Helpers

I'm not sure what's more beautiful: the little vase of blue flowers the girls picked for me yesterday...

 ...or the spring weather that accompanies it outside the window! The grass is starting to green up, and though the trees have not budded, they're getting close. Although I'm not sure how much time I'll have this summer, I'm really looking forward to getting some time out in my gardens!

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People will often tell me they "don't know how I do it." Well, the answer to that is two-fold. One, I have many helpers.

I walked into the computer room the other day to find this:

 There's a basket of clean laundry and a few children. One of them is right next to the laundry basket, and, it turns out, she is folding laundry!!

 Not just any laundry, though. She's digging through and folding and stacking the little cloths we keep under Mira's cheek to catch her drool. We go through many of these every day!

 All on her own, that two-year old (in all fairness, she's now mere weeks away from three years old) folded, stacked, and put away the little pile of pink.

And she's happy to be a part of it.

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  "Hey Mira, the phone's for you!"

"Here. I can hold it for you, since your range of motion doesn't quite allow for that just yet. Don't worry. I've got you covered, big sis."

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Last week at church an older friend approached me and asked if she could come over someday and clean for me. Clean what? Well, anything. So I said yes. Today was the day, and she dusted her way through at least four rooms of the house, and there's nothing like someone trying to dust your shelves to get the right momentum going to get some of those little random things that tend to collect put away, so I did. It was also a GREAT time to suggest to the three kids with desks that they clean off their desks, so that looks much better as well. 

A few weeks ago we had a similar offer from someone else at church, that one for cleaning our bathrooms. We had not planned to show her the bathroom in the basement (very much a 1930s farmhouse basement bathroom!), but she found that one, too, the brave woman!

I am learning to accept help when it's offered. Not too many years ago I would get frustrated sometimes when Matt would take a few minutes to switch laundry, thinking it suggested that I couldn't handle it on my own. I'm learning that I need help, and to humble myself enough to say, "yes!" when someone offers. A good friend gave me some good advice when we were in the process of adopting Krassimir, and it has stuck with me: when you do not ask for help, or do not accept help that is offered, you are robbing the body of Christ of the opportunity to serve.

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And, if you'll remember, the answer to the "how do you do it?" question is two-fold. Here's the second half.

Much of it just doesn't get done!

And that's mostly okay. Dust? Why, I haven't dusted in so long I can't remember the last time I did. I know that some of the house was dusted when my mom and "Oma Sue" (as the kids call her) watched our children last September when Matt, Gloria and I were in Bulgaria.

Cleaning the bathroom? Why, we do that on a more reactive than proactive basis. And since we have enough events to "react" to, the bathroom stays clean enough to be healthy.

When I was in the hospital with Mira, Matt and I had a late-night phone conversation, during which we both noted all of the things that were falling through the cracks. He made a wise remark. As long as none of the children fall through the cracks during this crazy time, we'll call it good. And none of them did, so it was good.

We may run things a little bit differently around here, but that's part of how we make it work. 

To loosely* quote Bogomila from a conversation we had last night while she was petting the cat in her room before bed, "Crazy family, crazy cats, crazy Bogomila." It works.

*Because anything that comes through google translate is "loose" at best!