adam's belated update from ellen's abscence

Dear readers of Ellen's Blog,

Well, I must first apologize that I did not come through as promised with a daily play-by-play of all our mishaps and adventures. The truth is that by the time I got the kids down for bed in the evening I was so mentally and physically exhausted that all I could do was devote my last puff of energy to something mindless and entertaining; for me that was watching episodes of 24 on Netflix. To be honest I expected to post a bunch of light-hearted and humorous stories of all the mistakes I made trying to be a mommy-daddy for the first time ever. I kind of pictured it like one of those movies featuring Vin Diesel trying to babysit kids for a weekend. Well, by the end of the day I wasn't laughing anymore...the job was tough, much tougher than I expected. Not so much because of all the demands of being a parent (though those challenges were taxing) but even moreso because I realized that being a full-time parent carried the added responsibility of getting through to your child's heart, and that indeed is a weighty and difficult task.


Ellen left the house just before 6am two Saturdays ago; no more than 10 hours later we were already in the emergency room after Marit snuck out of her room during her nap and ingested a bunch of tooth paste and a small amount of plumbers putty and then puked all over the car on our way to my parent's house. I knew almost everyone in the MCG emergency room and I didn't have to wait even 30 seconds to get into a room. The attending physician was Dr. Kuhn whose son Josh is long time friend of mine and a previous college roomate. He has also led several mission trips that Ellen and I have gone on over the years. When he found out that this was the first of four days that Ellen would be gone he filled me in on which hours he would be working the rest of the week anticipating my need for his services in the near future. I can't say I blamed him. One of the nurses kindly gave each of my children a purple Popsicle and within fifteen minutes they both looked like walking purple crayons. Oh and did I mention that Marit wasn't wearing any pants and graham had no shoes. I think we looked like we had just fallen off the wagon. I guess I should have anticipated a tough day. After arriving home from dropping Ellen off at the airport I was toasting the kids waffles in our toaster oven and for no apparent reason the glass door shattered into a million pieces; I took that as a bad sign. Fortunately there were no other major catastrophes during Ellen's absence but rest assured that it did not get any easier. Taking care of kids, especially young kids is incredibly draining. I had no idea how much patience and self-control is required in order to lovingly shepherd two little tornadoes all day, every day. Toward the end as my patience was really waning I began to lose my composure. I resorted to solving problems by whatever way was easiest, not what was necessarily best for training my children's hearts. Feeling entititled to their obedience and a to a few moment's of peace I fell into the lowest forms of behavior modification; on occasion even yelling at Marit. I would feel terrible each time I yelled at her and tell myself I will never do this again but within minutes she was pushing me to my limit again and my anger and frustration would come out. This trial eventually drove me to repent of my self-confidence, self-confidence that I could shepherd my children without frequent and fervent prayer and without frequent repentance of my own sinful attitudes.

On Tuesday Marit and Graham and I went to pick Ellen up at the airport. I had bought Ellen a dozen roses and Marit ran up to her with them as Ellen came out of the terminal. She said, “here mommy (referring to the roses), can I have my present now?” Isn't that the life of a mother. A brief moment of kindness followed by a need, a want, a desire, sometimes selfish, sometimes not, but always disproportionately little thanks along the way. To all you mothers out there let me just say, how tough it is tough to raise children. It is much easier for me to go to work every day and work hard for many hours and then come home and be your children's greatest hero just simply for coming home. Dearest Ellen, I admire you more than ever and am grateful for your joyful service to our family. And you know what else? I am really glad you are home.