For every awful thing I can name that’s upset our world, there are at least a dozen related things for which to be thankful. For every negative way our lives have been impacted, at least a dozen positives or silver linings. For every mean girl, at least a dozen kind girls. For every disappointment, at least a dozen people or things to make us smile.
The changes heaped on the girls were all unfair. And it’s a lotsometimes.
A lot a lot.
Especially on the night before a holiday, beginning a new holiday season, when the worry in little minds about how things will go is at its peak. And there’s only me to take it out on. And only me to help deal with it. Only me to help try to focus on the positives while acknowledging the not-so-positives. Only me to say “things aren’t the same but they can still be great.” Only me to try to figure out a distraction. Then only me to listen to the confusion caused by people who think everything should be ok by now. Only me to offer understanding for why it isn’t. Only me to help everyone wind down. Only me to say “you’re right, it’s not fair.”
And only me to bite back the commentary in my head. It’ll continue to be unfair for literally the rest of your life because even twenty years from now when you’re an adult you’ll be trying to figure out how to get to four houses during Thanksgiving weekendwhile the people who wreaked all this havoc in your lives will still be oblivious to or not care about the impact their choices had on you and they’ll be somewhere focused on themselves, watching TV or decorating something.
Deeeeeeeeeeeep breath.
And yet, my relationships with the girls are stronger, I think, after navigating many tough moments together. Even the ones where we’ve all been super shouty. (Maybe especially because of the ones where we’ve all been super shouty.)
I get to hear my children giggle with their friends at all hours of the day and night. And I get to see my children with their friends and see the whole “them,” because kids are different with their friends than they are with their parents.
I get to enjoy impromptu after-dinner dessert creations. And then I get to listen to them argue and snap at each other, only to awaken to the alarm they set so they could get up together at 4:45 on a school day to do hair.
I get to listen to their go-to music choices, and realize that at tough moments they both ask Alexa to play worship music. I get to see that they rely on God to help calm their storms, which makes my heart happy and also reminds me that I need to rely on Him more.
I get to see – I am privileged to see – the good times and the bad times and the blah times and the working-through-something times, and the moments of discovery and the moments of frustration and the moments of trepidation followed by the moments of triumph and even the moments of punch-drunk silliness. In part it is simply being present in all of those situations and moments that strengthen our bonds. Sometimes it is really, really hard to be the only one present in those moments but I am so grateful to be present.
I’m thankful for dozens and dozens of things. My Aunt is in town for Thanksgiving. My parents are all healthy and celebrating another holiday season. Home and car and food. My church. Laughter with old friends. My work family. All of our helpers. Teachers who really care. Veterinarians who work you in at the last minute. Chocolate covered raisins. Extended time off this week – time to read, time to prepare for the holidays, and time to watch an episode of The Crown. Photographs. Memes my daughters text or share. Forgiveness. Tender little hearts that want to see the best in people. Conviction. Snuggles and declarations of love when eyes are too heavy to keep open just before sleep sets in.
My cup runneth over with things just from today.
I saw a long post on Facebook recently about “what’s in your cup?” and it really stuck with me. Paraphrasing…If someone bumps into you while you’re holding a full cup, what’s in the cup is what spills out. Tea or coffee or hot chocolate. When life happens, what’s in our heart is what spills out of us.
My cup runneth over…And yet what spills out in a bump is still a bit of a work-in-progress.
Love is never present when there are excuses or narratives or explanations. Love does not coexist with those things.
Love is black and white in terms of its presence. It’s either evident or it is absent.
If a person’s behavior is selfish, the only love involved is the individual’s love of self – not of others.
Love is pure. And love is also honest. We cannot make something not honest and not pure into love. There either is love or there is not.
Love is not just a feeling, it’s a commitment. Be it love with a partner or a friend or a parent or a child. And because it’s a commitment, people can sometimes learn that they cannot count on it once any commitment by that person has been broken.
Children learn to believe in love, or not, at a very young age. They learn to trust in love, or not, at a very young age. They learn to live and love and treat others appropriately, or not, at a very young age. They learn based on the behavior of the adults in their lives, and they carry those lessons into adulthood. Those lessons are either their compass or their baggage.
