Random Mom Thoughts...

It is Mother's day this weekend and I am thrilled beyond thrilled that my Grandma and my Mom and Dad are coming to celebrate with us.  I am blessed to have my Grandma.  So blessed.  And I was SO blessed to have my Grandma Twig (aka Terwilliger) for so many years of my life...30 to be exact.  Wonderful women who I look up to and love deeply.

My heart is also burdened for those who have lost their Mother's...my Dad, my dear friend Leanne, my sister in law Cara.  I KNOW this week is HARD for them.  I know Mother's day is HARD for those who don't have someone to buy a card for, or give a card to.

My heart aches for those who for one reason or another are not mother's...by choice some, and not by choice for others.  Either way, I think Mother's day would be hard in those situations.

I read a great article this week about being sensitive to those who have suffered losses, miscarriages, children who have run away, children who have strayed away, children who have died....makes my heart ache for them.

I had lunch with my dear friend Lynn on Tuesday and we were talking about how often we FAIL as Mom's and how we hope our children's memories of our faults are short.  I know my memories of my Mom being upset are few and far between.  I don't remember those things very well even when I really try.  I am sure she was mad at us, I am sure she told me 1 million times to clean my room, wash my hands, help with dishes, hang up my coat, do my homework...I am SURE she did.  But yet I don't remember those moments.  I remember her being home after school, I remember her baking for us, making great family dinners, doing my laundry for me...I remember her listening to my tears, and let me tell you there were a LOT of tears.  I remember her notes on my nightstand in High School when I would get home after she and Dad went to bed.  I remember her having things we loved stocked in the fridge.  I remember her asking about my friends.  I remember her caring about my boyfriends and asking a LOT about those details, which I REALLY can relate to now.  I remember the rule of calling her anytime my friends and I changed locations in High School so she would know where I was.  I remember her grace when I made bad choices.  I don't remember the stuff I feel so consumed by these days as I am busy in Mommyhood.  I hope my kids don't remember those parts of me. :)  I hope they remember the "good stuff".

I read several wonderful Mom articles this week that I need to read and re read.  I am going to post them all here.  Which will make this blog post VERY long, but it will then be written for years in our blog journal for me to read and re read vs just the links.

Bottom line....we are tired, we are blessed, we are Mom's...grateful I have so many wonderful Mom's to share this journey with.  So grateful.  God's provision in my girlfriends amazes me....from high school friends who are still so dear to my heart and life, to friends I see weekly, to friends who I can pick up with right where we leave off....NOT to mention my own Mom.   I don't take it for granted that I have her to talk to almost daily.  So so SO blessed....and yes, still tired. :)  Sit down and soak these following articles in....

love you girls....you KNOW who you are!
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First I read this on monday morning...from Proverbs 31 Women

May 6, 2013 The Micromanaging Mama Karen Ehman

"Don't let your spirit rush to be angry, for anger abides in the heart of fools." Ecclesiastes 7:9 (HCSB)

I couldn't think of anything more exciting than going to Sylvia's house for the afternoon. She had fancy clothes and the neighborhood's only built-in swimming pool. But best of all?

Sylvia had one amazing dollhouse.

There were bedroom sets with dressers, cloth curtains in the windows, and colorful spreads on the beds. There was a living room set with a tiny television and a kitchen with real-looking appliances in the trendy shade of turquoise.

To top it all off, it came with a family - pliable, lifelike miniature human beings who smiled no matter how I posed them. There was even a trusty canine I named Scrappy.

I could arrange the furniture any way I desired. The petite pots and pans were just the way I liked on the stove to simmer. The baby woke up from her nap just when I wanted. The family members entered and exited on my cue. No object missed a single prompt in the scenarios that played out at the ends of my chubby little fingertips.

However, my perfect little world was easily shattered. Sometimes, when I had to go home to eat dinner, Sylvia wanted to play with her own toys. Later I'd return to find the house rearranged by someone who was not going along with my program.

I never liked when someone messed with my plan. In fact, it made me angry.

Today my days still revolve around a house. The furniture is bigger. The dishes and rugs are real. The people are too. And I still don't like anyone messing with my plan.

Messing with my plan often looks like this: abandoned dirty dishes, shoes scattered haphazardly, newly washed windows dotted with sticky fingerprints, mud tracked floors, crumbs trailed, trash not taken out as asked, homework undone, pokey kids making the family late for church. Again.

And sadly, messing with my plan can also find me behaving like this: sharp words strategically hurled, a caustic demeanor meant to snap my family to attention, or a "martyr mom" pose I suddenly strike to convey my "I-do-so-much-for-all-of-you-people-and-what-thanks-do-I-get?" message.

