My sweet Simeon,
seven months old,
with his mommy
who is still speechless
that God gave me this boy
Enjoy It
What is one of the first, last, and most common things that an older & wiser woman tells a young mama? Enjoy it. Enjoy these days, because they go by all too quickly.
Oh! Don’t we know it!
I do not begrudge the sentiment by a long shot, nor do I hold it against the throngs who have thus sought to encourage me. (And, yes, I too have said it to others!)
But what I would really love to know is HOW ~ how do I enjoy it? What are the secrets to embracing the chaos with joy? Where do I uncover secrets for how to capture the beauty in the mess? When will someone explain to me exactly how to soak up life in its moments rather than being pummeled by its speed?
I know that I should enjoy this.
And in all honesty, there is nothing I enjoy more than motherhood.
Nothing!
But there is also nothing harder.
Nothing challenges me to the extent that motherhood does.
Nothing else pushes me to these limits.
Nothing makes me long for quiet moments lying between cool cotton sheets like the chaos of four children, homeschooled by little old me, in a big house in the country.
I enjoy cooking. And baking (yeah, especially baking).
I enjoy a tidy, ordered home.
I enjoy washing dishes and putting away the laundry.
I enjoy dressing my children.
I enjoy undressing them and bathing them and watching them splash in bubble baths.
I enjoy reading books together and having educational aha moments.
I enjoy being the one my husband comes home to.
I enjoy being the woman who makes his lunches, irons his shirts, listens to his thoughts, and entwines my legs with his at night.
I enjoy waking up to the sound of “moooooooommmmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!” through the monitor.
I enjoy answering questions, especially when I know the answer.
I enjoy planning outings and projects and schedules and parties.
I enjoy homemaking.
I enjoy turning chaos into order, mess into beauty, strife into peace.
But in recent weeks, I have wondered: “Do I enjoy MY LIFE?”
What a strange thing. Individually, I can not say that there is honestly any single aspect of my life which I do not enjoy.
I count myself among the blessed few in God’s wide creation that truly enjoy each thing He has called me to do.
But collectively, when it is all shoved together into the short 24-hour windows that He has allotted for me, I find it very hard to enjoy life.
I struggle with feeling like I deserve to enjoy my life.
I feel guilty if I find myself enjoying it fully.
I’m always thinking of twenty other things I should be doing rather than sitting still and enjoying a moment.
(Tell me I’m not alone.)
When I am on my deathbed, if I am coherent at the time, would I say to anyone, “I wish I had vacuumed more regularly? I wish I had cleaned my home on a schedule? I wish I had stuck to a meal plan? I wish I had sent my children away from me each day to be taught by someone else? I wish I had spent more time on the computer?”
I sincerely, highly and deeply, doubt it.
I will, God willing, look around at my descendants and those who I love most, and say, “My only regret is that I did not put aside futile things more to enjoy each human soul God put beside me each day.”
Thirty-two years already into this life, and no clue how many years yet the Lord has written into my story on earth.
But I am trying to get a handle on this thing called life.
Learning how to walk and drink ~ the basics, really.
Does it matter how many dust bunnies are found beneath my couch?
Does it matter what size my jeans are?
When I am older and grayer, will I look back in my memory banks or gaze through photo albums and simply critique the flabby abs of my thirties or the dog hair & country dust on my wood floors?
I should hope not!
These flabby abs were hard to fight for.
Damnit if I allow myself to succumb to peer pressures which make me think I’m less-than because I am no longer a size two.
This body brought thirteen more eternal souls into God’s Kingdom.
I spent nine years giving my body to the work of fattening heaven and earth with children ~ I will not give up my remaining years to agonizing over the evidence they left behind.
These wood floors in my country home are a tool for our life, not the point of our existence.
Phooey on me if I give in to the false assumption that cleanliness is next to godliness because my home doesn’t always sparkle and smell of white vinegar & lemon verbena.
This home is to be used for a blessing, a haven, for those who live here and those who visit here.
Rather than wasting my days scrubbing this place for the sake of appearance, I need to drive Matchbox cars on these floors, crawl alongside my baby through the dust bunnies, and have tea parties on the rugs. Rugs which, by the way, have a clever skill of hiding immeasurable imperfections.
I will enjoy this life.
I will enjoy these children.
Not only the individual events but the collective gathering of people and tasks and weeks.
My personal weakness is to find fault and focus there. To feel guilt over embracing blessings.
But what has God called me to do? To be faithful. To enjoy Him.
