Best Yes: Week Five

I know the bible study is over, but I wanted to write six blogs but didn't have ideas for the last two weeks, so I decided to wait until ideas came to me.  Today, one did.

My toddler is many things (curious, mischevous, adorable, loving) but "helpful" is not one of them. It's not that he doesn't "want" to be helpful, he sincerely does! However, in truth, he just does not know enough to be helpful and when he tries to do things himself, particularly when it comes to cleaning up his own messes, he often makes them worse.

Case in point, I discovered at lunch today he had thrown a small cardboard book into his diaper pail and when I washed it the cardboard disentregated into brown pellets all over everything in the load.  To try to clean it, I got all the diapers out, set the washer to rinse and drain to try to clean it out a bit (it seriously looked like a cardboard masher had thrown up in there), and went outside to shake out the diapers, liners, wipes, etc. and put them on the line in the hopes the wind and drying process would get rid of the smaller cardboard particles I couldn't shake out. Of course, my five year old and almost twenty month old wanted to come out with me so I first had to bundle them up, then hustle everyone out to get the mess cleaned up.  Outside, it was chaos.  I knew how I wanted to get the mess cleaned up, but my sons both had their own ideas about how best to "help."  My eldest son thought he could be most "helpful" by giving me a running commentary on everything his brother was doing.  My youngest thought he could be most "helpful" by throwing diapers off the deck and trying to turn it into a game.  Knowing my youngest is too young to understand my plan of how to correct his innocent (but incredibly messy) mistake, I concentrated my efforts on trying to shape my eldest son into a helper for me.  Being older, and more used to my ways and the way my mind works, my eldest actually was pretty helpful once I got him to stop his commentary and yelling at his brother.  I'm not saying he was perfect, but he was certainly helpful.  He didn't always do things the way I wanted him to do them, but I was there to help and we got the job done.  Meanwhile, my youngest (whose poor decision to throw the book into the wash to begin with) caught on to what I was trying to do, but he was so intent on cleaning up the mess "himself" that he often caused even more little messes as his brother and I were trying really hard to help him out of the original mess he created.

As I looked at the diapers finally all hanging on the line with as much of the pieces of cardboard shaken off them as we could manage, I couldn't help but wonder how many times God has watched me act just like my toddler.  How often has God watched my clumsy attempts to ckean up my messes by "myself" only to make them worse?  How often have I, like my five year old, attempted to help him clean up someone else's messes without getting his help and instructions first?

Lord, help me to know you and to listen for your directions! Don't let me be the toddler making things worse or the young child slowing things down!

Epic Date Night

My husband and I, like many parents of small children, don't really get out much.  We were homebodies even before we had kids, so a weekly date night was never really in the cards.  I'm not saying there's anything wrong with those who get out more; we just don't.  But this year, we've been making an effort to put more "romance" into our lives and that has included a few date nights.  Okay, date afternoons. . .like four or five. . .counting today.  Anyway, originally, I thought a blockbuster movie we both wanted to watch was coming out this weekend, so I arranged a babysitter for this afternoon so we could see our first movie together since my water broke and I went into labor with our eldest son over five years ago. (See my earlier statement about the fact we don't go out much. . .we've  been to movies, just movies with the kids.)  However, it turns out the movie doesn't come out until next month, but we decided to go out to a campus art museum near us where some friends of ours had a fun date a while back.  It was a good idea in theory. . .but, we didn't check what the installations were.

