Category Archives: Family & Marriage

Life Right Now

Posted on by
Life Right Now, contentment, engage

The Crappy Old Doublewide

When we moved out of Columbus, we lived in a crappy old doublewide. It was a tight squeeze with 4 kids under 4. It was lonely to be in a new place and have Eric drive into Columbus every day for work. We had wanted to build, but we took a hit on the sale of our house (a BIG hit). So we waited. And it was hard.

I kept reminding myself, all though that season, that if I couldn’t be happy or content in that crappy little doublewide, I was not going to be happy or content in a new house we built next door. I had to keep living my life as it was right then. And if I didn’t, I really couldn’t expect to suddenly develop new ways of thinking in behaving in a big, brand-new house.

I found myself in that place again this week. I keep telling myself that I will be able to write better when Tim goes to school. And, let’s be honest, I will.

Or maybe not.

If I’m not fighting the distractions and disciplining myself and making time to write with life as it is right now, what makes me think I’ll suddenly start doing all those things when all my kids are in school.

It’s really not likely. And if I’m not careful, I’ll miss these lovely last few months with Timmy all to myself. In a few months, it’ll be summer. And then all four will disappear into that big brick school and I will find myself in a brand-new stage. It’ll be a good stage, for all of us. But I don’t want to waste life as it is right now, wishing for the next stage to come. And putting all my hope on “that moment” to make all my writing and blogging dreams come true.

It’s really hard not to do that, though. Maybe you have struggled with this, too, at some point. (Please, tell me I’m not the only one!)

So what can we do?

1. Engage our minds. We all have set mental patterns that undermine our ability to take the present moment as a gift.

  • When I have more money…
  • When my husband starts/stops/does/doesn’t…
  • When my kids are older…
  • When I have kids…
  • When I get a better/different job or boss…

Those thoughts–whatever they sound like in your head–are torpedoes that destroy our ability to live life as it is right now. We have to pay attention to them, root them out, and face the hard battle of struggling through what isn’t great about our life as it is right now, if we want to embrace what we have been given today.

2. Engage our faith. Our feelings are not very good anchors for our lives and decisions. They change too fast. They have a purpose, and we ignore them to our detriment, but they aren’t a good foundation. But faith is not like feelings. Faith is a settled assurance of Who God is, Who I am as a result, and how the world works when we wait for Him to live with and through us. We have to go back to the Truth, compare our thoughts and feelings and attitudes to what the Bible says, and do the hard work to bend ourselves to match His thoughts. That means knowing what the Bible says, and choosing to believe its truth. It isn’t easy, but it’s a necessary part of living life as it is right now.

3. Engage your life. You have a life, right now, that is worth more than you think. It’s easy to look at the busyness, the difficulties, the challenges our family members face (or bring with them) and wish to just lose ourselves in…anything else. But your life, as it is right now, can be a good and beautiful place. Your kids. Your spouse. Your job. Your time. Your church. Do the hard work of engaging with the people and places where you are, and you will begin to find joy sneaking in around the edges. And eventually, you find the life you have is exactly the life you want.

life right now, engage, contentment

I don’t know what you’re waiting for, but I can promise that your life–as it is right now–is a gift. Claim it. Engage it. Enjoy it.

Talk to me: What do you catch yourself wishing was different about your life? What would it look like for you to live your life as it is right now? 

Day 30: Why I’m Giving Up

Posted on by

Y’all. I have started this post at least four times today. I have gotten less than a paragraph on three different topics. And then school ended, and supper had to be made, and Timmy barfed and fell asleep on the couch, and Megan had her first every gymnastics class (which she loved), and Eric was finishing details of halloween costumes when we got home, and I loaded the dishwasher, and then we did prayers and bedtime story and final kisses and all. And I just remembered that I did not finish anything that looked like a meaningful post for today.

So I’m not going to try to finish any of the “great thoughts” that I started today. I’m giving up and will try again tomorrow. And that’s okay.

Some days are like that. There’s enough for what gets done and not a single solitary bit of extra. The big, necessary things get done and nothing else.

I will be back tomorrow for a final Write 31 Days post. I have not missed a single day, y’all. And I’m proud of myself for making this a priority. It was fun. It was a good challenge. It was reassuring to know I had lots of things to tell you about. It was encouraging to know you liked to read what I wrote.

But tonight, I’m going to give up on the grand scheme I had earlier in the day, give myself the grace to go small for once, and just go to bed.

