Saturday Swap Part 2

I can just tell this is going to be a rambling post.  A no-photos, lots of ideas flowing, thoughts pouring out kind of post.  Sorry in advance.....

Today was our Saturday Swap with our Bentley friends part 2.  It was our turn to have a day as a couple (plus baby!) without our kids.  Saraya and ELijah went to have a terrible time with their buddies, doing treasure hunts, swimming in the backyard pool, making craft, eating icecream, having bubble baths, and all sorts of other very non-fun activities.  Needless to say, they are exhausted and now sleeping soundly in bed!  Many thanks to Cathy and Gary (and Chloe and Declan too) for giving them such a great day. :)

After spending a couple of hours at our church's working bee this morning, grocery shopping and dropping our children off, we came home.  The house had an unusual stillness about it without the buzzing of Saraya and Elijah.  It was nice.  I missed them, but I just love peace and quiet so much that I really appreciated it!  Stuart and I managed to fill the day with general pottering about the house, having naps, drinking cups of tea, going out to lunch, having a walk in Queen's Park, and doing a few little jobs we'd been saving for today.  A few pictures got hung, William's cradle packed out to the shed (my heart is aching over that one! :(), the highchair pulled out ready for use by our big 5 month-old boy.............. oh, and of course Stu managed to fit in an hour or two pottering on the computer doing some work on his Prep movie.  A few hundred more hours to go on that, and it will be complete!!  Then onto writing report cards.  Got to love term 4.

Anyway, it was a lovely, quiet, slow day.  We actually both enjoyed the extra bonding time with William.  And it was nice to have some good conversation.  I love going out to eat together. :)

I've been thinking a lot lately.  I mean, I always tend to think a lot but I've been really thinking heaps about family life.  My friend Helen  posted her own thoughts and yearnings the other day about how to achieve a simple life.  We all yearn for it, that peacefulness in our daily lives....... that feeling of being- well, in control.  Feeling on top of things.  Feeling at ease, with ourselves and our families.  Feeling connected in our relationship with God.  Feeling content with what we have.

Stu and I were really super good at this before we got married and started our family.  In our heads, and in our plans, everything was just perfect.   We were going to live an hour or so from Brisbane (the city where we grew up) on a lovely block of quiet acreage, have a nice Queenslander with sweeping verandahs surrounded by cottage gardens; we would keep a few horses, ducks and chooks of course, and maybe a nice farm dog sleeping on the verandah or running around with our children.  Our children would always be happy.  They would always be obedient, helpful, and they would hold my hand with their little chubby ones and tell me they loved me, and thank me for all the hard work I do to care for them.  We would homeschool our children.  I would be up at the stove, wearing my lovely long skirt and apron, stirring vegetable soup made with crops from our garden.  A baby sitting happily on the floor playing with the pots and pans.  The older children sitting quietly at the big kitchen table, independently working on their math and copywork.  We would have many children, a large family, and the older ones would help teach the younger ones.  The smell of the flowers blowing in on the afternoon breeze.  Stuart arriving home from work on horseback, fresh loaf of bread from the nearby bakery under one arm.  A lovely long embrace for me first, followed by cuddles with the children.  They would of course then play happily out in the garden, just like in a painting, while Stu and I sipped tea on the deck and the dog slept at our feet.  The dog, of course, would never smell bad or poo in the garden.  Our chooks would free range, but never ever touch my vegetable patches.  We would set up a little business, a shop, with absolutely no capital.  We would earn very little, but just enough to buy everything we needed plus a few little luxuries.

Because we would choose the simple life, our lives would be simply wonderful.

That was our dream.

It's funny, 10 years down the track, to look at where we've ended up.  The reality of our family life looks very different from the dream.  Sure, there are days where I feel very very content and at peace with my life.  Most days in fact.  Many afternoons where the children DO play happily in the back garden, my baby does sit nicely playing on the floor while I'm cooking dinner, which does have some fresh produce in it from my gardens.  

However, we have not ended up living an hour from Brisbane.  It is too expensive to buy there, and anyway we have fallen in love with this little town Maryborough.

We do not live on acreage.  We own a relatively small suburban block.  It's sort-of on the outskirts of town, but still there's quite a bit of traffic going by.  We have discovered that Stu is not a natural handyman, and he doesn't really enjoy yard work.  At this stage of life, and maybe forever, a suburban block suits us more practically.

We currently do not homeschool our children.  This is still a point of heartache for me, because I still dream of having my children around that kitchen table, close to me.  However, I've had to face that my little girl is incredibly social, and her personality calls for a different pace of life than I enjoy.  She loves to be busy, getting out there with her friends and she genuinly loves going to her school.  She loves to come home to a quiet, peaceful house and enjoys the special times we do spend together.  But, being home all the time simply isn't for her.  School has been brilliant for Saraya, and I've realised that homeschooling her (or any of the children) may never be a reality.  

A large family is also no longer our dream.  The physical reality of caring for 3 young children, the constant exhaustion I feel, plus the physical toll taken on my body in the last 7 years has brought Stuart to the decision that he would like our family to be complete now, as it is.  That is a whole post in itself!

We don't own any animals, despite our children being real animal-lovers.  We don't want to own a dog on a block in town, and although we did have chooks earlier this year, they all died of a chook virus.  Yep, our first attempt at keeping animals was a complete flop.  Are our children keen to get more chooks?  Yes.  Do I want fresh eggs again? Yes.  Am I a bit put off after our last experience?  Yes!!  Once again, the dream was different to the reality.  The chooks were expensive to keep, troublesome around my vegie gardens, and eventually they all died anyway!  Very sad indeed.  We will give it another go, though.  We've learnt quite a bit from the experience and will do things a little differently this time round.

All this to say that I am amazed how differently our lives have turned out.  We've always been big dreamers and planners, full of ideas.  It's wonderful fun to sit and pour over our "brainwave" sheets of paper from back in our pre-married years.  Oh, the life we were going to lead!!  

But you know what?  Even though there are days when I wake up and wonder how I'll ever get through the day; when I desperately want a day just to myself, alone; when Saraya has hurt her knee and Elijah needs help on the toilet and William is crying loudly for a feed and the rice pot is boiling over and the phone is ringing, all at once, and I'm shouting out "STOP world, I want to get off!!!!!!!"............., I am, generally speaking, really, blessedly content!  I feel an inner peace in my heart that surpasses the day-to-day circumstances of my life.  My husband is my best friend in the world.  I feel privileged to be married to him and just love sharing the bumpy road of life with him.  I love the home we own together, and the children we are growing together.  We have a fine roof over our heads, a good income, and beautiful, beautiful children who love and look up to us.  We have everything we need, and more.

This is not exactly the picture I would have painted for my life.  But it is God's picture for me, and I feel so blessed to be in it.