It’s our job as parents to be the absolute best example we can be. We will certainly fail at times because we’re human. But it’s our responsibility to work on those failures, to admit to our children when we’re in the wrong, and to constantly strive to be better. We’re not the parents of animals that primarily need love and care – we’re the parents of little human people who will emulate us and learn about love from us, and we need to behave like it. It’s our job as humans to be good people, and if we become parents that responsibility grows – we will be accountable for how well or how poorly we managed our human and parental responsibilities, in this life and the next.
I can’t read 1 Corinthians 13 and say that even half of those statements apply to me. I keep a record of wrong doings. I get upset with others. I’m sometimes rude. I don’t patiently accept all things. And the truth is I’m not sure I want to work at changing all those behaviors. In some ways I want to remember wrong doings because I think it may help me make more informed decisions now. I have a lot to learn and a long way to go. I’m not the one who cheated, but that doesn’t make me a saint or any “better” at love. I didn’t sleep with my boss, but that doesn’t make me a saint or any “better” at love. I didn’t commit adultery, but that doesn’t make me a saint or any “better” at love.
I feel the weight of the example I must constantly set. That weight is heavy some days. I worry about the example everyone in the girls’ lives sets – the messages we all send with our behavior. I fail greatly some days and that weighs on me because there’s really no second shot at many things. What my girls learn now about love and trust and commitment and honesty will be the compass or the baggage that they carry into adulthood.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous, it does not brag, and it is not proud. Love is not rude, is not selfish, and does not get upset with others. Love does not count up wrongs that have been done. Love takes no pleasure in evil but rejoices over the truth. Love patiently accepts all things. It always trusts, always hopes, and always endures. Love never ends.
For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been focused on this mantra: God, help me to see what you want me to see. A speaker at a retreat I attended shared that she’s been starting her day that way, and it stuck with me.
God, help me to see what you want me to see.
We see and process thousands of images each day. Tens of thousands. Our brains process what we see in milliseconds, and then do things like tell our eyes what to look at next or create a smile in response to joy.
Everything we see communicates something to us. We may need to see more in something or we may need to see (or “read”) less into something, but everything we see has a message. And as we interact with people throughout the day, I think the vast majority of what we see is based on choices – our choices, the choices of others, and our reaction to the choices of others. Our brains process, we make judgements based on, and we have reactions to or feelings about things like what someone chose to wear, what attitude someone chose to have, or what action someone chose to take or not take.
What we see in ourselves and in others is a lot about choices. And the more I purposely focus on God help me to see what you want me to see the more the word “you” becomes important. God help me to see what YOU want me to see.
About 18 months ago, I journaled about choices:
* We are all a product of our choices.
* Our choices reveal who we are.
* Our choices reveal our priorities.
* Choices that are easy moment to moment often end up being costly.
* Everything in our lives is a reflection of our choices. What we are or are not is a reflection of our choices.
* If you’re an adult, you make and made your own choices. No one but you is responsible for the life you’re living. One of the many choices throughout any given day is to turn around or not, to restart on a new path, or be lazy, or continue on a path of bad choices.
* If you have children, literally every choice you make impacts them somehow.
* Loyalty is a choice. Integrity is a choice. Love is a choice. Hate is a choice. Forgiveness, Honesty, Courage, Vengeance, Bitterness, Presence, Busyness, Learning, Happiness, Faith, Patience are all choices.
* Your reactions to the behavior of others are choices.
* Not making a choice or letting others choose for you are choices.
* Your background and experiences shaped who you are, but where you are or are not in life goes back to your choices. You are not a victim of the choices of others unless you choose to be, but you are simply the product of your own choices.
* You have the freedom to choose anything and everything, with the exception of the consequences of your choices.
I went looking for that entry a couple days ago and have reread it several times trying to decide if the list is complete. It’s not, and this is what’s missing: choices are the primary thing we see in people.
No words I speak ever communicate as clearly or as loudly as the choices I make. No words we speak ever communicate as clearly or as loudly as the choices people see us make. No art we create and no words we write tell the story of who we are like the choices people see us make. What conveys the truth about what we actually believe in are the choices we make. What conveys who and what is actually the priority in our lives are the choices people see us make. No one has more influence over the message of who we are than we do, and that’s because the only person responsible for our choices is us.
Choice is our most powerful communication tool. Our choices are greater than any spoken or written I love you. Our choices are the proof.
