Tag: motherhood

A Mother Who Dwells

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The bare soles of my feet are on the hardwood floors in the dining room, my hands are busy folding the third and fourth loads of laundry for the day, my son playing in the family room and my daughter with three rows of dining room chairs lined up in the office. She is driving a minivan full of Disney Princesses to Target in her imagination. I can see her from the dining room as she buckles each one of them into their seats with fingertips still orange from the cheetos she had with her lunch, she tells each doll “I love you so much” and places a bag of extra clothes and pretend kitchen food in the floor of the minivan for the journey.

Easily I see myself playing there in that office. I remember a walk in closet in my parent’s master bedroom from childhood. I would take my dolls into that space and line them up, drive them somewhere with my pretend husband, Davy Jones or Joey McIntyre in the front seat. Easily I am taken back that place and I can see my mom, too. She is full of life and she is fully present. I think of her and I think of how she always showed up. She entered into our games and our lives.

For a moment my grief returns when I think of her, only grief now doesn’t have the sharp painful edges it once had before. The sharp edges of grief have now become smooth with time and heart work. My grief has been loosened from anger and now the weight of the sadness feels smoothed out and clean like a freshly laundered bed sheet on a warm summer day. The sadness brings comfort and wholeness, it is now crisp and clean.

My son comes to me as I fold, he begins to pester around me like a gnat in the summertime. As I fold the tiny shorts and match the socks I am stirred to thinking of the kind of mother I want to be. I am stirred to thinking about what my mother would do in this moment if she had just one more day with us and I thought about what I would want to do if this was my last day here too. I know for me I would not want to be buried in a task list of making the house look just so- I am pretty sure that is not how my mother would want to spend her time either if she was given just one more day to soak up childhood imagination and cheeto-fingered hugs. I believe she would want to dwell in the moments with us, lingering there for as long as she was able.

My thoughts switch from past to present and I think about the ministry I have to these children in my home, the privilege of being the one to fill their buckets and care for their hearts. In the present I am stirred to think about how Jesus was with those He came to minister to, how He dwelt among them, how He reclined at the table, how He was right there, Jesus loved by being fully present and showing up.

I think about how a lifetime from now I want my kids to remember me as a mother who was with them, a mother who was fully present, a mother that showed up physically, emotionally. Not as a mother who always had empty laundry bins or all the toys picked up off the floor. I fight to lay the ideal of perfectionism down, the old must unravel away before I can embrace that an unfolded pile of laundered clothes is evidence of a life lived alongside my kids. I must be renewed in the spirit of my mind to see the undone housework as the healthy fruit of a life lived showing up and dwelling among the ones God has given to me to care for during these fleeting days of motherhood.

Reminded of what my mother would do if she had just one more day, I walk the half-folded laundry upstairs and I sit with my the son who was pestering around me. I place him in my lap. He has grown so much it is difficult for me to gather him up, but for a time he lets me hold him. I listen to him, we laugh. I then go to my daughter and she lets me hold her too. I hold onto her, I rock her. She melts into me for minutes. I think about my mom and I believe this is what she would do if she had one more day. I think about how Jesus knew the number of His days and how He spent them dwelling among people, the people who He loved so much and would love enough to give His life for.

Oh how connection is so needed. Connection is so much more intergral to the whole-children I want to raise up in the Lord. More important than children who remember how clean the house was or my fussing over neat piles of clean laundry.  We are all thirsting for just a few moments to dwell among those we love and melt into them. How we all just want someone to sit with us and hold us.

I want to walk in a life that produces the fruit of remembering what my mother would tell me to do if she just had one more day. Be fully present and full of life. I want to show up and dwell among the ministry of motherhood I have sitting right in my lap. And one day, I hope to be recovered from perfectionism. I hope my children remember piles of half-folded laundry and a mother who dwelt among the childhood imaginations and cheeto-fingered hugs. I want to be a mother who dwells.

