After much trepidation and dread, the day has finally arrived for my husband to leave on his annual ice fishing trip. I hate this trip every year, because in the 7th grade, my best friend's dad died during an ice fishing trip, and I can not seem to shake the sense of foreboding associated with it. (Read: I am scared out of my wits). This year, it is even worse than normal, and compounded by the fact that the baby is teething and has had some rough nights. There is nothing I hate worse that being tired. Excursions such as these always sharpen my appreciation for military wives, single mom's, and women with useless husbands.
My husband, being the wonderful specimen that he is, has made it as easy as possible for me, by doing things like: making sure I have enough pellets for the stove and gas in my car, filling up the water softener, changing batteries in nearly everything, and making sure the gun is readily accessible in case I need to shoot an intruder. So, I really have nothing to complain about, and besides, when my husband and I got married, though we said the traditional wedding vows, I silently and secretly vowed never to resent hunting and fishing, because these are who he was before we met. Though I have not been entirely successful with this, as it gets exponentially more difficult with each child, I was pleased with the more grown up way I seemed to handle it this year. Maybe I have finally learned what I have trying to teach my six year old: Tantrums are simply unbecoming; they never change anything.
My mom and sister are coming for part of it, and I have lots of projects planned for us, so that will help some, but not with the nights. I also plan on reading a novel.
I always do this to myself; try to trick my brain into thinking of it as some sort of relaxing retreat, which I know is totally bogus, because who in there right mind would consider taking care of three kids with no husband a relaxing retreat? But it's all I've got, so I go for it.
It's strange for me to feel this way, I used to love living alone. Maybe having someone to depend on weakens a person somehow....
The time comes, and he kisses us goodbye. I try to put on my figurative big girl panties, but I've got a lump in my throat. It's going to be a long four days if I can't summon a stronger version of myself, but I've momentarily forgotten how. He is gone, and Baylie needs breakfast, and Colt needs to go potty, and I remember: the key is to keep moving, to try to immerse myself in the task at hand, so I do that. It will get me through until bedtime, where I will be alone with my anxiety, in my carvernous bed. It's nice though, being with someone you miss so much it hurts, and I know it's good for him to go. He deserves it. (Never mind that I could never say to him "I'll be gone 4 days around the 25th, have fun with the kids, see you when I get back." says the other part of my brain.....) Sigh.
Anyway, I have no sparkling wit to offer today, just a prayer request for safe travels and that I find my big girl panties ( maybe they are in washing machine oblivion, with the baby socks?)....In the meanwhile, I think I'll go put on some lipstick ;).
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Jesus loves me, even in my sweats
Sometimes, the worse I feel, the more it seems I am barely holding it together by a thread, the more important it is to me to look put together. A little lipstick goes a long way sometimes in plucking up my courage to face the world. Maybe I'm tired, but if you can't see it, it's easier to get through some how. Even if no one sees me, it pulls me up and in, gives me back some sense of strength.
I don't think this phenomenon is unique to me either, maybe it's a female thing, or just control freaks. When I was in college, I had International Political Economy first thing in the morning. I am not a morning person, but I never showed up with out full makeup and my hair fixed. Why show up in your sweat pants and betray weakness? With three kids and a husband who prefers me without makeup, I am not as rigid about this as I used to be, but some days, I still find it makes me feel better, less frayed some how. I look in the mirror and I say to my self, ugh you look like a dishrag, stand up strait, curl your hair, and put on some lipstick.
I suppose this comes from being such a performance based person. I judge myself, and probably you too a little if I'm honest, by what I can get done. People who sit around just rub me the wrong way; part of my upbringing I guess. I find that I just don't feel worthy if I haven't accomplished anything.
I want to be able to Do something. Guilt is a constant companion of my to do list.
So it happens that I go rounds with the fact that God is not a performance based God. I don't have to Do anything, and I can't anyway. He doesn't care if I mop today or not, he'd rather have me love on my kids. The things he probably does want me to do, like get real with him about why I snap at my kids, or put loving my neighbor above my own schedule are not the things I have in mind either. The deeply Lutheran part of me wants to bring you a casserole, and then, seeing progress, mind my own business. I have put you on my schedule, checked you off my list, our relationship is tidy, but shallow. It is a realization that I have to come to over and over, that my worth is not about what I got done today. If I got short with my kids because they were interfering with my battle against the mini dogs that are spawning from the hair under my couch, then I have missed the point somehow. God's grace goes over my head like this about a million times a day. The balance between the day to day tasks and the big picture priorities of what my kids are seeing about God in me is an ongoing see saw on which I never seem to gain equilibrium.
