Imagine

Did you ever imagine your life? I did, I never imagined my wedding or husband, but life I imagined every detail, and it looked nothing like this. And I am so thankful, because life imagined is so far less satisfying than life lived. I imagined I would live this life full of adventure, traveling the world- maybe the peace corps. I never imagined the adventure I was in for involved an amazing husband and four incredible children. That my days would look like a three ring circus ending with a glass of wine and a good book. But I couldnt have imagined it any better. I am celebrating today a life far more satisfying than I could have ever imagined!

life is full!

I can remember being at this retreat, hearing someone ask us to make a tree of all the parts of our life- each part represented by branches, twigs, leaves, etc. At the end she said she knew there was someone out there trying to make their tree the biggest, because they measured their importance by how busy they were. She also stated that busy had become a feeling, when people asked how someone was doing, “busy” was a good answer. I wanted to cry out, YES! that is me, busy makes me feel important, if I am not busy nobody needs me. She liked when someone described life not as busy, but as full. At this moment in my life, my life is full. I have recently given birth to my fourth child, and I honestly wonder if we will ever be able to leave the house again, and if we do if I will always need a three hour nap to recover. In the mean time I am trying to help my children see that their trees do not have to be full of branches, that their lives can be full without “things to do” but because they actually have time to do real things!

Break Day

I am giving myself a break today. I feel like I give myself a lot of those. But today I need it. Today I am napping all of nap time and spending my free time holding little hands or people on my lap. I just finished a shift, working 18 hours straight, I do get to sleep there, but 4 hours sleep on a short couch counts for little for this mom who is expecting her 4th child and exhausted. We are preparing for a big snowstorm, so I am going to have lots of time to teach and read my little people. Today, we will just enjoy being together. That is all for today, I need some sleep!

Box of Chocolates (in Honor of Valentine’s Day)

The phrase that life is like a box of chocolates is poetic and beautiful, you never know what you are going to get. If it is then my chocolates are all filled with that weird kind of butter-cream flavor that is the last to go always. Not the caramel covered dark chocolate. It is actually the butter-cream flavor that has been sitting there for ten years. Each piece has a bite out of it. But I have only found the same thing. I know exactly what I will get each day of my life. Wake up, make breakfast for my three children, drink 2 cups of coffee with International Delights French Vanilla, eat a banana, run around doing kid things for the next couple of hours while feeling guilty I have not done dishes, made dinner or done laundry. I end or begin my day with a run. I go to bed, and my day starts again. It is exactly the same day after day. And, there is no caramel covered dark chocolate in the middle.

Going for Gold

I love the Olympics. I have such respect for the discipline to pursue a goal with steadfast determination. I long for that sort of discipline and determination. My goals unfortunately revolve around getting dinner on the table by 6 and putting away all the clean clothes before all the dirty ones fill my laundry room again. Maybe the determination would come if they started handing out a gold medal for best mom/home-keeper of the year. I am not exactly sure how you would train for this sort of medal, laundry folding boot camp and Rachel Ray’s 30 minute meal cookbook memorization may help me some. However, I think the real problem is that I don’t want these to be the goals for my life. I think they are just part of life, but if they are all of my life, I will never feel the satisfaction of Gold. Now possibly if God had given me a love, a passion for cleaning and organizing, maybe then I could make this whole scenario work. But even then I think the goal would grow weary and stale.

I never knew what it was like to train for something until two years ago I trained for a race, a 25k. I had never raced in my life, and I had a new baby, but I needed a goal. So I trained, I made myself get out and run even when it was freezing cold and I had been up all night nursing a crying baby. I made myself run even when it was dark at night and all I wanted to do was stay in my pajamas. There were only maybe two days of all the days of running that I had any regret for making myself get out that door. Most days I felt strong, energized, refreshed, renewed, like I could take on the world, or another night of little sleep. I was more than needed, I was having my needs met.

So if I were to get a Gold Medal what event would I want it to be for? I think I would want want for best mom that runs, knits, reads, cleans, cooks and looks beautiful. Is that too much to ask for? Or maybe I should just start with some simpler goals like: have a quiet time EVERY day, a goal to read two books a month, a goal to keep knitting and sewing every day, a goal to spend time laughing with my children every day- because sometimes all I do is yell, a goal to go to the gym three times a week and a goal to have a date night with my husband every week.