We arrived dressed up for us and excited to spend a few hours doing "grown up" stuff without a single raisin or sibling squabble in sight.  We began wandering around the small museum and saw such "unique" exhibits as pictures of a performance artist who decided to face his fear of the dark by sealing himself inside a concrete column for 24 hours naked with only his cell phone for company.  Okay, so many of the exhibits weren't really "our" thing, but we used to love art museums when we first met, so it was a fun throw back to our more earnest collegiate selves. Around the corner from the pictures of the performance art was an exhibit with a warning that it included graphic images of violence and animals.  We gave that corner a wide berth and traveled to a lower floor where we found an exhibit on the horrible, awful, heartbreaking things our oil companies (like Exxon and Texaco) have been doing to native people and their lands in the Amazon.  Not exactly what we were expecting on our first date away from the boys in months, but we took in the information and tried not to let the sobering statistics ruin our afternoon.  On the way out, I asked if we could see a film exhibit that features duel screens streaming different scenes.  (I had peeked in on it on the way in and saw that this exhibit showed two different films and the one I had peeked at had shown a boat pulling into port and a mother and her young children dressed as if they were in the '40s or so and looked like immigrants.  The children were obviously nervous to go down the ramp from the boat to land, so the mother was butt scooting down with them to help them feel safe.  As the mother of a 19 month old who butt scoots down stairs, it was a moment that resonated with me.  I thought it might be interesting to see something about immigrant experiences when I had connected with the brief snippet I had seen so much.  

Unfortunately, they were on the other film exhibit that alternates with the one I saw.  It was an interesting experience in story telling about the '60s in the US, race, the UN, and mass murder. It featured no narration, but seemed to show scenes of Kennedy, the United Nations, and the Cuban missle crisis, alternating with scenes of murder in Africa (I think it was Africa. . . It was hard to tell which nations specifically when they were edited, had no narration and were cross cut with Kennedy). It was a unique narrative experience. That is it WAS interesting until it had a close up of a murdered five year old. The child looked nothing like my eldest son who is around the same age, but my reaction to seeing him dead was eviscerating. I just could not sit anymore and had to leave the exhibit, my eyes welling with tears. My husband missed the scene because he was focused on the other scene,but understood   that the last two exhibits had been a little too sobering for a rare parents' afternoon out.

To cheer me up, we walked to my favorite little shop which happens to be across from the museum. There we were greeted by a Beyonce dance song popular when we were first dating and covered as some sort of love ballad by a male singer. ("Smarmy" might be an adjective that comes to mind for this rendition.) The ludicrous juxtoposition between the strangeness of the song choice in the little shop that features knitted goods, scarves, earrings, and small trinkets was enough to make us giggle a bit which led us to real laughs when we discovered in the middle of my beloved little shop was a table which now featured handcarved bottle openers, hand painted with bright designs such as flowers and geometric patterns and were made to represent male genatalia. Why in the world they are selling that in a shop full of imported woolen knit accessories and other feminine trinkets is a mystery I will never solve. They've never been there when we've been there. The surprise of finding them there made us burst out laughing! What a gambit of emotions this date had brought us through in less than 90 minutes and none of them quite what we had envisioned! Unfazed (or at least not fazed too much), we spent the rest of the date giving THAT table a wide berth and bought some fun knitted hats for our family at five dollars each.

You know, marriage, parenting, life in general is rarely what we plan ourselves. God and our own choices (or lack of research in our choices) can throw a lot of unexpected heartbreak, fear, and just random ridiculousness our way, but if your partner is someone who can laugh along in the journey with you and just keep going along with the flow, I think you and your family are going to be all right.

Best Yes: Week Four

My kids are the WORST when they don't get enough sleep. They scream. They wail. They hit each other.  They become impulsive in the worst possible ways.  Do they succumb to impulsive urges to nap a little later in the day? Do restful activities to conserve energy like coloring or reading? Quietly just go to bed a bit earlier and faster? No way! 

My boys get impulses to run clumsily around the living room, gleefully throwing easy to trip on toys everywhere that either trip each other or they simply trip over their own feet.  My eldest son dissolves into temper tantrums that render him unrecognizable and although he is five, has already broken both arms! He broke his left before bedtime when he impulsively stood on the couch and them fell and his right before nap time time when he impulsively decided to ride a laundry basket down the stairs.  See what I mean about making bad decisions when tired?  Instead of choosing activities that will restore them, like, oh, I don't know, sleeping?!?!?, my sons choose to tackle one another or hurtle themselves off furniture or downstairs.  (My eldest son even climbed his dresser about ten minutes before lights out and  almost killed himself once last year, but was miraculously unhurt.) 

