Me Too

He came into the bathroom as I brushed my teeth, each stroke marking my thankfulness that this pit-full day had passed.  I hated this day.  I hated the day before even more.  In fact, the whole week stunk.  My grandfather passed away last week (step-grandpa really, but he was always there), and with his passing my childhood memories felt tainted. That whole group of people whom I love, the ones who gathered for Thanksgiving and I can picture in my mind...those old pictures, could never gather again because a key player is gone.  In a way, I felt like when my grandpa died, a piece of my childhood died with him.  The passing of an era.

We’d been away on a trip, and before that, another trip, so my house has been out of hand for weeks.  I don’t thrive well in the chaos.  In the same way, home school hasn’t been established well enough to have a regular rhythm for the year.

And now we're home from the highest of highs of the most amazing trip only to be kicked in the gut by death again.  I’m kicked hard and even more gut-wrenched because I live so far away from my family and my own kids didn’t know him.  They never will.  Just as they don’t know my Grandma.  

It takes my breath away as I’m crying over the sink and the familiarity of pain embraces me like a friend and I feel a strange comfort.  “Hello darkness my old friend…” runs through my mind and I think I finally understand what it means.

But as I’m flailing here, the days must go on.  The house and the school and the fighting kids and the looming list sit on my lungs and squeeze them hard, until I’m barely breathing, and I can’t keep anything straight, and everything feels like an effort and all I want is sleep, but that’s elusive too.

All too quickly, when my guard is down, those creeping lies enter my mind!  Suddenly they’re there where they weren’t before, and I knew they might come and I told myself not to believe them, but they’re there and I believe them and I don’t know how not to.  I know I’m a terrible mother.  I know I cannot home school well and I never should have tried in the first place.  I know I can never keep up with my house.  I know the list of ‘to dos’ is too hard for me.

Just the effort of the days suck away at at me.  And I’d rather give into it and curl up in my bed then make the greater effort of pushing against it.  But I’m a fighter, so I try.

I try to laugh with the kids, kind of.  I try to look beyond myself and listen, sort of.  I try to say yes when they ask of me, mostly.  And, on Friday, he asked me to play a game of rope tag outside - a game where, if you’re ‘it,’ you hold onto the rope and close your eyes and you try to tag the person running in circles around you.  Such exhilaration I’d not had in way too long.

But I still hated the day, generally.  

To my surprise, when he breezed into that bathroom as I brushed, he asked me what my favorite part of the day was, that hated day.  I had to push past all the mental mush of the hated and my first compulsion to cry out that all of it was terrible, bad, ugly….!  And that moment on the swing came to mind.  The laughter and the running and the freedom from those lies.

“Oh, the game on the swing, baby.  That was the best part!”

With a tiny smile he turns to leave almost as quickly as he came.  Reassured.

“Me too.” he says quietly and confidently as he hops away.

I’m a little awe-struck because it was just ten minutes of that terrible day.  But it was enough to pour into my boy, that one growing up too fast,  that he is important.  It was enough to make memories right where I’m at with the life that I have and the people around me here.  And that little “me too” from my oldest son, was enough to remind me that even on my darkest days, God has equipped me to be enough for my kids.

A Barren Field

A barren field.

Brown.

Quiet.

Still.

Dead.

Covered in limp leaves,

Blown off stickish grey trees

Surrounding.

Blown by misty gusts

Cold

Pushing and pulling to its will

And then frisking away

Leaving

A barren field.

Brown.

Quiet.

Still.

Dead.

A morning walk leads me there.

I remember the summer breeze.

The green hues.

The vibrant life.

The warmth.

The laughter-filled picnics.

I tighten my coat.

Shiver.

Hug my own self.

I hate this

Barren field!

Brown.

Quiet.

Still.

Dead.

Nothing can happen here now.

Not in this dead place.

I stoop down abruptly and pick up a leaf

by the stem

The leaf itself hangs limp,

Like tear-soaked slop.

It drops to the ground

To join the muck.

I hold a lonely stick.

My new banner.

Feeling foolish

I thrust it from my hand.

Nothing here.

I kick at a dead stick.

Frustration boiling.

Sadness overtaking

My heart 

In this dead place.

Lost hopes.

The muck sticks to my boot.

I stomp, stomp, stomp

On the barrenness

The brownness.

The quietness.

The stillness.

The deadness.

And through my kicking,

I am covered in,

Splattered by,

All that muck.

I stop to catch my breath.

Bend down,

Hands on knees.

