Category Archives: balance

Dear Mom, I’m not judging your tantrum

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I think it’s possible that the best writing topics are the ones that bear a sense of deja vu.

The ones you’re fairly certain you’ve written about before, perhaps several times.  Those are the ones we need to keep processing and pursuing because clearly there’s something there.

So along those lines… mothering is tough.  And I think so often we feel judged by well, everyone really.

We feel judged by the people at the table next to us in the restaurant.
We feel judged because of the noise coming from our cart at the grocery store.
We feel judged because we’re just so crabby sometimes in public and doing a poor job at portraying the ethereal mom-gasm we’re supposed to be embodying.

The other day Kel and I decided to screw the budget and take our two lovely little ones out for breakfast at Holland’s The Biscuit before we ran new-house related errands.

I regretted this decision within the first minute we were in the door.  Caedmon threw two tantrums before we were seated and two more before the waitress arrived.

When I picked him up for a time out and some stern words he slapped me in the face and I swear to you, everyone saw it.  I promise that I heard the restaurant gasp in some sort communal oh “Oh snap!” and “What now, Mom?”

I was sure they saw me as a terrible mother with out of control children. I was so embarrassed that I wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor.  Surely they were all wondering why we brought our tantrum-y son out for breakfast to ruin their dining experience.

tatrum These are the moments of parenting that suck the strength from your soul and send you wondering if 11:00 A.M. is too early for a glass of wine… and does wondering this mean you’re an alcoholic?

But, with every terrible grocery shopping trip and taxing dining experience I’m coming to realize that most people are giving me grace when my children and their tantrums hijack my sanity.  Either that or they just don’t care.

Most people around you have been there before, the other Moms regard you with sympathy and the older ones just remember it with nostalgic fondness … somehow.   Continue reading →

Our “Yes but not yet” Adoption Journey (a guest post at Adding a Burden)

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Gods will is never completely clear to us while we’re still treading dirt. Yet, we cannot deny that we catch breathtaking glimpses of it now and then.  I may never be fully aware of the thousands of reasons behind our time in Oklahoma, but I have a pretty good idea that one of them centers around adoption.

A lot of people talk about adopting someday because it’s a neat idea, yet a small percentage of them pursue those words into reality.  We were always a couple who talked about how cool “maybe someday” adoption would be. Then we spend our time in Ada in a close knit group of adopting and fostering families and went from maybe… to when?”

Alongside those friends my fuzzy visions of adoption took on faces and names which came with a hearty dose of the realities of the adoption journey with all it’s paperwork and fundraising, all it’s highs and lows.

So today I’m over at my dear friend Jill Burden’s site today writing about our “yes but not yet” adoption journey:

“I’ve read somewhere that if something makes you cry, it’s because your heart is
connected to it. It’s part of it and within whatever it is lies a resonance you shouldn’t
ignore.

This concept perfect fits my heart for adoption. I can’t talk about it without crying and I
can’t relay my friend’s stories of adoption joy without tearing up. I often envision our
future family portraits on the mantle and they have a couple more children in them, and
they’re not necessarily ones I gave birth to, and I love that.

I’m currently not in the process of adoption, but I wish I was. I am however an adopted
Aunt to an 8 year old Ethiopian boy named Fetinet and my daughter started calling him
her brother without any prompting from us. He comes over on days when his school is
closed and he’s so comfortable in our home that he bosses my kids around a bit, but
that wasn’t always the case.”

To finish up please head on over to Jill’s space and while you’re at it follow her on all the social medias.  

Friends Far Away (Five Minute Friday Link Up)

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Today I’m linking up with Lisa Jo Baker at Five Minute Friday where we write for only five minutes on a certain topic, no proofing, no editing, just raw writing.  Today we write about friends… and Go!

I love these ladies, I love this picture because it captures a moment when friendship went from screens to skin.

I love these ladies, I love this picture because it captures a moment when friendship went from screens to skin and kept growing.

I have often thought of making myself a friend map, at this point it would be a map of North America, but in the future?  who knows?

On it I would put a star for everywhere I have a friend, all these places I would like to visit and share a mug of coffee and a nice. long. chat.

The kind that gets away from you and you look at your phone and realize that you’ve been at it for over two hours.  Just laughing and catching up.  You haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet, the nitty gritty, the stuff you know you need to bear to a trusted friend.

