The Annual VBS Dilemma

Today someone asked me if I would teach the nursery class in vacation Bible school this year.

Bring on the tortured mental cogitations.

When I was 15, good-natured old Alvin Helmuth asked me if I would teach Bible school.  I nearly swooned.  SOMEONE had ASKED me to TEACH.

ME!

to TEACH!!

I have a feeling Alvin went home and told Mary, and she said, "Ach, Alvin, didn't you know Dorcas is only 15??  She can't even drive yet.  And she's such a silly little thing.  Ach, I don't know.  Maybe you should talk to Amos about it."

And Alvin said, "Ahhh, Mary, she'll be fine."

Well, I wasn't exactly fine.  I had a class of wild little boys who turned and ran out the back door when I turned my back, and who squeezed the Oreo cookies and hollered that the poop was coming out.  I thought they were a bunch of little heathens and a thoroughly lost cause.

They would not listen to me.

Well, in thinking back, I wouldn't have listened to me either, but instead of recognizing the problem, I poured out my heart to my friend Millie after class, that kids these days just weren't taught to RESPECT AUTHORITY, while Dad sat out in the pickup waiting to take me home, seeing as how I didn't have my license yet.

Wow.

Then I went on to teach every summer for the next 8 years, and after that first year things went pretty well, seeing as how there was no direction to go but up.

I didn't teach Bible school again until many years later when we had been to Canada and back, and I didn't have a baby any more.

That time I had the nursery class, with 21 students, including a little girl who would jump up and take off running for the parking lot during our outside story time, and I had to leave the ninety and nine to go after the one.

VBS lasted for two weeks back then.

It was during harvest.

I just about went crazy.

I remember one evening I came home worn to a frazzle and found all the supper things still spread out on the island.  The guys were lounging around the living room reading the newspaper.

I unleashed all my frustration into a speech that would have intimidated John Brown.  "Just so you KNOW, when I am off all evening teaching BIBLE SCHOOL, I do not APPRECIATE coming home at 9:30 and finding SUPPER all over the KITCHEN when you are perfectly CAPABLE. . . ." and so on.

I think I've taught a time or two since then.

This is what I've found: we are all much much happier if I stay home and keep things going so my fine flock of talented children can go teach, than if I teach myself.

Some years I've had three teaching.  This year Ben and Emily have signed up.

And they still need teachers.

So Alvin Helmuth 2.0 asked me.

I feel like I ought to.  My youngest child is 13, for goodness' sake. Why could I NOT?

Other moms do it, moms with more and younger children, and more action going on, and just home from trips, and leaving soon, and company coming, and gardens, and canning.

So, seriously, why can't I?

Well.  For one thing, I do not handle stress well.  I teeter constantly on the verge of depression.  When I have too much going on or am away from home every night, with no one picking up the slack in my absence, I feel like my head is going to explode, and all my relationships suffer, and it takes a long time to undo the damage.

Yet the word "ought" blinks above me in neon lights.  And I feel the wordless rebuke of those spiritual moms who just teach because it needs to be done, and smile cheerfully, and stay up til midnight doing green beans, and apparently trust God more than I do.

And yet.  I know my life, my limitations, my history.

Can I say NO knowing that God and my husband know the full story, and just rest in that without trying to vindicate myself to the rest of the world?

P.S. Next morning: I think this is why it's such a dilemma: because VBS is a cause I believe in, and someone needs to do it, and I get very irritated when there's a job to do and people take off with a dismissive, "Nope.  Can't do it," knowing good and well it means more work for everyone else.  Well, duh.  There's plenty I could do to make it more feasible for someone else, like cooking supper for them.  As my Facebook friend Gertrude said, "Sometimes when you can't do a task, you can enable someone else or make their week easier: fix a casserole for another teacher's family to have for supper, send cookies home with all the teachers,snap a bushel of beans, etc. -- or whatever you do well, you can do for others."