At times like this, as today's key verse from Ecclesiastes 7:9 states, my spirit rushes to anger. When anger takes the lead, I can go from mild-mannered mother to micromanaging mama in three seconds flat to try and make my family "get with the program—and PRONTO!"

Rushing to anger in an attempt to micromanage can lead to hurt feelings, crumpled spirits and fractured relationships in need of repair. Of course we should expect our children to do as they are asked, to perform their chores or remember their school responsibilities.

But, when they don't—because they are kids and like us, not perfect—how will we chose to behave? Do we choose to be like Jesus who would respond appropriately and with self-control or like a wild woman who somehow thinks yelling is effective although it has never, ever worked in the past.

Will you join me in a challenge to pause before pouncing? To not rush to anger and instead rush to Jesus' side? It is there we can allow Jesus to temper our tempers and filter our words so we can behave in a way that honors Him—and our family members too.

Dear Lord, teach me to rush to You instead of rushing to anger. I want others to clearly see You reflected in my actions and reactions. In Jesus' Name, Amen.

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Then I read this...by Ann Voskamp

So God Made a Mother:
When the Giving Tree is Really The Giving Mother *Updated

So, sure, there was this talk of The Giving Tree –

but there wasn’t one of us who didn’t know all along it was you, The Giving Mother.

You who leaned over a stove and stirred and let spices fall like leaves and you ladled and we slurped and it would be remembered when we were old, the meatballs that you shaped and the noodles on Sunday nights with the Magi and how you wiped your hands on your apron slow.

The Giving Mother who lets us take up whole places inside of you, who keeps making spaces, who never stops making spaces, growing soft and round, stretching thinner and growing fuller, your hearts and hips widening with a widening grace.

I never get over the shade of you, the grace of you, the limbs of you, the God-made Giving Tree —

Because God needed someone to love the least and the little into real whole people, and He knew that to love is to suffer so God made a mother.

God had said –

I need someone to get up at midnight and scoop the most fragile of humanity close to her warmth and rock though she can hardly stand and nourish though she’s mostly sleep-starved and change the diaper and the sheets and the leaked on, leaked through, and leaked down clothes though she’ll have to change them in the morning and next week and that won’t change for years.

So God made a Mother.That God had said I need somebody with a strong heart.

Strong enough for toddler tantrums and teenage testing, yet broken enough to fall on her knees and pray, pray, pray.

Someone who knows that in every hard place is exactly where you extend grace, who looks a hopeful child in the eye and says yes, even though she knows every yes means a mess but this is how you bless, who has the courage to keep letting go because she’s holding on to Me.

So God made a mother.

God said I need somebody who can shape a soul and find shoes on Sunday mornings and get grass stains out of Levis.

And make dinner out of nothing and do it again 79, 678 times, and keep kids off the road and out of the toilet and in clean underwear and mainly alive though she’s mainly losing her mind and will put in an 80 hour week by Wednesday night and just do one more load of laundry.

And one more sink of crusted burnt pots.

And keep on going another eighty hours because raising generations matters and weaving families matters and tying heart strings matters and these people here in hidden places matter.

So God made a mother…

It had to be somebody who could comb back pigtails and tie up skates just-right tight.

Who could pretend she remembered algebra and how to get home from here and that really, she was just fine, that it must just be the silly onions.

Somebody who would run for the catch, jump on a trampoline and play one fierce game of soccer and not give a thought to all those labors and her weak pelvic floor. Somebody who’d stay up late with a science project that never ends, who’d get up early for the game in the rain, somebody who’d wave at the door until the taillights were out of sight and still be smiling brave.

So God made a mother.

It had to be somebody willing to keep loving when it made no sense because that’s what love does.

Somebody who knew that life is not an emergency but a gift — so just. slow. down. There are children at play here and we don’t want anyone to get hurt and the hurry makes us hurt.

Somebody willing to feed and lead, lay down her life and pick up her cross, give of her time because they have her heart. Someone who knows that we all blow it — and what matters is what we then do after.

Someone who could humble herself into the tender sorry that covers a multitude of sins.

Someone who would live like a Giving Tree — who would would give grace, give life, and give thanks—  eucharisteo:  the giving thanks for every grace that gives back always joy.

Someone who would stand in the mess and the midst and give thanks anyways — becauseeucharisteo always, always, precedes the miracle of discovering that the Giver Himself is always,always more than enough.

Someone who would live it a thousand times: Give thanks — and discover that the Giver Himself isthe Gift and He alone is always, always enough.

Someone who would pour out and bend down and surrender not only to the physical pain of childbirth but the far deeper, unending heart pain of letting go, letting go, letting go –  from the womb, from the arms, from the front door. Someone who would know that umbilical cords can be cut — but heart strings never can.

Someone who’d bow her head at night over the girl sleeping with the doll in the crook of her arm — and give thanks to her Father for this hidden life that’s turning a gear for the whole spinning world.

