stupid freaking balance

balance
should
discipline
and
moist

I am not the biggest fan of these words.

All of them are elusive (a word I do like).

Well, okay, maybe not moist, that's not elusive...it's just icky.

I've written about how I feel about balance many times, about how unattainable it is. If I'm going to mother, I'm going to have an UNbalanced life, that's the reality. And either I can accept that, or get swallowed in the anger and tension of trying to fight for a balance that remains out of reach no matter how DISCIPLINED I am.

I'm getting a tiny bit better at this acceptance thing, but man, some days I just want to scream at should and discipline and balance. Like a mad woman-just screaming until my furrowed forehead and wide open mouth get stuck in their angry wrinkle-inducing expressions.

Maybe that's what I should do, just discipline myself to let it all out, going off and out of control on freaking balance. Yeah, just scream in the face of balance and then move on, relaxing a bit in the tension of my UNbalanced life.

After all, my unbalanced life is just as it should be, wonky and messy and scattered and good. It's just fine to get mad at the exhaustion of spinning around in such grace-giving crazy-making, as long as I can see that less time for me will not always be less and it is not less even now.

Okay, then. I should stop now. Apparently the lack of balance has stolen my ability to make sense.

~~~~~

make a meal
write a book
change the laundry
paint the house
make the call
return the favor
read the books
walk the dog
break up fights
make up beds
connect
sweep the floor
wipe the butt
turn on the air
see the dust
tell the joke
play the game
give the bath
wipe the floor
button the shirt
lock the door
open the windows
get the snack
hugs and kisses
say prayers
watch the show
pick new cabinets
meditate
listen
journal
tidy
bake
enroll
sneeze
scrub
console
yawn
give
sleep short
stay sober
get groceries
worry
return the movie
fill the cup
smile
goodnight

We people
we women
we mothers
so unbalanced
no shoulds
what discipline?
we're good.
no guilt
no shame
just love.

"look for the beauty that can be found...in setting up the pins and knocking them down." -Sara Groves

Buffered

I had to shut the door, while they stood there crying and screaming for me, I said "Go get a hug from Daddy. I can't. I need a minute."

It has been so loud and so whiny all morning and I'm tired. They are fighting and fussing and then one of them is screaming and I need a buffer. The door is my buffer.

And now I feel trapped while my heart hurts.

It's quieter, but not in my head.

These boys of mine are so good. They are good to their core, not just in the way they act. I am beyond surprised at their temperaments, the way they sit perfectly still for haircuts and almost always respond positively to my directions. They are good sleepers, they don't fuss much over food, and they stop to ask permission if they aren't sure if what they're about to do is allowed.

They are conscientious and sensitive little souls, always asking each other or friends or family are you okay? when hurt.

Really. I am blown away by their goodness. I don't take credit for it, I simply appreciate it, admire it, and reflect on it often.

This is not a typical morning and it will pass. Maybe they didn't sleep well, or they're hungry or thirsty. Or maybe they need more of me, sitting right with them and really being there. Even in small doses, this always helps. I think I'll go cover those bases so we can start our day again.

I am their buffer, a woman who often needs her own, and we're going to be okay.

We can always start our day again.

~~~~~~

I hope your weekend is full of fun and sun and fireworks and parades and buffers and swimming and more fun. Don't forget the S'mores.

miles and miles and miles and miles and miles

On day one, you taught me that having a c-section didn't make me a failure
because I had you.


On day 2 I studied all your sleeping faces, all day long
and I loved even the frumpy grumpy ones
and you still make them
and somehow, I love them even more


In your first months
you showed me what peace looks like
and how it would feel when you're sick
always like I'm sick, but worse



You've always shown me
joy
pure joy
in the smallest things


In your first few years, I learned that so much of what I know and believe is because of you.
You are five years of love and light, struggle and growth and absolutely nothing I would trade.
Because of you I know what an old soul in a small body can bring to this life, and I know that I will always always love and accept you...no.matter.what. And I know that I say be careful too often, but please know I really truly want you to live out loud. Please live out loud.

