boyhood: living in a hood of boys

January 27, 2015January 30, 20151 Comment

I live with lots of boys. One husband and then four little precious creations the Lord has given to us. Three of them are boys. The ladies in this house are outnumbered 4:2 and it’s a tough time for ladies in this house most days.

This is a boyhood. A house of boys.

Just yesterday I gently repremainded, “why can’t you just play school or house?” The boys in this hood then began to play school, I even showed them how to line up their stuffed animals as students, but then their students got in a fight and everyone began to wrestle… again.

Oh the wrestling. My three year old pins me and I seriously cannot get up.

If you are pinned to the ground, outnumbered in your boyhood, know I am on the ground with you. Here are some things working for me with my boys surviving boyhood and maybe they will help you too.

It’s real hard living in the hood. We need to help each other out.

1. The White Line

For a long time getting out of the car and running into moving traffic was fun for my boys. I had chest pain and my boys had fun. My heartbreaking moment was the time when I only had a twenty-month-old and a newborn and I found myself in a parking lot at the grocery store. As I turned to take my baby out of the car my little toddler dashed out into traffic and directly into the grocery store. Thankfully he was not put in harms way.

So after all these years of seeing excited boys exit a car and wait in the parking lot I have taught them how to line up like soldiers on the white line that separates the parked spaces in a parking lot. This has saved me in the land of boyhood. All three boys know their feet better stick like glue to that white line while they are waiting for momma.

2. A Simple Touch.

If you live in the same hood as I do you know listening can be a challenge. like your saying, put your shoes on just so the crows feet will begin to disappear from your eyes (that would be so awesome, right?) But boys (and men) need something more physical to really hear you. I simply and gently touch their arm and look into their eyes. “Put your shoes on” gets done and done when a simple touch of the arm is in play. A simple touch will save a girl from hearing herself talk in the hood. For real.

3. The Game.

Living in boyhood means everything is a race. For years we have been racing a bath time, bed time, seatbelt time. I never give prizes for the winner. Never. I always praise everyone efforts. But in this hood everything has to be a competition. Boys just live for competition in and of itself. If you want your boys to do something quickly make it a race. This is what works in our hood.

4. The Hero.

The Lord gave me great understanding of little boys once I learned the power of the word hero. All day I watch them, playing and fighting and rescuing. They are always rescuing someone from something. So recently in this hood I have begun to use the word, hero, more often.

I need a hero, seems to make all three come running. Paper towels are fetched more often and toys seem to get swooped up faster. Find your heroes and see the hero in your boys.

5.Their Daddy.

If you live in the hood of boyhood like I do you know how important the daddy is. Truly. He is the bread and butter to this whole thing. If daddy comes when dinner is called and tells mommy that this taco dinner is the best taco dinner he has ever had, you better believe three other boys will be saying that same thing around the dinner table for days.. for months…for their future wives…and to model for their future sons. In the hood, daddies are the key. They matter most. All the work I do all day, all the loving, snuggling, kissing boo boos and calling for heroes will never have as much impact as a few minutes with their daddy.

6. Jesus.

Jesus matters a whole lot in boyhood too. A praying boy and a boy who respects his momma because he loves Jesus is the only way this hood is going to work. Truly. Truly. Truly. Pray with those boys. Pray with them about their hearts. Pray with them about their sins. Pray with them when they get too physical with one another.

Pray for them. Pray that they would be men who love God and serve people. Pray that God would give the boys in your hood hearts to know God truly and make Him known.

As moms in the hood we are raising up the next generation of men. It is exhausting and I don’t understand the amounts of pee around the seat or the need to turn every single game into a fight or wrestling match. But I do understand that what I am doing is important for our world.

Embrace your hood.

Overcome the challenges.

Make a better world.

“Every time you raise a loving, kind and responsible man, you have created a better world.”

