Archive for March, 2010
A Break and a Bit of Reading
I’ll be taking a break until next Monday.
If you’re an Imperfect Mama just like me, you might enjoy reading Sally Clarkson’s two blog posts on parenting.
If you haven’t discovered her already, consider checking out one of her many books that offer a sense of purpose, hope, and grace for this crazy journey we call motherhood. I recommend Mission of Motherhood, The Mom Walk, and Dancing with my Father. And her blog offers a daily dose of wisdom, truth, and encouragement.
See you next week.
The Best Ten Minutes of My Weekend
The Imperfect Mamas Club-Guest Post
Mothering through the Panic Room Phase
We moved into a new neighborhood when our kids were nearly 3 and nearly 1. Our household was busy and we were encountering some significant parenting challenges…. but big picture, things still felt relatively manageable. Our new next-door neighbors, whose four children were 2 to 8 years old, were among the best parents my husband and I had ever met; we loved their kids and their parenting style. My neighbor friend described to me the intensity of having four kids under six. “My bedroom was like a ‘panic room,’” she told me. “When I felt like I was about to lose it, I’d go into my room, close the door, and scream into a pillow.”
At the time, I hadn’t hit that stage yet in my mothering. Now I have. There are definitely days when I feel like I might lose my mind at any moment. Days when I can’t believe it’s only 11 AM and I have eight more hours to get through till bed-times. Days when I desperately wish I could be somewhere – anywhere – else. Sometimes I find myself in a whole week of panic-room-style days.
Being an at-home mom of little kids is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Other significant undertakings- traveling weekly for a demanding consulting job; building our house from scratch; starting my own business; climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, even – pale in comparison. Recently I thought, “I wish someone had told me how hard this was going to be.” Then I realized they had… I just didn’t listen or believe. It’s not till you’re in it yourself, going through the day in and day out, that you fully get it.
Being needed all day long by multiple small humans is unbelievably wearing. And then, managing a household in which things constantly need replacing and replenishing – groceries, clean clothes, diapers, wipes, toilet paper, soap, dog food – could itself be a full-time job. If I had one day of finding every single thing where and when I need it, it would feel like a major accomplishment. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were just home management plus child management…. If, for example, I was happy to put the kids in front of the TV for hours and serve pre-packaged foods for dinner. Problem is, I’m not happy with that; the minimum effort doesn’t cut it. Doing this job with excellence – attending carefully and well – requires infinitely more.
When I hear moms who work outside the home say they “like “and “are good at” their jobs… boy, I get that. I like my (compensated) job too – at least, I like the space and independence and freedom that doing it brings (in comparison to tending well to my kids and home). My consulting work (which now occupies 3 – 5 hours of my week), even in its more frustrating and taxing moments, is way easier than being home full-time with my kids. And in the short and measurable runs, I feel much more competent and successful doing it than when I’m correcting my seemingly untrainable child for the 11th time on the same issue. More successful than working, over weeks and months, with children apt to show me their worst and most sinful sides in the home space we occupy together. (Note: this is not to knock moms who work outside the home or to say there’s no place for doing so. I understand that the landscape is complex and am not judging, here or elsewhere.)
The landscape of parenting today sells mothers such a bill of goods. All the options available to us cloud the realities – the full-time working mom, the part-time working mom, the part-time work-from-home mom, the full-time stay-at-home mom. The attachment mom vs. the scheduled mom. The child-led mom vs. the firme, high-expectations mom. We think, “This is so stinking hard. I must be doing something wrong. There must be a better way.” We feel discouraged and guilty. The darn photos we incessantly view on Facebook of other people’s families, the endless parenting magazines we fill doctor office waiting rooms - they show happier families, more fulfilled mothers. Hint at more successful strategies and results than ours. Can’t this be easier?!
The reality is: yes, there are parenting strategies that work better than others, critical principles that improve things when we employ them. But they’re no fix-all. It’s just darn hard work. We’ve been conditioned by our culture to see life in terms of instant results, short-cuts, and superficial happiness. But these have no place in mothering young children.
