Back to School-ish and Family Traditions

Every year on the first day of school, while my kids are munching on cereal and getting ready, I can be found in my pajamas, complete with messy hair and socks with flip-flops, coloring on my driveway with rainbow-colored chalk. I do a giant letter/number outline for each child, filling it in with their name, school, and teacher. I also ask my kids what they want to be when they grow up, and I include whatever answer they give me, especially when that answer makes me chuckle. This year’s surprise answers were tow truck driver and “fighting Army guy.”

Despite the nontraditional beginning of schoolyear 20/21, I stuck with our tradition, making my boys get dressed and take pictures with their empty backpacks. They humored me, smiling and squinting into the rapidly rising sun while I stood on a stepladder snapping photos and looking like an extra mom. I’m rarely this over the top, but on the first day of school, I embrace it— thanks, Pinterest

With life getting back to a semblance of normal, I’m working on reordering our days. School is beginning for our big boys, complete with daily Zoom calls— the homework soon to follow. Our daughter has a school schedule that we’ve created with the help of her therapists, teacher, and nurse, plus she has therapy appointments at home. And the adults’ balance of life, church, and work is looking more and more routine and predictable.

Though I’m mostly happy finding normal again, our normal can be a difficult thing. It’s scheduling gymnastics— even when we’ve culled our calendar. It requires meeting diverse needs most of the waking, and some of the sleeping, hours of the day. As much as I adore it, our normal is often a mental and physical load to bear. And as stay-at-home-mom, master scheduler, and doer of mundane things, much of this load is mine to carry.

So on top of my traditional back-to-school photos, I have begun a tradition of my own. This marks the third summer that I’ve worked my way through an 11-week devotional called Walking with God in this Season of Motherhood. The first summer I did it, our youngest was just born, and our eldest was transitioning into kindergarten. That baby is now a toddler who talks non-stop, my oldest is a reader, and my second son is a kindergartener. It’s incredible how quickly time flies and how much changes from one year to the next. In this rapidly changing season of my life, where the days seem long and monotonous but somehow change in the blink of an eye, I need a reminder that this parenting gig is done best when it’s God in me parenting my children and not just my best effort.

My kids are ready for this school year. They’ve got brand new backpacks, fresh notebooks and folders, and pencils that are sharp and ready to be used– plus they’re Zoom pros. With their teachers, they will navigate this school year, refreshing and building on skills previously learned, and they’ll reach the end with an expanded set of knowledge and experience. As students, the work they do, the foundations they build, will continue year after year as they learn and progress. And even though I’m not in grade school anymore, I’ll do the same. I’ll work with my heavenly teacher to build on the things he’s taught me, refresh the skills that need some work, and keep growing in experience and maturity as I let him create the mother that my kids need with every changing season.

Teach us to number our days carefully
so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.
Lord—how long?
Turn and have compassion on Your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with Your faithful love
so that we may shout with joy and be glad all our days.
Make us rejoice for as many days as You have humbled us,
for as many years as we have seen adversity.
Let Your work be seen by Your servants,
and Your splendor by their children.
Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us;
establish for us the work of our hands—
establish the work of our hands!
Psalms 90:12-17 HCSB