In my dreams there’s this neighborhood where we all live together, borrowing cups of flour and going out for tuesday night trivia to the wine bar.  We have play dates and pop over to watch Grey’s Anatomy together, because it’s better than doing it alone.  I love TV and snark.

In this neighborhood we don’t ache for each other, we don’t count the miles and wish they were fewer.  But this dream neighborhood will always remain in my dreams.  I will always have friends scattered all across the country.

If I move closer to some I move farther away from others, always missing those who have moved their ways forever into my heart.  Right now I’m preparing to renter into my Michigan community and say goodbye to the Oklahoma group I’ve loved and done life with for the last five years.

And It’s ever so bittersweet.

And then there’s my online friends, like you probably.  I consider us friends, I mention you in conversation over dishes, and Kel goes.. who?  Because you haven’t had dinner at our table… Yet.

But I’m working, longing to change it, to meet you, to send you a real handwritten card.

Because my friends are all over and skin doesn’t dictate soul bearing.

And I need you all, skin, screens, cards, paper, friends.  Thank you you.  Thank you God.

Amen. Selah. The End.

Remain

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I spend a large part of my brain space analyzing my life and beating myself up for the little ways in which I fall short on a daily basis.  I calculate how many calories I consumed, how many vegetables our family ate, how much money is left in our gas budget, how many episodes of word world we watched and how faithfully I’ve been keeping up with my YouVersion bible reading plan.

I use a planner, a chalkboard, a spreadsheet, an iPhone ap, blogs, books, eating plans, vitamins parenting strategies all in an effort to find the one thing that will make it all click.  The one perfect strategy I can swear by  to hold things together.

Something that will bring us health and joy, bring me energy and clarity, patience and perseverance.

Is it in all about counting gifts and choosing joy in the little things?  Would it all be okay ig I gave up TV in favor of more reading and or daily walks?

Should I do a strict Paleo diets?  Or opt for the micronutrient right option of Juicing?

What can I do to make me a better writer?  A more engaged Mother?  A faithfully prayerful Wife? A stricter Budget-Keeper?  A more efficient homemaker?

What am I doing wrong?  I never stop trying, I feel like all these components are screaming at me constantly, demanding attention I’m running low on to begin with.

What am I missing, what system must I adapt to find joy and peace?

So yesterday I found it, a huge challenge, a truly hard way to live but certainly one that will bring my life together.

pansies-remain

Remain daughter.  Just remain.  I am the vine, you are the branches, unless you remain in me and I in you, you will surely wither and bear no fruit. (John 15 paraphrased)

This verse quietly reminded me of my true glue, my only real system all contained in something simple and incredibly profound.  Jesus puts it simply using a word picture that his audience could understand, one that is easy to grasp for us still today.

I am the vine, you are the branches, apart from me you can bear no fruit.  None.  Remain in me and I will remain in you.

Right here our Jesus meets his audience in the space where they live by farming language.    If he were speaking to me personally, where I live, he would say this:

“You know how Noelle picks pansies from the front flower beds and it drives you crazy?  Can you count the number of times you’ve gently explained to her that when she takes the flowers away from the plant, they die?”

Well you are the flower and I am the plant, if your beauty is removed from me, you loose all your nutrients and start to shrivel up.  You can put the flower in water but it’s only a patch, a flower removed from the plant, the flower bed, will surely die.”

It’s so frustrating how easily I forget this concept and run to everything but my true source.  I flail about like a fish on a dock, trying everything else before flopping back in the life giving water.

There is no perfect diet or system that will pull it all together, there are some that may be helpful add-ons but the only true source of joy, the only true glue for me is to remain within the ever-helpful, sustaining, nutritive presence of God.

I cannot earn it
I cannot make it
I cannot schedule it
I can only, truly just remain.

To remain, just to be in Him, that’s our only real system, everything else is just details.

When you wonder if your life has any room for you

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A golden honeysuckle candle burns in my office, barely flickering in the stillness of the morning. The quiet of the dimly lit kitchen is often broken by the sounds of the cat playing with a balloon in the living room. This is music to my ears because it’s keeping him from his usual routine of meowing in the hallway with hopes of waking up the children, his playmates and sometimes friends.

And here I sit pajama clad sporting bed head and white mug of coffee, wondering how quickly “my time” will come to an end. They call this “me-time” and I crave it with an inner need that makes me feel desperate, guilty, selfish and justified all in the same breathe.

room for me

Lately Caedmon’s first “mama,” the one that sends me into his room to scoop him up, it feels like work lately and not at all like joy, I hate that.  My whole life feels like a chore that I’m struggling through, always wishing for a weekend, a holiday that never seems to arrive.