-Michael Gurian

The Thing About A Three Year Old

December 20, 2014December 20, 2014Leave a comment

Sometimes it is easier to see what is bad about the phase of a child. It is easier to scream and complain about the awful and the challenging. Some people write it down and when it is attached with cynicism others seem to applaud. Others gravitate toward the negative that is masked with cynicism. The challenging things go viral while the redeeming qualities of a phase stay in the background.

No one applauds the praiseworthy traits because everyone huddles around the ugly ones.

I know children go through challenging phases. I have four young children and I have experienced most of the awful and all of the challenging. I could tell you all the stories. The poop stories, the tantrum stories, the flat out ridiculous embarrassing moments at Target and the times my children ran into a parking lot without the helping hand of a responsible adult.

I think the praiseworthy moments deserve an applause. There is a world out there reminding us of the awful and through the noise, sometimes it is hard to stay joyful in the dog-days of parenting young children.

The thing about a three year old is there is a loyal, independent, teachable child behind those stubborn eyes.

I do not think there is a day that goes by that my three year old does not stomp his foot down and tell me, “I want to do it by myself!” BUT there also is not a day when he does not take me by my hand and say, “Mommy, you are my best friend.”

There is not a day when he does not begin to cry if his blanket is just right, BUT there also is not a day when he doesn’t want to smooth my hair out of my face and tell me I am beautiful.

The thing about a three year old is they are your best friend beneath all the challenging yuck.

They are loyal to you, you are still their best friend because peers are still of little importance.

Three year olds can dress themselves.

Three year olds can use the toilet.

Three year olds can put on there own shoes.

Three year olds can play in the snow for longer than it took you to dress them in their snow gear.

Three year olds get birthdays. They get Christmas.

Three year olds truly love their siblings: they look up to the big ones and care for the little ones.

Three year olds can set the table and match socks.

There are so many praiseworthy things about a three year old. Don’t hear the bad and embrace cynicism. Embrace the praiseworthy. I promise when you search for the praiseworthy you will find the joy in the dog days.

There are so many lovely things about a three year old. Find them. Write them down. Hang them on the fridge.

The world wants you to see a three year old through the eyes of cynicism but God wants you to see them differently. As His children, the thing about a three year old is they significant and important to Him, no matter the challenging and the yuck.

Strive to see the praiseworthy. “Whatever is praiseworthy about a three year old, think on these things.” Philippians 4:8

If you like this you will also like:

Why The Twos Aren’t Terrible

They Can Hear You

Finding Shelley At Christmastime

December 17, 2014September 21, 20162 Comments

For years I have struggled to find her. For seventeen Christmases I have looked for her but I have been so overcome with grief that my eyes couldn’t see what was right in front of me.

Christmas is a hard time of year for anyone who has lost a family member.

As a fourteen year old girl I lost my mother and it has taken me almost two decades to recover.

For as long as I could remember I was waiting for others to bring her back. I put the expectations on others to do Christmas like she did and each year Christmas passed and my expectations were not met. I felt disappointment and loss in the belly of my soul and this made the cycle of grief start all over again.

Finally, this Christmas I have found hope. I have found the hope in honoring her, after sixteen other Christmases have passed. Sheesh, it feels like it took a lifetime. But today it was worth the wait.

Today, I found my mom in the simple words of a recipe for Christmas cookies. Just one taste of the uncooked batter brought me back to childhood in her kitchen years ago. I baked Christmas cookies with my kids today and I told stories about my mom at Christmas.

I found her in the handwriting of her recipe book. The large loops in her cursive and the perfection and consistency of each stroke.

While I iced the Christmas Tree shapes and added the red hots I told my sons this was something I looked forward to every Christmas as a child. I told them I would even sneak bites of the refrigerated batter and how my mom would catch me anyway.

There have been plenty of opportunities for me to choose bitterness and loss and grief at Christmastime. There are plenty of opportunities for me to stick in the cycle of grief and let the bitterness take root and grow.

If she was here it would be different. It would be better. I do miss her. My kids and my husband have never experienced her laughter. My kids have not been able to experience the blessing of involved maternal grandparents.

I could choose to celebrate Christmastime with emptiness each year.