A friend of mine told me about an older, wiser couple she knew who called their earliest years with kids the ”Dark Years.” At first this struck me as sad – seeing such a tender and beautiful time with sweet babies int this light. But now I appreciate the candor and honesty that this viewpoint brings. This couple counted the cost; they got it. They didn’t deny that it was really hard at first; then they acknowledged and rejoiced when things got easier as their kids aged… when they got out of the ‘panic room’ stage. Because it does end, and it is worth it. We get moments of knowing this now, while we’re in this phase, and later we’ll get to relish it more fully when the intensity of life with young ones dissipates. God is with us. He humbles us as we mother young ones and teeter on the brink of insanity; he gives us the strength and vision we need. He equips us to fulfill our most challenging calling, that of mothering young children with excellence to grow and love him. God’s promise is that, as we trust and lean on Him, we will make it through the Panic Room stage and it will be worth it – for us and our kids.
Thanks so much for your truthful, yet encouraging words. I think one of my Imperfect Mamas Club t-shirts should read Hard Doesn’t Equal Bad. You can read more from this Mama here.
The Imperfect Mamas Club is an invitation, really almost a plea, to start sharing our struggles and our successes amongst Mamas, rather than put on our best hair and shoes whenever we get together. Are you more encouraged by the mom who appears to have it all together, or the mom who obviously loves her kids but also shows her slip and admits to her hard days and the fact that she doesn’t have it all together? I want to be the latter mom and help others be that mom too, for that path leads to grace and to the Lord, the other leads to guilt and disappointment. Would you like to find more Imperfect Mamas and/or let you own scratchy voice be heard, head to the original post and click on The Imperfect Mamas Club to the right (under categories) to see all related posts.
Please email me if you’d like to submit a story, reflection, word of truth or encouragement.
Deep Thoughts Always Happen in the Car
The other day in the car, a conversation across the minivan.
Mookie: “Mommy, those girls were talking foolish and using bad words.”
Mama thought: Oh what a wise, mature girl.
“Wow, I’m glad you could recognize that and choose not to be a part of it, it’s can be pretty hard when you’re with friends.”
Jellybean: “Yeah, they were also being kind of mean to the younger kids and keeping me from playing on the slide or coming in the house.”
Mama thought: Is this the same child who pushed her brother off the bed and then left him crying quietly on the floor while she went back to sleep?
Jellybean: “Why were they acting like that? You know how I’m all in to taking care of God’s creation and trying to make it like it used to be, well, people are God’s creation too so the way we can take care of them is for everybody to love everybody. ”
Mama thought: Ooh, what an amazing child, I’m sure she’s not the same one who hides her brother’s favorite animals and then lies about where they are, enjoying his anger and frustration.
Mama: “That’s great and you know that’s how other people are going to be able to tell how there is something different about your heart, by how you love people.”
Jellybean: “Mama-”
Mama thought: I wonder what wonderfully deep thing she’ll say next.
Mama: Yeah?
Jellybean: “Do crocodiles loose their teeth?”
Giggles, chuckling, the baby starts laughing with us.
Oh that’s right, she’s 7 years old. I’m 32 and I still have a lot to learn about loving people. And the dental health of a crocodile.
Little, Big Man
Two children and two girls into motherhood, and then-a boy. By then the excitement of getting to try out a boy had given way to fear. ”I know girls, what in the world will I do with a boy, and my goodness, aren’t clothes for boys so boring?”
My friend Beth looked me in the eye, “I love my girl, but I am in love with my boy. Just wait.”
How many times I’ve repeated that statement to my friends expecting their first boy, the same look in my eye. I’m in love with this little, big man.
The third child, the only boy, let’s just say he gets a way with things sometimes. Did I mention he’s a serious kisser? I mean he can let loose with the kisses and the hugs. To the point that his sisters start rolling their eyes and sighing, “Why does he have to talk about kissing you all the time?” One day they’ll understand. I’m not putting any stops to it until, inevitably, it happens on it’s own.
On the other hand, I really want this little man to become a strong, Godly, father and husband. Which he be may if he’s able to survive his sisters.
This weekend marked his fifth year with our family. For this first half-decade, he’s gotten along pretty well as the little brother and the super sweet son. This year he got promoted to big brother and demoted from being the baby in the house(though the boy thing still works in his favor). Little by little he’s coming into his own-we’ll watch with interest as he creates an identity separate from “brother of 3 sisters”.
