A completely inadequate answer, but in the midst of taking care of children, it was all there was really time for. This has been a long journey, and one I am still struggling to understand and walk. I've spent several years maintaining a household, educating children, going to Bible Studies, faithfully attending church, yet living with the nagging feeling that there is more to life than this. There was a time when I thought I found the American Christian life of a home educating wife and mother fulfilling - but that was gone. I was bored. I was depressed. I was always overwhelmed, no matter how much or how little I was doing. I was praying, involved in a Bible Study, going to church every week, most days had personal devotions - yet something was still missing.
I was so busy "doing", I wasn't just "being". As I've looked back to when I started becoming dissatisfied, I realized it coincided with some major life events in which I made some very small, yet very significant changes. Not that I ever had it all together, or was ever completely content - I am too human, too selfish, too prideful for that - but when a few things were removed from my daily life, I gave up those things that really make me - me. For as long as I can remember, I've had music at the core of my life. Whether it was lessons as child, singing with a choir, working as church organist, then as church pianist, much of my week has always involved music. A change in my husband's job changed that. I went from multiple weekly rehearsals and daily practicing, to 15 minutes once a week in church with a team that had no means of practicing often trying to keep 5 wiggly children in-line at the same time.
The second thing that had always been core to my life was study. I love reading, researching, learning, questioning, and reasoning. Through my formal education years, my life revolved around it. As a young teacher I was constantly reading new research, striving to find new and better ways to reach my students and understand their development. As a new mom it was parenting - and with our first 2 children having exceptional needs, reading, researching, and experimenting with ideas, activities, and approaches to meet their needs. Then it was being challenged with grace-based parenting, instead of the moralism so prevalent in the church and homeschool communities I was in. Then it was homeschooling - I was the only person I knew doing it, so it took a lot of thought, prayer, reading, experimenting to find what this new life-style was and how it works. Then it was Bible Study, first as a participant then as a leader - diving into the Word of God in ways I never had before. Going beyond the stories, theology, and application to the heart and character of God. Then life changed. I was no longer needed for bible studies. I had been through curriculum so many times I had it memorized.
Then I made probably the biggest mistake - I began listening to voices, well-meaning voices from God-fearing people, who told me I was in a stage of life where my only priority was my husband and children. Someday I would miss it all. It was selfish to want more. God had called me to serve them and the music, the teaching, the study was pulling me away from that. So I threw myself into meal planning, lesson planning, home making - doing all the things a good wife and mom is supposed to do.
They missed the point of life. My role as wife and Mom are roles I play - they are important ones, but they do not define me. They can be taken away at any time. I can wake up tomorrow to find I am no longer a wife, no longer a mother. There is no guarantee that a year from now I will be a chaplain's wife and home educator. The one thing that will never change, the one thing, the only thing that really defines me is who I am in Christ. The core of who I am, what really satisfies, what makes me complete is Worship. I was not created to be a mom. I was not created to be a wife. I was created for Worship. What I lost when I gave up music and study was not extra activities that pulled me away from my purpose - I lost how I was created to Worship. Those rehearsals and practice times always began and ended with time to just enjoy music for the sake of the music. It was through hymns, choruses, Bach, and Mozart I most clearly heard and saw the heart of God. It was how I poured out my love, my hopes, my dreams, my sorrows. It isn't surprising that in college when asked to write on a theological work I chose "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" - because through a hymn I understood the heart and soul of the Reformation and grace. In study and teaching, it was never just preparation for a class or work, because the "work" always lead me to a place where I was searching for the fingerprint of God. I saw Him and understood Him in pedagogical theory, Piaget, and Plato ways I couldn't in diapers, dinners, and dusting.
In "doing" all the "right" things, I stopped Being who I was created to be. The irony of the error of those well-intentioned voices is that I was a better Mom and a better Wife when I was taking the time to "be". This is the heart of "schole". Schole is not about relaxing, kicking our feet up, and putting the work aside. It is enjoying things for their own sake. It is enjoying the music for the sake of the music itself. It is reading the book for the beauty and value intrinsic to the book. It is taking a walk for the sheer enjoyment of Creation. It is doing things just "to be", not "to do". As created beings, it is worship. It is marveling in the music of the spheres, the praise of creation, the creativity of the created simply because they have been given to us to enjoy. The natural result in true "schole", is true, real, meaningful, soul-changing understanding of the Creator. It energizes us for the daily work, it pushes us toward doing more, because it opens us to seeing the hand of the Creator in the necessary work of life. It was in seeing and understanding God that I was able to love the diapers and discipline. Praising through Mozart made it easy to praise through meal planning. Struggling with Daniel opened my eyes to see God working through an angry pre-schooler. Allowing the lyrics of "Who Am I" to touch my soul placed in me the grace, patience, and love I needed to be the wife my husband needed me to be.
The only way I can "do" all things that need to be done, is if I am "being" who I was created to be.
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