As the children wave goodbye to their father a monster returns. The motherly Control Freak.

This is just how you picture me, isn't it?

On Friday I drove my husband… to work! He always jokes that I drive him mad but I only drove him to work 😉

He is part of an exercise that is heading away up north for six weeks. They are driving heavy duty trucks. 76 of them! I wouldn’t want to get stuck behind them on the highway as they have a speed limit of 75km/h. Yesterday the convoy drove for 12 hours and travelled a whopping 450 kms. Glad I’m at home. They are taking one week to get to their destination, 4 weeks there and another week to get home. I hate it when he goes away, I feel like half of me is missing. Plus, he’s getting too old for all this. He enjoys working in his workshop and doing all that he does but the adrenalin rush of these exercises wears a bit thin after the 100th time.

The other day the children and I were discussing the fact that Dad was going away for 6 weeks and I asked them a question.

Me: “You know what it means when dad goes away, don’t you?”

Master J replied, “Yes Mum, it means the house goes into lockdown.”

Hehee, I had to laugh. I can see why he would say that.

When I am responsbile for everything in the home I do things differently to John. Last time he went away for some length of time I wrote about my thorn in the flesh and how I handle (or struggle) with things. I sometimes struggle with law and grace when I have responsibility on my shoulders.

This ‘lockdown’ involves more rules. It’s how I cope. Quite possibly I have control freak tendencies, which is not good. Needing to control everything is not a biblical attitude. When this spills over to wanting to control my children then I am in dangerous waters. I have often thought though, that many homeschool mums are prone to this way of thinking though. Oh I believe it comes from a pure motive – we desire the very best for our children… but that control freak attitude is something that God wants to deal with.

I like to control things. I like to feel like I am in control of my family, of my homeschool. As the children get older, I see that this can lead to some problems if we continue in these thoughts/ attitudes. We cannot and should not control our children’s thoughts. Controlling their environment to the point where we are controlling their attitude is not healthy and does not raise adults. It raises mini children, incapable of truly thinking for themselves but parroting the things they believe we value. Control cannot achieve what we want it to. reaching the heart is a more scary way to go about it. But that means giving up our need to control.

Husbands carry a lot of weight on their shoulders. They bear a lot of responsibility. As a wife it can be easy for me to not recognise this and just keep piling more things on his shoulders. Times like this can show me exactly how much my husband carries and I become really thankful and appreciative of him. I can’t wait till he comes home again.