The Not-So-Runner-Girl

April 27, 2016April 27, 2016Leave a comment

Once upon a time I would watch runners from my car and despise them. I know pastor’s wives aren’t supposed to despise others but I’m working on this. I promise. Little by little. I am human and God is working on me. This feeling of yuckiness when I sighted a runner on the road was unsettling and only began to happen as I approached my thirties, before then I don’t think I ever noticed runners on the road at all. But back when I was approaching dirty thirty with three baby boys strapped into their carseats in the back of my minivan, I started to see runners everywhere and I did in fact, despise them.

I knew many people training for half marathons, running 5Ks and jogging just for fun.

I heard their stories and felt something deep down inside of me, which I believed was disgust too but now I recognize was envy. What I was feeling was discontentment in myself and envy. I was envious of what the runners I knew and the runners I saw were able to accomplish, listening intently to their training plans and then in awe of how one could run for two hours straight.

envy: a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck.

I then recognized the intense feelings I had about the runners along the road wasn’t actually disgust either. Overtime, I recognized the yucky feeling for what it really was: resentment, discontentment and envy. These feelings weren’t about those runners at all. The feelings were about me and something stirring in my heart. And overtime, as I saw the runners all over the streets in my town, as I thought about them and as I laid awake at night in my bed, contemplating my own training plans, I found calling. I found longing. I envied the road runners too and I wanted to be like them.

Running was all around me and I was longing to give it a try. I could have continued to sit in my car and watch runners with my calling and longing, crippling me deep down inside or I could do something about that feeling of envy and join them on the road.

That once upon a time was three and a half years ago. Five pairs of running shoes, almost three half-marathons (I am five days away from God-willing, crossing the finish line of my third 13.1) and one pair of knee high compression socks later.

This is a short story about how I found myself on the trail. Not in a Cheryl Strayed kind of way, maybe a distant cousin of a Cheryl Strayed kind of way. My trail is an asphalt one, void of hills, packed with people on Saturday mornings, only miles from my car, with spectacular LTE coverage and I have only seen one house cat, a handful of deer and quite a few squirrels. All of whom wanted nothing to do with me, though all of them, when I saw their movement along the landscape to my left or along the river to my right, they all did give me quite a fright. And the closest I can get to Cheryl Strayed’s Monster, is a thin hydration belt which I clip around my waist.

So I am not nearly as hard-core as Cheryl Strayed but I have found, along my trail that I am a whole lot more hard-core than I thought I was in the first place.

My mother called me Flash during my SAY soccer days. This was something cute she had written on the back of my jersey. She used to say my long legs made me fast. All I recall was my long legs making me clumsy, a character trait of mine which I now embrace and love, but by the time I reached the sixth grade, when the girls started trash talking during scrimmages on the field, I ended up crying like a baby and my Flash jersey was retired forever.

In eighth grade I cheated on the mile run around the track behind the middle school. I only ran three laps around the track instead of the full four. Other girls were lapping me and let’s be honest, I was dying. Cheating seemed better than death to me in that moment.

In high school I waited to take PE until my final semester senior year. I didn’t want to humiliate myself by displaying my lack of athleticism in front of my peers so I put PE off until I could humiliate myself in a class where I was the only senior in a sea of freshman. That semester I let much younger kids whoop me in badminton and crab soccer, which may have been worse on the old ego than actually taking gym with my own peer group.

To receive an A in PE and graduate with the GPA I wanted, I needed to run that mile in eight minutes and thirty seconds or less. At the time I was a seventeen-year-old, pack-a-day smoker. Cheating again crossed my mind on the day of the assesment but Mr. Kalugyer had eyes on me and was counting every lap, cheering me on. I almost hurled and passed out but I squeaked over the finish line that day at eight minutes and twenty something seconds. Most of the freshman probably lapped me that day but I can’t remember because I was literally sick when I finished that run.

Ugh. Now I run three times a week, I haven’t smoked in over eleven years and I would kill to run a mile in eight minutes and twenty something seconds. Curse you metabolism.

Exactly one year and one month after my third son was born, I suffered a miscarriage for the second time and in the wake of that grief is where I turned my envy and longing into action and decided to join those runners on the road.