When The Plants Are Thirsty

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It’s Sunday afternoon in my nook of the world and my husband is home from his work as lead pastor at the church just around the block from our home. He comes in and I see him, stretched and exhausted. He does all things well but at times reminds me of Bert from Mary Poppins carrying around way too many instruments, hands in so many trades.

We have been in the same space with him, at church, but the kids and I know our time to drink him up is once we are at home. So we all wait for our turn and as soon as he comes through the laundry room door my four kids climb all over him like ants on that sticky apple juice spot on the hardwood floor.

I can see he is worn but I simply say, “Your plants are thirsty, let them drink.”

For eight years I’ve watched this happen, Sunday after Sunday. My husband comes through the door and in the same way a thirsty plant’s roots grow towards a life-giving water source my children gravitate automatically towards my husband. Their little roots move towards him because he is the nourishment their hearts need.

Like thirsty plants, I tell him. They need to drink you in. 

I know it feels like ants marching on his back when he is oh so tired, but when the plants are thirsty they won’t leave the source of what they need the most. You can send them away but they will boomerang back for a drink to quench their thirst.

He sees their thirst so he goes and throws ball in the yard, jumps on the trampoline, reads a Leaning Tower of Pisa like stack of books, beats Bowser and finds the last hidden star in Mario Brothers 3D World. He sees their thirsty roots and he lets them drink up his time.  By Sunday evening all my children feel watered well. Replenished, loved, connected and with full hearts. Ready to walk with well watered roots that will bring them into classrooms, baseball practices and conversations with friends on the bus.

When children are circling you, poking you, piling up in your lap. That’s when they need to drink you up. When the plants are thirsty, don’t make them wait, let them drink. Put down the phone, that email, put off the things that can wait until the morning and see the little plants moving their roots near to you. They need you then. Let them drink so they can walk into their worlds with well watered roots.

Listening is Loving

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Yesterday I was putting mountains of clothes away upstairs as I watched my three boys in the backyard below me digging in a large hole of mud.

I had a report to give in about an hour and the babysitter arriving in forty-five minutes. I was already whirling around my home. I had no extra in-case-of-mud-buffer built in to my schedule.

I let the boys dig and kept putting away clothes until the pile has come to it’s end. Then I walked downstairs trying to breathe deeply to prepare myself for three mud covered children and also a quick prayer to Jesus that I would exude the fruits of the spirit instead of spewing the impatience of my tired flesh.

To my great surprise I found muddy clothes and boots in the laundry room and my boys washing the mud off their ankles and hands in the kitchen sink, the exact same process of demudding I have walked them through time after time over the last eight years. Without me saying a word, they just did what they were supposed to do.

And when I praised them my five year old simply replied, “Mom, we were just listening and listening is loving.”

Cue a:

Wait, are these MY children?

moment.

My children and I have not gotten to this place of automatic obedience overnight and pretty much, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year, sixty-five times a day it feels as if my children are not listening to my voice at all.

But this moment was my diamond in the rough. The one moment I can cling to in three hundred and sixty-five days and see just for one moment my words, my constant words on repeat all day every day are not falling on deaf ears. That slowly, ever so slowly my words are settling into the nooks and crannies of the hearts of my children.

Listening is loving was very much our summer love language last summer.

I developed this love language of listening is loving between my kids and I for the following reasons:

  1. Listening is life-giving to mommy.
  2. Listening is not just hearing but hearing followed by action.
  3. The action of listening must occur all the way, right away and with a happy heart.
  4. Listening is an important skill for all of life.

I have said listening is loving, I have chanted listening is loving, I have yelled listening is loving, I have whispered listening is loving in the ears of my four children as they sleep soundly at night.

Like a broken record for almost an entire year. Listening is loving have been the words I have both yelled and cried to my children.

As I saw my children doing what they were supposed to do I couldn’t help but remember the words a friend of mine said to me almost five years ago. Rachel, you sow. And you sow. And you sow. Then much later you will reap. 

You sow. And you sow. And you sow. Then much later you reap. Much later.

Yesterday’s scene of muddy clothes automatically in the laundry room and children automatically demudding at the sink came after an entire year of constantly repeating listening is loving to the ears and to the hearts of my children.

