Where oh where have my big girl panties gone?

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 ;).

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.

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.

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.

The story of John

I don't think about him much, but I have been thinking about him more lately.  I guess maybe it's the holidays, or the fact that this is usually as long as we go, or that I heard that he's single this year.  He doesn't do well single.  In the past I have always been like some strange platonic version of the 2 am last call call: not really what you want, but better than being alone.  Not this time though, because I have kids to think of now, and they don't deserve that sort of on again of again, convenience based relationship, and because my husband put his foot down. He isn't welcome in our lives until he says he's sorry; not only for the awful things he said during our most recent fight, 3 years ago now, but for everything.  That would be quite a litany of apologies, and since the last thing I can imagine emerging from that mans mouth is an admission of wrong doing, I guess this is the way it will stay.

I used to think that every parent, no matter how sick or twisted, had some sort of biological compulsion to love their child, even if only in their own sick and twisted way. My father dispelled me of this myth when I was a sophomore in high school; "My parents didn't love me." He said, "and I don't love you either.  That's life, so just buck up and deal with it.'

My parents married before they found out they were pregnant, and split up when I was 8 months old.  High time too, since my mom waited by the window for the unpredictable drunken arrival of my father, and then sometimes hid under the bed, for fear what that arrival might bring.  He never hit me, but after throwing ice water at me, she knew it was time to go. Ironically, he doesn't have any memory of this stuff. His alcohol saturated brain, recreated a much rosier picture. He suggested giving me up for adoption, siting that he didn't want me, and she couldn't afford me, but she refused, and so on we went; just the 2 of us and the learning curve string of boyfriends. He signed his parental rights away for relief from child support, you could do that back then, but she let him see me anyway, because she thought I would resent her if I didn't know him. When Christmases came, the gifts I received signed love dad, really came from his girlfriends or his business partner, who felt bad that I would not receive any thing from him. (Strangely his business collects Toys for Tots now, the irony.) The courage it took, for her to leave, to let me see him, to raise me alone, most women don't have it.

She remarried when I was 9, the man who is my real real dad. At just 21 years of age, he endured my hate and bitter venom, as I fought to protect my mom, our relationship, myself from rejection, from his authority. His endurance finally won out, but he still has hate letters in his drawer from my childhood self.  I wonder why he keeps them. My biological dad meanwhile, quit drinking, cold turkey, it's own form of extreme courage, but if you ask me, he was self medicating for much deeper things, so instead of improving matters, it made them worse.

After he told me he didn't love me, we didn't speak again until I was a freshman in college. When we started speaking again, I think I'd long since outgrown the expectation that he would change.  I just thought I could live with the way he was, and make the best of it, which I tried to do, until my children got involved. But then I just couldn't expose them to the hurt that I had endured; years of feeling like it was my fault, before figuring out that he had been damaged beyond ability to love; something that happened long before I came along, and had nothing to do with me. Years of getting my hopes up and getting let down, years of taking a backseat to everything until he got lonely. When he insulted my husband and daughter, lines had to be drawn. He has never met Baylie or Levi; I don't know if he knows about them or not.

I don't think of him too much, but when I do I have a strange subdued feeling, like those passionate feelings of childhood have been muted somehow. I don't feel anger, just pity, and a vague sense of loss.  You stop expecting, but a small shard of heart clings to hope. I no longer feel unlovable, you see, my name, which I never liked, was one of the few things my biological father gave me, only I think now that it was really God who gave it to me. Amanda: it means worthy of love, you see, it was my Heavenly Father, telling me that even if my earthly father didn't find me lovely or worthy, He did, like the way all the biblical names say something about the recipient. What a strange gift.

I believe my dad has a heart so hard, that it will never accept Jesus, because to do that he would have to shelve his pride, but far be it from me to put limitations on God, so everybody say a little prayer for my dad this Christmas, and who knows what miracles may be afoot.

My furry little marital problem says goodbye

In my marriage I have been fortunate enough to be with someone with whom I largely agree on politics, child rearing, and money.  We largely escape the typical banes of marriage, but we do have certain other, as our pastor calls them, perpetual problems.  Two to be exact.  And while these problems may seem to be very different in nature, they amount to the same result in each case: the offended party feels deprioritized and loved less.

