For The Love

January 18, 2016January 18, 2016Leave a comment

A few years ago I had my very first school Valentine’s Day experience as a parent. I took my then one-year-old, two-year-old and four-year-old boys to Target the week before V-Day and bought some valentines in the seasonal section. I believe that was the year we picked some kind of Transformer cards. I signed their names for them and sent their valentines to school in a ziploc as requested by the teacher.

It was easy, the boys had fun picking out a manly valentine and I felt really good about what we had accomplished.

Until days later.

I had been out of town the day of the parties and I remember coming home to neatly stacked papers from school and both of the boys’ Valentine’s Day bags sitting on the counter.

As I opened their bags, I was expecting tiny store bought cards just like ours but I soon realized I was actually looking at tiny works of art, hand-crafted by two and four year olds. It then occurred to me that preschool valentines weren’t exactly as I remembered them.

My store bought Transformer cards brought me shame as I pieced through the Pinterest inspired mountain of love and friendship in front of my eyes.

So the following year I gave into my shame. The haunting shame shaped how I felt about my parenting. I caved into hurtful phrases like “What kind of mother sends their children to school with store bought Valentines?”

This may seem laughable to you but at my very core this is truly what happened to me. I let something as simple as measuring up my preschooler’s valentine to someone else’s shape the way I saw myself as a mom.

I found my worth and value in a piece of paper passed out at school, instead of the deep ultimate satisfaction that can be found in my identity in Christ alone.

I let comparison steal my joy. And that stolen joy and the shame that went with it had me living to be someone who God just hadn’t made me to be.

I felt pressure to do Valentine’s Day like everyone else instead of being secure in who God made me to be, a store bought valentine kinda mom.

Year two I stressed about valentines. I researched Pinterest a month before Valentine’s Day. I selected a homemade craft valentine which included one hot wheel car per classmate. I was even impressing myself with my new found craftiness and I felt the ugliness and pride of a stroked ego when I thought about how other families may be impressed with my accomplishments as well.

There was no joy in making valentines with my kids that year. I trudged through the process. I was stressed and I was irritable over the valentines being perfect. There were even tears and some yelling at the boys because it all had to be just right.

Even when their bags came home and their valentines really had been some of the cutest, I still felt shame. The high I had felt from my impressive valentine was over before it even began. There was no lasting joy or pleasure. I had pressed on towards the goal of bringing praise to myself instead of bringing glory to a great God.

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I became angry about how I let comparison steal my joy and how the valentines I made with my boys weren’t a reflection of sending out love and kindness to friends at all because our valentines were actually made as a byproduct of a month of stress with the intention to impress a crowd.

I took a step back and in the quietness of my heart I was convicted when I asked myself, “Who were those Valentines for?”

Even after ten years of walking with Christ it seems to me that I still find myself slipping in to old patterns. It is still so easy to find myself standing on the shaky, insecure ground of wanting to impress others and stroking my ugly ego instead of standing firm on the secure foundation of living for the glory of God alone.

I felt sick when I realized what I had done in year two.

Year three I found myself back in the seasonal section at Target with my kindergartener and my two preschoolers. I thought I had learned my lesson but just recently I found myself, here in year four, perusing Pinterest. I am thankful for my failure in year two because I now know for the love of bringing glory to God I have to ask, “Who are you doing this for?”

For the love of your reputation as a mom? Or for the love of doing something uniquely you and spreading love and kindness the store bought way with your kids.

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Truth is, I am the kind of mother who buys store bought valentines and sends them to school for my kids to pass out at their class parties. It doesn’t make me worse or better. But it makes me uniquely me. And being uniquely me is enough for my kids, they told me they actually prefer buying their valentines from the store.

As I fight the valentine battle this year in my own heart I am hoping to find beauty in being ordinary and remembering that I am enough as a mom with my store bought cards. God says I am enough just as I am and that is the truth I am clinging to this February season.

I am enough with my store bought cards.

Strides For Shelley

January 1, 2016June 29, 2016Leave a comment

2016 will be a year of running in memory of my mother, Shelley Cronin. In 1998 when I was fourteen years old my mother lost her battle to breast cancer at the age of forty-one.

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Now at the age of thirty-three, married and with four kids of my own I feel like I desperately need to do something in my mother’s memory.

Every day as I parent my three sons and only daughter is another day I feel the emptiness of her not being here. The missing of her seems to get worse the deeper I find myself in the trenches of motherhood.

Not only because I wish she was a phone call away when someone has swallowed toilet water or if I can’t remember how long the cut-out cookies need to bake in the oven but most of all because I feel empty and sad about what she has missed. What my kids have missed. Oh how she would have loved them, gobbled them up, and tickled them in their hoochie-coochies (a weird name she named our most ticklish places… I know.)

