Super Powers!

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This week the people of Moldova, the country in which we are currently residing, celebrated Women’s Day. Isn’t that a wonderful concept? It might be one of my new favorite holidays.

So in honor of Women’s Day, and because at this point in the school-year we homeschooling moms tend to start dragging and feeling rather drained, I thought I would suggest a list of Super-Powers that we moms have been given — and should be celebrated!

There are, of course, the more obvious abilities that mothers learn early on, such as being able to interpret monosyllabic “words” yelled as imperatives with dire urgency by toddlers, navigating gingerly around a multitude of toy land-mines through the living room, and doing all things, including making dinner, one-handed with a 20-lb baby perched on one’s hip.

But I have noticed other super-powers that mothers have been granted as other needs arise as well, such as:

Selective super-hearing Some sounds can go undetected and ignored for long spans of time — for instance, it often takes me 10 minutes to hear something like a child banging on pots and pans when I am concentrating on a spelling lesson. But, even in the midst of explaining a complex math concept to one child, while another one is nagging me for water and another is singing a song at the top of his lungs, I can keenly detect that a baby just crawled into the bathroom upstairs.

Selective super-sight A friend of ours who’s a federal agent once explained how he automatically scans every room he walks into, sizing up any potential threats or suspicious characters. Moms do something similar: within 30 seconds of walking into a room I can identify the top 30 potential choking hazards, the top 10 things that will get broken by a toddler, and all of the heavy objects that could fall on a child’s head when he pulls on a tablecloth, curtain, or shelf. (Unfortunately, even with this super-ability, a child’s power of observation is still much stronger, and will inevitably find the other 20 hidden dangers I did not spot.)

Super-communication skills Not only can veteran homeschool moms handle listening to several conversations at once, but they have also learned how to finely tune the pitch of their voices so they can answer, “Good, Honey” in just the right tone, subtly convincing each of the multiple children clamoring for the mom’s attention that she was speaking directly at him/her.

Super-reflexes None of my years of soccer and tennis practice and training ever developed the level of coordination I now have. As a picture of God’s grace, perhaps, I have seen a direct correlation between my increasing clumsiness (due to sleep-deprivation, brain-cell loss, baby-on-hip syndrome, etc.) and my ability to catch multiple items falling through the air at once.

I’m sure there are many other skills that other moms could add to this list; this is all my muddled mind can come up with at the moment. I’m thankful, though, that even though my brain may be wasting away at a rapid rate, homeschooling and motherhood have stealthily given me some new skills and abilities! Maybe I’ll be able to put these on my resume someday.

With all this said, though, I must declare that pretty much daily I realize how incapable I truly am. Even with these stealthy super-powers, I very regularly fail to see/do/protect/help, and it is only by the amazing grace of God that anyone in this house is even alive! All thanks to Him for the gracious gifts He gives us, and the ways He provides when our weaknesses prevail. Those truly are reasons to celebrate!

Amy is a thankful daughter of the King, finding joy in seeing redemption on a daily basis.  Happily married to her best friend from college, Peter, she is the mother of 4 children, ages 3 through 11. Currently, the family is residing in Eastern Europe (the small country of Moldova) for six months, while Peter is teaching at a university there.  They are thankful to be a homeschooling family that could easily pick up and move for this valuable cross-cultural experience!  Amy writes on her blog, franklyjournaling.blogspot.com, as a way to record her family’s milestones and experiences, and also to express the thoughts and emotions that come along the way in the colorful journey of motherhood.