Supermom

When my first child was born she did not come out carrying a cape and tights for me to adorn. She came out screaming and needy. I wish she had come out with the outfit, it may have seemed strange, but it would have clued this first time mom into the fact that the expectations of a mother are far from wimpy. They are the expectations of a superhero. Sometimes, I can hear in my head the announcer from one of those movies, “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it is a mom running full speed across the kitchen to catch the egg her eldest has gotten from the refrigerator to “help” make cookies.”  Amazingly, with the grace of God, we as mothers are given superhero powers to care for these little people He has placed in our hands. Motherhood is amazing, beautiful, fun, and difficult. It is all the adjectives used to describe something great and worth a lot of effort. It is all I imagined it to be and more. What I could not imagine was the strength necessary to be a good mother.

A mother is given by God the superpower of making milk. A mother can provide her child with all she needs, all the food, vitamins and nourishment for her new little one.  She is given the gift of supersonic hearing.  A Mom can hear her child’s cry before he actually cries. Maybe it is the way he rolls in bed, the roll that clues her into the fact that her sweet child is not completely asleep or starting to stir. Sometimes it is the strength to get up one more time to put the pacifier back in his mouth for the eighteenth time. And so often it takes just a touch, a hand on the cheek, a pat on the back and he drifts back into dream land. And have you seen a mother’s smile? It is magic. The smile in a mother’s eyes and on her lips that instantly sends her baby into fits of belly laughing. I have heard it in the grocery store, the mall or a church pew. It is the laugh that sends me into fits of laughter. It is a strong woman, wise enough to know that laughter almost always wins out over tears.

The memory goes a little more with each child, a “holey memory.” A mother filters out the bad and holds onto the good. She has the strength to open her hands and let go of the things she does not want to hold on to, and to grasp ever so tightly those memories she will always desire. The gift of elocution is a mom having the ability to talk about poop and spit-up with utter fascination for hours.  A mother is able to work while sleeping.  Mothers can change diapers, make dinner, and direct children on just hours of sleep. A never- ending supply of sweet kisses abide in a mother’s grasp. She can heal a booboo with those kisses in an instant. She has the voice of an angel. This one I am particularly fond of since I do not have one, but my children love it when I whisper songs in their ears.  When all these superhuman powers do not work, the arms of a mother that carry thousands of loads of laundry, scrub floors, wash dishes and carry pounds of groceries, the arms of a mother gently lift this child and walk, on legs that chase children and climb stairs for one last kiss. The mother carries her precious colicky child for hours with patience far greater than any she ever imagined. The mother carries her child and loves with the strength of a mother. 

And what would this superhero wear? Besides cute shoes? There probably would not be an outfit my daughter could have come out with to prepare me for it all. Maybe it could have a charming red purse to put my kisses in. Whatever the outfit, it would not be pretty at all times, but definitely made with grace.

Writing For Writing Sake

Two years ago I went to a conference on writing. It was probably something I was not ready for. I love to write. So I thought, “I can come up with a book proposal.” So, I did, I set up meetings with editors at the writing conference. It was an amazing opportunity. I was just not quite ready. The basic points I took from the conference: You will fail, you will fail, you will fail, and you should really be writing just for the sake of writing. My response, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, and why would I just write for the sake of writing, it takes time and energy and parts of me- I need some reason for doing it.” I heard from the editors that I am a decent writer but need more work. So, I kind of put it down. I started reading. It is funny in my early thirties I have started to enjoy reading, EVERYTHING. I never read in high school or college, but I read all the time now. And my need to write started again. So, I started writing. And it struck me that I should write just for the sake of writing because my mind is full of ideas. If I don’t write what happens to those ideas do they calcify in my brain and fill up spots for other ideas. If I don’t write I know my mind doesn’t work the same. I know my intelligence drops and I kind of stop thinking. So, I will keep writing for the sake of writing.

The Simple Woman’s Daybook

Monday, February 1, 2010

Welcome To February!

FOR TODAY… from Peggy’s Daybook

Outside my window…a cold snowy day

I am thinking…God is bigger than all of this

I am thankful for… my family

I am wearing…blue jeans and a sweater

I am remembering…God’s faithfulness

I am going… to start knitting this evening a new hat

I am currently reading…Emma by Jane Austen

I am hoping… to have a great party for my 5 year old this Saturday

On my mind… my to do list

Noticing that…God meets my needs just when they really need meeting

Pondering these words… “And I tell you this, that you must give an account on judgment day of every idle word you speak.” Matthew 12:36

From the kitchen… peanut butter and honey on toast

Around the house… quiet time has started!

