The Journey Of Letting Go

September 21, 2014September 22, 2014Leave a comment

I took a moment today to put down the broom and sit with you on the floor to read a book. Normally, while your brothers are quiet after lunch I take a moment to sweep and put dishes away; today I took a moment and I sat with you right there on the crumb filled floor.

In between the turns of the chunky pages I touched my nose to your bald head and breathed in what is still lingering of your baby smell.

The plates and crumbs waited as your brothers played quietly and I chose to sit with you another moment, for another breath and another book.

After you went down for your nap I took a moment to observe your biggest brother’s praying mantis and listened to him rattle off everything he knows about bugs. He looks taller standing there now but when he crouches over the patio table to view his favorite bug I get caught up in how quickly his legs have become as long as the table is tall.

I took a moment to leave the wrinkle free shirts in the dryer and line up cars with your middle brother. When you really listen to him talk about his cars you can hear the depth of his imagination and the song of his heart.

I made sure I had a moment today to push your youngest brother on the swing but then I decided to sit on the swing and fold him up in my lap. It was just a moment because it wasn’t long before you were trying to taste fall foliage by shoving baby handfuls into your mouth.

But a moment was all it took to experience this blink of an eye called motherhood in technicolor. To feel it, hear it, smell it.

I’ve been thinking about the moments I had with my mom, your grandma. I remember her reading to me, joking with me and folding me up in her lap.

Our house was always clean and things were put away but my mother remembered to stop and take in the moments. She knew it was important to stop and experience motherhood in technicolor.

I remember the technicolor moments with her. Not the half listening, half sweeping, half uploading moments.

I remember in technicolor the moments she took to breath every moment of me in… like it might be her last.

There is never a guarantee we will get all the moments we wish we could have had. Suddenly those moments can vanish and in the blink of an eye in this phase of motherhood…with you tucked in my lap…the moments will be over.

This is a journey of letting go. Little by little and moment by moment one of us will have to let go sooner than we had hoped. We belong not to one another but to One calling us to something greater.

So while we have one another here in this kitchen I promise to try to remember to live these moments of motherhood in technicolor. To stop sweeping through my task to read you a book and breathe you in on this journey of letting go.

Psalms 39:4
“LORD, make me to know my end And what is the extent of my days; Let me know how transient I am.”

Unraveled Marriage

September 10, 2014September 10, 20142 Comments

that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in with deceitful desires and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

Just two weeks ago I brought two different running shoes for my long morning run. It was a complete mistake and I had no idea I had grabbed my old left running shoe and my new right running shoe. When I arrived at the trail I laced up anyway and tried to run. 8 miles was the goal that day.

It didn’t feel right running with those two different shoes that morning. My left foot began to ache sooner than my right and as I tried to push through the aches just began to creep up my leg… my shin, my knee… I knew it wouldn’t be long before my hip would begin to twinge so around the two and a half mile mark I decided to turn around.

I walked back and for two and a half miles I thought about how ridiculous it is to try to run in two different shoes. Not only does it look funny it also feels strange and after awhile you begin to feel physical discomfort when you wear the old and the new at the same time.

On my long walk back I thought about Hebrews 12:1

let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

If you don’t get rid off all of the old… you can’t run. You can’t persevere.

I thought about 2 Corinthians 5:17

If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old is gone and the new has come.

The old has to go away for you to walk in the new way God is calling you to.

It seems as silly as my mismatched shoes for me to think about hanging onto my old self as I walk in the new. But I still struggle with my old patterns and my old ways. I still have so much unraveling to do. There are so many layers to me and I feel like daily, as I read God’s Word, God is saying, “Hey you, put that off, that is the old way you used to think about that, use my Words and walk in them.”

When the old gets tangled up in the new it feels funny. I feel confused, sometimes isolated and off balance. Just like in my two different running shoes, if I try to walk with Christ with some old and some new after awhile it will begin to affect me emotionally, spiritually and physically.

Recently I have been thinking about an unraveled marriage. What would it look like for me to recognize and put off my old patterns and transform them with the Words and Power of the gospel? Could we run with more perseverance towards Christ? Could we feel more comfortable and in step? Would we feel less achy and less off balance?

I think yes. But I think we have some unraveling to do as husbands and wives.

When you come into marriage you bring so many unknown patterns with you. Learned patterns from your own family, learned patterns from your friends, learned patterns from your favorite books and movies.

When I am hurting, it is my natural tendency to stonewall or shut down, cold shoulder, give a cold but bitter “nothing” if my husband asks me what is wrong.

I live with the old pattern tangled up in what I know is true from the Word of God.

If someone sins against you, talk about it. (Matthew 18)

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

There is a burr in my side to be like the popular Disney Ice Princess and “Let It Go”. Let the old fall away from the new. And feel free, one with the wind and sky.