I mention this now because as I was watching my tired children make bad decision after bad decision right before bedtime a couple of days ago and praying to God that I would not blow up at them or my husband myself since I had had a rough time making good verbal decisions myself that day, I suddenly realized that my sons (as hard to handle as they are right before bedtime), are apples that have landed fairly close to the proverbial tree. I really am not much different than they are in God's eyes. I get tired myself: tired of cleaning, tired if parenting, tired of cooking, tired of taking care of others, and just like my sons, instead of taking restful time to pray or walk or get away, or read my bible or blog, I throw myself into another afternoon of riduculous activity that only serves to tire me out further and make me even more short tempered with those I love!  (Does this sound familiar to anyone? I can't be alone in this!)  Instead of realizing that my impulse to snap at my husband is God's way of telling me that I need to take time to reconnect with him, I impulsively and self righteously get mad at HIM!  

Just like my kids try to show me they aren't tired when I already know they are, I take on more and more as if to show God, "see I can handle this! I don't need you to tell me to rest", really I do.  Just like my kids need me to enforce strict bedtimes and safety rules and keep a nap routine. They won't do it on their own; just like I won't make wise choices on my own without God.  

Lord, I am so sorry I waste the time I should be resting in your arms and listeningnto your wise counsel screeching about how dirty the house is or taking on random projects that wear me out more. I will try to do better, Lord, and to listen to both the warnings you give me in my own body and in my heart!

Best Yes: Week Three

So, I'm three weeks into this bible study and I think I may have finally had an "aha" moment that I should have had a long time ago.  The only "best yes" is to say "yes" forever and eternally to God being in control and to not presume that the decisions I make are half as important as what he will make of them.

Simple right? But not easy.  This week, my family faced the decision of whether or not to replace our beloved family car, and if we did, which vehicle do we replace it with. We debated the merits of each vehicle. We test drove. We debated payment caps and doen payments. I prayed for wisdom.  This feels like a bigdecision  for us. We haven't had a car payment in almost five years. We are nervous about taking on the expense.  

At one point, my husband felt immobilized by the magnitude of the decision: What if his job disappears? How will we afford this? Which car would be the smartest buy? He was spinning in his tracks.  I used the methods in the bible study to point out that there were no truly "bad" decision we could make and that all our decisions (even just repairing the car we already owned outright), were good mixed with some bad.  It made him feel better to see that it was useless to look for the "perfect" decision and that what we decided might have different consequences, but certainly wouldn't he "wrong."

That was all good, but here's what I missed: the car decision seemed most important because it gave us the illusion of control. We felt like we were "deciding" our future with our car choice; that's what we so when we imbue our decisions with such importance that they immobilize us: we give ourselves the illusion of power. We have to make the "perfect" decision because we think we have all the power. If I am really a Christian I have to stop that kind of thinking.  I have to remember that God has all the power.

Of course my choices matter and I should use wisdom to make them (especially big financial decisions like a new car!). But I should always remember to say "Yes" to God being the highest and most important power.  I can't let myself forget that in the daily grind of making my decisions . . . Even my "wisest" ones.

Best Yes: Week Two

"By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles" Matthew 7:16

In this week's reading for the bible study, the author mentions the story of a woman who was so recognized as "wise" that when she walked around her city with a plan for how to rid itself of the problems it now found itself in, everyone recognized her as wise and heeded her wisdom (the story is in 20th chapter of 2 Samuel). 

I wonder, what am I known for right now?  I know what I used to want to be known for. I wanted to be known for being beautiful and talented. I wanted to be known for being inspirational. I wanted to be known as a singer.  What I wanted for myself is not really what God wanted for me or gifted me with.  

If I really consider what good I am known for, it's probably for being loving and lifting others up. "My favorite thing about you is the way you love me," is actually a statement I've heard multiple times in my life.  Many years ago, I took a "gifts of the spirit" quiz and exhortation came up as (by far) my strongest gift. I was shocked.  "What kind of a gift is that?" I wondered with 20 year old impatience, but this is what I have learned in the years since, it's one the world needs greatly.  

Seeing what is wonderful and beautiful about others is easy for me. Seeing the silver lining in nearly every situation is natural. Loving the beauty in others and telling them about the beauty they have is a simple way to make the day brighter.  It may not be an exciting gift and it may not be the kind of gift that transforms the world, but it's a God given gift all the same.  I am called daily (if I listen close enough) to love those around me. Even if I don't know them very well or feel uncomfortable approaching them.  I can see the compliments that people deserve to hear and know the words that are needed to lift their day.