But for now, keep the kisses coming little, big man.
“I’m going to be a daddy soon,” said the Boy on the morning of his birthday.
Oh Baby with Baby(Doll)
Baby finds her doll.
Baby picks up doll.
Baby puts thumb in mouth.
It happens every time.
And I fall for this little one even more. Is that even possible?
Broken For Me
“Smash!”
I know the source of the sound without looking(or atleast one half of the crash), the sweet blond head of Drummer Boy has once again made contact with a corner of a table or a door handle, maybe the edge of the bathroom sink. Earlier in the day he stepped on the point of a playmobile sword, and I can’t remember how the bruise come to his knee before I rose from bed.
“I need a band-aid mom.”
It turned out to be the corner of the sink this time. We’ve been here before with the other kids. Around this age their bodies are like one of those quick grow capsules that bursts into a foam animal five times the original size when placed in water. The sudden growth always means collateral damage.
“Buddy, I know what we need. We need to cover youre entire body and head with band-aids so that the next time you fall you won’t get hurt.”
He giggled and forgot about the pain momentarily. Secretly I wondered if we should go ahead and try the band-aid plan.
For a while now I’ve been walking with people in my life who are experiencing painful circumstances, a change from the many periods of my life when I was the one needing a healing hand. In my own life, I’ve held my 4 day old baby before open-heart surgery, and I’ve been on the receiving end of the full brunt of mental illness in a parent.
Undoubtedly my own experiences have made me more empathetic to someone else’s suffering, but a while back it all reached a point when I was no longer walking beside these people but instead swimming away from a growing tsunami of hurt as it spread over me, my friend, and several of my family members. Through their pain transfused to me, I was losing vision. It wasn’t that my faith was in danger, but I couldn’t see the end of the suffering with my finite perspective. I remember telling a friend, “I’m okay, but if someone asked me to explain why it’s okay for these people to be hurting so badly right now, I couldn’t explain it to anybody.” Even though I didn’t realize it then, I was out of band-aids. And more than that I was ready to start wrapping myself in gauze, or maybe a full body cast, to create a buffer from everyone else’s pain.
Several years ago my dad’s mental illness(of which I had been unaware) abruptly took it’s true shape, erasing aspects of the father I thought I had finally gained post-childhood. I remember reaching out to my best friend and she pulled away from me leaving me hurt and confused, wondering why she wasn’t there to listen when I most needed her. Later we talked through it and I tried to understand her point of view. But it wasn’t until I walked in her shoes, feeling and seeing these people break and being helpless to change anything for them, that I really understood how she felt. It was then that I could see that because she cared for me, it was hard not to let her anger and hurt for my circumstances paralyze her own life. And each time I shared more with her it brought further realization that she couldn’t do anything to stop what I was experiencing. She needed to step back, give herself permission to take breaks and feel the sweet(and tough) moments of her own life, and she eventually found a way to give me support in the water without my circumstances drowning us both.
The last few years I’ve been trying to develop a tradition of Lent in my life. A period of searching my heart, understanding the bottomless nature of my sin and how I participated in the pain heaped on Jesus that long ago friday(and I don’t just mean the nails, but the pain of the sin itself). But none of the carefully thought out practices I’ve found in my google search have made a connection to my heart. Instead, the infiltration of pain from 3 people in my life has shown me a lot more than easter traditions. I think about a recent moment when my breaths labored to be released and all the goodness around me seemed dim, reduced. The pain of the three people I cared about cloaked everything in my life. Three people, and I could barely tolerate it.
Then there is Jesus.
I found myself reading a story this week that I’ve read over and over again for 9 years to my children, but this time it sounded different.
“Papa?” Jesus cried, frantically searching the sky. ”Papa? Where are you? Don’t leave me!”
And for the first time-and the last-when he spoke, nothing happened. Just a horrible, endless silence. God didn’t answer. He turned away from his Boy.
Even though it was midday, a dreadful darkness covered the face of the world. …The earth trembled and quaked. The great mountains shook…Until it seemed that the whole world would break. That creation itself would tear apart.
The full force of the storm of God’s fierce anger at sin was coming down. On his own Son. Instead of his people. It was the only way God could destroy sin, and not destroy his children whose hearts were filled with sin.
