Fake It Til You Make It

I was walking through my favorite South African grocery store (Woolworths for those that care) a few years back for some true necessity.  Because of this domestic emergency, I dragged myself out of the house when all I wanted to do was call it a day at 2pm and go to bed.  And in that shop, my child, who had been making me daydream of torture, because that would be so much more enjoyable than dealing with her, turned on all her fabulous charms and managed to have no less than five strangers come over and tell me how well behaved she was and how sweet she looked.  It was in that maddening moment of wanting to scream at some previously unknown granny-type "Do you know that the Devil incarnates that child and did so no less than ten minutes ago!?!?" The elderly woman gave me a sweet smile as she picked Em up out of the shopping trolley it clicked in my head that sometimes I need to gain a different perspective of my circumstances.  This child, who could beguile strangers with just a sweet-faced wave of her pudgy little hand, who made me properly understand the motivations behind the need for a 'mommy time-out' was really trying to conduct her own special symphony.  Her symphony could sometimes feel like a noise specifically calibrated to drive me to the brink of madness, but in the smile of this stranger, I saw the reminder that her life was actually an artfully orchestrated masterpiece.

I learned long ago that when I get to those areas nearest my breaking point, if I'm not in a public place, I need to get to one.  Not because I'm going to harm my children, but because they are my children, and thus can get people in said public place to remind me, much like the granny in the shopping center, that my children are wonderful, that I always love them, mostly like them, and do in fact want to keep them 100% of the time.

Those facts bring us to the present.  We recently drove a 12 hour road-trip in an incredibly efficient 15 hours.  This had to do with many circumstances but it mostly had to do with the fact that (many) people had to use the toilet (mostly 30 minutes after the last sibling cared for their desperate need) … and wanted to wiggle their toes (on, near, and at someone else)… which all was irritating me (beyond belief!), and therefore I needed a Starbucks intervention, creating yet another stop.  We finally arrived, unloaded kids, laundry baskets of dirty clothes, and a one-year old who decided to start cutting a tooth in this cacophony of madness.

Which brings us to the day-after.  I was running on 4 hours of interrupted sleep with a clingy baby whom I didn't particularly like and by 8am it was clear:  today was an "in public" kind of day.  As I was pushing the shopping cart through the endless aisles of Target with a babe on my back, another in the cart, two fidgeting on the sides, and all that they were doing literally driving me crazy, a thought went through my head: "Where is my sweet old lady to remind me I love these hooligans!?!"

I think I, like so many of my peers, have been fed this lie that motherhood is something it's not... or at least something it isn't all the time.  My third child, no matter the clothes, always tends to look like she stuck her finger in an electrical outlet and simultaneously robbing the entire missionary donation barrel.  No joke.  She is not the picture of a sweet, pristine white-shirt clad child diligently asking for more broccoli please.  She's a mess, mostly emotionally, and always irrational.  Somewhere along the line I was tricked into thinking that the pictures framed and matted in the family home or posted online were true representations of LIFE.  No one tells you about the amount of effort and stress and crying that went into that one singular picture.  Because at the end of it all, no one is coming along side you saying, "this is your best lighting over here," or "hey, your kid's bone structure is more compatible with natural scenery."  We each have to find our way.  And we each have to find our kids.  I have to open my eyes and tune myself in such a way that I play the background music of their lives not to MY tune, MY pitch but to theirs, so that they can be the absolute, very best to perform in the music of their life.

My children recently have started spitting back phrases we've said a thousand times, but I'm suddenly hearing it from the other side.  Phrases like, "I don't need this Mommy, I just want it."  Things I've said over the years in an attempt to help us distinguish between the necessities of life and the wants of the moment and yet, here are my children repeating it back to me when they see a toy that's shinny and sparkly and pink.  I sometimes forget they're watching.  I sometimes forget that my intentionality (or lack thereof) and my generosity makes all the difference.  I forget that my children need to hear me say, while looking into their eyes, that I love them and that my love is not conditional on my mood or my schedule.  I forget that I have to take the time to snuggle with the poky and boney and incredibly wiggly 5 year-old as much as the snuggly and squishy baby-fat-of-a-sleeping-one-year-old.

