Tag: momlife

April Fool’s Birthday Girl

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.

Picture submitted by and approved by Ella.

April 1, 2019
Melancholy Mom Notes to My Girls

When you are sad or hurting it breaks my heart. I would rather feel the pain of someone smashing a limb of my own than watch you struggle. Watching you struggle and knowing the reason why fills me with sadness and regret. And it motivates me to do absolutely everything possible to make the remainder of your childhood as great and as carefree as possible. To get you any help and to tap any source to see you genuinely smile and feel peace.

I will do anything to help you grow into responsible and caring and successful adults, and that includes setting boundaries for you and having rules for you and even enforcing consequences for you when those rules are broken. It’s my job, my most important job, to help you see how to be good people and to help you want to be good people.

I want more than anything for you to trust people. To believe firmly that the vast majority of people are good. And instead of focusing on the havoc that selfishness in people can wreak, I want you to focus on the best of people that you have seen – the people who have rallied around you and loved you and supported you and prayed for you.

I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt what love is and what love isn’t. I want you to know that you know, deep down in your gut. Things may get confusing as you explore relationships of your own, and when you’re confused I hope you will seek the counsel of the right friends and adults. Just as you would choose a cardiologist for a physical heart problem, choose people who have loved with honor and integrity and selflessness for an emotional heart problem.

I hope you two rely on each other always, even when you’re mad at each other or in different places in your life. You are each the only other person in the whole world who has experienced love and heartbreak and disappointment and resilience together during this time. You can keep each other grounded, you can keep each other honest, and you can support each other as no one else can. Commit yourselves to letting each other say anything, and to forgiving each other no matter what.

I understand that in great part you will learn from your parents how to be a parent. I really, really, really hope I am a good enough example, but I know with absolute certainty that I fall short. A lot short. I commit to always doing my best to be honest with myself about the good and bad, to allowing you to be honest with me about the good and bad, and to trying to do better.

No matter what, I want you to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I will always prioritize you and choose you over anything and anyone and everything and everyone.

I will always choose you.

I will always choose you.

I will always choose you.

I will always, always, always choose you.

No one, including and especially me, will ever be more important than you.

Love you my girlys.

February 24, 2019
Brave Girls ARE the storm.
Urban Dictionary has some very interesting – and some pretty hilarious – definitions for family.
- It’s not necessarily about who’s blood you have, or who you’re forced to spend the holidays with. It’s about people you love and they love you back.
- A bunch of people who hate each other and eat dinner together.
- People you love who love you back, not necessarily blood or biological, but you trust them and they trust you, and they take care of you and you take care of them.
- People who get into your business.
- Family is not defined by shared DNA. It is defined by the people who love you as much as you love them; they are the ones you call and the ones who will never let you fall. They are the ones you trust with everything and anything, and you know that you will never let each other down.
I lucked out big time in the family department. I grew up in a household with parents who loved me, who worked hard to provide for us, and who spent their time with us and their energy on us. I came home from school to parents who asked me about my day and then we all sat down to dinner together every night. My Dad is a prankster who can make Grace seem longer than any Catholic mass, my sister is a donut thief, and my Mom has a super-secret personal Scrabble dictionary that allows her to spell balloon with one L and win by 142 points.

My family isn’t perfect, but we love each other unconditionally. We are a unit, we can trust each other, we can count on each other, and perhaps most importantly we are ourselves with each other.

It never once occurred to me that my girls would not have that family unit – that home with Mom and Dad and those secret inside jokes and shared experiences only the 4 of you know. That complete trust in their parents and that freedom to be themselves at any and all times. And more than everything else that I’ve fretted about and worried about and been sad about in the last 8 months combined, I have mourned that.

I have mourned that my girls will not have the family unit they should have.

The family unit they deserve.