Open my eyes.

To see tiny shoots of green

Uncovered

By my flailings

Surrounded by the mire

The smallest little life

Strong in its resolve

The push through the

Barren.

Brown.

Quiet.

Still.

Dead.

I touch its tenderness

and

I love it.

Straightening up,

in my dirtiness,

I look to the sky

and

Smile.

Honey Words

"Kind words are like honey-- sweet to the soul and healthy for the body."  

Prov 16:24

I noticed them at the beginning of the year - the words of my children - smashing, slashing at each other, at me.  The words flew like spiteful daggers, aimed to kill.  And they hit their mark.

I told them to stop.  I punished them.  But, like an epidemic, it spread rampant and worsened.  Until I realized that I, too, was infected.  In fact, I might have been the carrier.  I didn't know.

Nothing I tried worked.  Until God gave me a verse...I started seeing it everywhere. The honey verse.  Our family talked about words being like honey and how honey makes you smile, and makes you want more.  How honey words are good.

My kids tried it and they liked it.  That verse stuck.  Nothing I had tried did, but God's word worked in their hearts, and in mine.

My littlest daughter put a name to words that are not honey words, "coffee words" (a simile I appreciate since she and I are on the same page in our opinion of the taste of coffee).  So, although not completely biblical, we now have reference to honey words and coffee words in our house.

In thinking about honey words, another verse came to mind:

"A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.                               For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of."  
Luke 6:45

My words speak my heart.  

Coffee words spew forth from a dark heart.

Honey words ooze out of a sweet heart.

One of my sons struggles especially with his value.  He thinks he's worthless and unloved and he expresses it regularly.  I told him to stop.  I told him it's untrue.  I've angsted about it.

But only this last week did it come to me that he has bought the lie.  The lie fills his heart and flows out of his mouth.

My job is to show him truth.  It doesn't matter how often I tell him to stop speaking untrue words, or how often I tell him he's wrong, or how much I worry about it.  He needs to know and believe the truth.  The truth needs to infiltrate the lies until he sees them for what they are: dirty, old, rotten, coffee-lies.

And so I've been whispering honey words into his ear as often as I can.  I sing songs to him about how wonderful he is.  I squeeze his hand, look him in the eye, and speak the truth in love to him.

When he spews out his coffee-insecurities, I will rebut them with honey words of truth until he believes them.

But, you know what I've learned from this?

I'm really, really bad at saying honey words.  I mean, I have to really, really work at it.

Coffee words, however, come naturally.  

Oh, the black reflection of my own heart!

I pray for God to give me the discernment to see opportunity to pour honey words.  More importantly, I pray that my heart might become honey-filled so that it might flow forth more naturally.

Because, when I speak them, their faces light up!  The joy comes forth!  The contagiousness alights a new kind of epidemic.  They love me!  They hug me!  They speak those words back.  They smile so sweetly.  

A transformation from the angry roll-out of our home just a few months ago.  God is good!  His word changes hearts.

Undone

A house with small children is an active house.  In fact, every item in it seems to be unfixed or to come undone.  I cannot tell you where that hairbrush went, because there are eight little hands, or knees or legs which could have absconded it at any given moment and they put it...?  Only God knows where!  I've given up looking for things, because I know I'll eventually come across them in places I never could imagine looking...inside that shoe or toy, trapped in a box and hidden under the bed because it was a puppy waiting for her mommy, or with the bath toys.  I can't think like them.

Fortunately, my littles are getting bigger and so, oftentimes, they're able to bring that missing thing back to me and to explain to me why it was where ever it was!  Like yesterday morning, I was missing my phone, and of course, it was on silent.  I asked the kids about it and one child explained to me matter-of-factly that another child was her horsey and my phone frightened her.  So she hid my phone in their bedroom closet in order to protect her horsey from fear.  A valid, valid explanation.  And....I'm really glad she could tell me the story, because why would I look in their closet?

Then there's the epic time when I was putting lotion on in the park - the one time I took off my wedding ring and carefully placed it in front of me on the picnic blanket.  It must have been the most covert of operations because I didn't hear or feel the little dear slink up to me...not a bit.  Or I'm so used to their noise, and I never imagined my own flesh and blood might take it...I don't really know.  But I finished lotioning my hands (how long does that take - a minute??), grabbed for my ring...gone!  

I looked left, right, everywhere.  My heart in my throat, I glanced around in panic.  A park-full of kids, but no one looking suspicious.  I called my own over.  

"Have you seen my wedding ring?  I had it right here in front of me!"