It's hard to be loving and to not ask for that kind of love in return. It's hard not to wonder when someone will want to lift my spirit when I'm low. It's easy to get upset about my lack of returns. I am, after all, only human and somewhat selfish at times, but if I am to believe in a God who loves perfectly and provides perfectly, than I need to believe that I still need to keep speaking the beautiful truths about those around me even if I'm not sure what's beautiful about me and must rely on God to speak it back to me.  After all, who better to rely on?

Motherhood may just be my best chance at accessing the wisdom God wants me to have in my life.  I cannot forget to uplift my children and love them no matter what. I cannot forget to speak the words I know will enable them to see the beauty in themselves. I know it is God's love that is moving through me and it will teach me a kind of wisdom I need to serve.  Also, I know that whatever happens in the future, those around me will always know that I saw the best of them and how I felt about them.  There's something very fulfilling about that im and of itself.

So, Lord. Let me always speak and wrote the uplifting vision and words you have gifted me with.  Help me to access your wisdom on how best to serve and love others. Help me also to accept the love you give me as my replenishment.  In Jesus' name I pray, Amen!

My Best Yes Week 1: Saying Yes to What's Right Even if it Feels Personally "Wrong"

I mask it well, but I have a lot of social anxiety. While I love to try new things and have the experience of meeting new people, actually making myself do it is hard. I get cranky and defensive anytime I'm going anywhere in a new group setting or even going to see an old group I haven't seen in awhile.  (People who live with me know that the worst time to try to talk to me is right before I have to leave to go to a party or another social gathering I am wound so tight before I leave that it's hard for me not to scream or cry or both.). My instinct is, always, to not go.  It feels like the way out the door is paved with sinking sand in which I will get submerged and smother. My chest feels tight.  My mouth feels dry. My instinct is to hide under the covers forever. I cover all this with friendliness and buoyancy, but that is how I cope once I get there because that is how I know I need to act to be friendly. That is not the instinct in my heart. 

 When I do get out, I get exhausted after more than an hour in most group settings.  I always seem to talk too much and say the wrong things.  The only time I am comfortable in social settings is if I have something to do i.e. cook, decorate, put up chairs, clean up the meal.  When I was younger I did a lot of activities in school and nearly always took on a leadership role because leaders are often too busy for most small talk.  I love book clubs or meetings about specific causes because the social perimeters are already in place and well defined.  I adored doing theatre and music because my parts/roles were well defined and since I was busy pretending to be someone else, I got to spend less time being myself (a person I pretty much hated at the time).  Just going to a get together for purely social reasons is hard--very hard--for me.  Work parties (before I became a stay at home mom) made me anxious for days ahead of time and these were people I loved and already saw every day! It's not that I don't have enjoyable moments once I'm "there," but getting there is a challenge for me and it takes a lot out of me.  I know it is "worth it," but it always feels uncomfortable and wrong to make myself do it.

Of course, this whole anxiety problem of mine has never been ideal because I have never lived more than eight years in any town/place ever.  That means every eight years or less (usually less) of my thirty three years on earth so far, I've had to go out and make all new friends. Over the years, I've gotten better at pulling the bandaid off and forcing myself to make efforts quickly, because the sooner I can make a few friends in an area, the sooner I can stop forcing myself to go to a lot of places filled with strangers to make friends.  

This has also meant that finding a church is hard for me. In fact, I have not regularly attended a church in years. I am intimidated especially by the large churches prevelant in my area.  I fear walking in alone and not connecting with anyone or having them judge me by my social ineptitude. Still, I know I want my boys to grow ip in a church and I want myself to connect with other Christians. So, my best "yes" this week is to "make" myself try another church.  Feel the fear and do it anyway, right?

