Advent

First, I offer a candy-making tip: if you're making (say) toffee with (let's just pretend) a dark-chocolate, almond-studded crust, you do not have to go buy the ridiculously-expensive teeny-tiny bottles of Karo in order to get your couple tablespoons of corn syrup. Just use a bit of that huge jug of fake maple syrup because it, after all, is just corn syrup with artificial flavoring.

(And yes, I like real maple syrup better, and we get it upon occasion, but you should see our kids go through pancakes. Real maple syrup all the time is really not a realistic prospect.)

(Also, does anyone else think it's silly that teeny-tiny bottles of corn syrup for baking are so costly per ounce when that same corn syrup can be had super-cheap in, say, ketchup? Or cereal? Or soup?)

But, to the real subject: please forgive the blog silence. I've had a severe case of introversion, and it's extended to blogging.

That's not quite the right way to put it though. I've always been an introvert, but not a very extreme one, and usually my life has included enough quiet time that my introversion wasn't a problem. I expended energy in social situations, sure, but I always had the chance to recharge - usually while alone, reading or writing.

But recently our kids have all been at really demanding stages - not bad, just demanding - and taking care of the four of them all day has taken every ounce of energy that I had. Then, when in the evenings I was supposed to go and interact with other people, I felt resentful, because it felt like those social interactions were beating me up, stealing what I needed in order to take care of my kids the next day. I got to the point where I actually wanted to weep every time I thought about going out anywhere. I was simply exhausted.

Somewhere in my head, I thought that I wasn't allowed to be exhausted anymore because, after all, our twin daughters were not twin newborns anymore. It was fair to be exhausted when I had two babies, I thought, but now that they were toddlers, I ought to be doing as well as any other mom. I didn't want to believe everything I'd read about how twin toddlers can be harder than twin newborns - after all, most of the twin toddlers in those articles were holy terrors, and our girls are actually pretty sweet and agreeable little people.

But I'm not exempt. Having two one-year-olds just IS hard. Even if they're sweet. And I am allowed to be this tired. And if I am this tired, I need to rest. Not to be proud and say I can do it all without help. It's the same old lesson again: I am not God. And I am glad.

So, even though I think this will all be better in six months (two two-year-olds, a four-year-old, and a five-and-a-half-year-old sounds better than two one-year-olds, a three-year-old and a five-year-old), I've been working on learning how to live well now in the situation I'm in. I was tempted to just say, "Keep going, push through, get it done," but that is the exact same attitude that led me to breaking both of my arms five years ago, and I'm extremely wary of it. Better to stop, observe, think, and pray.

So I have been, and that's included stopping blogging for a while. I'm picking it up again, but slowly. I love Advent though, and want to write a little about it, and this is the place to do it. I just felt like I had to apologize (in the older sense of the word) for my absence first.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell