Parenting

My mom called yesterday and asked how the kids are doing. I rattled off my pre-teen's five latest stunts, rambled about how sweet the others are and stopped for breath. She sighed and commented that it's rather bittersweet how each child seems to pull us close and push us away at different times and you're always seeming to feel closest to a different child. I love that she had four kids and can really relate to so many things with me. Then she said a bunch of nonsense about how proud she is of my wise handling of everything. I was like a deer in the headlights. I mean Mom knows me. She knows google is my guide. She knows I have to have people explain every single social decorum to me three different ways before I actually get it.  I think, when I look around that parenting seems to be this beautiful natural evolution for other people. Somehow they have intuitions, instincts, experiences and knowledge to guide them. In recent years, this used to intimidate me which would in turn bring out my ugly side. The catty judgmental side. But that's exhausting. So after I got really tired from all of the judging, and excuse making for my ineptitude I realized I was humbled. Being humbled is something God has made a hobby of gifting me with. I know he sees something great in me or else why bother right? Wink wink! Anyway, as I've stumbled through every stage of parenting, always seeming to google the least important facets of the stage I'm in, I finally developed a new way of surviving. Yes, I literally google the sentence my kids say that leaves me curled in the fetal position and find out what "experts" think I should do. I spill it to my trusted friends and find out what they would do. Then I just kinda go limp and let it all wash over me while I scroll up and down my meaningless Facebook newsfeed because it's my guilty pleasure. I mean, that's the profoundly unprofound thing I've learned. Reacting is stressful. I feel like I'm playing the part of a mother in a movie nowadays. My oldest doesn't know what to do with me. She's spent 12 years perfecting the art of getting Mom's goat and now I just hopefully appear incredibly bored and distracted offering nothing more than a benign smile while my mind feverishly races around for a steam valve. I think of the people who come by this naturally and gaze into their child's defiant face with measured calm who maybe really are that calm inside and yes I'm jealous. Playing a part is not the same thing. The other half isn't a part. I try to savor the beautiful moments with her and bless her with approval and acceptance.  She has decided not to believe in God. Every single time she drops that bomb I feel my stomach lurch. Faith is something she has overanalyzed her whole childhood and it used to worry me so bad.  Even now as I write about it my mind is like a rat in a maze trying to figure out whether she says it to manipulate, as a desperate plea for attention or because she's truly conflicted. But deep down I know that I can only love her and let her take this journey. I think I stopped worrying per se about it sometime after Dad died and I stepped into Jesus love. That was when I realized my whole life of professing faith and belief had really been just a time of seed planting. I hadn't known Him. I didn't deny him like she is but I misunderstood faith for sure. I remember being out for a walk with a friend when I was pregnant with Hazel and casually stating that I wasn't sure I was saved. She was floored and told me once you're saved, you're always saved. I laughed her off and told her I'd been baptized twice and spent a life floating closer and further from God and wouldn't blame Him for sending me to hell at some of those points. I hadn't really known Him. Well, now I really do and I can't imagine one of my children spending their whole lives never knowing Him and if declaring an independence of Him is what someone needs to do for her journey, her story, her peace, then who am I to shame that or argue it? Additionally, if a 12 year old is guided primarily by emotions, what is the real purpose in trying to control her spiritual course? The gifts and callings of God are without repentance. My mom spoke that over me for 34 years before I had a real experience of what it meant to be His child. I think I can give my kids that much. It's funny how you can have all of your own stuff going on with people you know, unforgiveness, anger, judgement etc... then look at your child and tell them not to. I had to let go of one of my closest friendships this year. It felt like I cut my arm off. I still think about it and wish I had done things better, been a better friend, been kinder, been gentler, more intuitive, lived grace vibrantly. But deep down, I have to accept my journey. Know that I'm not there. I'm fragile. I'm not complete. I believe that God will be faithful to complete a good work in me. I believe that he will do the same for my kids. And I believe that He will give me the self control to avoid inhibiting their journeys. I try to pray for each of them several times per day and trust God with the process.

