June: in like a lion and out like a lamb, just like the weather in March.
Ella is at Appalachia Service Project, serving in Dickenson County. Teams like the one she’s with travel to Central Appalachia from around the U.S. to repair homes in some of the most beautiful country in our land.
She will never be the same – because of the opportunity to serve, because of the worship, because of the people and their stories, and because she’s never gone this long with limited cell service. I am so ridiculously proud of her.
Ella and teammates working on flooring.
Today, Audrey has been cancer-free for an entire decade. A decade. It was and is just an unbelievable glorious gigantic miraculous miracle.
My favorite Facebook Memories moment.
About a week ago, one of Ella’s pals shared a moment she captured on Ring Dance night that she forgot to send, and it’s just *the* most adorable thing. It was a really windy evening and this picture captures that, along with the looks of happiness that young people have on their first big night as kind-of adults.
I love these smiles.
At the trampoline park, Audrey encouraged a room full of kids to line up boys against girls for dodgeball – and then talked serious 5th/6th grade trash. I loved every minute of it. Girls won.
That look!
I had my mammogram this month, in the month I hate to have doctor appointments. There’s no picture of this. The follow-up letter informed me my breasts were dense but fine. I’m not sure how I feel about them being called dense, but I’m considering it a win that I didn’t get something in writing that called them saggy.
June sky on one of those nights I was anxiously waiting for test results.
My parents had their 50th wedding anniversary and we all celebrated under the big tree in my sister’s yard. I love that tree, and it’s lesson that deeply planted roots result in abundant life and growth.
Two seconds later he gave her rabbit ears and she rolled her eyes.
Pancakes played Fortnite from the pink gaming chair that is Audrey’s throne. She loves when the girls are home to play all day, but she gets far fewer treats now that Audrey is here all day monitoring my every move. Cute cuddly things need treats!
Princess Pancakes Sassypants
Even the cats got along this month. While Henry Fonda always loves Katherine Hepburn, Kate rarely loves Henry and generally delights in bullying him.
A rare moment when Kate tolerates Henry’s affections.
June was good. The angsty minefield month is finished, and it was really, really good. I am ridiculously blessed, and thankful to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that I ask or think.
This morning on the way home from an eye appointment with Ella, I saw my eagle. I feel such a kinship with this bird and this is the lowest and closest he has ever been flying near me. The pictures are not good because I didn’t think to get the phone/camera in time because I was too busy watching him and delighting in the moment, and also trying to convince my child I had not lost my mind because I wanted to pull over and really see him. But he was literally hovering over my car, maybe 10 feet above at one point.
He’s my reminder of Isaiah 40:31 – But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
He’s been my encouragement from God on many occasions. He appears and I hear softly whispered words in my mind: this is just a moment you’re having and this is for only a short time and you got this and this weariness will pass and just keep going.
One of the songs I’m stuck on right now, that moves me to teary eyes every single time, is Champion by Dante Bowe and Bethel Music.
You are my champion, giants fall when you stand undefeated…I am seated, in the heavenly place, undefeated, with the One who has conquered it all.
A couple weeks ago as I was headed for a scary doctor’s appointment, one of my best friends reminded me that God sees three daughters in my family – He doesn’t just see Ella and Audrey as His daughters, but He also sees me as His daughter. I forget that sometimes. I am a Mom and a caregiver, but I am also a child. His child.
And I was reminded of that again today, as my eagle flew right into my line of sight and hovered in seeming slow motion over and around me. In all the years I’ve lived here I have never seen my eagle that close. What a thrill and a blessing and a surprise and a shot of absolute joy. It was an unexpected gift from a Father to His daughter. Just because.
I sat with my Mom at lunch today and thought OH GOOD LORD over and over and over again. It’s Mother’s Day and I wanted us to have a nice lunch with good conversation and then all these things – MomLife – kept happening. The wait time was going to be 45 minutes, someone didn’t want pasta, someone wasn’t sure of the kind of cheese used to make that restaurant’s version of mac and cheese, someone wasn’t finished with their story before someone else started their story and we had to fully assess the unfair interruption, and we even had fake nails came off which required a thorough inspection of the floor under our table. OH GOOD LORD can we please just all eat and let Grammy have 5 minutes of peace?!
