Dinner Time

  How do your dinners go? Is there steaming delicious food sitting on a beautiful table cloth? Does everyone gather round in anticipation? Do your children have impeccable manners and love everything you serve? Do you all laugh and eat and enjoy each others company. Does dinner stretch into hours? Is there dessert every evening? Are events of the day discussed? Do you do some sort of devotional or motivational something after you eat?
  Or....
Are you making grilled cheese, scrambled eggs and toast, or peanut butter and jam sandwiches most nights? Do you not own a table cloth and if you did you wouldn't know where it was? Have you given up eating together years ago because it was just too stressful? Do you have children who hate all food you serve? Do you hide in your room because dinner time means its been officially a ten hour shift with your children and you finally can get a breather because your husband came home and its HIS turn? Do you usually have the baby sitting ON the table sampling everyone's meals, spills are almost mandatory, and the stress levels at dinner are so high that you wish that it never had to be done?
  I was raised with the mentality that dinner time was a 'special' time that the family needed to enjoy in order for our family to be healthy. We needed to be thankful to God before we ate, enjoy each others company and have a devotional afterwards for dinner to be successful. We also all had to sit nicely the entire meal time and not get up from our chair. Somehow that never happened for us. There were many reasons.
  When my husband and I had our first child she learned manners, she ate nicely and everything on her little plate, and dinner time was perfect and precious. She was happy in her highchair and if she misbehaved she was firmly told that her behavior was unacceptable. She learned that throwing food on the floor was NOT okay and so she didn't. She learned to ask to be excused and clear her place. She helped wash dishes and she was happy to do so at the tender age of two.
  Fast forward to now and wow...what the heck happened????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IF I make dinner it is akin to the miraculous. No one starves per say but grilled cheese if often on the menu. Our smallest family member feels sitting in a high chair is a sacrilege, and because his high pitched screams are so ear piercing they rival howler monkeys...we sort of just let him do whatever. Usually he is climbing on all our chairs behind us as we try to quickly eat. He also sits ON the table. It is worth it. I know it sounds like there is no way it could be, but it is. Our five year old has decided that dinner time is the perfect time to show everyone that she is her own person worthy of making her own decisions regarding her life. So she wont eat. I usually feed her every bite under protest. She is usually UNDER the table. Our nine year old is the one who wore us down to this degree...and although he is now doing a lot better...the damage and trauma has been done to his poor parents. Our oldest is still our angel. Everything we taught stuck...to some degree.
   It is funny how for years I stressed about these dinners. I thought I was failing our family because our dinners were so hellish. I didn't know what to do. I was literally in counseling about it! I tried lighting candles and doing all sort of creative things to distract and entice. Some days it worked but often it was another disaster with someone in tears. Last night my baby was throwing handfuls of chili. This morning I realized he had managed to hit the sliding glass door with it. I was writing as he was doing this. Everyone else was eating quickly because they wanted to get back to their movie they had been watching. We used to do devotions, sing a little song..I mean now we do often eat together but it just isn't the same. However I feel okay about it. I feel like that tiny dream of mine has not died. It just in hibernation right now. As the five year old works through her issues and my nine and eleven year old get better at helping out, as the baby gets tall enough to sit in a chair and see over the edge of the table, things will change. I assume at some point I will also have more energy and passion in regards to making food again. That might take a while though. I am pretty done.
  It is all in perspective right? Letting go of expectations ~ going with the process ~ realizing that there are things worth stressing over at some points of the journey and some things worth letting go.
  We have this incredible table we all sit around. It has been in my family for generations. It is very old and countless families have sat around this table sharing memories, fighting, crying, laughing and enjoying. This table is not giving up on my family. I know it. I also know that sooner than later our family dinners are going to be better again. It is going to be good. So if you are in the stage where you have these hours long family dinners, your food is delicious and incredible and your children akin to perfection...I salute you!!!! And if you are in the stage that I am in...I am with you sister! We shall keep keeping on.