When The Days Are Long And The Years Are Short

July 16, 2015January 2, 20161 Comment

Gretchen Rubin says it best in her book, The Happiness Project.

“The days are long but the years are short.”

Now, I know for some of my friends that have grown children (you know) I do not and cannot even comprehend the weight of what this phrase encompasses and I am not pretending to.

But I feel the longness of the days and just this week I am beginning to see glimpses of the shortness of the years.

My oldest son is in fact one-third gone. Saying that aloud and writing it down does not make that statement anymore believable to me. My son is one-third of his way out my front door and off into the world.

In the last year he has had some adult teeth creep up into those youthful holes in his smile and his feet have crossed over from little kid sizes and into real man sizes. (He wears a 1 to my husband’s 10.5.)

It was on his sixth birthday last January that I began to think of the weight of the truth: my time with him and I in this home, when I can still hold the grown-up card is one-third gone.

I cannot speak to having all the thirds gone but I can tell you the one-third crept up on me the same as those adult teeth did growing into my son’s smile.

There are parts about the years being short that I love.

Now, I love my children and I am not wishing them away but today I can be totally honest with you when I say- I loved my four children playing independently in the basement all morning with my oldest two steering the cruise ship instead of me.

In the shortness of the years I don’t know when my older sons began making up the games or getting out the toys for the day, I just woke up one day this summer and my children started making memories all on their own.

I love in the shortness of the years how I have quickly embarked upon a feeding time when I feel like I can eat a meal and have a conversation with my family.

I love the shortness of the years bringing us to a place where my kids can pump their own legs on the swings and play ant tag while I watch them interact from the window without my refereeing and whistle blowing.

And I grieve the shortness of the years too.

I grieve the shortness of the years when I think about my son who is one-third gone going off to first grade in a few weeks. I grieve because I know he will not be present around my lunch table five days a week.

I grieve because I know getting into the busyness of the long days at school will make the years seem even more shortened than they already do.

But I love where we are in our long days and our short years. I am so thankful for this time with these babes no matter how short the years may seem. I fight to live them big because I know some mommas don’t get to live all the years they want to with their babies.

In the long days and the short years I have a choice between sadness over the one-third gone or I can just love where we are today.

Because no matter what is gone or what is to come, today is what I have with my kids.

I think this is part of the journey. Not reminiscing and missing the days one-third gone and not trying to live too much in the grief of the hard loss which lies two-thirds ahead.

We can appreciate where we have been and anticipate with great hope what is ahead but most of all I am coming to a place where I feel it is so important to enjoy the todays.

When you realize the days are long and the years are short, you don’t start counting them and measuring them, you wouldn’t start counting your days if your doctor told you you only had a short time to live. You would enjoy the long days you have, where you are: one-tenth, one-third or one-half gone because you know the moments of making memories are precious.

So I’m fighting to enjoy me one-third gones and adult teeth creeping ins. Not seeing what is gone or what is about to be gone but seeing the six year old in my lap.

This is where God has me as a mom.

These are the long days He has given me in the years that seem to be so short.

Dear Mom, Why Didn’t You Tell Me?

July 13, 2015July 13, 20155 Comments

My mother passed away after a seven year battle with breast cancer when I was fourteen. There is literally no way she could have told me all the things I needed to know about pregnancy and parenting but I had this idea to write like I was writing to her a few years ago so I’d thought I give it a try. There are so many times I find my kids sucking on the toilet cleaning brush or wondering what to do about splinters and I ask myself why I didn’t have a notebook in my back pocket observing my mother while I could have.

Dear Mom,

I love you and I miss you tremendously every day. Seriously. Young moms need their moms to have on the other end of the phone saying things like, you used to suck on the toilet brush too and you still have two eyes, ten fingers, ten toes and a twisted but very funny sense of humor.

I am now a mom and I get you. I get why you had to talk to yourself while you are driving the minivan or shopping in the grocery store. I used to think you were a little insane. I loved you but the aloud list making was just something I couldn’t understand. But I get it now. If you didn’t say it aloud your thoughts may have been lost in the screaming and the chaos of the unpredictable life of raising multiple kids.