You shaved your head with Daddy's electric razor.
And just for documentation purposes, let's not forget that
you stuck a nut (of the nuts and bolts variety) up your nose
and $450 later, a specialist got it out.
Strangely, these antics simply made me love you more.

One of my favorite memories, running in the sun-rain with you.

~~~~~~~~~~

Miles, you are my birthday boy and one of the great loves of my life. No mother can ever prepare for the way she will love her children. Every mother knows the wonder of it all, the unfolding of a human life in her care, the enormous learning curve and fear and happiness.

You are the perfect boy for me. I think that's how God does it, no matter how our children come to us, He gives us soul mates, and then we get a taste of Heaven.


Happy 5th Birthday, my Milesy. I love you.

Mommy- What can you always ALWAYS know for sure?
Miles- I belong!

Mommy- What do you think will happen in your fifth year?
Miles - I'll play baseball and I'll walk the dog. And I'll ride a two-wheeler and try not to fall down so I'll need to take balance. And um, let's see here...what should I do? Okay, I will play being a Daddy with Asher.

Good plan.

Stripes

A day at the water park, cooling off in the water and soaking up the sun?

Summer bliss in my book.

(And this place is a mere three blocks from our house-I love that.)



I'm pretty sure these water park days will be ear-marked in the memory books of my boys, too.

Asher, Miles and strong friend, E

Oh My Serious Fun.

I love to watch them play in the water, rush down the slide, water drops dripping from their noses. I love the way water keeps their minds busy for hours, while I sit and take it all in. But this last time, what I loved the most was the way Asher snuggled into me after getting hurt, wrapped in a towel and fell fast asleep. It's been a really long time since I snuggled a sleeping boy baby, rocking back and forth and nuzzling blond hair. (They are just growing far too big.) I loved it, every second of it, even while I knew I needed sunscreen that I couldn't reach for without waking him, and therefore fried my Scandinavian-pale arms and legs.

These red and white stripes across me are totally worth it. Kind of like stretch marks.

This post is a part of Tuesdays Unwrapped at Chatting at the Sky. Thank you, Emily.

hamster wheel

So often I expect perfection from myself in motherhood, at least somewhere in the back of my mind I do.

I'm on a hamster wheel to nowhere when I do that. I'm pulling the wheel under and over me and back around again with thoughts of perfect meals and a perfect education and perfect faith and a perfect home.

Those thoughts are slowing these days, I'm sooooo grateful for that.


Last night Miles rode his small blue bike while I jog/walked next to him and he said it would be a really good day if we could spend it that way, all day. He was riding along and thinking he was having the best time of his life and he wanted it to go on and on like a hamster wheel.

That's all he wanted, just a little adventure on a little bike, with me.

He's right, ya know. Keeping it simple is the key to so many things.


Especially happiness.

Untwisting

You know that rumbly sound of slurping the last of your drink through a straw?

I can't decide if I love or hate that sound.

Maybe I should decide to like it because it's a satisfying sound of finishing, being sure to get every last drop of something tasty. And maybe I should hate it because it's a belchy kind of irritating satisfying sound.

I feel this way about sobriety. Some days I'm absolutely in love with its satisfaction, and other days (ahem, yesterday) I hate the itchy irritation of it. When I was drinking I was trying to take the edge off. What I'm learning is that it wasn't working, not at all. My edges are more rounded now than when I was pouring glass after glass night after night. I'm softer and lighter and different.

The thing is, sober or not, alcoholic or not, life is covered in itchy irritation. So when I'm hating sobriety, it isn't even really sobriety that I'm hating. And therein lies the beauty of remaining alcohol-free. It's just right. It fits, even if a bit tightly at first.

And I see it as a gift. Because I don't know how to answer you when you ask, "but what if I feel like you were feeling and I'm not an alcoholic?"

"What if your journey and your struggle resonate with me and I don't drink? How do I change?"

I've gotten so many emails like that, and I just don't know what to tell you. I really wish I did. Sometimes it feels really selfish to be wading through my issues, taking so much time away, an hour at a time, many days, to work on me, to stay sober. But I have to. I have no choice. So in a way, I wish every one of you, especially the mothers who write to me, could be given that. Time away to remain victorious over it, whatever your it may be.

Here, leave the house, sit and talk and just be. Do it or you will self-destruct. Here are some tools, use them. Here is a list of numbers, dial them when you feel lost or lonely.

