Life lessons

Life lessons can hurt; they can bring joy; they can bring relief; they can bring sorrow; but I would rather learn them then continue on in ignorance.   

I read an interesting quote attributed to Mother Teresa recently.  “If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.  If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies; succeed anyway.  If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.  If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway.  The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway…  You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.” 

“There comes a time in your life when you have to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus solely on the good. After all life is too short to be anything but happy.”  From How to be happy.

Its easy to get drawn into the fray when you are weak; to have a snide comment send you off the deep end.  Sometimes, though, going that step to far can be a good thing.  Falling off the comfy wall forces you to cut strings that you have no need of, so it's not for naught.  Cut away.

I feel God is certainly leading me in a direction of simplification; from who I know to what I do.  This is part of why Charlotte Mason appeals to me in our education walk.  She once wrote, "In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mothers first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air."  That's a unpopular philosophy but its really beginning to be what I think is paramount.  It lends it self very well to the education path we have traveled thus far. 

Miss. Mason even had thoughts on motherhood or womanhood.  "If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play! If she would have the courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents. The mother would then be able to hold herself in "wise passiveness’ and would not fret her children by continual interference even of hand or eye - she would let them be."

Now, I am not exactly sure I agree 100% with that, but the basic premise is that mothers should relax more and not orchestrate every facet of the family's life to her own detriment, i.e, don't be a control freak.  Take time to enjoy life in gentle pursuits.  Sleep in when you can, and don't worry...  The family will not fall apart.  Lean upon your spouse and lean upon God, because when you are rested and well in spirit as well as body, the house will run more smoothly and the family will follow.  The old adage that the "hand the rocks the cradle rules the world" is true.  We wield a lot of power within our hands and its up to us how we use it.