Last week at our Bible on Ruth, one of the questions we were asked was, “Recall a time things seemed to work out surprisingly well for you. How did you explain this success at the time?”
The answer came into my head as quickly as the horrible anxiety once had: daycare. Oh, what a blessing our daycare has been.
We were told to start our daycare search early and we did, but it was still too late for our local private christian school. Their baby room was full and already had parents on a wait list if anyone dropped. I would like to take this moment to say that I think Jesus was a procrastinator, so shame on all those parents who had taken the time to sign their tiny fetus’s up in this class before us. I mean, Jesus showed up 4 days after Lazarus had he had been in a tomb. Yes, he had a miracle up his sleeve, but the tardiness remains.
Oh the daycare woes, I conjured up once I realized we couldn’t get into the Christian school.
I was 90% sure I would need to quit my job, otherwise Ray would surely experience extreme trauma and neglect. And Bible story time, when would he ever hear the Bible stories? The Christian school read the Bible to the babies everyday.
After several touring several other, already-booked places, we finally found a private school that still had an opening.
I was ticked because this particular school requires parents to attend an almost half day orientation before the your child can enroll, and taking a morning off from my day job for this really annoyed me. Hubs was concerned because the school motto was “God, Family, Discipline” which somehow made him quite concerned they would turn our baby into a Trump supporter.
Out of necessity, we both put aside our concerns and signed the baby up because they were the only place I had found thus far that still had openings. Oh, and that was my other concern. Because, they had openings, they were probably the pits. Months of worry followed, especially in the weeks leading up to his first day.
When it arrived, I wore waterproof mascara.
I emotionally prepped myself for total breakdown. It was inevitable. Leaving your baby with strangers you don’t know, feels like walking off a cliff. I very purposely had planned to work from home for only about 3 hours or so. Surely he would go bananas from missing me if I left him any longer.
However, when I walked in to drop him off I couldn’t find anything wrong with the school. The room had an area lined with various models of play gyms, another area of baby swings and a row of cribs. Soft music played and there were two kind teachers. I put Ray under a play gym and he was as content as a cloud in the sky. His eyes gazed from one corner of the play gym to the next, he swatted at the ribbons that hung down. The anxiety and fear I had dreaded for so long amazingly didn’t surface at all. I ended up working for almost 6 hours before coming back to get him. He was alive, fed and just as content as I had left him.
Almost a full year later, I can say that our daycare experience has remained as wonderful as that first day.
His teachers did foot art with him for every holiday or big event, even the Solar eclipse! I now have a book full of little foot crafts. Proof, not only of how very talented he is, but also how fast he has grown.
I will never forget one day, when I went to pick him up and he was busy in a bouncy saucer, and guess what? Christian music was playing. The kind that talks about Jesus. It was such a revelation-moment for me. The baby didn’t have to be at Christian school, to have experience God and Jesus. Duh, God is everywhere. He says it himself, “I will never leave, nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5), even at Donald Trump school.
Not everything has been perfect, of course. His two main teachers from last year recently left. One of them was actually recruited by her church to show Jesus’ love there, instead of at Ray’s school. I don’t know if I should be more mad at her or God about this, regardless, I’m still grateful for all the time Ray had with her.
I didn’t have to quit my job and even got an opportunity to go full time.
Not everything has been perfect, of course. We are a very busy family with two working and sometimes traveling parents. Also Ray has come home from daycare more times than I would like with a little note that says, “one of my friends bit me today.”
My gut response to this is to find which jerk bit him and punch him/her. But then I think how bad I will look if I am caught punching a baby, and how, “oh yeah, its just a baby.” Baby’s biting each other is probably a way they communicate. Like “Hey! Gimme that toy” and just another horrible symptom of our human nature. He has also come home with a handful of germs, viruses and bugs leaving him with a runny nose and a rare fever. Hand, foot and mouth was by far the worse and we almost didn’t survive it. But that’s another blog for another day.
The point is this, Ruth followed God and moved back to Bethlehem, and her move went surprisingly well.
Likewise, we followed our only daycare option, which I now believe was the providence of God, although was unaware of it at the time, and that has been one of our biggest surprise blessings of all.
Thelma Socia says
Brittany I love your journal. CJ is the most blessed person I know to have found you and then bring the most joyful baby into the family.
thegingerlifeblog@gmail.com says
Thank you Thelma!!