Kel and I pass like proverbial ships in the night and I’m generally asleep before his work day finishes up.  I crave time with him nearly as much as I crave time alone, I feel so utterly spent when we’re finally together that I have no spirit left for him, just a few kisses and apologies as he tucks me into bed and retires back to the living room.

I play and work from 6:30 AM – 8:30 PM when I pass out with nothing left to give my writing , no strength to channel the creative spirit into something tangible or legible.  I often take comfort in chocolate, wine and pointless TV in the spare moments between the moment Noelle finally surrenders to sleep and the moment that I do.

Is this the best of my life right now?  A little chocolate and wine?  The cannot be my escape, oh Lord save me from the death of this rhythm immediately or sooner.

I want to run away, find a field to occupy, free and alone.  I want to blow dandelion fluff and find shapes and faces in the clouds. I want to my family drive away for a while so I can enjoy my home with a bit of peace and quiet, yet so I often protest the suggestion, because I’m wracked with  guilt for the very need of it.

Is this depression, stress, laziness or it the labor pains of something new being born?  Is it normal?  Is normal even real?

This is my adventure, the life I’ve always wanted yet somedays I wonder if there’s any room for me in it?

Are my house keeping standards too high?  My children too demanding?  Why am I doing wrong to wind up with this strong a need to run away from it all?

This isn’t a cry for help and I hope it’s not whining, it’s just my need to write mixed up with the only song I’m singing today.  I feel the need to apologize for it, but then I wonder if somedays you don’t feel it too?

Have you been here before, in parenthood, work-life or any other season?  In the middle of the life you love wondering if there’s room for you in it?  Shall we pray for each other, figure it out together?  Give it to God (virtual) side by side?

My Manna (what’s sustaining me)

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heart bread

This week I told you that I picked up some extra work to improve our financial situation. Well, in doing so I gave up my Tuesday and Thursday kid-free work time, it’s all the way gone.  I had no idea how deeply this would wear on me until the weekend came and I realized that I’ve had little to no quiet-alone time in the past few weeks.

I’m the sort of person who needs to retreat to process life, and life just hasn’t allowed for that lately.  Even my writing is crammed into stress-filled spaces and is starting to feel like a burden instead of a joy.

I eluded to this in my What I’m into February post but I can’t stay awake in the evenings anymore.  As soon as, and sometimes before, the kids fall asleep, I conk out on the couch and Kel nudges me to bed as I mutter protests like: “But I miss you, we never talk anymore.” or “I have stuff I want to do now that they’re sleeping….”

But I obey and fall asleep with unbrushed teeth and makeup still in place.  I regret it in the morning, but let’s be honest, I’m already asleep and sleeping people don’t swing by the sink.

This is a tough rhythm to sustain and tonight Kel and I are going to talk about how to change things up a bit to squeeze in some much needed self-care.  But I know that in the long run it will be one of those “push through” and “it’s just for a season” times in our life and I’m making my peace with it.

Yet, God keeps feeding me with nibbles here and there and they’re my manna, just enough, nothing extravagant but 100% nourishing for the next step. Continue reading →

Groundhogs Day (for when you wanna drive off a cliff)

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Yup, life's like that.

Yup, life’s like that.

My amazing friend Hannah (read more about her at the bottom!) says that lately everyday of her life feels like Groundhog Day.  You know the movie where Bill Murray wakes up and does the same thing all over again, and again, and again, until he drives off a cliff?

 

Because if we’re honest, that’s what life feels like sometimes.  It feels like we’re making great efforts all day long only to fall asleep exhausted wondering if we’re making any this busyness is going anywhere at all.  And then… we get up and do it all over away.

(so put your little hand in mine….)

I wipe the same table so often it makes my head hurt.
I load the same dishwasher while saying the same things as I shoo the same kids out of the bottom rack.
I coerce my children to pick up the same toys off the same living room floor.
I cook meals that seem the same in the same pots at the same times.

And a lot of days I wonder about the smallness of my life, I know that in the grand scheme it amounts to so much but some days it feels like I’m stuck.

The other day I caught myself telling a friend that writing has been hard lately because I’ve exhausted all the inspiration I can find within these four walls.  I commented about how I needed to get out more and have some new experiences to stir up the creative juices.