As a wife, I love my husband and I want to treat him the way God treats him. I don’t want to have old patterns I have brought from learned ways of the world and have them tangled up in the way God has designed marriage in the words of scripture. It looks as silly as those shoes and it feels uncomfortable and unsatisfying. You can’t run. You can’t persevere.

Unraveling is not as easy as switching out your shoes or singing a ballad on the top on an ice mountain. Unraveling hurts. It hurts our pride to say we are doing it wrong, it hurts and takes work to pray and hear and apply God’s designs for living.

Unraveling doesn’t happen once in a lifetime.

Unraveling doesn’t happen once a week after a convicting sermon on Sunday morning.

Unraveling doesn’t even happen once a day.

Unraveling happens on the long hard miles of everyday life with your husbands, wives, kids, neighbors and coworkers. I hope you remember to untangle the old from the new. I hope you remember both of your new shoes.

Why I Have Been Politely Declining Your Dinner Invitation

September 9, 20145 Comments

For the last five years I have been politely declining dinner invitations to your home.

I know you have fabulous hospitality gifts and I want to eat your delicious dinners and scrape my fork on your gorgeous wedding dishes. I can picture your centerpiece, smell the candles and hear the hipster music playing in the background.

Then a loud, old-school record scratch wakes me up from the daydream of what I might think it would be like to come have dinner in your home.

I remember one large very important detail.

I have small kids. Four small kids.

I love them to pieces. I love the dirt under their nails at the dinner table, their loud burps followed by their giggles and their ‘scuse mes, I love their spilled chocolate milks and the food that seems to end up mostly on the floor instead of in their sweet little baby mouths.

I love them to pieces.

However, I have politely been declining your dinner invitation for five years because of them.

Most nights collectively, my children spend ten minutes sitting at the table before asking to be excused and swirling off like tasmanian devils (cute and very loved tasmanian devils). We send them outside or in the basement just so my husband and I can hurry and shovel dinner in our own faces before some else needs us.

Just two weeks ago I ventured out to your home with my kids for a church picnic. In the hour and a half we were there one of my children kept peeing in their pants. He went through three changes of pants. Three. I was in the bathroom changing pee pee pants three times in the ninety minutes I was in your home. One time while exiting the bathroom I found another one of my children playing your piano with his chocolate covered hands. Just as my panic attack was beginning to my make neck tense up and my head shake someone spilled water on your arcade basketball game and maybe tried to ride your dog.

That’s right. It was time to go. I shuffled my children out the door, thank youed and apologized several times while bringing my three pairs of pee pee pants home in my purse.

Just two nights later another you invited us over for dinner. I accepted thinking we may be able to have a decent time. Your family also has four kids so I thought we may be able to make it through the evening without the pee pee pants or my tense neck and shaking head.

We almost made it until my two year old began stripping all his clothes off down to his nude birthday suit on your back deck. My infant was crying and exhausted so I tried nursing her upstairs in your master bedroom but my baby kept screaming. She wanted her swaddle and she wanted her bed.

And lastly. We didn’t have pee pee pants but one of my boys was too scared to ask to go to the bathroom with the big crowd so he just pooped in his underwear instead. This evening’s consellation was poopy pants in my purse. My child pooped his pants at your house.

We had a great time but the drama. Oh the drama my kids certainly like to save it for their mama.

Last night, I invited you to my house for dinner instead. I thought in my own house I could control the poop and the pee and the chocolate covered fingers and faces. I thought while my kids played with their own toys I could look you in the eye and chat about your marriage, your job and ask you what God is teaching you. I thought maybe we could joke and laugh around my table of mismatched silverware and a bottle of red wine.

I love my kids to pieces but they brought slugs and caterpillars in from outside to show you at the table. I love them to pieces but two of them pooped in their pants together outside while playing in on the swing set. And then my oldest child barfed. Right in the middle of the kitchen, coating the hardwoods with the soup I just served everyone and reeking up the house so badly you couldn’t even smell that Yankee Candle I lit for you anymore.

I apologized again and thank youed you for coming as my kids blew kisses and chased your car down the road. They said, “See you soon” as they chased you.

Phew I thought. I don’t think I can do this again for a long time let alone soon the tension in my neck started to come as I thought about it.

I love my kids to pieces. But this is why I have politely been declining your dinner invitation for so long. It’s not how I feel about you, it’s how I feel about pee pee pants in your house. Maybe in a few years once we are beyond the pee pee pants and the strip shows can we look you and your husband in the eye and chat over dinner.

For now it will just have to be the hubs and I, shoveling the food in our mouths and living these crazy years with littles laughing together. We love them to pieces but we’ll keep them and their pee pee pants to ourselves at dinner time.