 

 

Day 27: Why (and How) to Parent Innocence

Posted on by

http://pdpics.com/photo/1005-baby-toy-figures/

So we are edging running full-tilt toward the new and exciting world of tweens. The twins will be 9 this December, and I’m watching their maturity levels change before my eyes. They’re asking new questions. They want new privileges granted. They are responding in new (and not always respectful) ways.

It’s fun and challenging and exciting and scary. And it has required some real thinking and intentional conversation on my part. You know, as the “parent.”

For example, Alex wants to play online. He really wants to look up stuff about Super Mario games, but let’s be honest here, there’s a lot online that can surprise you when you don’t have the skills or experience to avoid it. So before I let him up his computer usage, we had a conversation. We defined the computer as a tool, a resource to help you find specific pieces of information (rather than just mindlessly surfing). We established that all computer usage has to be done with our permission (and I put my password back on my screen) and knowledge. Our computer is in a shared room with a glass door, but we specified that the door was to stay open and the screen visible at all times.

He understood. He agreed. It felt kinda like overkill because he stays on the one site we found that has everything he ever wanted to know about Super Mario Brothers. And yet, someday he’ll need to search a bit on his own. And I have to be realistic. Porn is dangerous and the people who push it don’t care about my son’s innocence. I do.

So that conversation got me thinking, especially about innocence. Because if I’m honest, I’d prefer to define innocence as “ignorant.” They don’t need to even know the words or the possibilities or the facts or how their bodies work. They’re still pretty young. It can wait.

But you know, I don’t think it can anymore. I really don’t.

Because I’m more convinced than ever that innocence isn’t about not knowing. It’s about knowing at a level appropriate to your maturity level. It means they know what they should know…and no more. We don’t keep our kids “innocent” by not having hard or awkward conversations with them; we actually handicap them and set them up for more dangerous conversations, possibly from other people who will expose them to stuff far beyond what they should know right now.

Our kids need us to be upfront with them. They need actual information, and it needs to come from us. We need to set ourselves up as authorities–open authorities–in our kids’ lives, and we do that by bringing them the information that is appropriate when it is appropriate so they don’t have to go wandering around looking for it (and getting much more than is appropriate when they do).

So what does that look like? Of course, that depends on your kids and your family. But our kids are probably more ready to know about things than we give them credit for.

Many years ago, my mom called my sister and me into our bedroom and sat down with us and a book, and we went over the “facts of life.” And I realized not that long ago, that we were probably 8 and 6 (or close to that) when she did it. And then I realized…that’s how old my girls are right now. (insert horrified gasp!)

But here’s the thing, I remember that talk. I don’t remember the entire conversation in detail. What I do remember is that she wasn’t afraid to tell us some things, that the book was off-limits (meaning we weren’t allowed to pull it down to look at by ourselves) and that I knew, from that day on, that I could ask my mom literally anything. I mean, she’d been upfront enough to share that information with me. I knew she wouldn’t hide anything I wanted to know.

So I decided to do some research. I found some great resources* that introduce those hard topics (sex and porn) on an age-appropriate level and from a Christian perspective. And I’ve started taking opportunities to talk to my kids about these things. We don’t go very deep. I don’t elaborate beyond the basics. I do want them to be innocent. But that means they need to know just what they should know and no more. And I want them to know that we are the ones to whom they can come for answers to those questions.

Talk To Me: Do you agree with my definition of innocence? What is the benefit of introducing hard topics in a controlled form? What might be the harm?

 

*I have no affiliate connection to these resources, but if you want to look them up, go here (I love that it’s a whole age-based series) and here. And let me know what you think…

Day 25: Why Parenting is So Hard

Posted on by

1. Because our kids are actual people.

When new parents announce they’re expecting and begin to fill their registry, it’s all so fun. “We’re having a baby!” And then the baby is born and for a while, it’s hard and overwhelming because it’s new and you have to keep this little thing alive. But at that stage, those little bundles don’t do so much. They eat, sleep, need diaper changes. But that’s it.

Except…it’s not. Even as a weeks-old thing, that baby’s personhood is evident. Maybe it was easier to see because I had twins, so I had something to compare with from the start. Alex has literally always been more laid-back than Erin. Megan put her whole self into her wails from her very first wails. Tim was jolly from the get-go.

Our babies are people from birth. They have likes and dislikes and definite opinions on how things should be done. In fact, some mothers can tell you about their kids before they were even born. My sister-in-law was adamantly against thumb-sucking, but when their  second daughter was born with small callouses where she’d been sucking on her hands in the womb–we all knew she was in trouble. She did finally break my niece of her thumb, but it took into kindergarten (maybe longer). Because it was part of my niece from before Day 1.