I had all of my three boys within three years of one another via cesareans and I had gestational diabetes with all of them. I shudder to think about what my BMI was back then but I started the slow journey of finding myself on the trail overweight, barely able to run a mile without stopping and with a background of smoking in my younger years with the cherry on top of cheating on the mile run in middle school.

But I started to run. And I knew I wasn’t very good so I called myself, The Not So Runner Girl.

In January of 2013 I began to train for my first half marathon. Some suggested I should start with a 5K but as someone who cooks thirty plus dinners at a time to hoard in her freezer, the whole idea of easing in and starting small just doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve kind of become a go big or go home kind of lady.

I made it to six very slow run/walk miles that training season. Those six miles took me ninety minutes. Math people have already calculated that I was a FIFTEEN MINUTE mile in 2013. That sounds horrid to me now and I applaud the old not-so-runner-girl in me because it takes so much tenacity to trudge through a painful fifteen minute mile six times over. And I know some of you out there do this and I applaud you and encourage you to keep going.

When nausea began to accompany those long runs during training season I discovered I was pregnant, which was not apart of my plan but with my miscarriage history, I hung up my running shoes that year and never made it to my desired race, The Flying Pig Half Marathon. With a heavy heart I grieved the loss of that race. I am pretty sure it poured that race day. I am actually certain it poured because I stayed home nauseous with our three boys and my husband ran the race instead, without any training at all. True story. Like salt in the wound.

I ran a few times during my fourth pregnancy once I made it though my first trimester. I was certain I was carrying another boy but that summer I learned I was pregnant with my first daughter. I also passed my first glucose tolerance test that fall. The nurse told me she couldn’t be certain but she thought I passed because of all the running I had been doing which for the first time made me feel like what I was doing for my body actually mattered.

When my daughter was four months old I began to train, again, for my first race. I would nurse my daughter in the mornings and head over to the park to meet my church’s women’s running group on Saturdays. I started at two miles and for the next almost six months I faithfully went through the Couch to Half Marathon Training Program. Nursing my infant all the way through it. I knew nothing about running and at times, I felt clueless. Cheryl Strayed talks about these moments on the trail, the times when she felt like a big fat idiot.

That 2014 training season I was running two miles somewhere in between a twelve minute and thirteen minute mile pace. For a month I worked on building up to three miles to run my first 5K and I was dead set on crossing the finish line in under thirty-six minutes. And I did it. I finished that first race in 35:18 at a pace of 11:24. And five months postpartum after my fourth cesarean, this felt like an enormous accomplishment.

I then trained for six weeks with a personal trainer, now friend, and she taught me about eating well, showed me how to properly squat and wrote down a bunch of exercises I could do from the comfort of my own home. I told her I wanted to break through the eleven minute pace that plagued me all summer and at the end of our training I had done it.

I crossed the finish line of The Queen Bee Half Marathon in the fall of 2014. I had been injured almost right up to the race with terrible tendonitis in my ankle. I could barely walk when I saw my dear sorority sister two weeks before the race and she asked me, as close dear friends do, how I thought I could run thirteen miles when I could barely walk around Target. It truly was miraculous but my pain went away before the race and I even ran tape free. My finish time was 2:18:44. The first half of the race I ran at a 9:59 pace and the second half was a tad slower… see below. But my overall pace for that race was 10:36. Not to shabby for a not-so-runner girl.

I fractured my metatarsal during the eighth or ninth mile of my first half marathon in true not-so-runner-girl fashion. I remember the very specific pain, but I had already been powering through what seemed to me to be much greater pain when I was running with tendonitis during the weeks leading up to the race, I thought running with pain was just part of it. I had no clue my foot was fractured until the bruise appeared two days later and I had trouble stepping on the lid release for my trash can with out feeling that pinpointing specific pain in my mid foot.

I was in a boot for six weeks but putting that thirteen point one sticker on my minivan was so worth it and my three boys thought I looked like Darth Vader in my boot so it was clearly a win for everyone.

It was hard for me to come back after that. I ran a few times that winter but it was polar vortex cold and The Flying Pig Half in May was just not more precious to me than windburned cheeks or a frost bitten nose so I set my heart on training again that summer for The Queen Bee Half Repeat.

I was stupid that summer. But not big fat idiot stupid. I was on the verge of feeling like a running diva. I had too much confidence and I was stupid. I didn’t follow a training plan and my go big or go home mentality teetered near insanity. I only ran distance runs that year. Once a week and accompanied by some spinning and body pump in the fall. My shin splints were relentless and when someone from our church saw me trotting around town on my ten mile run he said it took everything inside of him not to scoop me up into his car and drive me home. I recall him using the words, it was painful to watch you.

I also got bronchitis the week before the race and the strong antibiotics my doctor put me on left me hurling over the toilet. I was a hot mess. Everything inside of me wanted to give up on that thirteen point one. But I had paid ninety dollars to do it so I dragged myself out of bed that morning and headed down to the race. I was even late. I didn’t even make it to my pacing group when they started the race, I barely made it to the walkers.

I heaved myself over the finish line at 2:39:30. A 12:11 pace, my slowest race pace ever, shin splints screaming. I told myself after that race, that I would never, ever, ever run a half marathon again and decided if I came in a Not-So-Runner-Girl, I was retiring a Not-So-Runner-Girl as well.

But then just two months later, I felt that longing again. The same longing I had felt before I started the journey. The longing to be on the road, putting one foot in front of the other. And not just a longing to run a half marathon but a longing to run a full twenty-six-point-two mile full marathon, a real deal race. Sometimes I wish my longings would pack up and leave me. Legitimate craziness lives in me. But this year, I have my heart set on running twenty-six-point-two and I think I have it in me to really do it.

And I’m only half way there. In five days I will run The Flying Pig Half Marathon for the first time. The race that started it all three years ago. And then I will go on from there to train, God-willing, for the United States Air Force Full Marathon in Dayton in mid-September.

My last four months of training have been a hot mess, just the same as the training seasons which have come before them. I was in a boot with a stress fracture for most February and some of March (only about five people knew about this) and then bronchitis struck me again, which is how I discovered I now have something called, running induced asthma. In addition to now toting an inhaler around with me when I exercise, my doctor suggested changing my diet, nothing cold to eat or drink and no dairy. For the first time in my life I have a fridge full of almond milk, I didn’t even know almonds could be milked but I purchased a three pack at Costco, so indeed, I guess they can be.

But with all the hot messes I’ve encountered leading up to this race, I somehow feel stronger. Now a little bit closer to my mid-thirties I know I am stronger than I was three years ago and I’m certainly stronger than I was in my twenties. My twenty-year-old self would have quit in the face of adversity and I haven’t. I haven’t quit.

Now, I even long to be out on the trail on Saturdays. I will trade my second cup of coffee with almond milk for it. To feel the morning sun peeking through the canopy of leaves above me and see it’s beauty as it reflects off of the brooks which trickle beneath me. Waving to other runners and hollering out Good Job, singing Dave Matthews lyrics terribly when I can’t see someone within ear shot, and reflecting on how far my determination and hard work has brought me.

I’m a different woman than the one I was when I started the journey. And all I had to do to was be faithful to put one foot in front of the other. Part of me even feels the Not-So-Runner-Girl chapter coming to a close. Even though I began the journey a Not-So-Runner-Girl, I don’t believe this running story is over for me yet. I really can run now. I know about hydration belts, compression socks, how many GU packets I can fit in the pocket of my hydration belt, how to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth, how to just push for one more mile. I’m not faster but I’m different. With each run and each mile I find myself saying, thank you for the miles, and thank you for showing me I am so much stronger than I believed I was.

I get weepy just thinking about it.

I’ve shut up the voices which sometimes remind me I used to be a girl who cheated on the mile run and I used to neglect my lungs and my health in my so called glory days.

(You know what Bruce, I think I am just entering my glory days. Thirties are the new glory days.)

I have pushed the boundaries of what I thought I could do on that trail every week. I have pushed the boundaries of who I thought I was. Maybe my mom would be calling me Flash if she was still here. I know she’d be cheering me on.