I wish every woman, every mother, could be given that permission. To go and seek and learn what it is that makes her tick or keeps her all tied up in her own head. To heal and cry and grow, rounding her edges. To maybe take a good look at her hard truths, the ones we all have, the things that we need to give up, to rid our lives of so that we can breathe. Selfishness, over-eating, booze, vicodin, yelling and screaming, too much TV or Internet time, whatever! Usually we are upset and twisted up inside because we have no time to be honest with ourselves about what needs to go. Resentments? Anger? Habitual lying? Self-deprecation or hatred? Guilt?

You know what it is for you. Maybe only you know. If you could stand in front of the mirror, staring straight into those eyes of yours, refusing to look away until the truth has set you free, you would see that you know. And as painful as whatever that truth can be, looking at it is the only option on a road to freedom.

It will make that slurpy and belchy sound and panic will rise in your chest, but you will start to untwist. And you will look around and say, Oh God, what do I do now and then you will tell someone who loves you dearly and you will say I have to do something about this. And sometimes that means getting help, so you will ask someone to help you get help and then you will do it. Because realizing you are powerless over whatever you are carrying and pushing and pulling and wearing, it just becomes what you have to do, once you stop running from it.

I am sitting in a coffee shop with all the windows open and a breeze is blowing over my sandaled feet and I'm wondering, who am I to say these things? What do I know?

But I wanted to answer your questions, while I hear the slurping sounds of finished drinks from tables around me. I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry I can't give you steps to overcoming the way you feel, you who is maybe not an alcoholic but you who still wants to know what's wrong with you.

Friend, those people, other mothers or just any person, who seem so happy and content? Maybe they aren't. Maybe they're just like you and like me. And if they are truly peaceful, even serene? I'm guessing they gave something up. Because if we're telling any kind of good story at all with our lives, we've sacrificed something to win something better, you know? Every good story (as it says in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years) is about wanting something and overcoming a great obstacle to get it.

Not every obstacle is a bold addiction. But maybe it's more of a way of thinking or living or dealing, a way that just doesn't sit right in your heart of hearts. What we're all seeking so much of the time (aside from spiritual things) is balance. Every mother, every person, knows that balance is at times completely impossible because life just won't allow for it. But I want to tell you that I am closer to it than I have ever come and only because I took something out of my life that would make balance impossible, leaving me reeling and twisted.

I'm still twisted up a whole lot of the time, but not in such a shackled way. New days abound in which I start again and feel renewed. When I was drinking, there was no such thing as true renewal.

I am four months sober today, and that's all I know.

(And I hope I don't sound like a big bossy know-it-all jerk. I promise I'm not one in real life.)

Okay

He says, wash mine hands, Mama. So I hoist his nearly three year old booty up to my stomach and we lean in over the sink. The water is shivery cold and so we hurry and he starts to force exaggerated shaking and teeth chattering, dramatizing as he has a tendency to do.

I grab the towel from the oven handle and we wipe wipe wipe together until I can't help anymore because he's got both of his little arms wrapped tightly around one of mine, one of his little legs following suit as he lifts it up off the floor to try to add it to the arm hug party. A chubby cheek presses the side of my wrist and he makes sounds that say he's warming up with my arm's willing assistance. Which is good because the other arm is busy reaching for coffee. My heart is filled with the goodness of he and his brother and their Daddy and at the same time, I feel a bit at a loss today, a loss of nothing but an idea, but a small void all the same.

I completely and totally thought I was pregnant this last week. But I wasn't. And that's okay, while it's also a strange nagging not okay. As anymommy (love her) replied (on Twitter), a negative test result is like an empty ice cream container. Yes. Both cause that heart-fall, that sinking moment of a wish stolen. Different of course, but the same.

Baby lust.

I have that. I really wanted ice cream and it was all gone. And I say that's okay because it's not like this last month was the final chance in all of eternity. And I say that's okay because these days, everything really is okay. Even if it's awful or hard, in the end it will be okay. Baby or no baby, disease or no disease, obstacle or no obstacle, pain or no pain...

Knowing that's true makes it okay to lust after a hopeful seed in your heart, even if you aren't sure if you're going to get what you want.

So I can still have faith that we just may get what we're pining after, desiring, while feeling that peace that reminds me that even if we don't, our faith and hope won't die with that dream. That they will stick around because they are in a shivery arm hug and in the greenest grass and the robin's blue eggs and a hearty chuckle and a full container of ice cream.