Life is messy. God sees under my lipstick, and he knows that I'm a mess, and I'm starting to see that friendship and love is more about getting up in each other's mess than I thought. And while I'm not going to swear off productivity and become a couch potato, I need to let go sometimes; ease up, and try to see me the way God does, and to let others see me that way too. I used to have a deep belief that it is weak to let people see all that stuff, but I am learning slowly, that people who are too afraid of vulnerability to let people in, those people are scared, and that is the weaker thing.
Most often, my arms are too full of that neat little heavy package of put together, to receive unexpected moments of grace that only come when we are bare and honest and flawed, when I set down my casserole dish and my armor, and we talk, when I see the small things with my kids, when I align my priorities with God's.
Alas, this is a lesson I know I will have to learn many times over, but I hope today that I will make space for a little less perfection, and a little more love, I will dance in my kitchen, and cover my baby with lipstick kisses, and if you come on over to Soggy Bottom sometime, and I'm in my sweats, I promise I'll still let you in.
I don't think this phenomenon is unique to me either, maybe it's a female thing, or just control freaks. When I was in college, I had International Political Economy first thing in the morning. I am not a morning person, but I never showed up with out full makeup and my hair fixed. Why show up in your sweat pants and betray weakness? With three kids and a husband who prefers me without makeup, I am not as rigid about this as I used to be, but some days, I still find it makes me feel better, less frayed some how. I look in the mirror and I say to my self, ugh you look like a dishrag, stand up strait, curl your hair, and put on some lipstick.
I suppose this comes from being such a performance based person. I judge myself, and probably you too a little if I'm honest, by what I can get done. People who sit around just rub me the wrong way; part of my upbringing I guess. I find that I just don't feel worthy if I haven't accomplished anything.
I want to be able to Do something. Guilt is a constant companion of my to do list.
So it happens that I go rounds with the fact that God is not a performance based God. I don't have to Do anything, and I can't anyway. He doesn't care if I mop today or not, he'd rather have me love on my kids. The things he probably does want me to do, like get real with him about why I snap at my kids, or put loving my neighbor above my own schedule are not the things I have in mind either. The deeply Lutheran part of me wants to bring you a casserole, and then, seeing progress, mind my own business. I have put you on my schedule, checked you off my list, our relationship is tidy, but shallow. It is a realization that I have to come to over and over, that my worth is not about what I got done today. If I got short with my kids because they were interfering with my battle against the mini dogs that are spawning from the hair under my couch, then I have missed the point somehow. God's grace goes over my head like this about a million times a day. The balance between the day to day tasks and the big picture priorities of what my kids are seeing about God in me is an ongoing see saw on which I never seem to gain equilibrium.
Life is messy. God sees under my lipstick, and he knows that I'm a mess, and I'm starting to see that friendship and love is more about getting up in each other's mess than I thought. And while I'm not going to swear off productivity and become a couch potato, I need to let go sometimes; ease up, and try to see me the way God does, and to let others see me that way too. I used to have a deep belief that it is weak to let people see all that stuff, but I am learning slowly, that people who are too afraid of vulnerability to let people in, those people are scared, and that is the weaker thing.
Most often, my arms are too full of that neat little heavy package of put together, to receive unexpected moments of grace that only come when we are bare and honest and flawed, when I set down my casserole dish and my armor, and we talk, when I see the small things with my kids, when I align my priorities with God's.
Alas, this is a lesson I know I will have to learn many times over, but I hope today that I will make space for a little less perfection, and a little more love, I will dance in my kitchen, and cover my baby with lipstick kisses, and if you come on over to Soggy Bottom sometime, and I'm in my sweats, I promise I'll still let you in.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
The soul's winter
I know I have a blessed life. I have to preface this post this way because I don't want to be a whiner. I am blessed to have a love with a man who knocks the wind out of me with it's intensity, I have healthy children who color my world (sometimes a bit too literally), and we have had the enormous blessing of building our dream house together, in a peaceful quiet neighborhood where my children can have space to roam. But I have to write this any way, because I hope it will be a gift to those who know what I mean. In all the blessing, something is missing. The surety of knowing what I was made for has gone.