Cheryl Strayed writes about this turning point I am feeling so beautifully at the end of the fourth part of her book, Wild.

“I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn’t crying because I was happy. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I wasn’t crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full. Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and the 9,760 days that had come before them too.

I was entering. I was leaving. California streamed behind me like a long black veil. I didn’t feel like a big fat idiot anymore. And I didn’t feel like a hard-ass Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.”

And as I walk into this third half marathon of mine, I feel healthy, and ready. And I feel tears. It’s so emotional to do something you never thought you could really do. I too am not crying because of happiness or sadness, but I am crying because I feel full. I have really done something, I am truly different. I’m no longer a Not-So-Runner-Girl. I feel her slipping away. I’m leaving her and entering into something else. Walking into this race I feel the exact same way as Cheryl Strayed because of a different journey on a much different trail. Fierce, humble and gathered up inside.

I am thankful for every mile and every single person who has encouraged me along the way.

Unraveling Grief

April 6, 2016April 6, 2016Leave a comment

This very week, nineteen years ago I was riding in the front seat of our silver Town & Country minivan with my father manning the wheel. I stared out the window as we drove down Sycamore Creek Drive, my eyes fixed on the greening grass that streaked alongside the concrete curb.

I was fourteen, six weeks shy of fifteen and my father was about to say something to me in the privacy of that car, a simple sentence which would change me forever. I knew the words were coming. Every adult around me had been locked and loaded with the words for weeks probably bearing the weight of them and waiting for just the right time to delicately let the words leave their lips hoping the words would come out like the gentle drop of a pin instead of like an earth shattering atomic bomb.

I felt the weight of the words before they were even said. I knew they were coming, I was preparing for the earth shattering atomic bomb. As I prepared for the news I rehearsed the best way I knew how. Just like anyone would prepare for an air assault, I toughened up my exterior and pulled up my bootstraps. I was going to face the worst but appear like a strong fortress, absent of emotion, cold, but protected.

As I stared out the window, I heard my father say, “Rach, mom is going to die.”

The words enveloped me. I had prepared for this exact moment and I responded in the best way I knew how. I kept staring out the window and all I could reply was, “I know.” As I stared and attempted to let disengagement consume me I felt warm tears begin to cover my eyes, turning the strong streaking line out my window into a blurry green blob, even mixing up sometimes with the grayness of the curb.

Staring at the green gray blob became too much so I drew my gaze in and I caught my reflection in the window. I saw the tears in my eyes reflected back at me and immediately I remember being overcome with disappointment in myself for not holding it together enough. For not being strong enough. For not preparing well enough emotionally to handle the news. And then the shame flooded in. I knew if I could see my reflection, my father could see it too. I knew he knew I was crying. I didn’t want him to know I was weak nor did I want to appear too emotional.

I felt the responsibly to be strong and brave in the waves of uncertainty and the shattered earth beneath my feet.

So the best I knew how I tried to go back inside my fortress to hide from my pain. I built walls. I hid behind a heavy mask and protected myself with layers of armor.

The armor I hid behind looked different in different seasons. In high school my armor was a tough girl exterior. I don’t think I wore it well but I flirted with rebellion, disengagement, relationships with men, drinking and recreational drugs. Anything I could get my hands on to help me escape my pain, I tried it. But my fixes weren’t fixing. My band-aids weren’t able to hold together the still open wounds underneath the armor and the masks.

I became exhausted from hiding beneath the bad to the bone girl I was trying to be in high school so in college I tried on some new ways to hid my pain from the world. For a season, during my days at Eastern Kentucky University I tried on the armor of busyness. Twenty-two hours a semester, 4.0s, overly-involved, mentor, sorority girl, chair of the committee, changing the world kind of busyness.

I never wanted to be known as the girl with the hard story so I ran from my hard story. Buried it so deep it even became difficult for me to remember my actual mother. I spent so long trying to be strong and burying pain that I lost even the happy pieces of the times I shared with her.

Brene Brown writes in her book, Daring Greatly,

“When we don’t acknowledge how and where we are tender, we’re more at risk of being hurt.”

I had spent so many years hiding from where I was tender that I wasn’t even sure anymore how and where I was tender.