And after the arm hugging, my boy sat with wooden train tracks, struggling to construct the thing that he wanted most, lines of connection that go round and round. He was frustrated, getting half of them upside-down. I caaan't Mama, he said, heeelp meeee. So I did, connecting the pieces in a way I thought was best, even if it wasn't exactly the shape he had hoped for. It will work. And just as he always does, even when things don't turn out how he planned, he sat back and looked and considered and then chose to squeal Yay! while clapping his chubby little hands together. That's just who is, and I'm going to keep trying to be like him.


This post is a part of Five for Ten at Momalom.

That's courage

"I didn't want to get well, because if I got well, nobody would come and save me anymore. And I didn't want to get well, because while I could not control my happiness, I could control my misery, and I would rather have had control than live in the tension of what if." -Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
(This post is brought to you by the fact that I finished this book last night and my mind is reeling with good thoughts to think. Thank you (again), Donald Miller.)

_______________

We need breath-taking stories in our lives. We're made for these stories, and too often we don't choose them. We don't write the book or apply for the job or propose or adopt that child or take that trip or dance because we're scared. And then we stay just where we are and wonder why life is boring and we just simply rev our engines and a whole lot of the time that makes us quit trying at everything. We lose faith and we lose courage because we're so easily bored.

Entertain me, something! Please keep me interested, someone!

There is so much trying involved in both reaching for epic stories, and in finding contentment in the mundane and ordinary things. We need both, and satisfaction in having a balanced life of both takes courage. To live both ends of the spectrum with a fierce determination, who does that? To believe either your epic or your ordinary are exactly where you should be? To trust your conscience and your heart-gut to lead you to either the peaks or valleys or the quiet in-between, to simply keep going inside of both? If a person can do that, strive to do that, they have courage.

Happiness in trials, in joys, and in the mundane. Courage.

For me, when life is spinning its days of repetitive sameness with nothing much happening, I have a harder time continuing to choose to do the right thing, every single day. There's no catalyst, and so I stall and go numb and quit caring, quit trying as hard.

When we do that, we often create drama, even subconsciously, providing our own catalysts, building up an inauthentic plot until we've made a huge mess. Or we get depressed or try to fill ourselves up with the wrong things until we are addicted to those wrong things.

What am I trying to say? I'm rambling my way to my own thoughts again. Here's what I'm saying is the balance: Contentment when there's no catalyst for change, allowing the change to be slow while setting up the pins and knocking them down, day after day. And then saying yes when life is asking for a bigger commitment or adventure that you know is right for you. The ability to listen to yourself in both the times of bigger things that bring fast change, and the quieter times of repetitive sameness, this is what we seek, I think. Being content either way, because both the big and small are inevitable. This is balance. This is courage. Continuing to move forward, to do the right thing, either way. Exciting or not. New or not. Mundane or not.

Isn't this what makes sobriety, motherhood, employment and marriage so very hard? We embark on these adventures believing we've found it, whatever new excitement we've been looking for. We celebrate with feasts and toasts and we truly feel and believe. We're living a grand story. But then we find out how much everyday in and out work is involved in these beautiful big things and sometimes we just don't want to keep going, we want to back up to the joy or even feel the sorrow of loss so that we can have that feeling of starting again, or being rescued. Unless, of course, we're choosing courage. The courage of contentment.

The really exciting and dramatic times are good, even if they're painful for a time. They shape us. But right now I think that the most excitement and joy ends up happening in the ordinary, but only if we're choosing to live our every day stories out loud, no matter how boring they may be perceived by the world. We are the ones that will feel the fulfillment and awe even within what may seem like a cookie-cutter existence, if we live from our heart-guts, obey our God-given instincts in both the big and small things, and just keep going.

That's courage.

And I want it.

_______________

"The experience is so slow you could easily come to believe life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I'm saying is I think life is staggering and we're just used to it. We all are like spoiled children no longer impressed with the gifts we're given--it's just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving in over the mountain, just another child being born, just another funeral....If I have hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you. -Donald Miller