The first thing I did when I got my own place in college was get a cat; actually I couldn't choose, so I got two. While I have always loved all cats, these two became my children.  They were there for me when I moved far away and didn't know anyone, when I was lonely, when I went through my divorce, when I started anew. They slept on my head, snuggled me when I read, reminded me I was loved when I felt only blackness. But Lance is allergic, VERY, and he gets chronic sinus infections from the allergies. If we hadn't gotten pregnant, I don't know if we ever would have decided to live together, because we couldn't see around me not being able to give up my cats, and him not being able to live with them.  Under what I felt like was duress, I agreed that within 6 months of buying our home together, I would find a home for them, but when my ex husband backed out of taking them, I just couldn't do it.  I got sick to my stomach every time I thought about it. So, for five and a half years, my husband has felt like he isn't really the most important thing in my life.

Last January 31st, after nearly 14 years together, my beloved Wynn (a runic name that means joy) died from complications of diabetes, and now my Berkana (also runic, meaning birch, for he is white as birch bark.) has a tumor in his face. I have to get him put to sleep, soon .He sits on my lap as I write this, as our time together ticks away, and with it, the opportunity to know what I should have done, weather I should or could have chosen differently. I can't imagine what I must do; hold his now frail body in my lap and kiss him goodbye, and feel him go limp in my arms, but neither could I imagine having passed this task on to someone who loved him less. I hate that it makes my husband feel like he was chosen over. Perhaps my choice was selfish, but now, for better or worse I can not take back that path.

For Lance's part, he hates to see my heart break no matter the reason.  He built beautiful caskets, and buried my Wynnie beneath the cottonwood on our new property where he will be with me always, and will do the same for Berkana. I wonder why God gave me a man who was allergic to cats, and yet perfectly made for me in nearly every other way. I'll be asking that one when I get there.

So, in a heartbreaking way, one of my marital problems is coming to an end.  I guess God didn't want it to follow us into the home we built together for our family; for those feelings to haunt my husband there. Certainly He is wise.

Our other issue must wait to be told another day, I just can't take any more sadness on this one.....

Learning curve

If, reader, this all sounds horribly familiar, and you are currently caught up in the tidal waves of new motherhood, it gets better.  And it doesn't. You meet some people who are moms, so even when it sucks, you can suck together. You learn to accept help, (or if you don't, do.  Just trust me on this one, I know it's tough, but really, do it anyway.) You find a routine that may not be perfect, but at least keeps you from the mental ward, summer comes, hormones recede, and the next thing you know they are growing up.  The fog begins to lift, and you realize you are still a person after all, and your name is not really mom. You have a history of rough days to look back upon, and realize you have a hundred percent survival rate. There is a flicker of hope.

That being said, every seemingly endless challenge is resolved and replaced by another. Your whole world can be consumed by the fact that your baby has colic or won't nap, and then suddenly, it's gone, and they are sick, or potty training, or back talking, or you have to juggle two, or.....

My Morgan has been one challenge after another for me since the day she tried to come early, or maybe the day she hid from the ultrasound technician. I think God made her a special key to all my buttons. That child can bring out my ugly faster than 8 jack and cokes. It never ceases to amaze me how you can love someone so intensely you would fight a gang of thugs like a mama grizzly, and yet want to strangle that same child yourself, and if you haven't felt that way, you either haven't been a mom very long, or else you lie like a rug, or I'll trade you kids (kidding). I think God made her special, so that I would a) appreciate my mother in a whole new way,  b) so I all my weaknesses would be out there exposed, and in the interest of not permanently damaging my child, I would try to fix them, and c), I would have to sink so low, that all I could do was learn to lean into Him.

I have a great husband y'all ( I don't really say y'all in real life, I just thought it would be fun), but he's human, and he can't be at work and holding my hand every time I'd like to break down, he can't read my mind, and he can't substitute for a good nights sleep, so by the second child, I was starting to figure out that I needed to depend elsewhere if I expected that kind of help. I leaned, and I prayed, and help came, in the form of grace when I was worn out, patience when I wanted to loose my temper, forgiveness when patience didn't come quickly enough, time on days that I gave Him some back, and in an army of women who must have a direct line to when I most need a break, or an ear, or a meal. It's a long way from perfect, to which the child mentioned above will attest, but I survived those first days, and I'm growing, I'm learning that sometimes strength doesn't mean going it alone, and we are both learning a thing or two about humbleness and forgiveness,. So hang in, new mamas, and have faith.