And the reality that choice is our most powerful communication tool is even more significant for parents. Children often don’t understand our grown-up words, so all they have to go on is the choices they see us make. And as children get a little older they don’t believe the words we say because they don’t want to listen to anyone or even because we’ve let them down before, so they look at the choices they see us make. We have to constantly assess what our choices are showing them. That’s when God help me to see what you want me to see becomes God help me to see what my children see in me.
God help me to see what you want me to see. Help me to see what you want me to see in me. Help me to see what you want me to see in others. Help me to see what I’m communicating with each choice I make. Help me to see.
When I was younger I used to wonder what life would be like when I was 20 and then 30 and then 40. Although not as often because life is just a little too chaotic, I still sometimes daydream about what life will be like 10 years from now and 20 years from now. I think once you have children, and your life is no longer about just you, it’s almost hard to imagine too far forward because so much of your life is wrapped up in who and where they are going to be. So I just imagine things like one day I’ll live in the Cosmopolitan and I’ll be able to walk somewhere after work to have sushi and a glass of wine and I’ll never again think about lawn service options or how to remove goldfish crumbs from the tiny crevices around my seatbelt buckles.
Younger me was so very wrong about forty-something life that I’m guessing I will adopt children at 60 and restart the process of battling with little humans about why we must bathe regularly. Not only did younger me not imagine having children, she did not understand that aging is more about growing in understanding and empathy than it is about wrinkles and falling asleep in a recliner. She also did not realize that as you age, your vision and definition of what constitutes an old person is updated – when you’re 25, 50 seems old but when you’re 46, 50 seems not old at all.
But the biggest things young and silly me didn’t expect are probably these three truths:
Life is significantly better when you’re past the selfish years of youth.
You don’t really even begin living until you can just embrace who you are and relinquish your cares about how you look and what others think.
Absolutely every feeling pales in comparison to the ones you experience in a moment of realization that prayers were answered.
Forty-six. That’s how young I am now. That’s how old I am now. That’s my current age.
I’m a week away from owning my own home. Just me. All by myself. Only money I earn paying the mortgage each month. Only my name on the title and deed. For a long time it’s just been me making the mortgage, but behind the scenes two names were on all the paperwork. No more. And IT. FEELS. AWESOME.
I may look tired some mornings, but I am likely feeling invigorated. I regularly fall asleep in the middle of Anderson Cooper, but then wake up in the middle of the night and sit down to research or read or write. It’s solely my job to set goals, to get myself motivated, and to put in the effort. Only I am responsible for goals and dreams accomplished, or goals and dreams daily back-burnered for another day. So it’s OK if I look tired, because I am getting stuff done.
I no longer think twice about how I look in a bathing suit. I have scars. I’m not a tan person. If my thighs or arms look like I had donuts after dinner, it’s probably because I did – because I long ago realized that Kate Moss was wrong and warm Krispy Kremes taste better than skinny feels. This body grew and fed little people. It’s survived some serious trauma. It doesn’t need to change in any way, or look like it’s 25. It’s not 25 any more. Our bodies should tell the stories of our experience, not of our insecurities. And I will play with my girls on the beach because it’s fun and because I need to show them that the only thing that matters about their bodies is what their bodies can help them accomplish while they’re on this earth.
I have sand in my car and drive it around for weeks that way. I have stuff sitting on counters, without a real place to go, until finally the counter becomes the home for the stuff. I host last-minute sleepovers and the kids are all OK even though bedroom floors have baskets of clothes sitting on them and we eat takeout and cereal.
Basically, I am a recovering OCD-er.
Many of the things I used to consider important are now not important at all, while things never even in my frame of reference at 25 are of the utmost importance now. I am keenly aware of the relative small amount of time that makes up the childhood years of the two young ladies who call me Mommy. I have so little time, really, to provide them with a home and a foundation that’s peaceful and happy and grounding and safe and fun. This is actually their time, not mine. So perhaps the biggest difference in what I imagined and what is actually forty-six is that my days are not about doing and watching and experiencing and accomplishing things that are about me. What makes me happy is so much simpler than I ever imagined – it’s simply hearing them laugh and seeing them happy.
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.
Forty-six. That’s how young I am now. That’s how old I am now. That’s my current age.
Brave, Anyway 