Nap Time Faux Pas

So, every day before nap, I read books to my boys (the boys get read to at bedtime and other times, too).  The usual routine is for the boys to both get ready for nap and then we all pile into my bed (where we all nap together), and we read one to two picture books per boy and then, as the youngest nurses, I read one or two chapters of a chapter book to my son.  Our latest book is one of the first ones I've read to him that I have not read beforehand.  I know from the synopsis on the back that it is the story of a grumpy porcupine who while wondering out alone on his birthday, comes upon a mother fox who is dying, and promises to take care of her three kits.  As my eldest son is always claiming that he intends to adopt 3-12 babies (depending on the day), I thought he might like this story when I found it at a library sale for $.50.  Naturally, I was a little nervous about the mom dying part, but figured that just made it more "Disney" like.

Fast forward to today. . . we are six chapters in and running late for nap.  Due to me being on crutches for over a week and having a sprained ankle, I had not had the chance to do "big" grocery shopping in some time so the shopping this morning took longer than usual, which meant lunch was late, which meant our routine was off, which meant less reading time before nap, etc.  Before going  up for nap, I told my eldest that under no circumstances could I read more than one chapter today.  We just didn't have the time . . .and wouldn't you know that it was the chapter where the mom died?  And she didn't just die, mind you, she died slowly. . . dramatically. . . speaking lovingly of her babies and how much they needed someone now that she was dying.  The book described the bloody snow from her fighting to get out of the trap for goodness sake.  And I was reading it. . . to my five year old . . .right before he was going to sleep!!!!!!!

Needless to say. . . nap did not go well for him (or for his brother who might be smarter than the average 18 month old and knew something less than savory was afoot).  After nap, he was still so traumatized that he turned his lego playing while I put away the groceries I did not have time for before nap (the cereals and non-refrigerator stuff) into hunters and traps and then kept letting the lego guys go, saying "No one has to die!  Go take care of your babies!"  To help remedy his sadness, we used our afternoon learning time to practice writing character names and to "re-enact" the story using puppets only how we wished it would go, where the porcupine manages to get the hunter, who is sorry for setting the trap, and the hunter takes the fox to the vet and she is saved.  (A little play therapy goes a long way to heal a broken kid's heart.)

What struck me was how lucky we are that God did not leave us in the same lurch that I left my son in.  When he told us his story of his son's death, he didn't just say "that's the end.  Isn't it sad?  Now don't do that to people!" Instead, he gave us the full story with his son's resurrection and the hope it gives us all for the heaven that will await us.  He, like the fox in the story, also gave us a helpers to take care of his children (the Holy Spirit and each other) after his son died, but he also gave us the hope and joy of his son's return.  What a blessing and beautiful story our God has given us so that we can all sleep well every night.

Proverbs 31 Online Bible Studies: Week One Questions and Passage

For this week in the bible study, we are to read this passage and to answer these questions digging deeper into this passage.  I thought I would just do my answers here and if anyone else is doing this study, they can tell me what their thoughts were, too.

Proverbs 2: 1-6

What does it mean to?
–Accept my words: If I accept God words than I believe them and believe that there is meaning within them even if I don't at first understand them.
–Store up my commands: Remember in my heart what God has asked me to do (and biblical remembrance is more than just recalling them to mind. . . when God "remembers" us, the way he did Sara in the old testament, he also takes action, as should we).
–Turn your ear to wisdom: Don't just be content with the words in isolation or as they are in the story.  Listen for the wisdom in them that may relate to my life or to the bible as a narrative/religious whole.
–Apply your heart to understanding:  Look for where this wisdom directly intersects with my current life as I am leading it.
–Call our for insight: Pray for further understanding when I am confused or I am only seeing the surface.
–Cry aloud: Share my insights with others and share the wisdom with those who also seek it.
–Look for it: Look for opportunities to find more wisdom or truth
–Search for it as hidden treasure: Keep an eye out for the gifts/blessings that wisdom will bring to me

- See more at: http://proverbs31.org/online-bible-studies/2014/09/23/the-beginning-of-wisdom/#sthash.m4JF5T3o.dpuf

