How Do You Do It All? My Top Ten

I read frequently another home schooling list. In last few days, someone asked, "HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL?". I offer her plea anonymously:

I am having a very hard time right now. I feel like no matter what I do I can't do it fast enough or well enough. It took me the entire day just to fix my husband's scout shirt today (We just moved). I feel like I can't give my kids all the attention they need. I can't teach them the things they want to learn. I never get enough sleep. i have an 8 yo boy who needs help with writing and math and my 5 yo girl wants to learn to read. my 2 yo and 8mo baby girls want to be held and swung and call for my attention all the time. I know I am supposed to home school every time I pray about it. I know it. I just want to know how do you do it all? How do you feel like your brain is not turning to goo? And how do you keep from feeling like you have failed every day?

What has followed is a long long series of posts entitled "Re: HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL?" Half of one days digest and all of today's digest. It appears a lot of people on this list understand and can empathize.

I had a list of ideas come to me.

1) I hurt for you
2) Upper level class in values and priorities going on.
3) Hitting the wall is sometimes the only way we come to God.
4) There has to be a bright side in all of this. Find it, hang on to it.
5) Is hubby aware?
6) Kids are resilient.
7) Can someone else help with the 2 clingons?
8) Are you a list person?
9) Go to sleep, it will be better in the morning.

and finally....

10) Frustration is a mild form of insanity. It is the inability to adjust expectations to reality. (Author/Leader/Entrepreneur Grant Sharp)

If someone else would mind sharing their thoughts I will certainly pass them on. If you have a link to a blog or two where you have written about this before, I will pass them on too.

I remember those days. So many children. All wanting something. Cyndy wanting to quit. Dad holding fast to the tiller as the great ship Weiss weathered the storm. We always came out the other side of the squall. Having now 30 years of sailing under our belt, we know the truth of the line from "White Squall", "You can't run from the wind. You face the music. You trim your sails and you go on." Cyndy would be the first to tell you, that what she became and what I became and what our children became when the squares were up, in the middle of the ocean, with no land in site, and God was our only lifeline, has been worth it. I look forward to meeting together with all you old salts as we trade tales of the open sea and all of our journeys and adventures.