Brown also goes on to write from her own experience,

“Slowly I learned that this shield was too heavy to lug around, and that the only thing it really did was keep me from knowing myself and letting myself be known. The shield required that I stay small and quiet behind it so as not to draw attention to my imperfections and vulnerabilities. It was exhausting.”

From my own experiences in unraveling my grief over the loss of my mother I could not agree more. I spent so many years hiding behind strong personas, I forgot who I really was. I lost myself. And I felt isolated because I never let anyone know the real me. And I didn’t have my mother present to tell me how to snap out of it.

For so many years I hid and then I lost myself. I felt like a balloon, not tethered to anything at all, just floating around.

It has only been in the last five years that I have been able to slowly unravel my misconceptions about my grief. When you are fourteen you think you know everything about the world and about strength but truth is I knew so little about strength, I knew nothing about it at all.

I thought strength and vulnerability were like that greening grass and the hard concrete I saw streaking outside the window on that April morning. Two very different things which before I felt tender I believed would never blur.

But it turns out, today I believe strength and vulnerability are actually a lot like the blurry blob of grass and concrete I saw out my window when I was feeling tender. To see them both blurred together as one thing. That strength requires vulnerability and it takes a whole lot more strength to be vulnerable than it does to pretend that you can just keep marching on and hide beneath armor and masks.

Now I understand that to hide my pain is not strength at all. It is weak, cold and inhuman.

So I have loosened the bootstraps, tried to get rid of my solider boots all together and I am slowly unraveling unhealthy patterns.

I am trying to be more tender. To learn and remember where I am tender.

I am trying to remember my mom. To cry and sometimes shout to myself, “It sucks that my mom is not here.” Sucks is not apart of my regular vocabulary but it seems to fit there for now.

When I let myself remember the emptiness I feel when I think about her it helps me remember that this life is just not the way it is supposed to be and I long for heavenly places where there is no more crying and no more tears.

I try to talk about my mom with my kids because they ask about her.

I try to remember my mom with my brother and sister. Though my vulnerability with them causes tears. I can only share a little and try to remember the blurring vision my tears cause and what I believe that means. Grief is not black and white, or green and gray streaks or little neat steps. I can’t check off the boxes when it comes to my grief.

Grief is jagg-ed and criss cross with both hard edges and smooth shining surfaces. Grief requires a constant unraveling of our hearts.

I try to sit and wait with a hurting heart. I wait because if I try to bandage it on my own, I will never truly heal. I sit and wait on a Good God who sees me while I wait and promises He will bind up the wounds, I only need to wait and be still. (Psalm 147:3)

In the jagg-ed and criss-cross places of grief, I have unraveled enough to know now that it’s okay to lean into uncertainty and earth shattering grounds, to be tender and broken, exposed and known because I don’t have to appear strong at all. That I can delight in the broken and tender places. It is there where I find God glorified. It is there where I see him holding all the threads of myself together. Taking away threads of misconception and binding me up with His promises to me and His truth.

And I’m not all the way redeemed in my grief. I still have so much more unraveling to do. I may have only begun to chip away at the surface. But I have so much more hope. I know there is a real and good God at work in my heart because I never could have been called out from behind the armor on my own. Little by little God is working on me. Making me more aware of where I am tender and helping me see that to grieve is to simply be human.

Am I Doing Enough?

February 29, 2016February 29, 2016Leave a comment

I know you know the days. The rising, eyes barely open at the first murmur of a child and one tiptoe in front of the other with them down the stairs as not to wake the others. You crack open your Bible over their morning show and digest a few verses before someone else needs you.

You simply pray, “Lord, help me be enough today.” Because those six words are all the time you have to pray.

Then it’s breakfast, teeth brushing, packing lunches and socks and shoes. Kisses and waves for your big kids and then off to cleaning up breakfast.

You almost make it up the stairs to brush your own teeth and comb your own hair before someone else is needing you again. So you rush through your routine to read a book to the one needing you. Then it’s onto blocks, more books and the more fastening up of costumes.

I know you know the days when the clock moves faster than the needs and you feel like you can’t. So you one foot in front of the other are onto making the lunches, sweeping the crumbs off the floors and wiping the jelly off the tables.