Leaf Rubbings

I love fall.  One of the crafts I do every year with my sons is leaf rubbing.  There's something just magical about using crayons and construction paper and revealing the beauty lying just underneath the surface, but this year, something else occurred to me as I watched my eldest struggle to the leaf rubbings all on his own this year.  In previous years, he's been content to let me demonstrate how to hold the crayon to reveal the leaf underneath, but this year, he wanted to figure it out on his own and had a horrible time getting the leaf to show up.  There's a trick involved to get the leaf to reveal itself.  You have to know how to use your senses and use the right amount of pressure to reveal the design underneath or your scribblings can obscure the leaf and make it hard for it to reveal itself.  What a perfect picture of free will and how it interacts with God's predetermined design.  We decide the color of our crayon and how we color, God's plan is always there underneath the surface.  Maybe we change how much of God's design can be seen in our lives by not learning (or applying) the trick of coloring in our lives that lets his design shine through, but that doesn't change his perfect design that is underneath.

My eldest doesn't quite "have" the trick, yet, but he's working on it.  The baby is still content to let me help him and guide his hand so his picture is a lot clearer this year than his brother.  Maybe that's what it means to have faith like a little child.  A small child still lets others guide his/her hand and has perfect trust; it's only when we get older, when we insist that everything must be done on our own and our way, that our picture gets really messy.

The Importance of Crying Out

Every night for the past two weeks (at least) my baby has woken up crying every hour to half hour until I decide it's just time to go to bed and let him sleep with me.  Every time, it's the same, he wakes up, looks around, and for whatever reason cries out like his heart is broken, like he doesn't know if he's been abandoned forever.  So, I come and I remind him that I will always come for him, that as long as he cries out, he will be heard and tended to, he just needs to keep communicating even if I don't understand his panic.

As I lay next to him last night, trying to soothe him back to sleep for the fourth or fifth time, my own heart racing in panic at the thought that one day very soon we could be suffering yet another hard blow, one that may result in us having to move and sell our house, the first house in nearly twenty years I had let myself hope I could stay in for the forseeable future, so tht we can have enough money for the allergy safe groceries we need for our son, it occurred to me that while I berate myself for worrying about something that may or may not come, it does nothing to assuage my feelings.  It's as useful as yelling angerly at my baby's closed bedroom door that "everything is all right, now stop crying, and go to  sleep,"  Such an action would only teach him that his feelings were not important to me and, worse yet, his feelings shouldn't matter to him or are wrong.  

God does not make us to not have feelings and worry has a purpose.  This worry is leading us to make serious budget cutbacks and pre-plan just in case and is helping us work through our emotions now before we are faced with the situation if it comes.  How many times do the psalms and Job in the bible talk about "crying out to the Lord?"  Dozens.  While I am doing my best to not let fear of the future arrest me everyday, It's probably only natural that I should have a few panicky moments at night.  Maybe instead of trying to shut off these worries all on my own and shove them down and tell myself that what I'm feeling is wrong or pointless, what I should do is follow my son's example and cry out for my father and let him come to me at night and wrap his arms around me while I pour my fears out to him and then sleep in his arms.  I must remember that I am in the "bosom" of the Lord and as such, I am like his nursing child who can only be comforted by his presence.  If I don't let myself cry out, I don't really summon him or give him an honest view of my feelings.

The Record I Keep Replaying

My four year old desperately wants to be a photographer right now when he grows up. He takes hundreds of pictures a week with the camera he got for Christmas.  He also dabbles in videos. 

 It's all very cute and sweet except when we're in a hurry to get to the store and back before my youngest's last nap and dinner time.  After multiple requests for him to get his shoes on, I exasperatedly made a comment that he'd "better hurry up or we would leave without him."  It was a threat so idle and taken so lightly that my son actually filmed it and more short videos before we finally got out of our house.  

In addition to taking an astounding number of videos and pictures in marathons that would leave an adult professional photographer impressed, my son likes to endlessly admire his own work . . . sometimes by playing the same 20 second video repeatedly.  Guess which 20 second video he chose to play the most?

Now, I know it wasn't my best parenting moment, but it was far from my worst. Even my naturally anxious son was not fazed by my threat! Still, by the twentieth time I heard myself make that threat I was feeling tremendously guilty and praying for forgiveness.  I even started worrying that I had given my child some kind of abandonment complex or would by him listening to the same threat over and over.  I started worrying about what I would have done if Jesus had decided to return to visit me just as I was saying those words.  Would he have been repulsed?  Would he have refused to take me to heaven to meet his father? What would I have done?