This post is a part of Five for Ten at Momalom. Click on the button below to check out this beautiful community of women, telling our stories together on topics important to us all, and join in if you'd like.

A Mother's Day picture story

There is so much fun to be had in a cabinet.
You can even pretend you're a really mean
trapped and angry bear


But then you might start thinking
Am I really trapped in here?
I'm actually just a person I might want to get out sometime
taptaptap...help


HI-YAH!



Oh my...one of the terrible bears
has escaped! And the other bear is...
astonished!


Brother Bear, I shall FREE YOU!!!


AAATTTAAAACK HER!!!!

I love being attacked.


It is a privilege and an honor and a joy to call these two bears mine...



Happy Mother's Day, friends!

In the middle

It's Wednesday and it's 9pm and the last of my two restless children has given into sleep. Finally. Ryan is out of town for work, so friends, the days are very long and let me just say that I'm...well, exhausted. Already. And it's Wednesday. Half-way. If you are a single parent, I honestly want to kiss your face right now and tell you what a freaking rock star you are. Just saying.

I'm sitting here with my feet up and my computer on my lap and Idol Gives Back on the TV. I haven't watched Idol even one time this season, but I'm always intrigued and softened and reminded by Idol Gives Back, and so I watch.

I was thinking back on today and when I tried to think about the morning I absolutely could not believe that I was thinking back on the same day I'm living right now. The morning was such a long time ago. It started very early and it went and went and went and so did we. There was a whole lot of fussing and fighting and a whole lot of laughing and chatting. There were fits and tantrums and stories and a walk. There was time at the park and an appointment for me. There were groceries to be gotten, emails to be returned, and phone calls to make. And there are ants in here, so let's not forget the time it takes to try to rid one's home of ants.

I even did one load of laundry from start to finish somewhere in there. Oh, and fed the short people, three times. Sort of. Sometimes a turkey dog kind of sort of is all I have in me.

The funny thing is, even with all of that and more, we still had many minutes in which we weren't sure what to do with ourselves. At one point, we had just played two games of Husker Du, and we were kind of following each other around the house trying to think up what to do next, and then we came up with a new game. It was called JIFOCWITS - Jump In Front Of Camera With Its Timer Set.

OK, it wasn't called anything. I just made that up.

But it looked like this:

~believe it or not, Asher is in these pictures, behind Miles~

And then I let Miles, my budding photographer, take pictures of anything he wanted to capture that he thought was sweet. Because that's the assignment for You Capture at I Should Be Folding Laundry this week. He did a great job, even while I was stuck on repeat at his heels, worrying over the camera being dropped, Use both hands-be careful-use both hands-it's heavy-use both hands-be careful-GOOD JAAAHHB-

SWEET.

And now I'm looking at these pictures and I'm thinking, Wow, motherhood is such a beautiful struggle. All the stuff we have to do can get in the way sometimes. I mean, when you throw the daily grind and all its stuff into anything, it makes it more of a struggle.

So I guess I'm just sitting here with my feet up and my eyes drooping, and I'm left with only one thing to say: I'm really glad there's so much sweet, so much good wrapped up in the middle of the stuff of life.

Mommybloggers are the Mary Kay ladies of the Internet

Dear Fellow Mommyblogger,

That title up there? Is that okay with you?

Because it's true.

You know the Mary Kay lady stereotype well, right? The one a dear friend of mine deals with every day, since she's a Mary Kay lady?

Still makin' people pretty? Do you drive a pink Cadillac? *wink wink*

All the questions asked of her are tinged with that patronizing tone of humor, as if she's pretending at something. As if she's doing something cute and silly most likely because she can't do anything else.

My friend's car is not pink but it did come from Mary Kay. She's a total Mary Kay sell out. She doesn't apologize for it, she loves it. She loves her job and the women she's come to know because of it. She happens to care about moisturizing and color-matching and protecting skin from the sun. She happens to care about helping women feel just a little bit better about themselves after she tries something new with them and then spins them toward the mirror to see the shy and proud smiles fill their faces.

That's a beautiful thing, really. There's no reason to consider it less than, to compare it to other more intellectual professions. It serves my friend well no matter what she used to do, how many languages she speaks or where she's lived. I could tell you all of that and more about her life, but I shouldn't have to. I shouldn't have to defend her abilities or her intelligence simply because she's a Mary Kay lady.

She is doing what she loves to do and that's enough.