And by the way, why didn’t you tell me it was unpredictable? I really believed my children would come into the world knowing how to listen to mommy’s voice. I have seen all these nice videos now-a-days on the Internet (the Internet has really taken off and is a good but horrible thing all at the same time) when children hear their mother’s voice from their womb and the mother’s voice is a beacon for them, it is comforting to them. Why didn’t you tell me that as babies grow the beacon isn’t as important for them anymore?

None of my children listen to mommy’s voice. There are times when I feel like they have turned my beacon/frequency down all together. If you would have told me this before I feel like I could have been a little more guns blazing about it. The listening patterns of my children are still a mystery to me.

Why didn’t you tell me there will be days when I feel like I am doing everything wrong but at the same time I am doing something right.

As a mom there are so many moments when the data seems to point to the undesirable outcome. There are just too many times when I feel like I am screwing up my kids and I wish you would have told me that it will all be okay.

I wish you would have said that even though you were at every class party, brownie troop meeting, dance competition and planned the most creative birthday parties I have ever seen before pinterest, (pinterest is a website where people can find all of your ideas for birthday parties on that thing I mentioned above called The Internet, it doesn’t even dial up anymore, it’s all about high speed access to your awesome birthday party ideas)

I wish you would have told me that I didn’t always listen and the data pointed to the undesirable for you too.

Why didn’t you tell me it would be so hard and that I would need you so much? Even what feels like so much more now than it felt like I needed you when I needed you when I was little.

When I was little I needed you to help me use a spoon but now I need you to help me feel un-crazy.

These toilet brush sucking moments make me freak out! I can’t even begin to let myself go down the road of germs and other possibilities. I really can’t even go there or I’d call 9-1-1.

Why didn’t you tell me?

Why wasn’t I listening?

Why aren’t you still here?

These are the moments when I miss you. When I want to pick up the phone and call someone who has been gone for seventeen years.

It’s a good thing I’ve totally accepted talking to myself as normal. That basically is what I blog is for me. So I’ll maybe keep bringing the questions to you here.

Maybe someone out there will remind me that toilet brush sucking has happened before and talking to yourself is not insane but it is survival.

Mom, I miss you all the time. The loss of you makes me understand the fact that this life is not the way it is supposed to be and makes my soul long for something better.

You were a treasure and I wish I would have followed you around with a notebook when I could have.

The WORST Mom Ever

June 9, 2015June 10, 2015Leave a comment

I am the WORST mom ever.

Sometimes I say this phrase to my kids when they are experiencing a disappointing circumstance. Truly. I can be fun but I am also tough. This combination leads to many disappointing circumstances.

When I say that I am the WORST mom ever to my kids I am only joking to add to the drama of their disappointed hearts. (When all my children are in counseling as adults they will talk to note taking men and women about how I used this phrase against them to feel guilty.)

I know I am causing damage when I joke with them about being the worst mother ever but I do find myself saying things like:

Oh, I’m sorry you didn’t get ice cream on the way home tonight but that is because I am the WORST mom ever.

Lately my oldest son has been saying something back to me and the more he responds to me the more I am taking his words seriously.

When I call myself the WORST mom ever he always says,

“Mom, why do you say you are the WORST mom ever when you are actually the BEST?”

The first time he said this I took his response lightly because this is the reaction I wanted to get out of my children. (The children crying while leaving Kings Island because I only treated them to Chick Fil A and a day filled with amusement park fun and I did not add ice cream on top of it all.)

These words from my oldest son have continued to stick with me even though it was the response I was expecting.

Even though I was expecting my son to respond in this way, I never expected his words to affect me the way they have.

How often do we all speak these words of untruth to all of our hearts when we find ourselves not measuring up to the moms whom we encounter at church, on the playground, in our schools and on social media.

How often are we speaking to our own hearts that we aren’t doing this mom thing as well as someone else?

I do this all the time.

Every time I fail throughout the day. Whether it comes down to feeling guilty over what I put on the table, the amount of activities I did or did not plan, the hours I spent away from them on a trip or on a run, the amount of minutes I fell short on a reading log or the homework folder.

However I fail, I sometimes and in someway speak this poisonous phrase to myself.

The WORST mom ever.

I think it and I really feel this phrase I speak jokingly to my children at times.