My kids, your kids, are people right this minute. Today. And if we don’t take that fact into account when we lecture or discipline or plan, we will handicap ourselves before we start. If we don’t manage our expectations with that one boundary, we will cause everyone involved a lot of tears.

2. Parenting is a marathon.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook about her struggles to get her boys to do their chores. The post garnered a lot (A LOT) of responses because every mom has been there at some point.

As I read and commented on her thread, it struck me again. What I’m trying to instill in my kids at this stage isn’t really about this current stage. I’m trying to train them for future stages. I want them to do chores today so they learn hard lessons (like “‘I don’t want to’ isn’t a good excuse not to do things” and “No one here is your maid”) that will serve them into adulthood.

Which makes parenting nothing like the sprint I wish it was. I want to teach my kids to “tell the truth” and then move on to “do your chores” and then move to “always be kind.” And once I’ve covered each concept, I want them to move on immediately. In other words, I still want the instant gratification I chide my kids for living by.

But parenting isn’t a sprint. Not done well, anyway. Whether my kids learn to make their beds isn’t really about their beds. It’s about doing the hard work to develop respect for themselves and their stuff as well as the discipline to do the right thing even when you don’t want to.

Yes, parenting is hard. And it doesn’t take many days of it to figure that out.

What about you? What do you think makes parenting so hard? 

Day 24: Why Humor Helps

Posted on by

http://www.quotehd.com/Quotes/mark-twain-quote-the-human-race-has-only-one-really-effective-weapon-and-that

1. Everyone loves to laugh.

2. Figuring out what makes someone else laugh helps you know and understand that person better.

Reading my old Calvin & Hobbes books last night, Erin giggled and giggled. She’s old enough to get the humor (some of it anyway) and that’s a fun new discovery.

Alex gets puns. He already understands how changing the word makes if funny.

Megan laughs at new or unexpected things. And she puts the whole force of her personality into her laughs.

Tim laughed and then demanded I read a second time one of our library books about being a boy. He thought the socks playing pirate in a laundry basket and the personified toothbrushes fighting through a bathroom jungle were hysterical.

3. Laughter releases stress. We simply cannot maintain a high level of tension or offense or  frustration without hurting ourselves. Laughter helps us calm down.

4. Laughing bonds people. When you share a funny experience, it strengthens and unifies a group, even in spite of major differences.

5. Humor gives us perspective. It helps us see more clearly. When something can be explained using humor, we lower our defenses and can listen more fully than we ever will to a boring lecture approach.

So what makes you laugh?

Day 18: Why Timmy Is Awesome

Posted on by

Because he’s never met a person he can’t be friends with (the other day he hugged around the waist a complete stranger sitting outside our local Amish bulk store – YIKES!)

Today, he wrote his very first story problem: “Mom loves Timmy. How many did she love him?” (I answered 10. He said, “Mom, it’s a story problem.” Apparently there aren’t supposed to be numbers in those.)

Tonight he sat down at the only seat at the dinner table that didn’t have a plate at it and didn’t realize it until Erin pointed it out to him.

This afternoon, we played Uno and did hidden pictures and looked up jokes on the Highlights website. He can even use the mouse by himself.

When Megan got to go with Grandma by herself, he cried loudly. I told him I thought he’d survive. “No,” he sobbed from his car seat, “I don’t think I will survive!”

Because this is how he ate breakfast one day last week:

And then, he had this exchange with one of the teachers today:

She: “Timmy, how old are you?”

Tim: “I’m the number between 3 and 5.”

She: “When is your birthday?”

Tim: “December 29.”

“So,” she said, “your birthday is right after what?”

Tim: Halloween!

 

The Dead Groundhog

Posted on by

So. This morning, my dumb dogs deposited a dead groundhog in my garage sometime between Eric’s departure and our frantic get-in-the-van-or-we-will-miss-the-bus hoopla.

I saw them wandering around the back yard with Pip, my BIL’s dog, about 6:30 a.m., and figure they had dropped off the dead thing IN my garage, you know, for safe-keeping, lest some other animal find their treasure and steal away with it.

So on this Thursday morning, we had created THREE, count them THREE, quick costumes in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday. We had done the speech homework since we have speech on Thursdays and we didn’t think of it until 7:30 on Thursday morning. I got the lunches made. We did the normal chores. I remembered to write in all three agendas that we would do after-school differently because of the PTO meeting today. I mean, I was ON TOP OF IT.

And then Alex skips outside (because he’s always ready first) at like 8:15 and hollers back in the open garage door (because we don’t close garage doors), “Hey MOM, the dogs left a whistlepig in the garage, and I think it’s dead.”