~~~~~~~

I'm a mommyblogger, but the recent so-called negative mommyblogging media hasn't bothered me. Sure, that same patronizing tone exists for us, but I can take that with a grain of salt, especially when I realize that it happens to most mothers, sadly, no matter what they do "on the side," or how well they do it. Mommyblogging is just simply misunderstood out of ignorance or a skewed perspective for dramatic effect, and that may always be the case.

The reality is that, just like my Mary Kay lady friend, we mommybloggers are all together under the same inaccurate and sometimes accurate stereotype. Either we accept that or we don't, because it's not going anywhere.

What I'm having trouble understanding is the reaction of many mommybloggers who have argued in response to negative media attention with a stomp of the foot and a, Hey! Not all of us are just posting craft tutorials and photos of our kids at the park! Some of us are published writers and we're powerful marketers and some of us go to the White House or get interviewed on television!

That is all true and even good, and I'm honestly proud to be here with bloggers who have these success stories to tell, but honestly, I'm a little confused. What is so wrong with sharing a recipe or a craft? What makes sharing photos and potty training stories too cutesy or wrong? Why is it less than? Compared? Why is it embarrassing to sit alongside other women, other mothers, who do blogging that way? With this reaction, the message that is sent is that if a mommyblogger is not a "real writer," she is pretending at something. It's as if she's doing something that's only cute and silly, most likely because she can't do anything else, when the reality is that maybe she's doing exactly what she'd like to be doing and that is enough.

When we react like that when we feel patronized, the point is missed, the fight for naught, because maybe there's nothing wrong with the mommyblogging stereotype in the first place, just like there's absolutely nothing less respectable about just selling Mary Kay instead of teaching Spanish, my friend's real story. Or being just a stay at home mommyblogger instead of a social worker, my real story.

