Adventures in letting go

Remember another thing on my list of 36 is to learn to let go?

Yes, well, I'm doing well in some areas (business), okay in others (things that are not good for me) and quite badly in others (babies!!!).

Fortunately, I remembered my ESTJ profile in the Motherstyles book said exactly this so I take comfort in that fact. That I'm not too weird. After all, 6% of women have this style. I just googled and it's the 2nd most common MALE style. Hmmm.


But back to the babies.

I have now "let go" four times:

1. When we took them to daycare for those 3 hours in December
2 - 4 Leaving them in the children's ministry at church

So after this post, D and I started thinking.

I will admit that I pushed a LOT.

But finally we decided that we needed to start letting the kids go to children's church so we could go to big church and enjoy the message.

I especially felt like I needed it (because I'm ministering again through those talks I'm doing) and told D that if he was uncomfortable then we'd go to the family room in the morning and I'd have to make a single trek out to the church on Sunday evenings.

I don't think he was too keen on doing the bedtime routine by himself :) so he agreed to at least try.

"What's the worse that can happen?" - this is a sentence I use quite often actually................. :)

They have now been on 6, 20 and 27 March. On 13th the kids were sick as was D.

Day 1 was actually the easiest, maybe because there was only one other toddler there.

They screamed when we left but I felt okay because there were enough workers to each console a baby.

Day 2 was worse - lots more kids and lots more screaming. The workers distracted them with their snacks....

When I got there (I'm so impatient that I leave the main auditorium before the closing prayer and RACE towards my kids), they were walking around outside. The worker told me they only calm down when they're outside. LOL

Day 3 (this Sunday) was terrible. We started walking towards the room and they started freaking out.

OH MY WORD.

But this time D was very certain and sure so I went with it.

This is what we do well - the one is always normal when the other is not. It's been this way our entire married life and is really helpful so the whole thing doesn't collapse when we go through tough times.

We left them SCREAMING Mama and Daddy but D held my hand, we said our goodbyes and that we were going to church and off we went.

I could hear those screams echoing in my mind for a long time afterward.

Eventually, after Praise and Worship, I told D to please go check on them. I know I'm a little softer with this type of thing and I'd just take them and undo the previous weeks' training.

He returned and said they were fine. He peeked through the window and they were playing (Connor) and eating (Kendra) but were fine.

After the service (but again before the official closing) I was out of there like a rocket.

I think it must be funny to see me speed out of there (especially to those who knew me pre-kids) because I'm usually a big socialiser after church.

When I collected them, Connor was himself immediately but Kendra was super-clingy and kept asking, "where's Daddy?"

Poor things.

Or poor us!

I know intellectually that they will be okay in the long run and I keep telling myself, "no-one's kids have psychological issues because they're left in children's church for 1.5 hours" but my word, it's hard to let go.

As I always do, I tried to rate myself on a scale of 1 - 10. I think I'm a 2 now. I was probably a -3 at first :)

Where are you on the letting go scale? And how do you guys do it with the daycare thing?