SO if you don’t know, a whistle pig is what Curious George called a groundhog, and what my son was, with great excitement, telling me is that THERE WAS A DEAD THING IN MY GARAGE!!!

Which is a problem, y’all. Because dead things creep me out. CREEP.ME.OUT. As in, make my skin crawl and make me squeal and make my insides all twist up. And my husband is gone, and there’s no one to dispose of the dumb thing except me. So I pull on my big-girl panties and go into the garage.

And EWWWWWWW. It’s all curled up and its two pointy buck teeth are all sticking out at me, and its fur is all sticking out like the dogs rubbed some Bed Head hair putty into it after they killed it.

Even worse, the only implement for removal is a rake with very short metal tines. And I really need a shovel, too. But I can’t find one because at some point all the garden tools got moved back to the other garage so they’re nowhere to be found. AND Eric now keeps that garage locked and I have NO idea where the key is.

So now I’m left with a sadly insufficient tool and a heavy gross dead thing in my garage. The dogs are nowhere to be seen (I called for them but they ignored me), and my son is giggling like a little boy who’s all excited about a dead thing in the garage. OH and then out comes Megan to see the dumb, dead thing WITH HER TOAST still IN her hand.

GAH!!!

So finally, I decide I’m just going to have to DO this thing. I can DO this, people. So I try to get my short-tined rake under it, and it just flops off. Ack! Ack! Ack! I walked ALL the way AROUND the van (because I’m certainly not getting close to the gross thing), and try to get it that way.

And in one final attempt to deal with the situation without being late for school, I use the rake to literally pull the little carcass out of the garage and onto the gravel where it flops over and stares at me, with its paws all curled up and its teeth just sticking out at me.

My children are in the garage all excited, and I’m so glad they’re laughing about it because I’m trying to not let my creeped out, nearly-in-tears self fall apart RIGHT in front of their eyes. And that was as good as I could do. I went BACK around the van so I didn’t have to walk by its dead glassy eyeballs and pointy teeth, and I went back inside.

LESS than five minutes later, the dogs returned and hauled their precious prize somewhere farther away from my van. Which made getting out of the house for the bus that much easier.

But in consequence of doing something as GROSS as leaving a DEAD thing in my garage, when we left for the morning, I closed both garage doors, thus banishing them to the outside for the day. Dumb dogs.

And that is the story of the dead groundhog and my sad, creeped-out self. The end.

Just Stop Right There

Posted on by

So I typically behave as if pain is to be avoided at all costs. You know, get comfortable, stay comfortable. Repeat. And for pretty much all my life, anything that interrupted this cycle was bad. Capital BAD.

But I’m finding, surprisingly, that it’s really not. The last year (and more) has been an interesting study in trying to open up doors instead of slamming them shut. Like the day I thought “Maybe [that experience] wasn’t about me, as much as it was about them.” The day I wondered if, just possibly, I wasn’t the broken one.

I’ve read (and cannot recommend highly enough) Brene Brown’s books. Her dream was to start a national dialogue on shame and whole-heartedness. And y’all. Those books hit me right where I hurt. Really hurt. Pain I hadn’t realized I was carrying around. Burdens I thought made me unloveable. Experiences that had left me thinking, truly believing, that there was something just wrong with me.

It was shame. All of it. And cracking open the door onto those places in my heart was both excruciating and freeing. And all of that is a fun story for another day. But as a result of all of that, I’m learning to pay attention to pain in an entirely new way.

Pain is not something we’re supposed to sit on, hide, cover up with make-up and the latest fashions, or brush off like we’re all good. When we run up against pain, we’re supposed to STOP. Our pain is there to tell us something. Something important about who we are and what we need to deal with. But we often don’t recognize it as pain. It shows up in disguises that we have to begin to recognize so that we can begin to move past them in positive ways. I can think of two, in particular…

Stop #1: Defensiveness.

Defensiveness is that panic that grips your heart when someone challenges you, your lifestyle, your choices in music or movies, or whatever else you hold dear. A comment is made, and your first response is to clamp down and DEFEND yourself. Get out the big guns and blow away anything that seems to threaten that whatever you’re sure you need to survive.

Can I suggest, please, that defensiveness is really a pain-marker? It’s not a declaration of war; it’s a warning signal. A sign that something deep and real, inside your heart, feels at risk. It signals pain. So the next time you feel defensiveness rise up in your heart and your breathing starts to get hard and you start to type that pushy, unkind comment on social media. STOP. Just stop. Take 3 big breaths. And ask yourself: “Why is this so important to me? What am I really afraid of losing? Is it this? Or is it something bigger? And will fighting with this person really protect what feels threatened?”