But then I realized my son was giggling as he watched the video.  "You're funny, mama! You wouldn't leave me, ever!" My son got the joke.  Surely God and Jesus did, too.  The only one who was getting a complex was me and I was giving it to myself.

I realized then that taking a little mistake in the moment, making a record of it in my mind and then playing it over and over and over again is what I've done to myself my whole life.  While others (including God) see me as a whole with both good and bad, I have often constructed my self worth based on a collection of twenty second clips of my mistakes that I whisper to myself over and over again and blow out of proportion.  I torment myself by only holding on to the bad moments and not balancing them with the good. For a split second, I said the wrong thing, but for most of my son's life I had done the right thing.  My actions outweighed my words.  Lord, help me remember this lesson in the future!

Building Blocks

Today my eldest son's block towers got dismantled by his little brother before we could stop him. The act broke his heart and set him sobbing and distraught for twenty minutes until I finally got him calmed down. (Admittedly, I wasn't initially as compassionate as he needed me to be, but eventually I did realize my mistake and we found a solution of utilizing his love of photography and making a photo album of his towers so that they cannot be permenently dismantled by his brother.). Initially, all I could originally see was the ease with which he should be able to pick up those pieces and build newer, bigger, stronger towers. I knew in my heart that he is destined to build better towers in his future and that his brother may have done him a favor by freeing up the blocks to be reimagined in new ways. It is only tonight, hours later that I realize that maybe this is what God has been trying to get me to see this year. While I've been crying and howling about how the building blocks of my home and family have been ripped apart, God just sees that all the pieces are still there for me to rebuild with and if I can just stop crying and howling, I can start building a bigger and better foundation on which to build my self-esteem and life.  Thank you, my child, for helping me to realize my own short sighted ness and thank you, God for being patient with me while I've uselessly wailed.  Help me to embrace this new, better, stronger plan for my life and to no longer mourn what I used to think I needed. Let us both wake up tomorrow ready to build new towers of hopes and dreams with more permenent and solid foundations!

A Prayer for My Husband

Dear Lord,

Remember my husband as he tries so hard today to be the best man he can be.  Help him to see himself through my eyes and your eyes. Help him to remember his strengths and the journey he has already been on. Help him to feel the love that is always around him. Help him to love himself as we love him and to know the future ahead of him is bright even if it seems cloudy right now.  Help him know that your promises are for him and they guarantee the future.  Help him to know his incredible worth and help him to know happiness is in his grasp.

  In Jesus' name I pray,

Amen

In the beginning . . . .

I used to be a person who believed I was really special.  I believed I was smart, I believed I was attractive(ish), I believed that I knew what I was doing. . . and then I became a mom.  My first experience with motherhood was tough.  A trial by fire would probably be the best way to describe it.  It wasn't very long before I felt as if I knew nothing and had no direction.  The person I thought I was, the mom I had planned on being, none of it seemed to be panning out.  At some point, I remember breaking down in tears, sleep deprived and heartbroken with a colicky reflux baby, and it occurred to me that maybe God had put me in this situation for a reason.  Maybe I hadn't been listening or praying or connecting with him enough when I thought I knew everything.  Maybe my self confidence (self absorption?) had cut me off with him and maybe he had sent me to take care of this particular little soul so that I could get closer in touch with my own. It was time for me to stop trying to get back to the person I thought I was and trying to work toward the person I thought I should be and to start becoming the person God always meant me to be.

Four and a half years later, I don't even remember that woman I was and I'm much happier (for the most part) with the person I have now emerged as with God's help.  I look different on the outside, I feel different on the inside, I am healthier, and I feel like I am (usually) the mom my sons need and that I want to be, but I am still a work in progress.  I am still failing in many areas of my life and I am still struggling to become who God wants me to be.  I know it's time for me to find my confidence again.  I feel like this last year has been another stripping, this time of all the things that I used to believe would give me more confidence or that would be a source of comfort or confidence.  Now, I know it's just me and God and that he is all I can rely on. . . but that's a tall order.  Join me on my journey.