So I'm standing in Target, trying to process the crunch of Gold Fish cracker under my feet and wonder if it's a moral obligation to find some way of stopping our little parade to pick up the broken orange fish because it was my kid, after-all, who had dropped said cracker while trying to give it to her littlest sister who can't see her but instinctively knows that there are three crinkling bags of wonderfulness that she is missing out on.  I stop the cart, nearly in tears because this zoo of mine can feel very, very large sometimes.  I take three deep breaths, hunt down the wipes and fake my way through a good parenting moment while squatting to redeem my broken, golden prize... Harper, how wonderful of you to share with your little sister!  Great job sharing my girl!  Next time, tell Mommy and I'll make sure to stop so Zora can see you and the cracker you were wanting to give her, okay?  And then, it happens.  A bustling, hurried Target employee blazes past us and stops.  In my head I'm thinking, there's no way we accidentally stole something because we haven't left the building yet (yes, it's happened).  But, bless her heart, she stops and turns to the three kids she sees saying, as if on cue, how precious they are and how well behaved they are and how lucky their mamma is because they are such sweet little things.

Thank you Jesus.  Thank you for reminding me that I'm going to make mistakes, thousands of them.  I'm going to mess these babes up because I'm their mamma and I've got issues.  But thank you that when I'm at the end, cleaning up smashed Gold Fish crackers and trying to 'fake it till I make it' at parenting, that you love my babes through grannies in Woolworths... through Target... through unexpected places... like me.

Center of the Compass

I learned a long, long time ago on a primary school playground that the phrases people teach you to deal with life aren't always true.  I remember being told:

Sticks and stones 
May break your bones
But words will never hurt you

It's not true, words can hurt immensely more than a broken finger or wrist.  And I'm finding myself putting the same skeptical wisdom to the adage:  Home is where the heart is.  I'm sure I can eventually make that true, but I'm finding it extremely difficult at the moment because I simply feel lost.

So I write.

I feel quiet.

So I write.

I feel frustrated at some unknown and unnamed dark shadow lurking in the corners.

So I write.

This blog is simply me trying to work through something.  Me trying to put the world right again after the storms of life.  Sometimes I feel like my life, my heart more accurately, looks like those pictures of natural disaster devastation where a woman in her bathrobe is picking through her flattened house trying to find something familiar, something important.  Nothing seems to be where I left it.  No relationship has been untouched by the last 10 years of life.

And so... I write.

I write uncensored and from my bones.  I used to write to deal with little things, small frustrations and a bit of perspective.  Those writings had lots of pictures.  These days, I find there are fewer pictures, more tears.  I'm not writing out to anyone in particular.  I'm writing to my own heart, my own reflection, as if this blog was turned into a representative mirror so I can see myself clearly.  I need to get these things out, but I'm not saying that to anything or about anyone in particular.  It is often true that something will happen to spark a thought that takes me down a rabbit trail.  A conversation.  A song.  A poem.  A play.  It's me processing, sometimes things I've been holding on to for years.  Todd doesn't understand how it can take me days, weeks, or years to deal with things.  I'm slow like that.  I don't forget, I'm not vindictively holding on to things to be later used as ammunition against someone.  I just simply am slow to process, slow to excite, slow to action because... it works for me.  I'm trying rather desperately in each piece to be at peace in my own skin, at home in my own heart.

Home is not simply a mark on a map anymore than a river is just water.  It is the place at the center of the compass from which every arrow radiates and where the heart is fixed.  It is a force that forever draws us back or lures us on.  For where the home is, there lies hope and the future waits and everything is possible. 

         -Call the Midwife (Season 2, Episode 7)

I'm searching for the very center of my compass.  That point from which everything, every other interaction can be drawn back to.  I was looking before we went to Africa.  I'll be looking long after I've moved into a home in the U.S. because I think that the pursuit of that one truth that holds all together will be the journey of my life... the adventurous story of me.  I know some may try to flippantly and casually say that the fixed point is Jesus Christ.  I think that's true but I'm not talking about knowing in my head the Truth of my Savior.  I'm seeking to find Him and how He works and moves in my life through each interaction, each conversation, each book I read.  Because as long as I keep pursuing, keep processing, keep seeking, I'll keep finding... and each discovery is such a wonderful love song to my soul, such an anointing oil to my spirit that I can't just sit back and live like I  can be satisfied to simply know.  I need to feel, in my marrow and down to my toes that Christ is the center of my compass... that He's my heart...  that He really is my home.