When I met Lance I was passionate and intense with creative purpose, but amid my days of motherhood, I feel my self shrinking to fit into the tiniest nooks and crannies of my life. I long to do something meaningful, but my reality is such that if I have gotten to clip my toenails without interruption, it's a good day. How do you fit in meaning? And the longer time goes on, the less sure I am that I have anything worth while to offer. The once contemplative parts of my brain are filling with the minutia of menu plans, to do lists, and school schedules. I long for deep friendships, but fear I have nothing to contribute, no ideas of substance, no vibrant energy, just a wrung out mom self who would just as often as not choose a nap over an adventure.
I want to write books like this, because when I read them, I cling to them like a shred of hope, a bright blue feather falling through a bleak sky, and it keeps that part of me from extinguishing. I want to do that for someone. To tell another mother, you are not alone, you are worthwhile, you are in there somewhere.
Levi was so crabby today. He screamed and screamed as we took turns trying to sooth him. The girls were fighting, and whining, and begging for something to do. Finally, to escape, if only momentarily from the cacophony of noise outside and inside my brain, I stole away to my front porch, where the only sounds were geese and distant cars. The sunset was ablaze, making an ebony silhouette of my neighbor's trees, but all I could see out there was myself, in the way the trees were planted too close together, stretching upward into the glowing sky, just to find some room to be; in the way the blue was pressing down upon the fiery sunset, pressing it into submission, until it was only a sliver on the horizon, fighting a loosing battle against the dome of indigo above. And then I heard my son screaming through the window, and I went back to join the fray.
God made me to be with this man, as though it is his very rib I was made from in heaven. These children were given to me to mother, but these things are not all that I am, and if that longing in me were to die, I would not be whole to be their mother and wife. I will clutch my feather like a secret, like a seed in winter, until the season comes when I can plant it, and it will bloom fearlessly.
When I met Lance I was passionate and intense with creative purpose, but amid my days of motherhood, I feel my self shrinking to fit into the tiniest nooks and crannies of my life. I long to do something meaningful, but my reality is such that if I have gotten to clip my toenails without interruption, it's a good day. How do you fit in meaning? And the longer time goes on, the less sure I am that I have anything worth while to offer. The once contemplative parts of my brain are filling with the minutia of menu plans, to do lists, and school schedules. I long for deep friendships, but fear I have nothing to contribute, no ideas of substance, no vibrant energy, just a wrung out mom self who would just as often as not choose a nap over an adventure.
I want to write books like this, because when I read them, I cling to them like a shred of hope, a bright blue feather falling through a bleak sky, and it keeps that part of me from extinguishing. I want to do that for someone. To tell another mother, you are not alone, you are worthwhile, you are in there somewhere.
Levi was so crabby today. He screamed and screamed as we took turns trying to sooth him. The girls were fighting, and whining, and begging for something to do. Finally, to escape, if only momentarily from the cacophony of noise outside and inside my brain, I stole away to my front porch, where the only sounds were geese and distant cars. The sunset was ablaze, making an ebony silhouette of my neighbor's trees, but all I could see out there was myself, in the way the trees were planted too close together, stretching upward into the glowing sky, just to find some room to be; in the way the blue was pressing down upon the fiery sunset, pressing it into submission, until it was only a sliver on the horizon, fighting a loosing battle against the dome of indigo above. And then I heard my son screaming through the window, and I went back to join the fray.
God made me to be with this man, as though it is his very rib I was made from in heaven. These children were given to me to mother, but these things are not all that I am, and if that longing in me were to die, I would not be whole to be their mother and wife. I will clutch my feather like a secret, like a seed in winter, until the season comes when I can plant it, and it will bloom fearlessly.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Can't we all just get along
Today a childhood friend of mine and son of my former pastor, who is now a pastor himself shared an article to facebook entitled "Friends don't let friends read Beth Moore" in which the author took it as his charge to publicly rebuke Beth Moore and Joyce Meyer for their approach to the scripture.
Now many of you know that I was raised in the Lutheran Church Missouri synod, and have, after period of waywardness, returned to Christ as an Evangelical Christian. I see these type of posts frequently among my friends...evangelicals have the wrong hymns and liturgy, the wrong approach to children's ministry, you name it, we Evangelicals have got it wrong. As a long time Lutheran, I get it, making God about you, and church about entertainment, misses the mark. And let me say as a disclaimer of sorts that my childhood friend is to the best of my knowledge a sincere and well intentioned Christian man, and that protecting one's flock and family from false teaching is indeed no trifling charge. That being said, as I went about my housewifely duties today, I could not stop being disturbed by what this post and it's fellows represent.
