The Joy and Sorrow of Mother's Day

"Joy and Sorrow are this ocean/and in their every ebb and flow/now the Lord a door has opened/that all hell can never close/here I'm tested and made worthy/tossed about and lifted up/in the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God."  Rich Mullins, The Love of God

If you read my other blog, you know that I talk a lot about the combination of joy and sorrow, and how so much of our lives are a mingling of the two. Just like in the movie with the emotions, sometimes we have to experience sorrow to really, truly know joy. I think that's the shape of Mother's Day for most women. There are just so many ways for it to be wrong, even when it's right. There's this deep sense of loss that happens, even with the best of moms, realizing that we just aren't going to be everything we thought we should have/could have/needed to. And there's a sense of failure a little too, when you're being celebrated but feel a little empty because of the places we lack. Then there's the whole infertility problem for so many ladies. Ouch. And then there's the relationship with your own mom, even if you're a mom yourself. (I don't have issues with my mom, but I know lots of people who do, including my own mom). I've never really liked Mother's Day because I don't feel like there's no need to celebrate the mundane everyday things. But I'm probably wrong, and it does give people a chance to think about the things they can be grateful for.

Ten years ago, I walked out of the church service in tears. Not just whimpering, threatening wet eyes, but full-on bawling tears. The lobby was empty except for one mom, a family friend, who saw me and knew exactly why I was crying. She just came and held me and recognized that "it hit me like a ton of bricks". I was four months out from a still birth experience. It was the baby's due date that day. And they were doing these child dedications with all of the babies who had been born that year. I just couldn't.

And I think all that has left this indelible sadness in my heart that resurfaces at the strangest times. Often on Mother's Day. With four beautiful girls who love me and really are perfect in so many ways, I don't need to be unhappy. I don't need to dread the church service and the ten thousand "Happy Mother's Days" that come my way all day long. But I kind of do. The majority of people I talk to have no idea that my heart is squished in between the joy and sorrow of motherhood. The war waging between what it "should" be like, and what it actually is. And that's OK. I'd prefer that the whole world doesn't know. But what I do prefer the world knows, is that Mothering is complicated. And the emotions that come in this messed up world are just hard to explain. I love my kids and I love being a mom, and I probably wouldn't trade it for anything. But that doesn't mean I've nailed this gig, and it doesn't mean I don't notice the others who are suffering from lack and loss on a day that we all just wish could be a nice special day. I'm there with you, Mamas. And even more so, God is with us in all the ways we suffer, He sees and knows us, and He's even brought healing to those places I really thought never would be whole again. And that's my message on Mother's Day.

Thirty Memories for Thirty Years Part two

Marie and I drove to Kansas City the first night and enjoyed a walk around the Plaza in freezing cold temps. We ate at PF Changs because there isn't one in our town. And it was restaurant week in KC, so that pretty much eliminated the chance of eating anywhere creative without a reservation.
We talked all night long and took our sweet time getting up in the morning.
And then it was on to Arkansas. Uncharted territory.
We felt like Arkansas gets a bad rap. The roads were nice and the scenery was pretty. The towns were good, although there were a lot of churches along the sides of the highways. I guess that's maybe a thing?
The first stop of the day was the Crystal Bridges Museum, which was fabulous. We arrived and walked into this kind of military-complex-feeling place with an elevator that took you down into the valley where the museum was tucked. The building was amazing.
We found out that we came on the worst possible weekend. Two of the main exhibits were closed for a few months while they re-did the whole thing. The special exhibition was in transition so there wasn't one that weekend.
Nonetheless, it was amazing. Standing inches away from Norman Rockwell's Rosie, seeing the beautiful canvases of modern art. So many amazing things to see. We were there a few hours, exploring the architecture of the building and the different artists.
Then we ate at this expensive coffee shop there in the complex and took off toward Little Rock. We hadn't really made any plans to go there, but decided we might as well since we were pretty nearby, all things considered.
There was this theme between us about "bad luck" things that consistently happen to us. The first one mentioned was how my orders at coffee shops always get forgotten or screwed up. In this case, BOTH happened. Eventually I got the iced tea I'd ordered but wow. Marie's thing was that the gas station booths can never print her receipt. Turns out that was true also. A long-time running one that's been part of our friendship since kindergarten is that whenever I decide to celebrate my birthday with her, weather happens. Bad weather. I think it was third grade when she had to stay at least one extra night at my house for my birthday because the roads had iced over so much. For my sixteenth, some friends had planned a huge surprise party and the biggest blizzard we'd had in years (probably since third grade) came in and they had to cancel the whole thing. No one left the house for at least a day after that one.
So for this trip, even though we were headed south, I planned for some bad weather. We were fine most of the time. Until the last little leg between St. Louis and home. I've driven it before in a storm and the road maintenance on the avenue of the Saints is not always up to par. Especially for this little leg. It was a white-knuckled drive for the last hundred miles, taking a very slow route as the snow poured down and the untreated roads got slicker and slicker. True to form. Birthday times get snow for me and Marie.