So God made a mother.

You.

The Giving Mother, made by God to be a safe shelter….

with your roots dipping like lines into aquifers to siphon love up out of the caving cup of His hands.

His hands …. and those always underneath, everlasting arms holding us all.

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And then I read this...  I am in a season of my life right now where I feel bone-tired almost all of the time. Ragged, how-am-I-going-to-make-it-to-the-end-of-the-day, eyes burning exhausted.

I have three boys ages 5 and under. I'm not complaining about that. Well, maybe I am a little bit. But I know that there are people who would give anything for a house full of laughter and chaos. I was that person for years and years; the pain of infertility is stabbing and throbbing and constant. I remember allowing hope to rise and then seeing it crash all around me, month after month, for seven years. I am working on another post about infertility that will come at a later date.

But right now, in my actual life, I have three boys ages 5 and under. There are many moments where they are utterly delightful, like last week, when Isaac told my sister-in-law that, "My daddy has hair all over." Or when Elijah put a green washcloth over his chin and cheeks, and proudly declared, "Daddy! I have a beard just like you!" Or when Ben sneaks downstairs in the morning before the other boys do, smiles at me, and says, "Daddy and Ben time."

But there are also many moments when I have no idea how I'm going to make it until their bedtime. The constant demands, the needs and the fighting are fingernails across the chalkboard every single day.

One of my children is for sure going to be the next Steve Jobs. I now have immense empathy for his parents. He has a precise vision of what he wants -- exactly that way and no other way. Sometimes, it's the way his plate needs to be centered exactly to his chair, or how his socks go on, or exactly how the picture of the pink dolphin needs to look -- with brave eyes, not sad eyes, daddy! He is a laser beam, and he is not satisfied until it's exactly right.

I have to confess that sometimes, the sound of his screaming drives me to hide in the pantry. And I will neither confirm nor deny that while in there, I compulsively eat chips and/or dark chocolate.

There are people who say this to me:

"You should enjoy every moment now! They grow up so fast!"

I usually smile and give some sort of guffaw, but inside, I secretly want to hold them under water. Just for a minute or so. Just until they panic a little.

If you have friends with small children -- especially if your children are now teenagers or if they're grown -- please vow to me right now that you will never say this to them. Not because it's not true, but because it really, really doesn't help.

We know it's true that they grow up too fast. But feeling like I have to enjoy every moment doesn't feel like a gift, it feels like one more thing that is impossible to do, and right now, that list is way too long. Not every moment is enjoyable as a parent; it wasn't for you, and it isn't for me. You just have obviously forgotten. I can forgive you for that. But if you tell me to enjoy every moment one more time, I will need to break up with you.

If you are a parent of small children, you know that there are moments of spectacular delight, and you can't believe you get to be around these little people. But let me be the one who says the following things out loud:

You are not a terrible parent if you can't figure out a way for your children to eat as healthy as your friend's children do. She's obviously using a bizarre and probably illegal form of hypnotism.

You are not a terrible parent if you yell at your kids sometimes. You have little dictators living in your house. If someone else talked to you like that, they'd be put in prison.

You are not a terrible parent if you can't figure out how to calmly give them appropriate consequences in real time for every single act of terrorism that they so creatively devise.

You are not a terrible parent if you'd rather be at work.

You are not a terrible parent if you just can't wait for them to go to bed.

You are not a terrible parent if the sound of their voices sometimes makes you want to drink and never stop.

You're not a terrible parent.

You're an actual parent with limits. You cannot do it all. We all need to admit that one of the casualties specific to our information saturated culture is that we have sky-scraper standards for parenting, where we feel like we're failing horribly if we feed our children chicken nuggets and we let them watch TV in the morning.

One of the reasons we are so exhausted is that we are oversaturated with information about the kind of parents we should be.

So, maybe it's time to stop reading the blogs that tell you how to raise the next president who knows how to read when she's 3 and who cooks, not only eats, her vegetables. Maybe it's time to embrace being the kind of parent who says sorry when you yell. Who models what it's like to take time for yourself. Who asks God to help you to be a better version of the person that you actually are, not for more strength to be an ideal parent.

So, the next time you see your friends with small children with that foggy and desperate look in their eyes, order them a pizza and send it to their house that night. Volunteer to take their kids for a few hours so they can be alone in their own house and have sex when they're not so tired, for heaven's sake. Put your hand on their shoulder, look them in the eyes, and tell them that they're doing a good job. Just don't freak out if they start weeping uncontrollably. Most of the time, we feel like we're botching the whole deal and our kids will turn into horrible criminals who hate us and will never want to be around us when they're older.

You're bone-tired. I'm not sure when it's going to get better. Today might be a good day or it might be the day that you lost it in a way that surprised even yourself.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

You're not alone.