Frankly, it really pisses me off because it was stolen from them. It was stolen from them by people who made very selfish choices and thought nothing of the impact their decisions and behavior would have on two innocent children. But as the anger has subsided a bit, I’ve thought a lot about the fact that roughly half of all marriages end in divorce and so at least half of our nation’s children grow up without that intact family unit. Why is that? How does that happen? Is it that people in our time have turned away from faith, that we’ve normalized divorce on TV, we play too many video games or spend too much time on our phones, we’ve sexualized everything on all kinds of media, or we’re smoking pot legally in all kinds of states? The list of possibilities seems endless, and yet it seems like none of those things are it.

And so I began to wonder…if we don’t come from a “whole” family unit or our family unit is broken in some way, do we really value family as much as others? Because how can you really know what you missed out on when you never had it?

And are you then more likely to grow up and enter into relationships which are more likely to end in divorce? Statistically speaking, you can find numbers to support the Yes and the No sides of that question. But as I’ve rolled all of these things around in my head over and over and over again, I’ve started to think that I am not sure that people who are raised in a “whole” family unit and people who are raised in a “broken” family can even really understand the life of the other. And if that’s true, can someone from a “broken” home really even grasp what people and children will miss out on if they don’t grow up in a “whole” family unit? Maybe not?

Maybe not.

Maybe. Not.

And if that maybe not is true, then I can’t be as angry about something that people don’t even have the ability to understand. It’s like being mad at someone for not understanding Spanish when they have never read or heard Spanish before. And suddenly my sail has less angry wind in it.

That’s how this process works – the divorce/grief healing process. It’s a repeated assessment of an angry wind in your sail, until one day you’ve been through all the reasons for angry winds and all the angry is gone.

Brave girls don’t run from those reasons. Brave girls think about those reasons one by one. I can do that. Brave girls get through all of the reasons for the anger and then the anger is gone. I’m not there yet.

My aunt and my cousins visited us this weekend. I absolutely love time with family. I love sitting and talking for hours. I love overeating and telling old stories and taking photos and laughing at bathroom jokes. I love getting to know the children of my first cousins – the girls I was so excited to see each Christmas that I would stand at my Mama’s front window and count cars until theirs pulled into the driveway. They have children now – boys who are almost grown – who love history and games, who have jobs, who are kind and thoughtful, and who giggled with my daughters in a pew at the back of my church. I love that we worshipped together.

We are a unit. We have shared DNA running through all of us. I may no longer be able to give my girls a “traditional” home with a Mom and Dad and board games after dinner. But I can give them family who love them and who they love back. Family with whom they have shared experiences. Family with whom they can look at angry waves and stand surrounded by angry waters as they feel angry winds hit their faces. Family that makes them feel so loved, they can face that anger and then turn away from the chaos and smile.

“Fate whispers to the warrior, “You cannot withstand the storm.”

The warrior whispers back, “I am the storm.”
July 11, 2018
Falling Masterpieces

I am currently trying to teach my 7-year old how to ride a bike. I use the word “teach” loosely, as we are not making a ton of progress. I have basically just been running alongside her holding on to the bike as she either laughs with glee or begs me not to let go.

As I’ve mentioned this challenge to others, I’ve gotten all kinds of ideas on how to actually teach her – put the training wheels back on, use a sidewalk that’s smooth, hold the back of the bike, try letting her walk the bike instead of putting her feet on the pedals. I initially thought all of these ideas were great. They have all failed. My daughter is determined to ride without training wheels and I am determined that I can teach her to do it.

This is not just about riding a bike. I need to be able to teach her without the help of a husband. By myself. Sad but true – that’s what will currently make me feel brave and accomplished. Audrey needs to conquer her fear of falling. That’s what will make her feel brave and accomplished. We were both frustrated and trying to hide it from the other. But a couple days ago, everything changed when we fell.

We fell because I took my hand off the seat for a couple seconds. I thought she would soar ahead and realize she could do it on her own and all would be right with the world. Instead what happened is when she realized I’d let go she became really frightened, and she turned around to scold me. When she got distracted, she fell. And when she fell I tried to help and I also fell. And then she got really seriously angry and shouted at me.

Giant Mommy Fail.