"Oh, Mommy!  Yes!  We're playing pirates!  We needed treasure.  I buried it over there somewhere in the sand."

Don't these kids have any notion of personal property...or manners?  Haven't I taught them again and again to ask permission before taking something of someones?  Aaaagh!

"In the sand?" as I scan 200 square feet of sand and 25ish children running across it, "Where, exactly, in the sand?"

"Oh...somewhere over there."

The child walks me to the general location.  I say a prayer as I consider employing all of those 25ish children to help me dig if I don't find it soon.

Fortunately, after only a couple minutes of sand digging, we unbury that treasure, my irreplaceable wedding ring, and I breathe a prayer of thanksgiving as I vow to let my hands crack in half rather than moisturize in public again.

These are just two examples of a whole plethora of similar happenings in my life throughout the past 10 1/2 years.  All of my formerly static objects have legs, or if they don't walk away from where I put them, I find them disassembled and scattered about (the work of my insatiably-curious future engineer).  And, usually, nobody did it.  I have to pry it out of them.

Honest moment here:  It makes me feel batty.

It's an anger point for me that I'm actively working on.

So, yesterday, again - after the phone/horsey incident - I walk into my bathroom to put on my necklace, rings and earrings which I'd ceremoniously left in a pile inside a wooden bracelet, only to discover things scattered, and the back missing from one of my earrings.  My brand-new earrings which I'd only worn once - defiled and lost!

I just want to wake up in the morning and have my things not be moved or touched or tampered with.  I DON'T want to have to crawl around the floor looking for my missing earring back.  I DON'T want to have to take the time to investigate this new offense.  I CAN'T put everything out of reach anymore, because they all can reach everything...or if they can't, they monkey their way there.  I JUST want them to START listening and obeying and putting into practice what I've taught them!  If you drop it, find it!  Ask before you touch.  Please....show some respect for the sake of your mother's sanity!!!!

A scan across the tiles gives me nothing.

And so I start the dirty business of interrogating the locals.  I cut right to the chase.

"Who was messing with my earrings?  An earring back is missing.  My jewelry was in a pile, now it's scattered around and a back is missing.  They don't work without the back!  So, who was it?"

Silence.

Of course.  No one.

Yes.  I know.

So I take the most likely suspect and escort him to my bathroom.  I am really, really tired of this baloney.  I move to direct assault tactic.

"You did it, didn't you?"

"No, Mommy...I didn't."

"I'm sorry.  I don't believe you.  You've not always told me the truth.  I think you did it."

He stands there, fingering the said earring and considering.

"Well, maybe...." he starts to mumble something incoherent, a confession, in my mind.

Ummm hmmmm.  The truth comes out.

"Ok.  I want you to find that earring back, bud.  You need to stop messing with things that aren't yours!"

Head down, he agrees.

But I don't make him look for it just then.  After school will work.

We move forward with the day, uneventfully.

An hour, maybe two, later, I'm in the kitchen.  As I'm clearing the counter, what do I find?  The infamous earring back.

Why in the world would they bring it to the kitch....

I pause in my thoughts.  Disaster.  They didn't do it.  He didn't do it:  that little, fingering, head-hanging, sin-confessing boy.  He didn't do it.

"In your anger do not sin..." Ephesians 4:26

I did it.  It was me.  A plastic piece had broken off the earring back and I'd brought it to the kitchen as I was talking to James and putting it back together.  And I'd walked away and left it there and forgotten it.  And in the morning, I'd seen my own disarray and angered at the kids.

I accused them all and didn't believe them.  This time, they were innocent.

I was guilty.

But I couldn't see my own guilt.  Didn't remember it.  I was so blinded by my own idea of their guilt, again.  So willing to mete out justice expediently.

And so I didn't believe them, didn't trust them, like Marilla in Anne of Green Gables with her missing broach.  Anne confessed her guilt because Marilla wouldn't believe the truth.

Sure, these kids of mine have a track record.  They're kids!  Kids do these things!

But my job, my job, is not to sin in my anger.  My job is to train them in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16) and to speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15).  My job is to show them grace and love.

And so, I show grace to myself as well.  We all fall flat sometimes.  Jesus loves me, little sinner, as much as he loves those little sinners.  It's true.

Father God, may I lean on you more and more as I walk this sometimes harrowing path of motherhood.  May I, like Solomon, ask for wisdom in a task that feels too big, too hard, for me.  Help me to be in your word every day.  I need you, God, in this!