I wasn\u2019t looking forward to Spirit Play this week. \u00a0I thought about what I might say. \u00a0I thought about what I might not say. \u00a0I fretted just a little. \u00a0And then I took a deep breath\u2026and the day began. \u00a0The day began slowly with a spacious amount of time for everyone to wake up, eat and get ready. \u00a0And then my son refused to go to church. \u00a0And I happened to be the only parent in town on Sunday. So the negotiations started, and the tears, and the screaming, and the consequences. \u00a0I managed to remain mostly cool calm and collected in the face of the very loud and tearful resistance. \u00a0I got my children into chapel and headed down to our Spirit Play room. \u00a0I greeted the other teacher and took some more deep breaths and went to sit on the rug. \u00a0The morning was already harder than I thought it would be.<\/p>\n
The lesson this week continued to revolve around all families matter. \u00a0This lesson was on families who have experienced divorce. \u00a0This is a hard subject to talk about with kids\u2026both kids who have two homes those who live all together. \u00a0I wondered if there would be any questions. \u00a0Actually I wondered if I would be able to get through the lesson. \u00a0Our family is currently in the middle of this very transition. \u00a0It\u2019s hard to talk about. \u00a0I don\u2019t really understand myself how we got to this place. \u00a0I wondered if it would be hard to read about kids who sometimes are with one parent and sometimes with another. \u00a0So, just in case I would cry during the books, I started by sharing a sorrow that my family is going through a divorce and that was what we were talking about that day. \u00a0And I shared a joy. \u00a0And usually the kids are very good about listening to each other, but suddenly everyone was sharing and wanted to talk about their joy that was like mine. \u00a0It took a while to get things centered and calm and for us to take turns listening. \u00a0That wasn\u2019t what I expected to happen.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t cry while I read the books. \u00a0I didn\u2019t expect that either. \u00a0And once the children were off and playing everything hummed along quite joyfully. \u00a0I was really expecting this to be a hard class. \u00a0Instead I got to hold a child who was sad to separate from his mother and he called me over later to look at his play-dough sculpture of an angry bird. \u00a0Another child simply sat next to me as I read her a book and leaned in so that we were cuddling. \u00a0Many of the kids engaged me in laughter as we pretended to fall asleep and wake up. \u00a0I laughed. \u00a0I was hugged. \u00a0It was really nice. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t what I expected.<\/p>\n
I am so grateful that our church is a place where we can talk about hard stuff, even with children, especially with children. \u00a0I\u2019m glad that our circles of community can engage in holding sorrows and laughter. \u00a0I am glad to join your children in play and learning and wonder. \u00a0I am glad that this is a place where I am loved no matter if I\u2019m put together\u00a0or if I\u2019m going through a hard patch. \u00a0I am grateful that I can be ok in myself and where I am in the midst of community. \u00a0This week the children taught me not to anticipate my own grief, but to be actually where I am. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s not so hard. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s not what I expected. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wasn\u2019t looking forward to Spirit Play this week. \u00a0I thought about what I might say. \u00a0I thought about what I might not say. \u00a0I fretted just a little. \u00a0And then I took a deep breath\u2026and the day began. \u00a0The day began slowly with a spacious amount of time for everyone to wake up, eat and get ready. \u00a0And then my son refused to go to church<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":146,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions\/146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sarahcledwynblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}