I spent some time today wondering at what point in MomLife things calm down. And then I started to wonder if it doesn’t really ever calm down, and maybe it just changes. Maybe MomLife really boils down to moment after moment and day after day and year after year of thinking and saying OH GOOD LORD, just in a variety of different ways.
The first OH GOOD LORD moments happen during pregnancy. My favorite is when women hover around you to relive their awful birth experiences for you. Ones where they knew better than the doctors and nurses, the epidural didn’t work, they needed 119 stitches, and they ended up not eating or drinking anything for the 3 days they were in labor. What we should do is tell those women to shut it, but instead we just internally think OH GOOD LORD.
Women also say things like get ready for sleepless nights!, breastfeeding is best, let me share my recipe for puréed organic purple carrot and guava baby food, and I wasn’t sure the dishwasher was hot enough to really get things clean.
Fact: You will suffer from lack of sleep.
Fact: Millions of babies throughout history were not breastfed and somehow magically made it to adulthood as high-functioning wonderful people.
Fact: Purple carrots are the worst. (Or, millions of babies throughout the last century have somehow made it to adulthood on food prepared by Gerber.)
Fact: I have praised God for my dishwasher.
You know what’s useful info for a pregnant woman? Prepare yourself for leaving the hospital wearing the largest underwear of your life in the most comfy sweatpants you own. Your large underpants will hold a variety of attachments including, if you’re lucky, a to-go cool pack from your favorite nurse. Additionally, your largest-ever underwear will be held in place by an outer mesh underwear because your regular underwear will need reinforcement to hold everything in place where it should be. You will not allow yourself to sneeze or cough for days for fear that the inner and outer underwear and all the attachments will fail, and at the hint of any potential cough or tickling in your nose, you will inwardly cry OH GOOD LORD. The good news here is that at no point while discussing big underwear with other Moms have I ever encountered a woman who had a breach – so sneeze carefully new Moms.
Once you’re out of the infant phase, people love to see and share pictures of little ones smashing birthday cake. Moms are prepared for those birthday cake messes, so they’re adorable. However, every other day of the year messes are unexpected and not adorable. And even with the occasional ones you find funny, you will also find yourself groaning OH GOOD LORD as you stop to consider how to get gum out of carpet, if it’s OK to put tissues back in the box if they were all pulled out but not actually used, or if the amount of lotion that got in their mouth while they were playing with your lotion is the amount that requires you call poison control.
When your kids are off to elementary school and another child hurts your child’s feelings, there are two separate OH GOOD LORD moments. The first is a prayer for help in the moment of your awareness of the incident, when you are inwardly desperately thinking about the right thing to say to make them feel better. The second is minutes or hours later, possibly even when your child is asleep or has moved on, when you have a moment to think about it and you become enraged that the offending child could possibly say/do that to your child. In that moment, you think OH GOOD LORD because you suddenly realize that you are mad enough and irrational enough to lose your cool and yell at someone else’s child (and that child’s parents and their neighbors and all their relatives) and you don’t even care if you end up with your mug shot on the nightly news.
Then your elementary child asks crazy hard questions that no book can prepare you for. If you’re a well-seasoned parent, you might be able to conceal your reaction to learning that your child put a baby doll dress on your girl cat and secretly married her to your boy cat and has been praying they will have kittens. Or you could be like me and calmly explain that the cats are fixed and can’t have babies and so this is not one of those things to pray about…and that will result in your child questioning why you did this really mean thing and prevented them from having a family and OH GOOD LORD did I mess that up.
When your kids are off to middle school you learn that teachers send parents emails when children get good grades and that teachers call parents when children pull pranks that get out of hand. In the moment you realize a teacher is not calling to say your child is the recipient of a Nobel prize, in the pause where that teacher is searching for tactful words, you will think OHHHHHH GOOOOOOD LORRRRRD this cannot be good. And then later when your child gets home from school and you say Hey, your teacher called me today and that child says something like Mommy, I really thought it would be funny and tells you their thought process, you think OH GOOD LORD this child got this love for shenanigans from meand Is it possible this is my fault? This is maybe actually kind-of my fault.