And you breathe. You pray again, “Lord, thank you for these moments.” Because again, six word prayers are just about all you’ve got.

You fold and you vacuum, you do what work you have set before you for the afternoon while littles are sleeping and those minutes seem to swoop faster around the clock than the others.

You squeeze in that cup of coffee before the bus comes up the road and you pray again. “Lord, help me be enough for today.”

From bus drop off to dinner is utter chaos and you are barely hanging on. Every creak in the house or drip of the roof sounds like the garage door. You long for your helper to be home. To share the reading, the wresting, the conflict resolutioning.

It’s all a gift but a blur until those tiny babes are fed, bathed, pajamaed and tucked in.

You are thankful for the moments but exhausted and wondering if the Lord helped you be enough today. Because honestly, somedays you just don’t feel like you are enough. You fret and you worry if you met every need and listened to every heart. You wonder if you are caring for those God has given to you well.

And during bear hugs, kitty hugs and good night prayers your son whispers, “Mommy, you are God’s masterpiece.”

And you haven’t showered, changed out of your pajamas, read enough of your Bible or prayed more than eighteen words for the entire day. You feel like you are barely hanging on. But you recognize that to someone, you are more than enough.

Somehow in some crazy way, even though we are barely hanging on we are enough. On the days we feel like we are at our best, at our worst or mostly on those days we feel just like one foot in front of the other.

In Christ. In some crazy way, one foot in front of the other. He makes us a masterpiece to someone, somewhere and at sometime.

He is really making us new and using our daily one foot in front of the other.

I know you know too.

Thank you for passing this on to someone who needs it.

The Last Load of Laundry

January 22, 2016January 22, 20161 Comment

There used to be a time when I had my family’s laundry situation under control. I was able to follow the schedule, put the clothes away and keep the bins from overflowing in a manner that felt natural and protected me from feeling bitterness over the bountiful bins of what seems to be a never ending battleground of washing clothes and undergarments.

But now here in this present time, I can’t seem to keep up with our laundry situation any longer. My bountiful bins are more often dirty than clean and our sock situation has my children buying into the idea that everyday is “silly sock day” at school.

Even this weekend as my husband and I have rallied; I have been faithful to get the clothes in the wash and into the dryer methodically while he has been the precise and ever important folder swooping in to complete the job. Our new weekend rule is if my husband wants to watch a game of some kind on television he must be folding and watching.

Even with our go get ’em efforts and even as we see the end of the dirty laundry coming into view, I realize it will only be moments before another article of clothing will be dirtied and the cycle and balance of the bountiful bins will begin once again.

And again and again and again.

Until (what feels like) Jesus comes back and there will no longer be laundry.

As my heart became discouraged thinking about the eternal cycle and endless bountiful bins, I took a deep breath, a step back and I remembered that every discouraging phase I find myself in as a mom has always simply been a phase.

A moment. A blink. A millisecond.

Just a millisecond ago I was washing 0-3 month baby clothes in Dreft Detergent.

And a millisecond from now my children can start folding their own laundry while they watch Saturday sports with their dad.

And a millisecond from then I will be back to folding laundry for a party of two once again. Because in a millisecond these precious kids, whom I only have for such a short while will be grown and gone.

So as I anticipated the last load of laundry, after taking a breath and a step back, I found a moment to be thankful for the bountiful bins, mismatched socks and moments of feeling like I am in an endless cycle of wash, spin, dry, fold.

This quote is borrowed from something I saw on Etsy from a Laundry Room sign I want to hang up in my home as an everyday reminder to be thankful for this phase in motherhood of bountiful laundry bins and what seems to be endless cycles.

“Today I will be thankful for all the little socks, the grass stained jeans and the endless piles of laundry. For there will come a day when the laundry basket is empty and these days will be profoundly missed.”

Thinking about a day when the baskets will be empty makes me feel thankful for the bountiful bins today because there will be a day when that last load of laundry will bring grief and sadness instead of relief.

If you loved this post or connected to my words in anyway would you mind sharing this with a friend or commenting below? Thank you for stopping by.

Rachel

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.

homemade valentine

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.