There are so many moments when I am so tired of sowing. My heart screams phrases similar to: Mommy does not want to sound like a broken record.

Planting wisdom and words in to the hearts of my children is very similar to the dirty, back breaking work of planting seeds outside in the fields.

I’m scattering these words like seeds into the soil of their hearts so that with hope and prayer and divine intervention one day these seeds will grow and produce fruit. Produce evidence that my words have taken root. Produce automatic obedience all the way, right away and with a happy heart.

We have so much further to go with listening is loving.

I will probably say listening is loving a million times more, have three-thousand more bad days with a few diamonds scattered here and there.

But to reap a harvest of children who know that listening is loving to others with hope that they will connect this truth of listening is loving to listening to God and believing His truth…. that is the kind of harvest I am sowing for.

That kind of harvest is what makes the broken record of saying listening is loving a million times more worthy of the dirty, back breaking work of sowing.

Listening is loving.

You sow. And you sow. And you sow. Much later you will reap.

When X Marks the Spot

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I have a child who enjoys drawing check marks on all of his drawings. To him, a check mark is his mark of approval on his drawing. If he feels good about a drawing, it gets a check mark at the top right next to his five letter name written in chunky crayola marker and all caps.

You can imagine my hurting heart when I walked down our staircase one afternoon to notice a brown X on my kneecap in our 16 X 20 family canvas that hangs on the wall right in our entry way at the end of our staircase. Like Tonya Harding had been there, planning her next hit.

I had recently corrected my child for drawing on the walls in my house and sent him to the bottom step of that staircase, where all four of my children have to sit and wait for me to come and sit with them, discipline them, hold them, talk to them about their hearts, pray with them and reconcile with them. A place that is worn from the never-ending merry go round of training up kids.

My child literally X-out his mother in our family picture. The very opposite of the marks I see him draw on his favorite drawings. He clearly was marking his disapproval of me. In permanent marker. The ultimate and forever mark of disapproval.

The child who in this picture I am holding close to my very own heart. The child who smooches with me with pursed out lips. The child who states I am the one he loves the most in the whole world. He put an X on me in our family photo that hangs in our entryway.

My initial reaction was fury. This is my baby. I carried him in my body, nursed him, held him and I make sure his animal blanket is smoothed down perfectly every night at his request.

I was both angry and heartbroken.

I’m not the kind of mother one would X-out. I sing the songs, make the freezer meals, play the games, read the books, volunteer in the classrooms. I should have a thousand green check marks of approval for heaven sakes.

As I continued in fury, and woe as mes, I had to think. Was this X marking the spot of something deeper? Was I hurt because I want to be liked by my kids? Am I the kind of parent who desires to be liked more than I care about the trenches and the hard, ugly places of correcting my children when they are wrong on that step? Am I willing to be ready for the long road of all the X-marks-the-spot moments of the future?

Where do I look to find my green check marks? What is my identity really rooted in? How much my kids approve of me? Or that Christ approves of me not because of my X to check mark ratio but because of what He has done?

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

This one X on our family picture in permanent ink, marking the spot of my own pride. Revealing the deep desire I have within to be a perfect mother, a well-liked mother, a green check-marked ten-times over mother.

I know some of you out there are with me too on the step. With your babes upset with you over correction and discipline.

I just think motherhood there are no guarantees of a long scroll of green check marks. Maybe in forty years, but in the trenches, there will be Xs. But in Christ we get it all. We get his robe of righteousness, we get all His green check marks.

If we are faithful mothers who sit on the steps of life with our kids the Xs will come. There will be times when our correction will stir up the desire in their childish hearts to mark us in Xs either in their minds or right on the family picture in the entryway. We can only be faithful to teach our children about their hearts (and vandalism). We have to faithfully walked with our kids whether in the moment the approve or disapprove of our correction.