For the last three years I have been training for and running half marathons. I have trained for three and crossed the finish line at three. I am not a fast runner, I’m someone you will see trotting alongside the road and wonder if you should scoop me up in your car and drive me back home, cover me in ice packs and tell me to never commit that type of horror again.

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This year, I am running for a cause and because I am not a very good runner it will take me all year long. I am calling the campaign, Strides for Shelley.

My goals are to run two marathon races: The Flying Pig Half Marathon in May (completed) and The Air Force Full Marathon on September 17, 2016.

I have no idea if I can run 26.2 miles in my own strength and effort but I know with your support, your prayers and the great motivation of Strides for Shelley, anything is possible.

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After the Air Force Full Marathon on September 17,2016 I will be culminating this journey at the Cincinnati Race For The Cure on September 24, 2016, an emotional race for sure. I have set up my fundraising page through Susan G. Komens’ Race for the Cure site so all donations will now go directly to my local Susan G. Komen Chapter.

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If you’d like to join me, train with me, or start your own team please contact me. It would be a great honor to see so many others make Strides for Shelley too. You can train alongside me near or far.

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So this is it. A normal mom, wife, woman trying to make a difference and dream big in memory of someone I love and miss dearly in 2016.

Will you help me make Strides for Shelley?

Race For The Cure Donation Page

Unraveled Motherhood

December 16, 2015December 16, 20151 Comment

Hello. I am glad you are here. I’d like to forward this post with the obvious message that I am not at all a baseball player and I know very little about the game. I am simply a fan of baseball but other than that I am very unclear about how this post began to lend itself to baseball analogies. I don’t even think I played t-ball as a child. Maybe it’s living most of my life in the two greatest baseball cities, Cincinnati and St. Louis. Or maybe it’s all these sons I have starting to love the great game.

If you aren’t into baseball analogies I write other things too. Please stop by my about page, check out some of the most shared posts on marriage, parenting or faith and connect with me via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or by entering your email in the box to the right.

I had the best intentions when I started out on this journey called motherhood seven years ago. Really, my intentions for my own personal journey of motherhood were good and perfect from that first moment when I recognized that relentless first trimester fatigue that sent me into a drooling 5:30pm nap was actually a baby and not in fact narcolepsy.

In those early days of hopeful motherhood I was pregnant with a child but also pregnant with expectations. My husband was finishing up seminary and I was a first grade teacher. As parents we would be a teacher and pastor combo with a double dose of extroversion. If I was the order and schedule, he was the life-giving fun and kindness. I believed we had this thing totally in the bag – like motherhood for me was going to be a walk off homer in the bottom of the ninth; an easy swing that may even leave the crowd cheering, impressed and talked about for days on the highlights reel.

I really had the best intentions of knocking this thing called motherhood right out of the park. But on the journey of motherhood I have learned that my eyes for the fence and my longing to impress the crowd with the appearance of good intentions really were keeping me from what I had coming right down the middle and in front of my eyes.

My swings became misses and not anything to talk about the next day or even something that was tweet worthy. I had eyes for that walk-off-homer when I should have just been focusing on making positive contact with the ball I had right in front of me; focusing on making a small advance in the right direction to first base. I had big expectations clouding the clarity of the simplicity of one day at a time.

My big rookie dreams of swinging for the fence were well intended but I had forgotten about the simple basics of the game.

Motherhood is HARD. <In all caps> H-A-R-D.

No matter who I thought I was, what kind of swing I thought I had, or even if I happened to have had good coaches and models; motherhood has brought more curveballs and wild pitches than I ever could have dreamed of. And with eyes for the fence and a heart to please the crowd I have found myself constantly striking out.

I’ve had to unravel my expectations for what kind of mother I had built myself up to be in my head and focus on the mother I really am and the children I actually have in my lap.

I’ve had to say to myself, “Rach, you may not knock it out of the park today but you can breathe, make contact and take today as it comes. Watch for the curve and adjust your swing.”

I’ve had to remind myself that being ready for the curveballs and wild pitches has little to do with your aptitude, post-grad degrees or upbringing and actually has more to do with how well you can deal with what is coming at you under pressure, how well you can focus on what is being thrown at you and how much better you can forget what you thought you were suppose to do, change your stance and hit the pitch you have been thrown the best you can.

To stop aiming for the fences and take this thing one base at a time. Sure it is exciting to see a walk off homer every once in a while but the game is really advanced one base at a time.

I am educated, my husband is educated, we love our kids with a crazy email writing to the teachers level of love.