And the words of my oldest son are such a sweet gift to me:

“Mom, why do you always say you are the worst when you really are the best.”

I may not feel like I am always measuring up. But to the four kids who I feel like I am failing, currently I am the best mom ever to them. Currently, my kids see me doing this job of mom and through their lens they see me doing my best.

Why do I always say I am the worst? I don’t know. I wish I could see myself though the lenses of my children.

Maybe I wouldn’t be so hard on myself.

Maybe I would see myself the way they see me.

To our young children, we are the best. They can’t see what everyone else on social media is doing. They just see their moms waking up each day and loving them the best they can. Our kids don’t have the ability to measure us up against everyone else. They only measure us up against the happiness they find within the walls of their happy homes.

We may feel like the WORST but to the little people who matter, we are THE BEST.

I’m actually may be doing a decent job at this mom thing.

Those are the words I need to speak more kindly to my own heart.

The “I Can’t” Days

May 8, 20151 Comment

There were so many days when I had a baby laying on my chest waiting to be nursed and a toddler pulling on the hem of my pants. There were so many moments when I was overwhelmed with all of the directions my heart was being pulled and all of the needs I could not possibly meet.

There were so many I Can’t Days in our little one story brick home. All the needs of those tiny people in my arms and at my feet overwhelmed me. There were tears and many disappointing sighs.

There were voices. “You are a smart, educated, with-it woman, why can’t you conquer… why can’t you be one step ahead of the runny noses and the diapers and the toys that need to be mended and fixed.”

There were moments when the “I Can’ts” were loud and the “I Cans” were soft.

Being a mom with little children is the hardest thing I have ever done. The boundaries of who I thought I was and the things which I thought I could handle have been nudged, pushed and eventually those boundaries stretched out wider and grew bigger in my young days of motherhood.

The “I Can’t Days” have made me into a better woman. It is horrible at the time, when your boundaries are being nudged, you feel like you just can’t give anymore. You feel like if someone stretches you any further, part of you might just break off. But over time, with that tiny baby on your chest and that toddler pulling on the hem of your pants, you learn that little by little you actually can.

You learn that you can stretch further than you thought. It hurts to grow in the process. I have grown with many tears. But in the hurt and the stretch you get stronger and you learn to punch the “I Can’ts” right in the nose. Right where it smarts.

Little by little and day by day you learn that you are more than you thought you were when you started this whole journey called motherhood. You find yourself loving in ways you once thought you were incapable of at the beginning of the journey. As you stretch in the “I Can’ts” you learn that you can.

You can care for one child. You can care for two… and then three… and four and beyond. You can survive on 20 minute bursts of sleep between feedings and children getting sick in their beds. You can love something when it is tantruming on the floor and acting unlovable. You can survive the long days while you are counting the years as short.

Motherhood changes you. It morphs you into a better version of yourself. You learn that you are more selfless than you thought, you learn that you can love bigger and your gag reflex slowly fades away. (See: Why I Have Been Politely Declining You Dinner Invitation)

You learn you can.

You learn you were made specifically for this journey.

And over time the “I Cans” become a little louder and the “I Can’ts” seem to soften.

You become thankful for the “I Can’t Days” because you know that those were the moments when God was refining you. Gently showing you that He made you for this journey and gently showing you that you can do more than you ever thought you could.

Happy Mother’s Day to every woman out there walking with me in the “I Can’t” days and learning, little by little, that we actually can love more than we ever thought we were capable of.

You were made for the journey.

You can.

The Things I Said I’d Never Do: An Unraveled Parent

April 25, 20151 Comment

There was a moment the weekend right before Christmas where I found myself cheering in a dark deserted parking lot on a chilly December night. I was cheering because my three year old was peeing in the bushes, outside and in the cold.

Really. I was rejoicing. This is something I’d never thought I’d be doing. Six years ago in my early parenting days, when my first son was about nine months old, my husband shared a story with me about a little boy peeing in the church parking lot and I said,

“I WILL NEVER let my son pee in a parking lot.” And I really believed myself. I was even reluctant to let my first son pee in the yard while we were potty training at two.