This is the Way Everywhere

I was hunting for a towel to stop my screaming babe from, well, screaming.  In the five years I lived in South Africa, I startled, scared, and was reprimanded for 'wearing' my children on my back.  In the US, it's an odd costume, not because people think it's wrong per say, but because most of the moms who buy baby carriers never figure out how to put said baby anywhere but on their front.  My belly soon got in the way of that.  And I saw.  I saw these women, everywhere putting children, big and teeny tiny on their backs with towels.  They did this in cold and rain, they did it in the heat of summer.  So, I braved embarrassment and judgement in the middle of the Apartheid Museum when Em was still so small.  I asked someone who knew how to put a kid on her back and said, "teach me."  I'm not sure Sister Jos would remember that moment, but it was a poignant moment in my parenting journey.

In that moment, I realized that this is what mothers everywhere do.  Not really strapping babes to their body so that they can go about their work.  Every culture throughout the world has some way of doing this.  But more than that, mothers across the globe get stuck with some momentary dilemma, like how to get a baby to sleep in the middle of the Apartheid Museum, and they figure out a way to make it right.  This is the way of motherhood.  We stumble, we get overwhelmed, then we find a way.  Our way.  Some way out.  Out of the sleep deprivation.  Out of our daughters desperate need for sparkly-sandals-in-the-middle-of-winter battle.  Out of the I-refuse-to-brush-my-teeth moment.  Out of the days when laundry and chores, kids and homework threaten to swallow us whole.

I feel there.  Like a thousand small things are going to swallow me whole.  The insistent questions of "when am I going to go back to school" and "what are we going to do today" are going to be the end of me.  My heart is pulling.  Edges are wearing.  It is hard, so very, very hard to see the fraying edges on my children.  I wear Big Girl Shoes so I can deal with the fall out of everything that has happened in the last two months.  Two months.  That's all it's been.  Two.

 All four ready for the first of three flights to get us back to the US of A.

My kids, though, are little.  They understand but don't understand why.  They don't understand what's going on and frankly, they will most likely never understand what has happened.  I know that kids are resilient.  I know they're young.  I know they'll be just fine.  But this is the way of motherhood everywhere.

We worry.  We worry before they're born.  Am I the right person for this child?  Am I prepared for the task at hand?  How is this going to change me?  Change my relationships?  What if I mess this up?  What if they blame me for... This is the way of motherhood everywhere.

We protect... some more than others but we chose the things we feel are important.  Don't touch the hot stove.  Don't eat food you may choke on.  Don't walk near moving cars by yourself.  Don't say foul words.  This is the way of motherhood, everywhere.

I fear I've ruined everything.  My kids went from a normal, stable situation to instability and upheaval.  Todd and I can't seem to find up from down, east from west right now.  And really, what's the point of moving when you don't know which direction to move?  So we've been standing in our own footsteps, trying to find a point of reference, gain some bearings.  I don't think God has been quiet so much as I've just been trying to quiet the loud voices inside my own head, in my own heart.  There are moments in motherhood when we listen to the wrong voices.  The voices that say we're not good enough, not patient enough, not kind enough, or working too much.  The voice that says to put the sleeping baby down because a floor needs to be scrubbed or the voice that says you're a horrible mother for going to work.  The voice that says you're a terrible mother for not having it all together or the voice that says you're not doing enough.  It's an insidious voice and a voice that persists, a lot.  One I have listened to too often in this mothering journey.

The one I listen to because I forget.  I forget that The Voice that spoke the universe into being also looked at me and said YOU ARE GOOD.  I forget that The Voice that spoke the first Love and Light into the world also spoke love and light into my heart.  The Voice that calls me to show that same Love, that same Light to my children.  I've forgotten that in the past few weeks, and I've lost my mothering way... again.  And I feel like even here I can claim that this is the way of motherhood everywhere.

I'm not the only one who has felt lost, alone, without someone who understands.  I'm not the only one who is up at zero dark-thirty because I forgot to listen to Truth and started listening to the lies that plague mothers everywhere.  So here, in these footprints of uncertainty, with doubts and worries all around, I'm reaching out in the darkness because I know there will be a hand next to me of the mother with her new baby thinking that she's overfeeding or underfeeding her baby, that she's ruined her child's life (and her's) because her 17 month old is still not sleeping, that her four year old will never forgive her for having another baby or the mom who isn't sure she is a mom because she has no babe in her arms.  This is the way of motherhood everywhere.  We hold on to Truth, even if its nameless, faceless hope from generations past, present, or future because this job is huge.  This job we face is monumental and it's bigger than age, race, ethnicity, language, creed or situation.  But we hold on, for our children, for us, for the very fabric of our souls because we know the Truth.  The One who gave us these kids loves them more than we do, He cares for them better than we ever could, and He gave them to us to teach us, instruct us, and mold us into better, wiser people.  Because this is the way of motherhood everywhere.