Ella’s photobomb fail!
As my girls get older I find that the vast majority of the time they are out of my sight, when they’re at school or in a friend’s yard or at a sleepover, I think about them but I don’t worry about them. But the moments when worry or panic do hit me, my emotions are overwhelming and OH GOOD LORD how often they are irrational. The possibilities in my head can go from the slightly possible to the absolutely insane in about 5 seconds once I see a news alert of a school shooting, or learn of a child who’s been abused or abducted or addicted to drugs. I struggle sometimes to rein in my thoughts about those possibilities, something I suspect will never completely go away and a part of MomLife that is really, really hard.
Without a doubt, OH GOOD LORD exasperation is the most common of all the OH GOOD LORDs. These occur when you find your child’s dirty clothes resting literally right in front of the hamper, when dirty dishes are sitting on the counter literally right above the dish washer, and when you are asked to provide your child with a reason why they must bathe. Sometimes when questioned about an empty toilet paper roll, which coincidentally is just two feet from a bin of full rolls of TP, all children in my house will claim they have not used the bathroom that day. And OH GOOD LORD, really?
But the best OH GOOD LORD exasperation occurs when your children are embarrassed by you or shocked by you. They might, for instance, indicate that your camo pants are not appropriate even for hanging out in the yard. They might call you “extra” when you open their water bottles even though they have literally never opened a water bottle for themselves. They might ask you to jump on the trampoline with them and then say things like Mommy, that’s good for 45! Or they might offer to do your make-up so you can “really look good.”
And just when you think you can’t possibly handle another OH GOOD LORD exasperation or panic or fear moment, your child will say or do something that makes your heart melt. They might bring you breakfast for dinner or make you a card that says their favorite thing about you is your kindness. And you will tear up and think OH GOOD LORD I love these kiddos so much and I am so thankful and lucky to be their Mom.
This Mother’s Day was filled with OH GOOD LORD moments, and it was a really great day. I may have caught the girls fighting about slime containers but I also caught them praying for folks who need healing and planning with friends how to raise the most money for the local children’s hospital. Such is MomLife – a mixture of fun and peace and chaos and loud and quiet and annoyance and love all in one day.
Happy Mother’s Day to my Mom, who continually shows me how to be a Mom and who I am absolutely certain still has regular OH GOOD LORD moments because of me. Sorry I’m perpetually late to church and sneak in to the back row wearing my jeans and flip flops.
Fourteen years ago, in the middle of the night, I was doing the exact same thing as I am right at this moment: laying in bed with my daughter just a few feet away, marveling about her.
Ella was born not long after midnight, on April 1. After all the post-delivery chaos of Apgar scores and examinations and congratulations, everyone went home and I was alone in a dimly lit hospital room with Ella. I had a daughter, a little swaddled baby making faint sighing noises in her sleep. I was a mother, and it was really just remarkable and unbelievable that a life had come from me. We were a team now, me and this little being with giant blue eyes that had seemed to look all around my face when I whispered to her. We were a team and that little girl should have been terrified because the Mom on her team had absolutely no idea how to care for a baby or what she was doing.
I wasn’t a child who’d dreamed of being a Mommy. I wasn’t a teenager who’d babysat to make extra money. I wasn’t a person who held other people’s babies. In the more than three decades of my life prior to Ella’s birth, I’m not sure if I held any baby other than my nephew – and that was always supervised by people who knew what they were doing. My poor kid had a Mom with a very short resume. I’d gone to a class to learn how to breathe consistently during her birth process, I’d learned in that class that I had to always always always hold and support her neck and head, I’d read a couple of books about babies and I’d even read ahead in the infamous What to Expect the First Year manual, and a nurse maybe 30 minutes prior showed me how to give her a bath. At any Mom company on the planet, I would not get the job.
Ella is 14 years old today. So the good news is that despite my lack of qualifications and preparedness, I did manage to keep her alive. Although I’m not sure that’s really much of an accomplishment. What you learn as your child ages and as you have multiple children is that they’re built pretty tough and I could have probably better utilized my countless hours fretting about things like possible milk or nut or bee allergies, could she get botulism if honey was simply nearby, when to switch from car seats to booster seats, and even if french fries with pointed ends could be too stabby in her mouth.