And there in December, I found myself applauding my three year old in the dark. I was so proud of him. This was same kind of pride I feel when one of my children take their first steps. Peeing outdoors has actually become an important milestone for me and after three sons, this “will never” along with many others has given me the opportunity to see myself unravel my wound up strings, breathe and let go of all those things I thought I’d never do as a parent.

A dear friend told me once, “parenting is actually for the parents” and I could not agree more. I can see how these little humans that I’ve carried, nursed, fed and cleaned up after are actually changing me more than I ever thought they would back at the beginning of the all the “will nevers”.

Parenting is for us. The parents. It’s funny how such tiny people have helped me grow and change. How these tiny people have helped me conquer fears, push the boundaries of who I thought I was and help me learn to love in ways I never thought I could.

I also said I will never let my kids watch Spongebob but when your stuck in a hotel room at 4pm on a rainy day with no Disney Junior you learn to let go on the tiny things that you think will corrupt your children’s tiny hearts and minds and you trust that God is bigger than Spongebob.

I said I will never own a toy gun back in those early days of being a new mom. My intentions were to raise boys that were not violent miscreants shooting everything and everyone they see. But looking back now I can see those intentions were ruled by fear and not trust. We now have multiple storage containers for weapons and nerf darts lodged into every couch cushion in our home. And so far- no violent miscreants.

I believe I may have uttered the words…

I will never let my children jump on the beds or the couch. Clearly I did not understand boys or children when this sentence came out of my mouth. This was also tangled up with the fear of my children getting hurt. I now actually sometimes encourage jumping on the couch and the beds, rejoicing when I hear them jumping and laughing and playing together the same way I was rejoicing when that little three year old was brave enough to pee outside in the cold.

I will never let my kids have formula. I am pretty sure I cried like a madwoman when the pediatrician told me my first son had lost too much weight and we had to supplement formula. The doctor’s eyes even bulged out a little at my overreaction. He wasn’t suggesting poison. Just formula. For supplemental purposes. And I was hyperventilating in my hospital bed uttering words of defeat, fear and remorse. When my fourth child was born I actually asked the nurse to give her formula our last two nights in the hospital so I could rest after having my fourth c-section. For supplemental and sanity purposes. All my kids have been nursed and given formula and despite my fears none of them has grown a third eye or eleventh toe… yet.

I will never teach my children the word MINE. I found myself correcting a friend a few years back when he was playing keep away with my infant son and using the four letter word, mine. “I don’t want him to know what that word is” is what I think I said. I felt like the word mine was the root of all selfishness. The word that in four letters can turn a sweet child into a monster. My desire was to teach my son that everything was given by a Great Giver and therefore help him learn to not use words which represented a heart of selfishness. But again, my good intentions were tangled up in fear and the unknown that a word does not produce a heart of selfishness. A heart of selfishness is naturally in all of us and selfishness will work it’s way into a home with or without the word mine.

I will never be able to survive parenting four young children, who happen to be within four years of one another. Look. It is true. Having little humans is tough. Tears on the floor, will I make it to nap time tough. I do not like to live in the unexpected. But having four kids so close together has taught me to learn to swim in unexpected waters. I am slowly learning to survive in the unexpected and learning to be comfortable when I can’t control every little thing happening around me. So far I am surviving. I haven’t lost anyone yet and everyone is still all in one piece. Things almost never go the way I planned them to go but I am learning to trust that God’s plans are greater than my plans. God is growing me and changing me, unraveling threads of fear and weaving new stronger threads of trusting in Him.

I am thankful when I find myself doing things I thought I said I would never do. It is there where I see growth. It is there where I see God making me into a better version of myself.

I never thought about parenting being for the parents. But it is. It changes you.You may even find yourself cheering for your children when they are peeing outside in the dark.

Hi, I’m Rachel. I became a follower of Christ one year before I found myself married to a man pursuing a seminary degree and on the road to become a pastor. That was nine years ago. We now have four kids, he is the head pastor of a PCA church in Mason, Ohio and I am figuring out how to be a mom, how to love my husband and how to trust God in the every day, one day at a time. I write stuff here and I try to keep it honest and encouraging as I have accomplishments and set backs. Follow this page on Facebook or add your email to the follow box on the right so we can stay in touch.