May He grant me the daily and hourly strength to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him.
May the God of heaven and earth reach through my weak flesh and grab hold on my faltering heart, causing me to fully enjoy what He has given me to do in this life He has called me to live.
Amen.
This Quiet Moment
I recline here, with my six month old miracle balanced on my lap, leaning into my breast. His rosy cheeks and sparkly eyes put butterflies in my stomach. Wearing nothing but a brown cloth diaper and an amber necklace, there he is, my precious little cherub. I stare at the dimpled elbows and soft skin he presses up against me. I hear crickets and the sound of a spring breeze fading into background noise as his lips and tongue make tiny noises of contentment and joy.
This.
This is bliss.
A quiet moment in the midst of a loud and busy life.
Laundry, dishes, meal planning, specific educating of ever expanding minds & quickly forming worldviews… these things melt to the periphery as I embrace the quiet delight of pudgy baby hands and full-throttle snuggling.
I was made for this.
To embrace this.
To enjoy this.
This.
Long-distance and Long-time
Five years ago right now, I found out I was pregnant with my ninth baby, who came on the heels of six consecutive miscarriages.
Five years ago right now, we began the process of building a home out in the country.
Five years ago right now, a friend of mine emailed me a crazy idea.
Boy. That was a busy year.
I now have a four year old Asher to show for that year.
I now have lived in this home, which we had built out in the country, for four years.
I now have participated in sharing a Pregnancy After Loss devotional, our free ebook download, for four years.
So many big things were obviously going on back then, and honestly, they continue to. Sometimes it is hard to see the growth of such blessings. It felt like so much big stuff back then, but when looking through the proper lenses, I can see that God is continuing to do great big things with those very seeds from five years ago. My friend Kristi reminded me this week that it was four years ago that R&R went live. What an exciting day that was for us! And today, she shares a little here about the growing process of our Rainbows & Redemption devotional to give a little special insight to the planting, blooming, and pruning progression.
Later this month, I will get to see Kristi in person for the second time ~ the first time was three years ago. I’ve known her long-distance for 5 1/2 years, as God has taken each of us on similar yet different journeys. We met online when we were both pregnant-after-loss, once: she was pregnant with her little Kyria, I was pregnant with my Peace. Neither of us were having a good time of it at all. We ended up delivering our precious little first trimester babies, three thousand miles apart, that November, in 2009. We have both had more pregnancies since then ~ my Asher and her Caleb were in our bellies while we wrote and edited R&R, so we shared wild roller coasters for months at a time. We have each called one another in moments of panic, straight from our own home bathrooms… because we were either starting to miscarry or had gotten less-than-encouraging blood test results or were worrying our brains to a fritz psycho-analyzing every little twinge and symptom and dream while PAL.
How good it continues to be to know that I am not alone.
We may be separated by basically the entire United States (she is at the SE corner while I am in the NW corner), but we are still there for one another, especially when it comes to specific niche topics. Things like miscarriage and related babyloss topics. Writing, specifically when it comes to words of encouragement. Homeschooling. Rainbow babies.
I hope to continue sharing life, prayers, and writing with Kristi as time goes on ~ my long-distance and long-time friend. God grows beautiful things from little seeds. Like babies. And friendships. And books. Blessings.
Twelve Pounds of Sugar
This five month old boy is sweet and delicious.
I can’t get enough of him!
Proverbs 4:3-5
When I was a son with my father,
tender, the only one in the sight of my mother,
he taught me and said to me,
“Let your heart hold fast my words;
keep my commandments, and live.
Get wisdom; get insight;
do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.”
Savoring Friendship & Cookies
It was obviously an early day of spring.
Grey clouds and blinding sunshine danced together.
Robins were bouncing happily around outside while it rained.
The fire roared in our living room stove, schoolwork was spread on the table,
the baby was fussing, and the big kids were doing anything but focusing on their books.
I was fighting a headache with Tylenol & caffeine to no avail.
Grasping for a lifeline of sorts, I popped off a quick note to a dear friend,
the kind of friend who is more like a sister than not,
to ask her to pray for me.
She wrote right back.
She thanked me for sharing my needs and expressing my heart.
She gave suggestions that were rooted in love.
She jumped into a gap for me and filled it with prayers, love, compassion, friendship.
I shared a list of things with her that was making me thankful.
Across a distance of 375 miles, she gave me a virtual hug and a shoulder to lean on.
Together, while apart, we sought the Lord as well as praised Him.
