only they saw my labeled shelves then they would know….

So twice in a week I felt betrayed by myself, by others I knew and trusted to be on my team, by what I thought was normal and good and safe.

But what is the truth?

The truth is nothing is ever normal and good, the hope that this exists is an idol in my life and I find myself anxiously waiting for those moments.

The truth is I betray myself all the time, placing unrealistic expectations on myself, my situation, my kids, and others. I want life to run like a programed machine. This will never happen my husband assures me.

The truth is these things are not programmable, my feelings will get hurt, the unexpected vomit from the kids will show up in the car, others will let me down, I will fail to be the perfect organized mom.

I am not saying life is never good. I am simply saying my hope needs to lie in the joy that comes from Jesus even when things are hard. It is only in that TRUTH that there is good and peace. Peace and joy that I can not label and put on my shelf because it is not mine to give but it is mine to enjoy.

So in the meantime I will try and remember to buckle all the kids safely into their seats, do the best I can to assess flu like symptoms, keep an eye on wandering Otto all for the glory of God.

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I have never considered myself a paranoid person or even someone that struggles with anxiety. But recently I found myself diagnosing Kai (second of four kids) with a heart attack; while on the drive to school he held his hand up from the back seat and said “mom, its not working right.” Then when i look back a second later he was slumped over. Clearly signs of a heart attack.

As I argued inside my head whether or not I should pull over I realized I was wearing Kai’s FM system (attached to Kai’s hearing aids are little audio shoes that are recievers. I wear a transmitter around my neck so Kai has better access to my voice in noisy environments). Instead of pulling over and alarming the rest of the kids (or at least to avoid someone asking 100 times “mama what are we doing?”) I just yelled into the mic on the transmitter, “Kai are you alive?!” Then I watched in the review mirror as his sleeping head bobbed back up to a less than dead position. Satisfied that he was just really tired I kept going.

What is wrong with me? I spent the next 20 minutes of the drive wondering when I became howard hughes? when did I become the overly paranoid person/mom that looks up meningitis online just because someone complains of their neck hurting? I was sharing this story with a friend and they said “yeah, you’d think the more kids you have the more relaxed you’d become.” Yet here I am, convinced that every abnormal bit of behavior means a round of puke is about to travel through our home.

But I don’t think I am abnormal, I think most moms have some kind of illness they fear. But is my fear justified? That is the real question. I cannot control viruses or even bacteria as they travel and land all over their kid-sized world. I have to conclude that I have always been this anxious person and it manifests itself as a lack of trust and a need for control every now and again. So it just all comes back to Jesus and whether or not my heart and my head is aligned with what I know of a faithful God who loves my kids way more than I can imagine.

So a few days after this first ‘almost’ heart attack we were on the way home from church when Kai says, again, “mom my hands don’t work right.” This time I was able to watch closely (since Jason was driving) to see that as he tried to spread his fingers apart he wasn’t showing 5 separate fingers but rather a spockish Star Trek hand gesture… not because he was having a heart attack but because his fingers were sticking together from something he had eaten.

Oh yea, kids are messy. I forgot. So case closed. And my hope is redirected back to Jesus.

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Write it down, I tell myself and others tell me. So why not? Most days really are worth laughing at, some are worth crying over and all are full of grace. So here I am, writing. I will feebly attempt to share our story one poopy diaper at a time.

But please remember I am not a writer. My grammar is so awful that my husband can’t believe I was ever a teacher. But I am a teacher, every day my job is to teach the 4 small souls entrusted to me; how to love, how to forgive, how to serve, how to laugh, how to repent. Every day is less than what I strive for and every night I have to relinquish the idol of perfection I placed upon that day and pray that tomorrow I will live and walk with more of the grace that is Jesus.

I am not sure where to start. For the past 8 weeks, well maybe since the 4th of July life has been umm, different. Someone said to me recently, “well you haven’t had it easy since your first child,” referring to a gambit of almost and definite medical issues we have had this summer (not to mention some rats in our house).

This was a bizarre and even startling statement to hear. I didn’t really understand it because I have been convicted that there is no such thing as easy or normal. I would be lying if I said I never looked at another family and thought I bet they didn’t get puke, blood and food all over their shirt today. Or I bet they didn’t have to stop 10 minutes into their drive, get 4 fours kids out of the car to go into a Starbucks so someone could pee while keeping one off the floor, the one from crying, one from escaping under the door of stall.

Jesus never promised easy and he didn’t die for normal. He rose from the dead for grace and that is what I cling to, that is why my husband sings hymns with the kids every night, that is why I will change so many diapers a day that my hands are dry and cracked from all the washing. Grace is why I almost cry when a teacher tells me my son shared Jesus with her while she changed his diaper. Grace. Jesus gives it so I can share it. It is what should motivate my every action and my every thought and each response to every phrase that starts with “mama…”.

But I am not perfect and I fail every day all day. And grace cleans up the mess.

And that is where we live. In the mess. Full of grace.

So welcome to our home. You are always welcome here if you are comfortable in the chair that sits in the middle of it all.

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