But instead, I choose HOPE in the midst of loss and unmet expectations.

Hope falters the growth of bitterness. Choosing hope at Christmas is a choice.

I choose to find my mom in the traditions and the stories. This has not happened overnight. It has taken sixteen years of sadness and choosing grief and the plauging seed of bitterness over the fruitful seed of hope.

Hope is what would be honoring to my mom at Christmas anyway. She wouldn’t want it any other way. If she was here she would tell me to dry my tears and teach my children to find her at Christmas. Grandma Shelley is not here physically but she lives her in our traditions.

Finding Shelley in the traditions is a choice.

Finding hope in loss is a choice.

Finding Shelley at Christmas has taken me almost two decades but I am thankful I found her today. In the cookies. The simple cookies with the red hots.

And I hope to pass her on to my children. I hope to give them hope. And stories. I hope to teach them that God’s story is full of people who lost but these same people had their eyes fixed on something Greater.

Because A Mother Is Beautiful All By Herself

November 18, 2014November 18, 20141 Comment

There was a time not too long ago when I didn’t want to have my picture taken. Sometimes I was the one taking the pictures but other times I just didn’t want to see myself photographed. I was unhappy with the way I looked and I did not want my children to remember the time when mommy’s hips were more rounded and her face was a little fuller.

Specifically I remember being at a baseball game and I was gathering my boys close for a picture of them with their rally caps on. A young guy in the row in front of us sweetly turned around and offered to take the photo for us. He immediately looked puzzled when I quickly declined and told him I wasn’t planning on seeing myself in pictures for at least ten more years.

That was really true and there it was: Out of my mouth my heart spoke the words: I am not beautiful enough to be remembered for who I am, right now, just this way.

I have heard this story before. My mom rarely wanted to be photographed while she was battling cancer while I was a child. I hear my grandmother tell me, she did not want you all to remember her that way. I love my mother and that was her wish but now here I am left without her and I barely have any pictures with her and me in them. I cannot think of more than five photos I have of her and me together from the age of five until she passed away when I was fourteen.

To me she was beautiful.

As a child, I didn’t see a bald woman or a woman with only one breast. I saw my mother. And a mother is beautiful all by herself.

To my children, a mother is beautiful all by herself.

There will be a time when I am no longer here on this earth and my sweet children will be longing for memories of me. My children will not be concerned about my chin, my dark circles, or my roots that should have been touched up last week. My children will just want to see me. And them. They will want to hold something more tangible than a memory that puts me with them in that place at that time.

Our children don’t care how we look for the camera, because to them, a mother is beautiful all by herself.

You can see I have some unraveling to do when it comes to this whole idea of being beautiful. Just the way I am. Right now. In this time. In this place.

I will tell you I know what the Bible says about being beautiful. I will even tell you I have those verses memorized. But even though I know what the Bible teaches on a cognitive level about beauty – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the attitude of my heart and my unwillingness to be photographed show a tangled up mess of belief and unbelief when it comes to my appearance. What I believe and what I actually do just don’t match up.

As God has been faithful to work on my unbelieving heart I can see the places where I have the “beliefs of the world” tangled up in what is true about beauty from the passages of Scripture.

I’ve realized that to the people who matter, a mother is beautiful all by herself.

God speaks to beauty in His words to us in the Bible and according to Him our beauty has nothing to do with the amounts of hairs on our head, the clothes that we wear or what the scale is saying about us on any given day.

“Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised.” Proverbs 31:30

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.” (1 Peter 3:3)

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on appearance. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

“Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful.” Song of Solomon 1:15

God’s words in the Bible do not say the same things the world is screaming to us about beauty. It is challenging to unravel the untruth from the truth. Mostly because as a mom, I am constantly surrounded by a world telling me to be thinner, to wear the latest trendiest boots, to be a hot mommy, to make sure my thighs aren’t touching. I could go on for days. Days.

God is telling us from His word that beauty comes from the blatant opposite or what our world tells us is beautiful.

Beauty comes from giving up of yourself. And chasing after Good.