Then Jesus shouted, “It is finished!”
“Father!” Jesus cried. ”I give you my life.” And with a great sigh he let himself die.
“Mommy, I didn’t know that all of the sin went on Jesus, I thought it just vanished.”
Yes, all of it. Not from three people, or fifty, or twenty thousand, but a number that might as well be the sum of all the sands on the shore for what I’m able to comprehend of it. And Jesus did nothing to prevent or limit the pain. And neither did his Father.
Thanks you, Jesus, that you were broken for me, and thank you for breaking me to know you.
Imperfect Mamas Club-Guest Post
I came across A Path Made Straight on one of those late night blog binges. You know what I mean. By the time I found it I had a running list of all the ways I could be a better mom-better art projects, dress the kids in cuter outfits, take up knitting. As I read her blog I didn’t find myself adding to the list. Shoulders and neck loosening, the main words that came to mind, “Yes, exactly.” Her day sounded like my day, messy. And what I loved best was that even on the very far from perfect day, I could tell Mama Hooper still wanted to get up each morning and be with her kids, come what may. She seemed to want what I wanted, a little more grace each day, transforming my heart to then transfuse it to my children.
Thanks for openly confessing that you’re an Imperfect Mama.
More
The snowman figurine dashed to the floor, one mittened arm lying broken, bent just the way flesh and bone would be, she thought, and Mama sadly scooped it up with her hands. She whose long blonde hair spun as she twirled and caught the snowman and sent him to his fate stood to the side, her hand covering a muffled, I’m sorry, Mama.
And from her knees, Mama smiled and said, You are more important to me than this snowman, precious! It’s all right- let’s see if we can fix it!
But before long (less than ten minutes), and not very far away (about ten feet as the crow flies), came another shattering sound. And this time, a ceramic mama holding her baby close lay in ruins, head and body severed cruelly; even the soft carpet couldn’t save her. The flesh and bone mama knew there was no repairing this one, no- but before her heart ran away with her thoughts, there was a touch on her shoulder, and a sniffle. I’m sorry, Mama!
And the mama turned and pulled gangly four-year-old, all legs and angles and shoulders, into her arms and said gently, and with a smile, It’s all right, Eliana. I love you more than this piece! And they fingered it sadly, together, and rose as one and walked deeper into the day.
And the mama was thankful, and rather proud, for the way she had handled those moments. For she felt thatfinally, she was getting the hang of
But suddenly, the lemonade spilled. An entire pitcher. Right before lunch was served, when food was hot and ready and four hungry souls circled the table in that pure happiness which comes from food that fills…
But the sugary drink left a sticky mess on the table, and she just knew it was dribbling between the cracks and puddling on the spare leaf underneath. Oldest boy fetched a towel and middle boy tried in his eight-year-old way to mop up the lemons life gave them and Mama caught her eyes across the table.
Sorry, Mama, she murmured, all hopeful and vulnerable and waiting.
And the mama tried to smile, tried to reassure, tried to fix all with the Jesus words she knew by rote but still required a channel to be pulled through heart and up and out… but she stayed silent, and smileless, and moved to the sink to wring out the rags.
She tried the words on for size. You are more precious to me than… I love you more than… what? And she knew why the words stayed stubbornly still, did not move from their place to take wing on her lips and fly to the child whose heart lay in her Mama’s hands.
Her time. That was the culprit. It wanted her full attention, did not want to be interrupted by silly spills and severed heads and broken mittens.
My time. Is that it? That’s what is holding me back? Is she more precious to me than my time? Do I love hermore than my time?
Oh, it’s easy to give time when it’s on our “clock”, so to speak. But when it’s taken from us? Well, then, Jesus words require an effort that a stay-at-home mama must hone with preemptive quiet time in the morning, with whispered prayers all day long, with nighttime knees-by-the-bedside talks with her Lord.
There at the sink, she heard her pride crack, and felt as if her own heart were made of ceramic and was severed from the head that now bowed in humility.
Yes. That was the answer. Yes. I love you more than my time!
Their feet were kind of sticking to the floor, but that was beside the point. There were other things far more important.
Such as time, well spent.