The wake up call

I had a snowball three days of personal crisis culminating with a movie night to see "Mom's Night Out". It was with two other stay at home moms who happen to be some of my dearest friends.  They spent days planning this night and at the last minute I jotted off an email giving my regrets for missing the show and explaining that I'm on a never ending crying jag when I hesitated then hit delete and typed a whole new email and just said yes. Thank you Jesus. I laughed and cried so hard at that movie. Thank goodness we had the theater to ourselves. Then I processed for about 24 hours and this is what I concluded. Who would think that a movie could speak to me on a level that no human ever has, personally, from the pulpit, in a conference, through a book... They jut nailed me. They nailed my problem and this is my conclusion:
So I've rolled around in my messes wondering why I'm so awful and tried a million fixes and fallen into the same sins. It's the human condition. I'm actually so acclimated that I was well on my way to hating myself in spite of the fact that God made me and he loves me. The one's who knew me and loved me best got that and always tried a gentle redirect after reading one of my self recriminating blogs. "You're so hard on yourself" was the gentle refrain. It actually made me angry. Because anger is my crutch and I wanted to fight my way out of situations and blame myself for every bad thing that happened, every relationship breakdown, every forgotten school event, every missed bill. It took coming to the point of being willing to let it go just like the movie we all love to hate "FROZEN"(solemn face). So, I've let go of hating myself. It's a much more logical reset button than focusing on steps to avoid life's pitfalls. I hated myself so much I let myself agonize and self recriminate for things I honestly did not care about. I used them as examples of how bad I am. It was miserable, why didn't I realize I was creating my own misery? So, that's done, I'm just going to enjoy being me and enjoy my life and enjoy the one's who love me and love them back. I'm done dissecting myself to death and feeling guilty for not taking perfect care of my health needs, worrying about things I will never be good at, agonizing over people who will never completely love me with my faults included. None of it matters. Yesterday, I accepted that nobody is more perfectly loved by God than me so who cares. The never ending mantra that you have to love yourself to receive love always drove me crazy. It sounded narcissistic. I get it now. How disappointing for God to be beaming down and loving me and trusting me with his missions while I roll around crying over spilled milk and missing His call entirely. It took a really bad day with a little mission from God that I somehow thankfully picked up on for me to turn my life over and see it from another perspective and I'm excited. I'm blessed. I'm free. That need for acceptance from everyone is gone. I'm ok with some people not liking me. Maybe God made me for a special group of people. LOL! I'm ok with my social faux pas. I'm ok with my depression. I'm ok with my grief. I'm ok with my muffin top. I'm ok with whatever I get. It's my lot in life and it's not a reflection of my mission, my calling, my purpose. It's just stuff. So, I'm done with accepting all of the blame for relationship failures, and beating myself up for being forgetful and dumping loads of drama on my faithful friends created by my insecurities rooted in self loathing. I am suddenly thinking... uh yeah, I'm pretty sure God can work in all of those problems if I just love Him, love me, love people and read His word.  It's not coincidental that loving myself makes me less judgmental and unloving towards other people. God loves me this way and He can use me, I know it because He is and he can change me too if he wants, that would be great.

Lift Off

As Jody and I sally forth in life with our arms locked and our shoulders squared, I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that we are walking across the palm of God and he has marked our path for us. So, while sometimes one of us feels like a foot gets stuck in between his fingers or that the wavy print of his hands are too bumpy (maybe that's why I've been so queasy lately), I must thankfully acknowledge, that it's a close, familiar and special, even Holy place we tread. I'm overwhelmed when looking back over the last few years, seeing so clearly how God has held us, spoken to us and used us. It has been a much better journey than the one people walk down there on the cold hard ground. I think I can remember the day we stepped off of the ground and into his hand. Well, I'll speak for myself, I tend to assume that Jody always feels exactly the same way I do because he does more than half... but anyway... Fear had a clincher hold on us of with all of that stuff we were going through and God put a picture in my mind of us sleeping in our bed and it was sitting in His hand. His other one was smoothing our covers. I guess that was the moment of "lift off."
I'm pregnant. When we found out, it might be an understatement to say that we were extremely upset that things were NOT going our way. Just to clarify why, I'd like to reference my 2005 Christmas letter where I lined out that we had been blessed with a second daughter and were happy that Gods plans had so far coincided with ours and we hoped for a little boy someday to make our family complete. You may then reference the 2007 Christmas letter in which Nicholas (the little boy) arrived. You can imagine our shock that God had not wrapped up his family plan for us when we did. Nick will be four in June... Jody and I even looked to heaven and asked God if he just didn't even like us, in our selfish moment of "BUT WE WERE DONE!" I wallowed in this self pity/God loathing state for a few weeks... several weeks... much to the bemusement and even dismay of my closest friends, but alas it came time to read James and reconcile. This is the only proven method in my life for receiving constructive criticism. I have granted James a special authority but I suspect it's because he's dead and his book is short. Some little excerpts: "God blesses the people who patiently endure testing." Made me think of this little peanut inside of me right now because I always hear "it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a blessing." Then down a little further "Whatever is good and perfect comes to us from God above who created all of heavens lights." Ah, what could be more "good and perfect" than a little baby, hand made by God for our family? The part in between talked about the danger of blaming God for tempting you when you want to do something wrong. Something wrong... something wrong... like considering a pregnancy anything but a joyous sovereign gift from heaven to be celebrated and going so far as to ask God if it's a mean trick? See, I like it when James sticks it to me. I must be sick... but anyway. Alrighty then! So yeah, that's what we signed up for when we stepped off of the the cold hard ground and onto the living palm of God. Plans that were not our own and ways that are not our ways. We've kinda got our "palm legs" though. We can roll with it.
So, to the wonderful little person inside of me, if you ever read this blog, you've blessed me already and I've only known about you for a few weeks. You will be an amazing person I know, and I consider it pure bonus that God used you to help me become the woman He wants me to be.