Then my neighbor said something that struck me. He suggested we try on grass because a fall is easier and less scary. Something clicked in my head and what occurred to me is that I actually needed to teach her about falling. She needs to know that it’s OK to fall and that falling is not a failure. She also needs to know the way to fall so she’s least likely to really hurt herself, and then finally she needs to know how to get back up again. I needed to teach her how to fall.

We are all going to fall in life. And while I may still laugh at a couple of spectacularly funny tumbles that happened 35 years ago at Haygood Roller Rink, for the most part what is important – what says something about who we are – is how we get back up. One way or another we show our kids how to fall and get back up. We either do that intentionally or unintentionally. We show them by how we live our life. We show them when they see us face our fears or avoid things that make us fearful. We show them when we laugh at ourselves or when we berate ourselves. We show them when we admit we need help and then ask for that help.

Sometimes falling isn’t even our fault – it just happens to us. Someone accidentally runs into us. Someone purposely trips us. Someone around us doesn’t see danger and we fall as a result of their poor decisions. In these scenarios, we show our kids how to fall when we decide to take the high road or when we publicly point fingers. One of my jobs as a parent is to show my girls how to fall and to show them how to get back up.

I have a good-sized bruise on my leg/ankle from my recent fall with Audrey. But the next night we went back out again. This time to a park with freshly low-cut grass, after showing her the right way to fall. Without any guidance about the best way to help Audrey, Ella channelled The Three Stooges and comically fell over repeatedly. My teenager might be smarter than me.

Audrey’s current bike-riding status: work in progress.

My current fall and get back up status: work in progress.

According to Pinterest, which I dedicate too much time to when I should be sleeping, we can be a work in progress and a masterpiece at the same time. Pinterest doesn’t know who said that, but somebody on Pinterest definitely said it – so I’m going with that.

July 6, 2018
Spring Is Coming, Brave Girl

It is late winter right now. Not early winter. Not mid winter. Late winter. That part of winter where you start thinking that every frost could be the last one and you start thinking about planting things because spring is so close you can feel it in the afternoon air.

It’s currently 92 degrees as the sun sets on the last day of June in 2018. It was a sticky bra and limp hair kind of day. But in my head, which is where I spend a lot of my time right now, the end of winter is approaching. I am eight months into separation and probably five months from divorce. It’s felt like winter since October.

I chose this wordpress theme because the visual is perfect for me right now. I am redecorating my house so that it feels different and home-y and more like me, as opposed to the old version of this house which was decorated for me + someone. The theme is farmhouse meets country meets antiques – I suck at decorating and yet I like how it’s all coming together. Barn wood and old books and even a pickle crock. The trees in this theme are winter trees, but the sky is blue and there’s no snow on the ground and the sunset is blanketing a grassy field with color. This picture says Spring is coming. It’s not here yet, but you are certain it’s coming.

That’s where I am right now. I am at the end of winter right on the cusp of Spring. I am feeling more like me. I am getting more accomplished outside of just surviving. I find the funny again. I genuinely laugh out loud on a regular basis. I enjoy all my favorite things again – reading and binge-watching TV and shopping and family outings and Amy Schumer and Pinterest and shoes and political tees. Darkness still creeps up on me sometimes, but it’s happening less and less often now. I’m back to driving with the windows down and the music turned up.

My life is not at all what I expected. And yet I am still the same. I am Beth. I am Ella’s Mom and I am Audrey’s Mom. I value faith, family and people above all else. I love my job. I love the people in my life. I believe in service and giving and community. While I have never not known and loved Jesus, I am not yet at a place where I am always filled with faith. I am a mixture of faith and planner. By that I mean I have always been able to visualize my future – and so while I thought I had faith, the truth was that my “faith” was closely tied to my being firmly planted and thinking everything was under control and on schedule and according to plan. Until October. Until winter. Now my future is not at all what I thought it was going to be and I don’t have everything all figured out.

I’ve been surviving winter, but I’m more than surviving now. Spring is coming. And it’s an opportunity for me to really be brave. I’ve been building up to it. I am not a wimp and yet I am not yet brave. I’m a Brave Girl Wannabe.

July 1, 2018