As I mentioned, and as you well know if you have ever stumbled before upon this blog, I have been as far off the path as you can go, and were it not for the extension of grace shown to me by the Evangelical church, I would not be a Christian today, nor would my family. I have a fondness for the way Lutherans do things, but I also enjoy the worship style of my current church, and you know what, I think God does too, because he created us all as unique individuals with different gifts for expressing our gratitude in worship, and because he is the one who authored our creativity. The bible commands us to teach our children, not whether it should be in a Sunday school room or church service, it commands us to worship, not how it should sound, it commands us to love one another, it commands us to cling to the word. So what if the form it takes is different for different folks. Most of the stuff that begets interdenominational squabbling is petty, trivial stuff. If a church is biblical, and people are coming to and remaining in Christ as a result of it, then I celebrate and thank God for that church, no matter its name.
Christian friends, we have a real and common enemy, and when we get distracted from that by finger pointing within the church, that is a device of that enemy. God never said, I don't want my worship to have electric guitars, but he definitely did say that we are One body, and that we are to work in harmony within that body for the Glory of God.
Of course it's a different matter if a church or ministry is teaching against Gods word, that's downright wrong, but if my take on accepting Jesus' salvation looks a little more warm fuzzy than fire and brimstone, or if I put my kids in a separate class to learn, or if I dunk instead of sprinkle, or if I sing my praises with a little bit of bass, so what, we're still on the same side, and we have a lot of work to do, it's getting ugly out there. We need to stand together as Christ intended, and be a working, living body, and if we let trivial issues stand in the way of that, then we give power to the enemy. If we allow details and judgement to overshadow love, then we are being more unbiblical that those we are condemning, and that's a victory for the wrong team, so let's get it together, church.
Now many of you know that I was raised in the Lutheran Church Missouri synod, and have, after period of waywardness, returned to Christ as an Evangelical Christian. I see these type of posts frequently among my friends...evangelicals have the wrong hymns and liturgy, the wrong approach to children's ministry, you name it, we Evangelicals have got it wrong. As a long time Lutheran, I get it, making God about you, and church about entertainment, misses the mark. And let me say as a disclaimer of sorts that my childhood friend is to the best of my knowledge a sincere and well intentioned Christian man, and that protecting one's flock and family from false teaching is indeed no trifling charge. That being said, as I went about my housewifely duties today, I could not stop being disturbed by what this post and it's fellows represent.
As I mentioned, and as you well know if you have ever stumbled before upon this blog, I have been as far off the path as you can go, and were it not for the extension of grace shown to me by the Evangelical church, I would not be a Christian today, nor would my family. I have a fondness for the way Lutherans do things, but I also enjoy the worship style of my current church, and you know what, I think God does too, because he created us all as unique individuals with different gifts for expressing our gratitude in worship, and because he is the one who authored our creativity. The bible commands us to teach our children, not whether it should be in a Sunday school room or church service, it commands us to worship, not how it should sound, it commands us to love one another, it commands us to cling to the word. So what if the form it takes is different for different folks. Most of the stuff that begets interdenominational squabbling is petty, trivial stuff. If a church is biblical, and people are coming to and remaining in Christ as a result of it, then I celebrate and thank God for that church, no matter its name.
Christian friends, we have a real and common enemy, and when we get distracted from that by finger pointing within the church, that is a device of that enemy. God never said, I don't want my worship to have electric guitars, but he definitely did say that we are One body, and that we are to work in harmony within that body for the Glory of God.
Of course it's a different matter if a church or ministry is teaching against Gods word, that's downright wrong, but if my take on accepting Jesus' salvation looks a little more warm fuzzy than fire and brimstone, or if I put my kids in a separate class to learn, or if I dunk instead of sprinkle, or if I sing my praises with a little bit of bass, so what, we're still on the same side, and we have a lot of work to do, it's getting ugly out there. We need to stand together as Christ intended, and be a working, living body, and if we let trivial issues stand in the way of that, then we give power to the enemy. If we allow details and judgement to overshadow love, then we are being more unbiblical that those we are condemning, and that's a victory for the wrong team, so let's get it together, church.
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