Finding Fun

April 2, 2015April 3, 2015Leave a comment

Not too long ago I fretted over everything parenting.

When I was pregnant I fretted over the size of my baby, I fretted over labor and delivery, my mind overflowed with the all consuming role of motherhood as I felt my toes dangling over the edge of my expectant role, not quite ready to jump in.

During the newborn years I fretted over tummy time, sleep schedules, appropriate amounts of Baby Einstein, Your Baby Can Read and how many times I could get through the Jesus Storybook Bible so the redemptive story of Jesus would begin to grow in their little newborn minds.

When they were infants it was the screen time and the fretting to make it out the door on time for story time at the library. (I don’t think we made it on time a single stinkin’ week.)

When they were toddlers I fretted about delayed walking and delayed speech and my heart would race when they mixed up their “Nello Mello Peas” mid alphabet song.

In preschool it was my boys being unable to sit still and concerns that they needed to be coloring more and digging for worms less.

And the fretting over whether my sons would ever begin to use the toilet??? I can’t even talk about it. That was a dark, dark place for me.

Then something wonderful happened. I stopped fretting. I’m not completely recovered, I am a recovering fretter, the relapses are hard. But I have consciously made an effort to stop checking the milestone charts and have some more fun.

When I find myself fretting. I try to replace it with fun.

We sing and dance in the kitchen more, we take more impromptu trips to the donut shop on Saturday mornings and sometimes this mommy who said no wrestling would ever occur in her house will find herself wrestling with my three boys on our living room floor WWF Smack Down Style.

I have found a road to recovery from the fretting when spend more time beating my boys at Smash Brothers than thinking about whether they will survive kindergarten.

I believe recovery from living under the yoke of fretting is absolutely necessary for me as a mother. I could fret the days away and let them pass without ever finding fun.

I hope that I am not too late in this journey of finding fun and once my children are grown and gone they will remember how I was able to enjoy them, right where they were, wrestled on the floor or knee deep in the mud.

*********************************

So I’m recovering from fretting and reaching for fun.

As a step toward finding more fun this year I have been surprising my boys at the bus stop randomly in costume. This started innocently when my Halloween Costume, Queen Amidala, arrived fifteen minutes before the bus came one day in the fall. I tried the costume on and as the bus came up the road I figured it would be fun to meet my kindergartner in costume.

Then randomly in December I tried to ease into the idea of Bus Stop Dress Up by using a superhero mask.

In February I tried a Mario Brothers Hat because my preschooler had joined my kindergartener on the bus and my preschooler loves Mario.

On St. Patrick’s Day I began to build up a little more courage and tried a hat “costume” which was a little more risky but I need something green so I found a Yoda costume hat in the dress up trunk.

And the latest bus stop costume was the riskiest. I was in full costume. White hooded sweatshirt, black leggings, tall boots and a toy Boba Fett Blaster. I’m not even a Star Wars fan but I have three sons so I’ve had to learn the names of all these different battle weapons.

I left guns and lightsabers in the yard so they could shoot and slash back at me. This was a really fun one.

And I’m planning something really big for the last day of school.

I also have big plans for my third son once he starts riding the bus and I am saving all the princess costume ideas for when my daughter reaches kindergarten age four years from now.

******************************

At first I fretted over this, what will the neighbors think? What will the bus driver think? What will my kids think? Will I traumatize them? But honestly, the neighbors laugh kindly and wave if they drive by, the bus driver and I have become good friends over this whole thing and my sons love it. It helps that they are the first drop off in the afternoon. They probably think everyone gets picked up by someone in costume.

And the fun cures the fretting. How could you not love shooting at your sons with toy guns when they get off the bus?

I fretted over the other stuff for too many years. And all my fretting was forward thinking. I was fretting forward instead of enjoying what I had right in my lap. I literally had a present in my lap and I was so busy fretting I forgot to have fun.

Hopefully fun can find me permanently and I can become completely recovered from the fretting.

Hopefully it’s not too late for me.

The Joy Of Making Memories

March 14, 2015March 14, 20152 Comments

Every day I have the opportunity to make memories with my children. Somedays with my little family can overwhelm me but then there are moments when I find myself stepping back and seeing a bigger picture.

Every day we are making memories.

It’s amazing to think that the task of creating childhood memories for four people is in my hands each day. Every day as I parent, I get the privilege of helping my children build the memories of their childhood. It is a privilege and a privilege I only have for a short time.

It brings me so much more joy to think about my days with my young kids this way. When I think about making memories for them it gives me a long term purpose for what I am building for them as their mother. When I think of making memories it gives me more joy than to look at an empty space of a day and think of tasks I can create to fill it up.

We make snow day memories, warm day memories, Friday night memories and Saturday morning memories. It is such a privilege to be involved in these moments that my children will one day talk to their children and grandchildren about.