Ten Years Gone

If you followed my other blog years ago, you know that a big part of my adult life has been discussion about our stillbirth baby Grace. Monday was her 10th birthday. I was 25 weeks along. She would have been perfect. She's missing every day.

We move on and heal and time just washes over those memories and the days, but once in a while, the waves come again and we have to take a few minutes to just... remember, to feel. I've said before how in loss of this kind, the pain of the memories is kind of all you have to hold on to. So I give myself a chance to feel, to be sad about it. For a long time, writing anything about it was hard. But on Monday when the internet died, I wrote a couple of poems as I thought about that terrible day ten years ago. I didn't have any idea what life was going to look like ten years later. At that time, it sort of felt like life had stopped and would never go on.

But it does go on, and we live full, rich lives. Without her here. Thankfully, we have hope of heaven and we wait for those explanations that will become clearer and clearer in eternity.

Ten Years Gone 

You and me were built for eternity

And for a moment you grew within me

Ten years ago you were here and then gone

Leaving a scar that tears itself open time after time

Ten years of wanting, and prayers of why

As the family without you laughs and grows

                There are reasons we believe that God knows

Ten years of wondering what it would have been like

If you’d lived with us in this life.

And we planted our promises in the fertile earth

                And asked the Lord to show us Himself through your birth

Ten years of wishing you were here,

Of faith growing in spite of our fears.

Believing in heaven and best things untold

In the secret ways of God and the mysteries that will unfold

When the veil of dark glass is removed

And our tears are all wiped dry

And we see you, and Him together, on the streets of gold.

Copyright 2018

Thirty Memories for Thirty Years. The Beginning.

Friends are a gift. Every one of them in different ways. My first real friend outside of my family was a girl named Marie who I met on the first day of school (named changed for her privacy). I've talked about her quite a bit because she's a big part of my life. This year we celebrated 30 years of friendship. It's a pretty big deal for us. we've been counting years and dates for a long time.