The real fretting settles in later, and seems especially heightened at this stage. The real question to fret over is am I guiding her toward being a good person? Or maybe it’s could her life be better if I did something differently? Or maybe it’s have I laid a solid moral foundation? Or maybe it’s am I properly protecting her from bad stuff and bad people? Or maybe it’s am I properly preparing her to inevitably face bad stuff and bad people? Or maybe it’s am I setting a proper example? Or maybe it’s have I prepared her to say no and yes at the proper times?
There is no end to the things I can fret about, and sometimes I just get exasperated with all the fretting I cannot seem to relinquish and I think I should have stuck to raising cats – I am certain I can do that! And yet I must explore all these questions and constantly assess and reassess what’s missing and what’s off and what’s right and what’s wrong. I have to do that because I’m a Mom, and because my greatest responsibility and privilege is to be her Mom. No other responsibility or people or thoughts or desires or work are more important than her and Audrey, or than what I need to do as a Mom.
I’ve never been one of those people that wanted to throw their kids giant birthday celebrations every year. It’s exhausting to plan and host those events and it’s exhausting to take your kids to them throughout the school year. Last year we had a party because Ella was finally a teenager and because I wanted to bring her joy in a time of confusion and sadness and anger. And so until about a week ago I’d expected to have a quiet birthday with her this year. She started talking about having a friend or two over and then another friend and then another, and then it was going to need to be different people on different nights and I found myself panicking at the thought of having very little time to prepare. And just as all the panic was at its peak, I realized that Ella has only four birthdays left in her official childhood. Four. Four is nothing. A tiny number. How could there possibly be only four childhood birthdays remaining?
So we celebrated. We had two sleepovers, two cakes and a set of cupcakes, stacks of facial scrubs and masks, trampoline jumping way after bed time, shopping with gal pals at the mall, singing at Olive Garden, and countless pieces of candy. I’m exhausted and my house is even messier than the mess it was last week. I have a recycle bin full of empty pizza boxes, a basket full of laundry, a trash can full of makeup wipes and KitKat wrappers, and a Momma heart full of gratitude.
I am grateful for Ella, a young lady who’s lovely inside and out. A kind and thoughtful friend. A super smart math whiz. A talented singer and actor and gymnast. A child of God who prays about everything, from the need for guidance about big issues to finding her phone charger. A young lady full of empathy and the desire to care for people who struggle. She may not keep her room clean, but she will take money out of her own wallet for CHKD or to feed the homeless or to buy a treat for a friend who’s feeling down.
I am grateful for the village of people in her life. I am grateful for the choices she’s now making about what kind of people to add to her village – I may have made the initial choices about who surrounded her, but she’s old enough to make her own choices about those things now, and she’s choosing well. And I am grateful that she’s such a wonderful young person despite all my flaws and mess ups.
In the stillness of night tonight, in a dimly lit room just like on our first night, I laid quietly by myself and prayed for sweet Ella. No matter what she may encounter in her life I want her to know deep inside and beyond a shadow of a doubt – or as my Dad would say “that she knows that she knows that she knows” – that she is loved beyond measure and that it is a privilege to be her Mom. I pray that she would love life and be filled with joy. I pray that she would get into the college she wants and have the career that she wants and get the life partner that’s just right for her and that she will keep her priorities straight. I pray that when she’s happy or sad or mad or has messed up or done something great, she will always want to call her Mom. And I pray that I will always have discernment about how to pray for her and how to guide her and how to be a blessing to her.
Happy Birthday, Brave Girl. I love that you are 14 and still call me Mommy, even when your friends are around. In exchange, I will no longer publicly chase you to smother those perfect cheeks with kisses.
I love photographs. Color photos. Black and white photos. Sepia photos. Panoramic photos. School photos. Nature photos. War photos. Historical event photos.
Not only do I take a ton of pictures thanks to the convenience of my iPhone, I have tons of old photos in boxes and frames around my house. And a few times a year I still have prints made, and I meticulously put pictures of the girls and our family into albums for each of them so that at some point they can browse through their childhood memories (in order, courtesy of OCD).