Childhood doesn’t go on forever but the memories do.

I know because my grandmother still talks to me about the memories from her childhood.

When childhood ends, the memories will go on forever.

On Fridays we make movie night memories and pile the blankets and pillows all over the floor, sometimes we have pizza and popcorn on paper towels, sometimes cookies and apple juice.

When daddy is home from work my three sons make “man time” memories of swimming or going out to the park.

Some Saturday mornings we head to the doughnut shop in our pajamas.

“The doughnut shop in your pajamas with your brothers…this is what Saturday morning memories are made of.”

On Sundays after church we make memories to see who can race upstairs the fastest to put on their cozy clothes before lunch.

In the spring we make memories in the sand at the beach and in the summertime we make memories at my grandparent’s house on Lake George.

My favorite memories are the simple ones we make every morning when all my children pile up in my bed before we have to get moving for school. I sip my coffee and while they are all still little enough they all snuggle up close. I know these days will be over soon but what a privilege it is to make the memories while we can.

“My heart is full every morning to see my family wall snuggled up like this.”

I find so much more joy in my days with my children when I see the opportunity to make memories.

This day is the day we have to build the memories of childhood.

What a privilege we have as parents to help build the memories that will go on forever.

How I Began To Feel Free: Busyness

March 13, 2015March 13, 20152 Comments

I recently read the article, Busy Is A Sickness on Huffington Post Parents by Scott Dannemiller. As I read the article I can’t help but whisper the word “yes” aloud as I relate to every word.

I have the sickness too. It is the tendency of my heart to be discontent with just being.

Two years ago I attended a training and two women stood in front of the large group. One woman held her two hands into the air to illustrate the image of a small person trying to hold up a big world. She simply asked the question, “What happens when you let go?”

I gasped and externally processed the shocking truth of how I see myself. I replied in shock, “The world would fall on me. The world will crush me if I let go.”

It was in that moment that I heard out loud the way I view myself. I see myself as big. I see myself as the one who holds up the world.

I wasn’t able to feel free from the heavy yoke of busy until I realized I was small. Even when I let go of my world, it will still keep spinning. I was able to feel freedom from the weight of busyness when I finally recognized the simple truth: I don’t hold up the world.

So I put my hands down for an entire year. (How Saying No Is Leading Me To More Yes) I gave up the extras. I let the sign up sheet pass by when it was time to sign up for room mom and Sunday School teacher, small group leader, and hosting events.

It was hard to take a year and watch the world spin without me having my hands in the things I love but it was a great opportunity to reflect on my heart that is bent toward the busyness I control. When I was able to let go and put my hands down, the world did not fall apart. God brought in people even more talented than I could ever be to lead small groups, teach Sunday School and sign up to be classroom coordinator. When I put my hands down, God kept the world moving and God raised up stronger leaders.

When I realized the world would keep on moving without my name on the sign up list, I could breathe and for one year I just tried to focus on the very important things God has already given to me: my faith, my marriage and my children. In that year I was able to focus on the things that do in fact suffer when I am too busy to pay attention to them.

I went on more dates with my husband, I yelled the word “hurry” less and I just enjoyed my children without all the extras.

This year I have found my name back on the sign up list. I am teaching Sunday School, leading a small group and I am the classroom coordinator for my son’s kindergarten class. After a year of realizing I don’t hold up the world I have been able to come back and serve with a heart that sees myself with a proper lens: I am small. The year off has enabled me to hold onto the extras a little more loosely.

I am teaching Sunday School with two other amazing women.

I am leading a small group with a team of women.

I am a small classroom coordinator that hands out a sign up sheet for the other parents to lead the games, crafts and snacks at the class parties.

I am a small person inviting others into my life to come alongside and help me.

Busy Is a Sickness. I will always have it and I will always struggle with the pangs of busyness unless I fight to see myself with the proper lens.

Who holds up your world? Will you allow yourself to feel free?

The Mark Of A Mother

March 10, 2015March 11, 2015Leave a comment

Today as I was sitting in the bright white room at the doctor’s office talking to my beloved pediatrician about my fifteen month old daughter at her well check up, my daughter dug her nails into the exposed skin below my neckline and drug her hands passed my heart all the way down to the squared neckline of my green Old Navy tee.

An hour after the incident.

I swore I was bleeding. I kept talking to my pediatrician but, at the same time, checking the part of my upper chest for blood. My daughter was smiling as she as she hurt me but I still swear that sweet child of mine may have been out for blood.

I have a bleeding heart for my children. I love them so much it hurts.

Mothers are just like that. All mothers. Breastfeeding mothers, bottle feeding mothers, working mothers, stay at home mothers, organic mothers and drive thru mothers. I am or know all of those kinds of mothers so I know its true.