And while new experiences, vacations and escapes are good, needed sometimes, I don’t think they’re the solution as often as we think.  So often when things are falling apart we think that we need to get away to fix things or find what we’re looking for.   Continue reading →

Mind the Gap: The only New Year’s resolution you need.

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mind_the_gap_please__by_eternalsunshine88-d49w5d1

Today I’m sitting in my “office” in Oklahoma, sitting indian style on a dining room chair and munching away on veggie sticks.

I’m also contemplating some hot tea and about to give Kel his marching orders for a much needed WalMart run.

Yesterday we spent 18 hours in the car driving from Hudsonville, MI back home to Ada, OK.  I wanted to kick and scream like a toddler for the entirety of the trip.

Because I was exhausted and the end was always forever away.

Because I hate long road trips

Because the kids were constantly whining and kicking my seat

And… Because I flat out didn’t want to return to Oklahoma.  Michigan is home and I really do hope that God gives us what we need to do something about that in the new year. Continue reading →

Cotton Candy Light

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 It’s two AM and Noelle wanders into our room, mumbling a need to have ice  for her owie finger, the result of some three year old dreaming.

I roll out of bed and guide her back to her room, realizing that she’s wet the bed.  So I bundle her softly on the couch under a huge fleecy blanket while I strip the wet sheets off and exchange them for new, clean, bright pink bedding.

As I bend down to kiss her face and smooth the covers over her chilly, soft skin she licks my face: “Because I’m your kitty” she says, “and kittys lick.”

I laugh, even though I’m slightly grossed out, and shut off the hall light before crawling back into bed.  Somehow smiling in the midst of a 2 AM, pee soaked wake up call.

Suddenly my mind switches on and I wonder why I was able to find joy in the non-ideal.

Then scenes from last night drift back and keep me from sleep. I nagged at Kel for playing on his phone and he reminded me that a whole day cannot be defined by one moment.  He encouraged me to remember all the good despite the slip up.

This way of relating is a marriage gold mine if you can dig it and, God I need to dig it. Continue reading →

Refueling Red Riding Hood.

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They LOVE “The Box!”

Another morning starts, I hear Caedmon crying out in his crib and I roll myself out of bed and cross the hall, past the bathroom to scoop him up;.

He’s sitting there waiting and before I lift him out of his crib he gathers up his “entourage” of 2 mamakes (blue elephants) a bobby (pacifier) and the books he demanded to take to bed with him the night before.

It’s really quite the production.

Then we change his diaper and move through the kitchen meeting his many demands for milk and whatever catches his eye in the pantry.

This morning is exactly the same as every other morning, although for me it feels entirely different.

I’ve been absent from this place, these morning routines, for five days now, off connecting with friends and receiving truth from gifted teachers.  Downloading new music and gathering new insight from new experiences and views.

And now, just as I suspected this conference high has collided with my real life, which didn’t take it easy on me my first day back.

A full litter box which the cat is meowing me to clean with much demand.

Caedmon peed all over Kel’s messenger bag.

I can’t find a clean sippy cup to save my life.

I hear the phrase “shaving cream tastes yucky mommy!”

You can’t make this stuff up people.  This is my real life, not aimless meandering chicago streets with gourmet coffee.

But the escape reminded me who I am, this mother AND that big city wanderer.

This writer and the woman who tends to endless excrement and dirty sippy cups.

As I sat to process all these swirling thoughts, my 3 year old Noelle brought me a business card with the gorgeous STORY red riding hood on it.

She asked if we could put this “beautiful art” on the fridge, so we gathered alphabet magnets off the floor and displayed wandering Red on our black maytag.

I sat with my mug of coffee staring at this dramatic, dark and beautiful woman on the business card, now surrounded by alphabet and banana magnets.

It’s just right, isn’t it? Big city, real skin, conference beauty brought home to fuel the oatmeal making life, peppered with dirty diapers and bright plastic magnets, little people underfoot (both the plastic ones and the flesh and blood ones)

This is the day to day, life is cycles and seasons, each speaking to the other, one refueling and one depleting it.  We refuel for brief periods and then we must travel long distances on those tanks.

The wandering is the punctuation that brings sense to the run on sentences.

But with each pitstop, I am learning healthier rhythm, better grammar, deeper breathing.

I’ll continue to pick up a comma and period here and there, develop sharper eyes for the fuel I need, learn to find it here and there.

But for today I’m Red Riding Hood on the Fridge.