I Want To Slow Down With My Kids This Summer

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Happy May!  This month holds the unofficial start of summer.  Maybe you’re like me and your calendar has started to fill up.  You’re excited about the summer’s plans but you’re also feeling a little bit anxious about how you can fit it all in.  This had been the trend for me for a while now and this year I’m trying something different.  In this episode I’m sharing why I (really) want to slow down with my kids for the summer.  

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I knew I needed to slow down because of the stress I was feeling.

In between tears I told her that we wouldn’t be able to visit her that weekend.  It was too much. 

We’d been planning to pack up the kids and drive 4 1/2 hours to my grandparents lake house in Minnesota.  This is one of my favorite places. It’s a place where I hold so many special memories of growing up. It’s somewhere I want my kids grow up knowing.  We’d already had to cancel one of our Minnesota trips earlier in the summer. Now my husband was working unexpectedly over the second weekend we were supposed to visit. 

If it had been a year earlier, I would’ve had just one baby to tote around. I would’ve packed him up and we would’ve been on our way.  But with two littles in tow I just couldn’t do it.

My grandma told me that she understood.  She’d been here.  She’d stood in my shoes as a young mom trying to do and be it all.  She raised four babies and when her twins were born she had four kids under five years old. 

Hearing her tell me that she had to say ‘no’ to a lot of things when the kids were little was so validating for me.

I started Embracing “No”.

Embracing ‘no’ is something I’ve been trying to do since way before I had kids. Now it feels even more important. When I have too much on my plate I started to feel stressed and overwhelmed.  I’m not the mom I want to be to my kids or the wife I want to be for my husband.  I’m not experiencing life the in the grateful, connected way that I want to be. 

When summer plans started coming up this year, I could feel the beginning of overwhelm setting in. I can recognize this because I start operating from a scarcity mindset.  I feel like there’s not enough time or resources.  Then I start feeling like I’m not enough and my life is not enough.

As soon as I recognize these feelings I started going straight to the calendar. Usually, I can look to our schedule and see that once again I’ve overbooked us.  I feel like more often than not I’m overbooking us.  I’m always surprised by how much space raising two wild and wonderful toddlers takes up.

Why am I constantly underestimating the amount of space I need to feel good in our routine?  I realized that some pretty big changes have taken root in the way I’m living in the past few years. I used to mostly live my life for the parts that were eventful and excited.  My life felt a lot like this quote: People wait, all week for Friday, all year for summer, all life for happiness.  I lived a lot in the space of “I’ll be happy when…”. I was more focused on finding happiness in the destination than I was on finding joy in the journey. 

As I’ve made intentional changes in my life I’ve noticed something very serendipitous starting to happen.  Instead of waiting for happiness at the end of the week, the end of winter, the end of a challenging season, I started living for joy in the ins and outs of everyday life.

I need to slow down to make more space to live for joy.

I’m really proud of this shift because it’s something I’ve been working to cultivate for a while.  I know this is more in line with the way God wants me to live. But I’m running into a problem. I’m entering a season where there’s more obligations and expectations about how I need to show up.  My old expectations aren’t fitting into my new way of operating my life.

It takes up more space to live for the journey.  I’m not rushing through the week to fill my obligations so I can have space for happiness on the weekends.  I’m living at a slower, more intentional and connected, pace every day.  The problem is that I haven’t reallocated my resources so that they are equally spread out though each day.  My expectations of what my summer weekends look like are taking up too much space.  

My expectations of frequent travel to see family and friends all summer requires me to spend my weeks recovering from the past weekend’s travel. In this season that looks like unpacking, laundry, caring for overtired kids while simultaneously preparing for the next trip.  I’m constantly trying to hurry up and get it all done.  There’s not enough space for intention or connection.  There’s not enough room for joy in the day to day. I’m not meant to live in a state of constantly preparing for the next thing.

I’m learning what’s really worth saying “Yes” to.

I really need to honor how much space it takes to travel with the kids right now. They don’t just pick up and go super easily. DJ’s diet is super restrictive and requires a lot of preparation when we travel.  In general, the way I want to be nourishing our family isn’t conducive to a lot of traveling.  

I’m realizing that very few trips are really worth sacrificing my day to day peace and joy. This is hard for me to accept because I want all the things to be worth it. I want to do all the fun things, see all the people, have all the relationships.  But I know I need to start prioritizing my priorities.  My number one priority is showing up as a present and joy filled mom and wife.

I’m scared of what I’ll loose when I say ‘no’. But I know the cost of not learning to say ‘no’ is much higher. So I’m ready to take the next step in living the way that God wants me to.  It really doesn’t require anything of me except to make space for God and leave room for him to work in my life. It requires less thinking, less planning, less stressing, and less expectations for what my summer should look like. I’m giving myself permission to let go of all of these things so that I can live in the way that’s meant for me.

Kids are encouraging me to slow down to the pace that God actually wants me to live my life.

A quiet, peace filled summer is a radical idea to me but I can feel it calling me.  I feel the roots of this starting to grow deeper.  I feel them spreading out beyond this summer and into the way I’m surrendering my expectations to God in all areas of my life.  This looks like letting life happen for me instead of always trying to plan and control.  It looks like giving God the room he needs to let good things grow in my life. So I’m focusing on the present and being a good steward of the gifts God’s given me instead of always going on the offensive and being proactive.

I’m letting my kids slow me down this summer.  I believe they are slowing me to the pace that God actually wants  me to live my life.  I’m brushing off the lie I believed that kids shouldn’t slow me down. I’m letting go of my old ways of thinking that it’s somehow a disservice to myself to slow the pace of my life for my kids.  That it’s better to scoop them up and pack it all in.

The things I’m missing out on aren’t meant for me right now.  What’s meant for me now is being the caretaker of the precious gifts that are my kids. This is time I won’t get back. I don’t want to miss the special moments by resisting the call of a slower pace in these years with young kids.