She in her kitchen, surrounded by her little blondies.
Me in mine, surrounded by my wee gingers.
Friendship is acting out God’s love for people in tangible ways. We were made to represent the love of God in each other’s lives, so that each person we walk through life with has a more profound sense of God’s love for them. Friendship is an opportunity to act on God’s behalf in the lives of the people that we’re close to, reminding each other who God is. When we do the hard, intimate work of friendship, we bring a little more of the divine into daily life. We get to remind one another about the bigger, more beautiful picture that we can’t always see from where we are.
~Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines, p49
Then I noticed she sent me something else ~ a link to a recipe.
“If you need something sweet to eat today, here’s a link to a recipe we are making,”
she said, along with three pictures of her children helping her
stir batter, eat batter, and put trays of cookies in the oven.
“I wish we could share hot cookies and ice-cold milk with you this afternoon,” she added.
That’s when I decided it was time to stoke the fire,
strap the baby onto my chest,
put away the schoolbooks,
and take three sticks of butter out of the fridge to warm on the counter.
“Butter is out to soften!!” I told her,
declaring that we would make the best of it,
and we would join them in the baking efforts of the day…
and we spent the next hour or two occasionally popping messages to one another
on our progress in our own little worlds of flour, sugar, aprons, and children licking their fingers.
My children and I were able to not only connect with one another and savor our relationship,
but we were talking about these far-away friends & taking pictures to show them,
connecting in creative ways with these friends even when distance separates us.
When joy and grace are shared, it multiplies in ways indescribable.
When friendship is savored, it builds bridges undeniable.
The short of it is that you really just need to click here and try the recipe out for yourself.
And then, once you have, share the link with a friend.
And share pics of doing the same thing as one another, even if separated by miles.
It is good to savor friendship.
It is good to find unique ways to share life together with those you love.
Even if it is two mamas with their little ones at their sides, separated by 375 miles,
we can still share life & friendship & motherhood & cookies.
Creativity can be both warm and delicious.
Just like friendship.
In our own unique way, my children and I
shared hot cookies and ice-cold milk
with the dearest of friends ~
our hearts were encouraged
while souls were fattened
and tongues rejoiced!
I know of no other recipe for making a good-bye bearable than the promise that the God who goes with us and stays with them will be the bridge connecting us, no matter how far or long the distance.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p95~
Photography Challenge, Week Twelve
Week Twelve: Artistic, Transportation
Each week, I find myself trying various ideas
and trying to be particularly artsy…
but then I find myself back in my “real life mama” rut! 
So this week’s artistic interpretation of transportation,
is simply a picture of all my babywearing gear.
That’s how my littlest kiddos
are transported around.
And it’s my favorite thing right now.
Bliss-Full
I had expected to feel defeated. To wake up every day still longing for more.
That’s the honest truth.
But when someone said to me at the mall on my birthday (and maybe it’s simply because, who honestly goes shopping at posh J.Jill during naptime with four little kids in tow?!), you certainly have your hands full after I answered her question about the kids’ ages… I smiled, and replied, yes; blissfully, happily so.
After so desperately wanting half a dozen kids filling my home, to feel full of bliss and contentment that I can not adequately describe is truly humbling and beautiful. It is a gift from God.
I don’t feel defeated. I do not daily yearn for what-will-not-be.
Joy fills my home, and supersedes the sorrows.
Rather than defeat, I feel a sense of peaceful victory.
God gave us the courage to push through.
And He gave us the grace to overcome.
And these four little miracles who fill my home are just so downright blissful themselves.
Joy, wonder, excitement, creativity ~ it is in every corner of the home, every hour of the day.
And while the duties of my days have their monotony, their frustration, their dull sheen at times…
the joy and gratitude and marvel of my life truly take the monopoly.
Take a peek. Because these little people truly fill my heart with bliss.
I discovered that at the heart of my misery—beyond the homesickness and sense of failure—was a misunderstanding about faith. I had confused faith in God with faith in what God could do for me. I had been viewing God like a mystical vending machine: I inserted my prayers, pulled the handle, and expected the desires of my heart to pop out the bottom slot. It turns out God has very little in common with Pop-Tarts. And what makes me happy is not necessarily what draws me closer to the God who knows my every nook and cranny. It turns out He loves me enough to say no when, as every parent understands, saying yes would have been so much simpler, with less call for temper tantrums.