One of my favorite things~ sunshine when I haven’t seen it in a really long time!

A few plans for the rest of the week: getting the house ready for the party and lots of guests

Here is picture for thought I am sharing… paintings by my husband and daughter of the Madonna and Jesus

Patience

I try to assure myself that my children get all their good qualities from me. Their not so good ones must from their dad, or maybe it is just inborn. But honestly, sometimes I think it is God’s way of humbling me and teaching me in the only way that I learn. My oldest daughter is seven. She is one of those really gentle sweet people that you worry about the world eating alive. She is the main reason I home-school my children. I could not imagine when she was 5 sending her out into the world to face people who wanted to harm her, even if that was just one mean kindergartener who pushed her down on the playground. I was terrified it would break her. She is precious and gentle and kind. Sometimes just watching her interact with people brings tears to my eyes because she is so genuine. I am not saying she is perfect. She can scream and get angry just as easily as my other two, but her heart is huge. The quality I admire most in her is her patience. I dream of being patient. Of my children waking up to a mom so excited to see them, quick to make their short order breakfast with a smile on my face. But I do not know if I have ever been that mom to them. When she was little I would make her breakfast the night before. I would honestly get up, go to the kitchen carry it to my bedroom where her blanket was sitting and set her down with cereal, milk and Finding Nemo. She was happy and I got another hour of sleep. But she is that person, the one who wakes up happy to face the world. When her little brother wakes up she greets him with a kiss and a hug and offers to read him a story while they wait for their sluggish mom to roll out of bed. She helps him play on the computer, offers to let him take her turn in pouring the flour in when baking cookies as a family, lets him sit on her lap when she is playing a card game and once again “help.” I am amazed. It is all so much work and so much easier to just do it yourself. She is who he asks for when I have tucked him in ten times and am running out of patience, she will swoop in and give him kisses and giggles and tell him to stay in bed. Sometimes he listens, and sometimes it is just a respite from me having to say, “mommy is running out of patience, stay in this bed,” and him having to listen to it. She is this little light in the world being used to teach her mommy about patience.

Psalm 127:3a Behold, “Children are a gift from the Lord,”

When I Grow Up

When I Grow Up

When I grow up, I want to be a woman of the world. A business woman, who travels and lives in the city. I want to be a woman who takes the subway and drinks lots of coffee. I want to wear high heels and carry a briefcase. When I grow up I do not want to be settled. I have spent my entire life in the same house, I want to travel. When I grow up, my life will be perfect!

I am a grown up. And I drink lots of coffee. My alarm woke me up, and no, it was not the buzzing sound of an alarm that gently reminded me of all the important meetings waiting for me, it was the scream of one of my lovely children biting the other, yes biting. No high heels for me, although if I walk around my house enough with bare feet the cheerios stick nicely and give me a bit of height. I work in a small business- we are non-profit and I work for three very cute but demanding people. My days consist of travel, to the grocery store, usually twice. I carry a black diaper bag, with papers from crafts stuffed in all the pockets. My transportation is a white mini-van. And those cute demanding bosses are 7, 4 and almost 2. 

I never thought I would be a mom. I pictured my life like the former. I thought I was an independent woman. I did not need a man. I thought I might adopt a child from a third world country once I had “made it.” This was before Angelina and Brad were ever together adopting kids. I was going to adopt this child and travel with her around the world, having her learn French and Spanish. My life was going to be glamorous. Instead, I have two amazing daughters who gush over me. They greet me in the morning and randomly throughout the day with, “I cannot wait to grow up and be a mom!” Really? A mom? Sometimes the truth comes out that they think I can just eat whatever they want when they are a mom. Apparently the sneaking M&M’s while doing dishes is not all that sneaky. And I am afraid. Afraid that is all they wanted to be, shouldn’t they have more dreams than a mom? What if my girls “just”want to be moms. Yes, it is a lot of work and a lot of responsibility, but does it really matter? I have struggled and wondered, but come to the conclusion that yes, it does matter. My job as mom to these little ones is more important than anything in the world. They need me to teach them about life, and I need them to teach me about life. They need me to carry them, and I need them to make me laugh. I might be raising a business woman, or a teacher, a world traveler, or a mom. Whatever they become, whoever they become. They will only be better little whomevers because of me being their mom. What a responsibility and pleasure. I get to raise these little people. And they want to be moms, and I am thrilled!