We all have bleeding hearts for our kids. We all love them so much it hurts.

When my daughter straight up assaulted me in front of our pediatrician I literally gasped in pain but then smiled and went about our regular check up. I also probably kissed my daughter and told her how much I loved her as we left the office more than I can even count.

The Mark of a Mother is deeper than the marks on their skin or their ego. The Mark of a Mother loves the unloveable. The Mark of a Mother takes the pain inflicted from a sweet child and says,

I don’t care how much you just hurt me, I still want to smooch your face off.

The Mark of a Mother knows our days are few.

You know you are a mother when the pain from your child, the blood on your hands of the stain on your ego does not change your love for them. The love for a child from a mother is unconditional and never ending.

The Mark of a Mother feels the pain and loves anyway.

That is the dangerous calling we have all been given. To love in the hurt. It is natural for us to do so. That is the Mark of a Mother.

Today when I checked out at the receptionist’s desk she gasped, Did someone scratch you?

I nodded, yeah. Kids do things like this.

I really don’t care. Of course, I want my children to grow to respect me but even if they don’t (and that could happen) even if they continue to scratch the surface of my heart… I will love them with a ferocious love anyway.

You hear that kids, no matter what you try to do to hurt me, I love you and I will try to smooch your face off anyway.

This is the Mark of a Mother.

I see you moms and know you have that ferocious Mark of a Mother too.

More Than Cute

March 4, 2015March 6, 2015Leave a comment

Disclaimer: This post is about rethinking the way we as people speak to others. How our speech forms how others view themselves and how the words I’ve heard have shaped me as a woman.

I have been a girl mom for fifteen months. With boys the phrase that comes up often is “you’ve got your hands full.” I have written about this before and have received comments about how people are not meaning any harm and I should respond in love. I hear you. I want you to know I have never back-handed anyone or snarled at the ones rolling their eyes at me or shaking their heads and sighing when they see me with my three sons so close together. My sons do not cause me trouble nor are they inconveniences to me but they are, each and every one of them, a precious gift.

This post and the peeling back of responses to children in culture is more about an aching heart for how we see and respond to others. How we can give a voice to the little dear ones in our strollers and our grocery carts. How we as grown ups can reform ourselves, grow and be better when we engage people out in the world.

I don’t think I have heard the phrase “you’ve got your hands full” since my post They Can Hear You went bananas last summer and basically broke the internet. That is a win for me. So here it goes with my latest thoughts about speech… I have been a girl mom for fifteen months and there is a new phrase I am rethinking. It is a phrase we all use and a phrase that bubbles out of our months when we see a little girl approaching our path, “she is so cute.”

Cute. C-U-T-E. attractive, especially in a dainty way; pleasingly pretty

This is an overwhelmingly kind comment. I actually use it all the time when I see girls of all kinds. Cute shoes, cute hair, cute shirt. I remember being on vacation one year in Florida and I had seen some family there who were vacationing in the Sunshine State at the same time. I remember running into a particular younger family member, she was maybe seven at the time, and I used these exact words to connect with her. “You are so cute.” Her father quickly interjected and said, “She is also very smart and very kind.”

I was taken back. I didn’t understand his rebuttal back then but I do now.

It seems as if we as people are very quick to comment on the outward appearances of especially women and we forget to see what God sees, the inward beauty that is not fleeting but is everlasting.

Being cute, dainty and pretty will eventually come and go and on that day the women and the girls we have been complimenting on their cuteness will be left wondering, who am I? But inner beauty cannot be matched. Courage, boldness, intelligence, a heart for the Lord, kind, important and loved. Those are the things we should be fighting to say to those sweet girls that will one day be women when they cross our path in that grocery store.

I love dressing my daughter in ribbons, bows and smocked dresses. She loves standing next to me while I put on my makeup and she likes to brush the make up brush on her face and say “pretty.” I am not calling for a strike against girliness, I love being girly. However, I am wondering about how I can build my daughter up with other words, words other than cute.

Currently, when we hear the phrase, “she is so cute” I always respond, “she is VERY loved.” And she is. Who wouldn’t be in a family with three big brothers?

L-O-V-E-D: held in deep affection; cherished

As a woman in my thirties I would much rather be cherished than the words dainty and cute. Cherished feels more secure than dainty.

I want my daughter and all of the daughters in our homes to know from the beginning that they are more than their appearance, their bows, or the outfits they are rocking on that day.

All of our daughters are loved, cherished, kind, smart, important, accepted and loved by The Most High God. Let’s saturate our compliments for little girls with truths they can take with them into eternity.

Cute and dainty are the outward things that man sees. Let’s try to fight to see the inward beauty that God sees. For a more confident generation: will you walk with me in reshaping the way we rotely respond to our sisters… young and old?