My guess is that it’s something bigger. Mine usually is. Defensiveness is often just fear, wrapped up in anger, that my life, my personhood isn’t really important. And my response is, too often, to shut down the person whom I feel is threatening me. Except that doesn’t really help. Defensiveness shuts down. It feels like protection, maybe, but it’s really not. And the only real way to ensure the protection of what’s important to me is to open up, not shut down.

Stop #2: Contempt

This is a huge issue for me. My internal monologue is filled with contempt, unkind thoughts and judgments about everyone and everything around me. But contempt, too, is a marker. It’s not really about whomever I’m holding in contempt. It’s really about me.

And the only way to deal with this issue is to accept that my contempt is an attempt to mask my own pain and fear by blaming and degrading and dehumanizing someone else.

So I have to STOP. I have to catch myself. I have to challenge my contemptuous thoughts with ones that say “He is a person and he matters” or “She is valuable” and “She matters to God.” Even though they still disagree with me. Even thought they’ve been unkind. Even though they are filled with contempt for me. I have to STOP. And when I do that, I find that, instead of spewing out on them a waterfall of contempt, I open up to the fact that maybe they might be hurting themselves. Maybe they just need me to hold their story, their pain instead of adding to it. And maybe I can be patient with them for one more day.

The only way we are going to stem the flood of hatred going on right now. The only way that I can think of to help heal the hurt I see and feel in the posts my friends are sharing. The only way we can be part of the solution…is to STOP.

Pause. Call your responses by their true name. Defensiveness, not patriotism. Contempt, not justice. Bring them out in the open and make them answer for themselves. Our responses say much more about our own pain than about anything else.

Let’s find ways to open our doors, our hearts, our minds, our lives. Share our pain and our stories. Be part of the path forward. I believe this is what Jesus does for us. And I believe this is what He calls us to do for others. Together, we can stop right here.

Perspective

Posted on by

Things that are on my mind today…

  • The health needs of a pastor friend and a young man in our school district
  • That those in power don’t seem to see that wisdom always wants MORE input, never less
  • That people believe it’s okay to destroy someone else’s career, income, or reputation simply because they disagree
  • That Friday is the 100 Days of School celebration, and I haven’t even asked Meg what collection of 100 things she wants to take in
  • That my kids’ sense of entitlement is largely encouraged by my own lack of gratitude
  • The level of over-reaction to everything right now means no one will believe it when something actually horrible happens
  • That it’s really hard to let a child earn a new something when I really could just buy it

Things that help me remember that we’ll make it…

  • Among all of the discourse of the weekend I had a great, hard interaction with a friend from college whom I haven’t “debated” with for a long time
  • My kids enjoyed playing with each other on their 2-hour delay this morning
  • My bible study ladies actually enjoy coming together for bible study (which he had to postpone because of said 2-hour delay)
  • Lots of people are engaging with each other and with their communities…even if we need to work on “how” we do it
  • That Jesus is our final hope, no matter what my day, my world, my health, my friends, my president, my country, or my world is doing
  • There is still a lot of laughter going on
  • Denzel Washington won a SAG award for Fences

 

In a Funk

Posted on by

This morning, I woke up in a funk.

I was tired from a busy Tuesday. I was tired from the drama and discourse of the last week. I was grumpy and really wanted everyone to just leave me alone. (So of course, they needed me even when I was going to the bathroom first thing in the morning. *eye roll*)

To be honest, I milked the feeling for a while. It felt good. I am tired. And it’s been a long week. And Tuesdays always leave me drained. But I also know it’s not good for me to hang there for too long.

So instead of sulking and claiming my right to a tired funk…

I called my mom.

I talked to my kids.

I started to watch and read stuff on Facebook, but that just sent me backwards. So I made myself close that tab and shift my focus again…

I changed the sheets on my bed.

I started a load of laundry.

I folded my girls’ clean clothes.

I played pretend with Tim.

I painted (and let Timmy paint, too) and then took a silly video of Timmy.

I called my Grandpa who’s in a rehab place recovering from open heart surgery. (He’s still having trouble getting good full breaths, so I talked most of the time. I know, I’m a giver. But he was really glad I called.)

I started another batch of apple butter.

I snuggled with Timmy and watched some cartoons.

And now, here it is, just after lunch…and my funk is mostly gone. It does me good to think about someone other than myself. How about you?

PS – There’s a woodpecker on the trees outside my window. They are really interesting birds to watch. I should get myself a pair of binoculars.