But when I (I really don’t want to speak for the hubs) rely on my know-how, the how-to books and the expectations I have for our four children the curveballs frustrate me.

When I have eyes for the fence in motherhood I notice I am more irritable, more frustrated and less satisfied in the things God has placed in my lap and declared so beautiful and so wonderfully made.

So I fight to forget about that fence.

To forget about who I think I am trying to please.

I remember I am a rookie.

I remember I have an amazing team on the field with me. My husband, some bloodline family, some “adopted” family from my community in my church and a God who promises to be at work in me, who pursues me when I wander back to my lofty expectations and who has been faithful to remind me when I focus on what is right in front of me, that is enough.

I remember to give myself grace and I watch for the curve.

I remember making contact is enough.

It’s really the focus and consistency no matter what is coming at them that make a true player great.

I am learning, seven and a half years after feeling that relentless 5:30pm fatigue that motherhood is not at all about what kind of mother I thought I’d be.

I have had to unravel those aiming for the fence expectations I had for myself and rest in simply making one step at a time contact.

I am just like everyone else. Watching for the curveballs and hoping to get on first on a good day.

Unraveled motherhood for me is letting those big expectation threads I had for myself fall away and realize who God made me to be and is making me to be is enough for the journey.

And, thank you for making it to the end of this post. We have been crazy here in this house living life with four kids under six. My goal is to be a blogger in process and not leave things all pretty and finished and solved.

If you liked this at all it would be a great encouragement to me if you’d positively feedback by way of sharing on Facebook, Twitter or commenting below. Cheers and Thanks.

What God Gives

October 22, 2015October 23, 20152 Comments

Some may say, God gives you only what you can handle. But in my personal experience I have lived the exact opposite of the well known phrase.

What God gives has always been so much more than I can handle.

There was a time when I believed the old saying and in my times of heartache I pulled up my bootstraps, mustered up my strength and marched on like it was something I could handle.

But over time I have realized in all my handling and mustering God was not giving me what I could handle at all. Instead, God was bringing me to a place where I could find the end of myself. Where my strength, faith and hoped ended is where I found my need for others to come alongside me and hold me up when I couldn’t hold myself up any longer even with the sturdiest of bootstraps.

I found my need for something bigger than myself.

In pain and loss and suffering, God gives us more than we can handle, the weight is too big for us to bear alone.

But when God give us more, God also gives us Himself. In Him, God supplies more hope and more faith than we could ever muster up in our own strength and through His people God gives us so much more love than we could have ever even imagined for ourselves.

This week our family experienced a traumatic accident. My father-in-law, my husband’s best friend, was struck by a car at seven o’clock Tuesday morning.

What God has given us since that moment has been the end of everything we thought we could do in our own strength.

It is amazing for me to think of all the blessings I have personally experienced this week and I know my husband, my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law can testify to so many more personal blessings as well.

God has given us the timing of this accident to happen when my husband was minutes away from where his father was when normally he would have been two or more hours away.

God has given us friends who are willing drop everything, loan their new car, their time and their energy to spend the night with my four young children so I could drive down and be close to my husband in his heavy moments of grief and uncertainty.

God has given us two people who held the elevator for us the same night as the accident as we were running to catch it. They asked us who we were visiting and as we shared our story they shared that their son was in the trauma ICU too from an accident which had occurred the day before.

God gave us them, complete strangers, to whisper the words, we will pray for Mack. We learned their son’s name was Tommy and we whispered we would pray for Tommy too.

I asked as the elevator was closing, because we had gotten off, where they were from and they said St. Louis, a beloved place to my husband and I as we spent our first three years of marriage there while he was in seminary. The couple held the door open to tell us they were saved by a Covenant Seminary student twenty years ago.

As we left them they told us their son was going to be okay, as was the other student from Asbury in the car who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. In that moment God gave both my husband and I hope.

God gave us that moment. He was the weaver of two completely different stories crossing paths at the same time to give the gift of hope for another day.

God has given me people to pick up tortillas for taco night, friends to sit with my kids while I gave my older child the regularity of volunteering in his classroom and friends to send pizza over because all I can do right now is throw pizza on a paper towel.

God has given us people who will pick up new guitar strings so my husband can play music for his father while he is laying in a hospital bed.

God has given so many visitors at the hospital. So many more than my husband can even count.

God has given us hundreds of people praying across the country for my father-in-law. So many texts, emails, phone calls and messages. More than any of us could keep up with even on our best days.

In these hard moments and in uncertainty, God has given us so much more than we can handle. The burdens and heartache have been too big to bear alone.