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11)

The family picture in the entryway was marked with an X one year ago and it still sits there at the bottom of our entryway. As a reminder for me. That if I am a faithful mother, committed to raising up kids I will keep on sitting on that step even when the Xs come. Because my identity in in something greater than what kind of mother I am. I belong to Jesus. And that sisters, is more than enough.

Am I Focused on the Smudges or the Sunshine?

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Last week tucked in between rain and unseasonably cold temperatures we had two very pleasant days of warmth and sunshine in my little nook of the world.

So often on these warm sunny days, I find myself watching my four children playing in the yard from the bay window in our kitchen. As I watch my children playing outside, sun streaking through the windows, feeling it’s warmth and enjoying the extra brightness that sunshine brings inside our home, I feel shalom for a moment. Wholeness, peace and beauty.

On this particular day, I found myself feeling shalom and enjoying beauty one minute and finding faults the next. I took my eyes off the beauty of that sunshine streaming though the bay windows in my kitchen for a moment and I began to see first handprints all over everything; windows, television, fireplace, then computer screen. And next the tiny specks of dust resting on the surfaces of my cherry furniture. My gaze turned from beauty and instantly I saw imperfections and smudges all over the place. Sunshine has quite a way or exposing beauty and smudges.

It is a tough battle for me not to grab my version of a glock 19, the windex bottle, and distract myself from that moment of rest, shalom and beauty by getting caught up in the busyness of shooting down smudges. Doing is the nature of my flesh. Rest has always been counter to who I am. It is the work of the Spirit maturing inside of me to hold still and fight to take my gaze back to the beauty and shalom of that sunshine.

I cannot see beauty when I am bustling about focused on destroying dust and shooting down smudges.

I can only see beauty when I still myself. (Psalm 46:10)

When I lay my arms (that trusty bottle of windex) down and see shalom despite the smudges.

And as I have thought about his moment over the past week I have been convicted that my entire life is lived this way. I am so quick to take my eyes off of bright, warm, all encompassing beauty and focus and fret over tiny imperfections. Once I find one tiny imperfection, I tend to see them all.

I live this way with my kids. My children could have one hundred good days at school and a handful of bad, but that handful of bad tills up every single imperfection I see in them in my heart. When I take my eye off of beauty with my kids, I easily forget whose they are. I see them for how they live, what they do right and where they fall short instead of seeing them as covenant children of the Risen King.

I live this way with my husband. I could come home from being away at a women’s retreat or spending the day subbing at school. Every time I am away he has folded the laundry, taken all four kids swimming or to the amusement park or something else extraordinary, but I find myself taking my gaze off that beauty and finding faults in tiny details of crumbs on the counters and toys strewn across the floor. I fail to see all of the beautiful ways he loved our children while I was away when I focus on the condition of my home.

I live this way with myself. When I turn my gaze from beauty, when I forget to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of my faith (Hebrews 12:2). It is so easy for me to see my imperfections and let those imperfections take hold of my gaze. I so easily focus on the smudges in my own life and fail to see the sunshine. I fail when I focus on seeking the approval of others, what I did right or what I did wrong, drinking from the unsatisfying cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13) of performing the role of parenting well or my reputation in the community and the church.

And as I reflect on standing there in front of that bay window in my kitchen I believe I am feeling God’s nudge to fight to focus on the sunshine.  To lay down my arms of wanting to constantly work on buffing away smudges instead of basking in the beauty of my Savior. When I keep my gaze on Him, the smudges are still there but pale in comparison His beauty.

In my nook of the world I want to automatically focus on the sunshine and forget the smudges. When I start to feel my fretting heart beating a little bit more quickly when it comes to housework, parenting, marriage, ministry, I want to be quick to ask myself: Am I focusing on the smudges or the sunshine?

In my nook of the world I am fighting to remind myself to keep my gaze on Jesus. To focus on sunshine and feel shalom, wholeness, beauty and peace. To dwell in the shelter of the Most High God, feel His all encompassing beauty and rest in His presence. (Psalm 91). To be still, lay down the doing parts of my nature and walk in the path God has called me to. A path of freedom and rest. A path with eyes fixed on Him.