We went on a road trip together to celebrate, and it was pretty epic. It started out with a stop at AutoZone to buy wipers. And if you've ever been to AutoZone, you'll know what I mean when I tried to warn her that it wouldn't be a short stop.
There were six guys working in the store that day. Six. There was one customer at the counter, and then us. We grabbed the wiper blades and stepped up to a register with a guy sitting behind it. A large, silent sort. The guy sat there for a minute, then got up without a word and walked away. Cool. We got in the other line. That guy was helping someone find a part. After about four minutes of us standing there, he got up from his stool and said, "I'll be with you in a minute, ladies." Then he hobbled toward the back of the store. I say hobbled because he only had one leg. I'm not kidding. Slowest part retrieval EVER.
Meanwhile, the first guy who had been sitting at the other register was just doing a lap around the warehouse part of the store. He did not pick up anything. He did not serve another customer. He just... walked.
There was another guy on the phone off to the other side. He stayed on the phone for a bit, but then he went out onto the floor of the store and... aimlessly wandered.
We also noticed the one guy mopping the floor. Which was a fairly hopeless cause at that point with fresh snow that people were continually tracking through.
Another couple got in line behind us.
One-leg returned with the ordered part and began the slow process of checking the guy in front of us out. The phone rang in between and he had to answer it since there was no one else available. Since the Silent One was still making his round through the warehouse.
The guy in line behind us let out a stream of profanities, absolutely pissed that he'd been waiting for three minutes. It had been more than ten for us by then, standing there with two wiper blades.
THEN, the the guy who was wandering the floor of the store moved a display three inches, then went to open the register we'd originally been at. As he beckoned for us, the Silent One finished his lap and plopped himself down on the third register (that's right, there are THREE REGISTERS in this store) and waved to the customers behind us. I couldn't help it. At that point, I muttered, "Or you could have just done that in the first place when we were STANDING THERE waiting for you." Our cashier chuckled and said, "Yeah." like he knew that guy never did any work.
Five seconds later, we'd checked out of the store, stepping over the fresh mopping which was already becoming muddy.
There were two workers who had been in and out of the store, now outside, cleaning out mop buckets. I guess they didn't actually work for the store?
Marie and I just looked at each other and kind of laughed. Was it a bad omen? Maybe. But nevertheless, we got on with our trip.
We stopped for food on the way out of town. Taco Bell is notoriously slow, but what made this particular one slower, was when we drove up to the pay window, the guy standing there didn't seem prepared to handle cash. I gave him twenty dollars and he said, "Let me go get some change."
He actually meant GO GET change. Like walked across the back line to the cash register in the front to grab the change. Then return with the change. Then pass out the food.
We laughed together as we drove out of town, a good solid 30 minutes after first leaving. I'm happy to report that those two incidences were the worst part of the trip. And they were actually funny because we didn't happen to be in any hurry. But all the same, we did leave town wondering if we'd just signed up for some kind of comedy of errors in the making.

Is this the new year, or just another night?

We spent New Year with some Asians who usually have a giant party with the entire city on their New Year's Eve. It wasn't very eventful for us, but we had some food and stayed up to midnight. we also played a couple of wacky games, compliments of me, by request of my sister-in-law. When was the last time you ate a peanut butter cracker off a piece of plexiglass?
That aside, there was this huge rush to get the house ready for our guests (who stayed all week) and the laundry and getting gifts wrapped and trying to make time for everyone who needed time with me. Which included my sister and my best friend and my own kids, and then all of the in-laws, and my brother and his wife and my other brother and his new girlfriend. It was just... a lot. It was good, but it was a lot. And I think I'm spending this week kind of recovering from all of it.
I turned 36 last Thursday. It was a very uneventful day. The relatives left, the kids went to class and I taught English Grammar in the afternoon. Then, home, tired, and surprised with a clean house, I just wanted to go to bed. So husband got home and made supper and I just slept for a while. Welcome to being old and boring! Aside from my 30th birthday, it might have been one of the lamest ones I've ever had. Although husband did get me a cool tin sign with the batmobile on it.
We went out the next night, since it fit our schedules better, but I failed at planning anything that well so we only had time to eat dinner before we went back to pick up the kids, and it wasn't even a fancy dinner. Fail again. I don't know. The expectations might be a little too high for my birthday, what with it being the day everyone has to go back to work after holiday. I am looking forward to an epic road trip with my best friend from kindergarten soon, though.
Anyway, all that to say, I guess I'm officially in a slump. Hopefully a hormone-fatigued-induced slump and not a winter-induced one. But maybe it's just everything.
My challenge for this year is to spend more time savoring God and just beholding who He is. We overthink Him sometimes, I think, and I've made stuff really complicated lately with studying the Bible and trying to figure out the best way to "connect" with him, and maybe I just need to sit and be, and breathe a little more than I have been.

Listening in on Girl and Grandpa

I'm totally eavesdropping on the table beside me at Panera this morning. There's a blonde college student with a nose ring and a Texas A and M shirt on. Across from her is an older man, probably in his seventies. He has a hearing aid, but he's comfortable here. He's visited with several other people in the restaurant already and I understand that he's a runner. One of his friends came in and said hi, and sat down at the table with them with his coffee.

