I Don't Let Little House on the Prairie Steal My Joy Anymore

Oranges, turning 40, and accepting my real life

“Those kids in Little House on the Prairie got oranges for Christmas, and they were happy!”

I used to wear out my husband’s ear with that line.

For years, when my kids acted ungrateful or entitled, my thoughts went straight to the oranges and handmade mittens the little Ingalls girls were so pleased to receive on Christmas morning.

When my kids couldn’t seem to do chores without bickering and complaining, I compared them to the Ingalls girls dutifully helping Ma around the house and cheerfully babysitting Baby Carrie.

When my kids had massive amounts of toys splayed throughout the house but complained they were bored, I compared them to Laura Ingalls’ one toy, a handmade doll named Charlotte.

When my kids were picky eaters, I compared them to the patient Ingalls girls enduring months of potatoes during long winters.

And while I’m talking about comparing my kids to the Ingalls girls, I should confess that I really used to struggle with comparing myself to their mother.

Caroline Ingalls—Ma—is the loveliest, wisest, most patient of mothers. But if my husband had moved our family around the American Midwest every few years and made us start over again and again—with backbreaking labor, rudimentary housing, and usually some kind of devastating natural disaster involved every single time—I’d be dead (or maybe he’d be dead). Caroline just didn’t seem to struggle like a normal person would with all that change…like I was. The number of times we’ve started over anew with a career change over the past 18 years has been one of areas of greatest struggle for me. Comparing myself to patient, complacent Caroline always made me wonder if I was being a drama queen!

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You know, I’ve written and spoken so much about how comparison is the thief of joy. But for years, secretly comparing myself and my family to a children’s book slid through my defenses somehow.

I kept all this comparison mostly in my own head, which mostly made only me miserable, you would think. But the thing about negative thoughts is that if you don’t hold them up to the Light and speak the truth to them, then you end up living out of them. I was critical and grumpy and discouraged about my family a heck of a lot more than I needed to be during a whole season of my motherhood. And yes, I think my family probably noticed some of that.

I do want to say that I absolutely believe these sweet books have real merit and a place in the classic children’s literature canon. I loved them, as a kid. Little House on the Prairie and the Ingalls family inspired me to work hard, to be grateful, to enjoy simple things, and to find joy in family life.

It’s understandable that I really wanted my kids to like these books. I wanted my kids to be inspired and delighted by them like I had been! (I even made homemade maple sugar candy once in my homeschool era to peak their interest in them. It came out a sticky/rock hard mess but we still ate parts of it.)

But in reality, the books aren’t anyone’s jam in my house. So far, a couple of my kids have read one or two of them, but only because they had to for school.

I’ve had to accept that a lot of things about my children and children’s childhood aren’t what I once envisioned.

Off the top of my head…we don’t sit around reading aloud classic literature as a family like me and my beloved Read Aloud Revival tried to make happen. But my crew loves a good emotional America’s Got Talent singer audition or Dude Perfect video. We like playing trick shot basketball in the front yard, random Saturday morning dance parties to One Republic or KPop Demon Hunters songs, and a good dad joke. Even though I’m home full time again as of this spring, I had to work outside the home for about 4 years and the kids had babysitters during school breaks and summers. I don’t manage a ton of liturgical living activities or feast day celebrations.

Years ago I hosted a talk at my house for my homeschool group’s moms night out. The topic was about integrating faith and mental health. During the discussion after the talk, the quietest young momma there said something I’ve never forgotten: “To have good mental health, I think you have to accept yourself as you really are, and you have to accept the actual people and situation that are right in front of you.”

Isn’t that the truth.

A wife and mother with good mental health doesn’t permit herself to constantly compare herself and her family to something she read in a book or saw on the Internet.

She accepts her aging body, her need for 8 hours of sleep, her introvert’s need for a nap after a big event.

She accepts her lifelong (and still going strong) quirks and weaknesses.

She accepts the fact that one child eats nothing but PBJ, pizza, and meat sticks.

She accepts the fact that her kids deal with things at school that their homeschooled friends don’t.

She accepts the fact that she can’t give her children—currently 16, 14, 12, 9, 8, and 3—all the same childhood opportunities and experiences.

She accepts the fact that there are no re-dos in family life; there’s only entrusting, returning, and adjusting as you go.

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I’m not 40 yet—the big day is in August. I’ve met many women who told me they enjoyed their 40s the most out of any decade of their life. I wonder if that may be true for me.

It’s certainly a good time to think about what I’m permitting myself to bring with me into the second half of my life.

Comparing myself to Little House on the Prairie is definitely not coming with me.

Accepting each unrepeatable and irreplaceable and precious soul—as-is—in my real-life family is coming with me.

And gratitude.

That’s coming.

Gratitude is built up and built in for me, moving forward.

Friends, it is miraculous what God has done for me, in me, through me, and (most of all) despite me, in the past 40 years.

My spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

And my heart is so, so grateful for my story so far, my little house, my little family of 8, and my little life.

Here’s to continuing to grow into the grace and confidence and holy acceptance of saying: This is me. And this is us.

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