But God has also given us more prayer and more love than we can handle.

God has given us more love.

God has given Mack more love. And I believe it is the more love that keeps us going. More love than we can handle. Because love is bigger than burdens and hard places.

If you have prayed for Mack’s recovery, reached out, visited, brought groceries or have been a friend, I personally thank you for showing me how God can give me more burdens than I can bear alone but also more love than I could have ever imagined for myself.

If you are praying for Mack please also pray for Tommy and all the others in the Trauma ICU.

Thank you for praying and for giving more love than we can handle.

Unraveled Church

October 12, 2015October 13, 2015Leave a comment

It feels strange to learn how to “do” church while your husband is in full time ministry. For some people it feels strange to “do” church at all and to others “doing church” feels like an old perfectly broken in baseball mitt.

For me it feels like I have the old cozy baseball mitt but my hand just hasn’t settled into those comfortable places yet.

“Doing” church is something I am still learning to do. And this is where God has me.

There was a time when I would try to settle into those comfy spots like a stepsister forcing her way into a glass slipper. Forcing my hand to make it touch every contour, nook, cranny and seam. I believed if I could just do it better or try to make it fit harder maybe then the doing of church would feel more comfortable.

And then there are times when I haven’t even felt like wearing the glove at all. I saw the glove and I knew my hand didn’t quite wear it well so I hid behind pride, behind shame and even behind the pointing the finger of blame.

The root of pride that I was just too different.

The trunk of shame from who I have been and what others have said about who I am.

And a branch of a pointing finger which bore the fruit of blaming others for a perfect glove which wasn’t quite snug enough.

And now I realize, ten years into being one with someone who is called to lead God’s people in God’s church, that doing church or learning to do church is simply a process. It is a constant unraveling of what you thought you knew from who God is calling you to be. Whether you have a brand new glove or your glove is cozy and your hand feels like it fits every cranny.

Everyone is in the process of learning how to love Jesus more and love their self less.

And God has me in the process of learning how to do church. A place where I know my hand isn’t quite settled into every cozy place and I am okay with that.

I don’t feel cozy in my glove when I sit in the front row on Easter Sunday and one of my handsomely dressed children is eating their boogers. My pride still has me finding my worth in how we look sitting there in the front row.

I don’t feel cozy in my glove when my husband doesn’t share a story just right from the pulpit and the expression on my face shows it. My perfectionist self reveals it’s rolling eyes and my wanting to control rears it’s ugly side.

I don’t feel cozy in my glove when we are adjusting to a service which is thirty minutes earlier and with four kids we seem to be walking into worship late and with wrinkly slacks almost every Sunday. The soil of acceptance and my need for others to see me as “shiny and freshly pressed” seeps into my pridefully drenched roots. Sometimes my heart finds it’s worth in freshly pressed pants.

It is only when I can undo what I have already wound up tightly, unravel what I thought I knew from what is true and start with feeding the roots of myself with faith and belief… this is where I can find freedom.

Dependent roots grounded in the gospel of truth which remind me that yes, I am different, but I am also uniquely knit together and wonderfully made, called specifically to be in the front row with booger eating children for a purpose I don’t quite know the meaning of yet.

A trunk of fresh bark, firm and strong by the Word and His power which reminds me that in Christ, I am a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come and I am more accepted and loved in Christ than I could have ever dared to dream of.

And branches that don’t bear fruit of blame and pointing fingers at others when I don’t feel like I fit in but instead bear fruit of love and service because I realize unraveling this idea of doing church is not at all about me, or anyone else around me. When I pull back the threads of pride I can see clearly that church is about God and calling people from all different backgrounds to love and serve Him, no matter how well the glove fits, in the name of Jesus.

When I recognize that my biggest discomfort about fitting in and “doing” church well actually has mostly to do with my pride (myself) when I point that branch back at me, it is there when I can wear my glove more comfortably.

Even though I haven’t quite completely grow into it yet.

It is there, when I unravel what I thought I knew about doing church from my pride and unbelief that I can be comfortable with just being in process.

It’s not about shoving like a stepsister. We all desperately want the glove to just fit better but instead we should be learning to be more comfortable in the places that don’t quite yet fit. This is where we find faith and belief. This is where we trust that God will grow us in the ways he needs us to grow, in His timing.

We are loved when our gloves don’t seem to fit, our kids eat boogers and we are running late with wrinkly pants.

I will grow into the coziness of the glove in God’s good and perfect timing. Being in process of doing anything is a good thing. God is good and He is at work, we need not shove. He is able to grow us into our gloves even without our shoving.

I am a pastor’s wife, learning to “do” church. I am in process and I am okay with that.