~Lisa-Jo Baker, Surprised By Motherhood, p100~
Life in the Weeds
I was gritting my teeth through the morning… two crying in one room while two squabbled in another… one wetting her pants while another filled his diaper… two boys throwing up hands because of math problems while the baby throws up milk because I didn’t pat out his burps while I want to throw in the towel at the sight of a dog tracking in mud-and-who-knows-what… costumes and matchbox cars and crayons and sippy cups strewn all over the house…
I am smiling though my body aches and my soul is stretched, because I know there is no other choice.
But there is a struggle going on while I nearly drown myself in self-doubt and self-loathing. Yes, this day feels like an exercise of futility. But does that mean that it is not valuable? Deep in my heart I know that it is invaluable, but that is an intangible & invisible price tag.
Then at noon my phone rang. It was my husband, calling to check in on my day. When I heard his voice, it felt like a drink of cold water when you are really thirsty. I needed that. And when he asked how my day was going, I said, “tell me about your day” – to which he said, “that good, huh? tell me how things are.” I sighed and walked to the bathroom. It’s funny how a bathroom can become a place of refuge, of comfort and quiet. The rest of the house may be a busy, noisy, bustling, messy place ~ but my bathroom? I can close out everything else, even if just for five minutes. So I did. Well, except for the kids calling me from the other room, and the sleeping baby strapped to my chest. But you know. That is basically the same as being alone. 😉
I poured out my thoughts (anxieties, fears, self-doubt, struggles, frustrations) to my generously listening husband. I emptied myself.
And then he poured his thoughts back to me, seeking to fill me back up.
I may have cried while he did.
He encouraged me, it is hard to see the fruit when we are still planting.
And, it is hard to see when you’re in the weeds. You have to be able to step back and see where you came from.
My husband took the time amidst his own busy workday to encourage me in mine.
I don’t get graded or adjudicated or reviewed to find perspective.
But my husband can see my emptiness. Especially when I am not too proud to lift the veil and let him see it.
Sometimes all I see are the weeds that need pulled out. And when the plants are still small, the weeds and the seedlings can actually be hard to distinguish. I need a fellow gardener sometimes to give me perspective and remind me that I am still planting, still watering; the harvest at this point is in tiny portions. Someone else’s eyes may better see the good growth while surveying the land, while I am on my knees in the furrows, hands covered in dirt and eyes focused on the weeds.
My job isn’t to wonder how great the harvest will be. Not yet.
It is to keep planting good seeds, keep watering, keep fertilizing, keep plucking out the weeds, to let the sunlight in, to patiently wait while the tiny plants take root.
Someday it will be easier to see the work that has been accomplished.
Right now, all I need is to be this empty vessel, this diligent planter, this person who takes five minutes to cry “alone” in the bathroom and then gets back digging into the dirt.
I need to remember that only eyes of faith can see the beauty of future fruit even when life feels lived in the weeds.
Oh Lord, help Thou my unbelief.
Life as SAHM is (More Than) Enough
I praise my King, that He and His grace are sufficient
(which means not only enough, but completely and totally filling it up to all the corners!)
even for the moments where I muse about the following…
where I wonder about myself and my work…
where I ask Him, is it enough?
and am I enough?
I can feel like I run around all day trying to just keep little people alive, fed, clothed, and moderately happy.
And is that enough?
Sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough.
There are moments where my brain says, “I’ve HAD enough.”
And there are moments where my heart screams, “This is enough to fill me up for six lifetimes!”
But there is a tug of war going on inside myself.
Is it enough? What I do? Who I am? How I do it?
I spend all day every day just trying to keep our world going. To keep bellies filled, house clean, home havenly, children tended, errands run, bills paid, prayers said, minds educated.
“Just.”
As if there were anything JUST about it.
For today, while yet another ellipses claims my thoughts and my time, I will leave you with a wonderfully long missive that G.K. Chesterton said about the massive duty of motherhood, for which it could never be said to have “just” as its adjective.
Supposing it to be conceded that humanity has acted at least not unnaturally in dividing itself into two halves, respectively typifying the ideals of special talent and of general sanity (since they are genuinely difficult to combine completely in one mind), it is not difficult to see why the line of cleavage has followed the line of sex, or why the female became the emblem of the universal and the male of the special and superior.
Two gigantic facts of nature fixed it thus: first, that the woman who frequently fulfilled her functions literally could not be specially prominent in experiment and adventure; and second, that the same natural operation surrounded her with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist.
Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world.
But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean.
To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.
How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.
-What’s Wrong with the World by G.K. Chesterton