I love anyone’s and everyone’s old photos. I will look at them repeatedly and notice tiny details and reason in my head about what led up to the photo, what followed the photo, and what environment surrounds the photo. Photos tell stories, and I guess more than anything, when you boil it down, I am actually in love with the history and the stories that photos document.
In the last few months I’ve felt awkward about photographs. I want to continue to document the girls’ childhood memories and not have a big gap in their lives and in their books, but documenting a part of their life that includes sadness and grief feels…not wrong, necessarily, but also not right. And yet everyone’s life includes periods of sadness and grief, so why does it feel odd? Is it wrong to show us vulnerable? It’s not wrong to show myself vulnerable, but it does feel wrong to reveal their vulnerability and their down moments. So is the answer then to only show the pictures of the phases of our life that are fantastic? That’s also wrong. Not only is that what we all see all the time – everyone’s day boiled down to an adorable “your story” on Facebook and Instagram – it’s not the truth.
And yet at the same time, I feel like it’s wrong when I do post some of our daily happy pictures. We are actually laughing and having fun when we’re at bowling alleys and trampoline parks and farms and our driveway, but if I show us having fun will people think we’re fine – that we’ve moved on and life is great and we’re past our little speed bump? That life is back to fantastic? Back to blessed? That’s not the truth, either.
And then…the big what if. What if happy pictures lead people to believe that what happened wasn’t really a big deal because we’re able to have fun so quickly – and if so, does that mean that what happened to our family wasn’t really all that bad?
That thought makes me angry. Just because we make decisions to find positives and to find some happy and to experience some joy – and make no mistake, those are DECISIONS we make – does not in any way make a statement as to the severity of the actions of others who hurt my girls. They persevere despite those actions. They persist despite those actions. They keep moving despite those actions.
But I digress. The point, I guess, is that I think of pictures differently now. Maybe I overthink pictures. I desperately want Ella and Audrey to look back at this time and not just think about the fact that our family changed. I want them to look back and be able to see how courageous they were. See how far they’ve come. See that they could always count on me. See that I was strong.
I think they’ll be able to see some of that. But I think they may also look back on a photo and think ‘that’s the picture where we were feeding a piglet, but earlier that day Mom really shouted at Dad.’ That’s what I think when I look at some of the photos, so I have to assume they will, too. And that makes me sad. And yet, it is truth.
I keep mulling over this snippet from The Blindfold by Siri Hustvedt.
‘You really believe that there are subjects that shouldn’t be photographed?’ George said. He spoke evenly and softly. ‘Maybe I do,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘You believe in censorship then,’ said Stephen. I looked up at Stephen. His face was tight, combative. ‘Not censorship,’ I said slowly. ‘That’s external. I mean control from the inside. After all, pictures can lie, too, can convey falseness rather than truth.’
We need to tell more of the stories behind our photos, so that we are all a little more real with each other. Here’s our story in three photos from this weekend, and it’s really the story of the stages of girl vanity.
Audrey is in disguise in her picture. Basically, I think the young just don’t care what they look like in photos. Audrey wants to try every snapchat filter every day. I also regularly find pictures she’s taken to try to see up her own nose or in her own ear, or where she’s trying to see how big she can make her teeth appear. The young either find all photos of themselves awesome in some way or they don’t think twice about the photo after they realize they cannot see up their nose into their brain.
Girls in the middle of growing up care a lot about photos. Ella takes photos of herself all the time and although it doesn’t seem possible, I think she discards more photos than she keeps. Middle School social media is somewhat confusing, but I think it can be summed up like this: girls like all the photos posted by all other girls at their school, but then hop onto House Party with just the girls they actually like to talk about the photos they just “liked” posted by girls they may or may not like whose photos they didn’t really like. Got that? I mean, it’s so simple really.
And then there’s the old: me. Instead of “old,” maybe we’ll just characterize that group as women over 40. When we end up with a picture where only *some* of our wrinkles show, especially at a time we’re trying to grow our hair out, we call that a win.
Brave, Anyway 