I'm really impressed right now, and a little sad in my heart.
I'm impressed that this girl actually traveled up to visit her grandpa, got up before eight o'clock and came to the restaurant with him. She doesn't have her phone out on the table to wait for texts. She doesn't look rushed to go anywhere else. She's here, fully present. Talking to her grandpa and his friend, answering their questions. Asking her own. Listening.
There's talk about the hurricane. Grandpa's got a lot of friends at Panera who stop at their table to say hi and visit. She's visiting with them. So I'm impressed with this girl who's taking her holiday weekend to visit Grandpa and fully engage with him and his friends.

I'm sad because it didn't happen like this for me. Granted, my grandpa wasn't a really social fellow and he preferred the back of a tractor to a coffee shop in the mornings. I know him mostly from what his kids have said about him, from letters he wrote during the war and from his larger-than-life legacy. For whatever reasons, mostly because neither of us were conversationalists whatsoever, I missed the chances I had to talk with Grandpa when he was with us. I missed lots of chances to hear his stories, to work with him, to understand his life. He was busy when I was a little kid. He worked so hard and I preferred to play with my cousins while we were visiting. And I'm really bad at making conversations. When I was an adult, he was still busy working. There were a few times he sat down to visit, but I had a hard time thinking of things to say or ask.

And now he's gone and I'll never be able to ask him what the Kiwanis are or talk about the weather with him. Last time I was with him, we had a few more chances to talk. He showed me the oats and explained how he knew when it was time to harvest. He told some funny stories about boot camp and training before he deployed to Europe. I'll never know all of the stories. I'll never be able to ask.

I worry about us these days. How narcissistic we are and how easily distracted by our phones we can be. I'm not that old, but I can see society taking a dive as we all just sink further and further into our own worlds. We're losing the art of conversations. We're seeing less and less congregations around coffee house tables in the morning. But today I'm seeing this hopeful scene beside me, a girl with three old guys, one of them her grandpa. Visiting. Engaged. No phones to interrupt.
We might have adapted and become more intelligent as a race of people. We might be self-aware and self-sufficient. But we're also self-absorbed. We need our grandparents to teach us relationships. So, Girl with Grandpa, carry on. I wish you many more years with your grandpa. And I hope you have all of the chances to know him that you need, and I hope you learn from him how to have lifelong friends like his.

For the Sake of Writing

I haven't really been able to work on writing projects lately. I want to, but I just haven't been able to. Like there's this deafening silence happening in my creative corridors and all of the doors are slamming shut whenever I try to get inside. I don't know what to do, so I edit instead when those times come. But even editing is unfulfilling right now. I have a lot on my mind, as one of my characters is always saying.
In the time since my last blog post, I've been:
Trying to keep a 1-year-old out of every cupboard, away from all things dangerous, and keep pretty much every small-sized thing out of her mouth.
Listening to the 8-year-old read. It's tedious and slow and so frustrating for her, but she's making progress and that makes me happy.
Folding laundry. I mean, literally. I could do it all day and it wouldn't be done. Ever.
Reading. I finished the novel The Thirteenth Tale, and I've been working through AW Towzer's The Pursuit of God with my small group. Also read a stupid cowboy romance novel which will go unnamed because it wasn't that good. And my current favorite by my favorite pastor and theologian Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God. I do recommend all of these and if I get five seconds to myself some time I'll try to write out some reviews. Don't hold your breath.
Homeschooling. We're in a co-op with a classical model and it takes a lot of time to memorize and work through parts of it. I love having the direction and structure. Some of my children like it better than others.
Going to appointments with kids. Mostly with my second. Last week we found out that she's going to need yet another surgery for her third degree burns. Yay.
Worrying about my church (and praying for). I've been going there for almost twenty years now and things are changing. I personally like the change and I think it's good, but not everyone does so it's making a lot of unrest. So being the middle child peacemaker that I am, I'm carrying some burdens I probably don't need to. But that's OK.
Trying to think about Jesus more. I'm seeing how important that is these days.

And now that's all I have time to write. Husband's done with his activities.