Beauty does from bravely enduring hardship. Like my mother. She is a heroine and I just won’t stop saying that.

Beauty is a mother. Giving up herself.

A mother is beautiful all by herself. A mother doesn’t need to hit that weight loss goal, make her hair the right color or wear the trendiest clothes. To God, your husband, you children, none of that matters. They want you in those photos. I know. And I am telling you.

“Behold, you are beautiful, my love; behold, you are beautiful.” Song of Solomon 1:15

Go and be photographed. Hang those photos on the wall and post them to Facebook. Because a mother is beautiful all by herself.

Preparing For The Seasons Of “I Hate Yous”

November 14, 2014November 15, 20141 Comment

Confession: I am a Parenthood fan. I started watching the very first season because as a Gilmore Girls fan, I will never be able to get enough of Lauren Graham. Who wouldn’t just want to follow Lorelei around for the rest of their lives? Six seasons later, I have never gone a week without missing an episode of Parenthood, this epic show that give me a glimpse of what may be headed my way.

This final season has brought so many questions and tears.

Tonight however, something struck me. Something which I was not expecting.

Ruby is the teenage daughter to Hank. Ruby and Hank are supporting characters and really making a good storyline in this last season of the show. Ruby is left home alone and she lies to her dad, Hank and throws a pretty epic high school party. When she is caught, she tells her dad, “I hate you”.

As I watched the show so many emotions flooded over me. I have been Ruby. I have lied and manipulated my father. I have invited friends over to party in the basement of my childhood home on Sycamore Creek Dr. I have been Ruby. When I was caught, the only words I knew to express I was feeling ashamed were the words, “I hate you”.

My childhood was far from perfect and I rebelled and said those words so many times. To my father. To my mother.

It stings my heart now to relive those moments when I looked my mother in the eyes and said, “I hate you”. It stings because she is not here now for us to be close and live in harmony like most teenage girls get to grow up and do with their mothers.

Like Ruby, I have said, “I hate you” to my parents. Like Ruby, I never meant it. I hated my situation. I hated being caught. I hated the humiliation. But, I never really hated my parents. My mom. And even my dad.

As I watched tonight I blinked and thought about my own childen saying the words “I hate you” to me. Their mother. You know, the one that has been there for every midnight fever, bad day at school, last minute assignment and literally used my body to give them essential nutrients for close to two years. (Pregnancy and the first year of breastfeeding- it’s amazing if you breastfeed for longer… I just count down the days until my children hit their first birthday or are ready to wean.)

I think about my four children ages five and under and it is very difficult for me to think about the words “I hate you” coming out of their sweet little mouths. It’s difficult because we are in a season where they love me. They kiss me. They hug me. We are in a season where at bedtime we try to top each other with who loves the other more or who can blow the last kiss good night.

We are in a season of “I love yous” but I’m too intelligent to believe this will prevent us from a season of “I hate yous”.

When that season comes, I hope I will be wise enough to remember my children are just trying to communicate, “I am hurting”.

In the season of “I hate yous” I hope I remember the season of “I love yous”. Like God is screaming in this moment right now, “REMEMBER, they love you”.

Remember they love you because of the moments when that baby smiles like you light up the room for her.

Remember they love you because of the moments when your toddler wants to hold your hand.

Remember they love you because of the moments when they say they want to marry you and you are their best friend.

Remember they love you because of the moments when they beat you to infinity or “more than anything that God made”.

I hope to prepare for the season of “I hate yous” by remembering the season in which God has me right now. I am not above the season of “I hate yous” I will absolutely not be a cool teenage parent. I will be a parent and that alone will bring on the piercing wounds.

I believe God is giving me now so I can prepare for the stings of “I hate yous”. So I can prepare for the breaks of my heart.

Now, I am storing up all the “I love yous” for the moments when I could be standing in front of my teenager hearing the “I hate yous” just like Hank and Ruby.

Maybe it will sting a little less if I can prepare for them now.

Maybe God wants us to remember the nows and store them up to prepare for the moments of “I hate yous”.