I'm tired of the hesitation I feel in an effort to not be something, to avoid a mommyblogging stereotype I have no reason to avoid. I'm tired of thinking that every post has to be some magical, well-written, intelligent and insightful gift to the world wide web for it to be considered valuable. Because sometimes I may just feel like rambling about potty training, or maybe I just want to share this with you and so I will:



This picture is creativity and life and a little piece of divine art, in my biased opinion, and I know many of you will see it that way too. Nothing to be ashamed of there. So some days I may share something just as simple and lovely as that, and another day I may write something thoughtful that maybe even borders on profound. And then maybe you will say it knocked your socks off, like you've been so kind to say before. (That is, if my fingers up and do that mind of their own thing, pounding at the keyboard without me getting in the way.) Any which way I mommyblog on a given day, it's valuable because it's mine and I love it.

So you there, with your recipe for fluffier pancakes? I'm glad you're here. And you with your simple and hilarious stories about everyday things? I'm glad you're here. And you with your creative crafts? You make me feel a wee bit inferior, but I'm still glad you're here, your energy inspires me, and I'm not just saying that. I'm proud to be here with you, all of you, however you define your success.

Love,
A Mary Kay Lady on the Internet

*UPDATE* I wanted to add that I think it's perfectly fine to be frustrated with negative media attention around something you do. Everyone wants to be taken seriously. That's exactly my point. Everyone should be taken seriously if they're doing something they love.

Peanuts

He is not a kid on a table or a boy looking up at his Mommy for a hug.
He is Snoopy and he's on his dog house and he can't wait to fly a plane with a cape.
He is pawing at Charlie Brown, begging for a treat.
I'm Charlie Brown.

This is fitting because I have a really hard time figuring out how to grow up.
I trust Lucy over and over and end up flat on my back while she laughs.

I have the imagination of a child and sometimes, when I should sit up and learn something,
it's like my teacher is going 'wa wa wa wa wa waaaa.'
My brain is too busy to take these lessons to heart.

I'm always thinking, just like that boy of mine, never taking things at face value,
always digging deeper. And at the end of the day, we're both terribly exhausted, the world finally dimming down, hiding at the loss of light, taking cover in the shadows.
The 'wa wa wa' becomes a slow and soft whiiir but never stops.

We rest fitfully, clenching and grinding and tossing and turning, vivid pictures dancing through our dreams, and then we're up again to a world that's blindingly bright because we take it all in, every detail, the slightest twitch of face easily read-she's sad, the softest of sounds too loud, echoing.

We feel it all in the deepest parts of who we are until we're too full to feel anything at all.
We are overstimulated emotion addicts gone dry.

I am so busy taking it all in and processing every part. He is so busy taking it all in and processing every part. He is perched on his red roof in the sun with eyes always wide open, not remembering to squint, and I am running and running and then kicking at a ball that isn't there, up and over I go with a thud while the thoughts continue to swirl.

We are Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

"...and for you and myself I will pray, let our weakness become our strength." - A lot like me by Sara Groves on her album Station Wagon-songs for parents

Comfort

"Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.
That's why it's a comfort to go hand-in-hand."

{Emily Kimbrough}

Motherhood has shown me how little I know about much of anything. It started right away. I thought I would know exactly what to do {pffft}, but I second-guessed everything. So much of the time, this unknowledge loomed over me, past and present and future. I knew instantly that I desperately wanted control of everything and I had control of nothing. It was terrifying. To fiercely want to protect while feeling so helpless.

Sometimes it feels like all I've done since we had our boys is stand in one place trying to figure things out. Thinking about how to do right by them or fix this or that while all the clashing thoughts bounce around my head and heart. Most often, by the time I work through the mess and come up the best possible response, the moment has passed. The child has moved on, feeling better or not, issue resolved or not. Life does its speedy thing and I'm the only one still standing there.

Motherhood, like sobriety, is humbling in the best possible way, because it forces me to reach out for help. It demands that I ask for peace and then for the healing of even the things that have already passed by while I stood there, numb and worrying.

I'm slowly learning to stand and worry less and to trust my gut more. I call it my heart-gut, and I may not know much, but I know God speaks there. I also know I will always be there for my boys. I'll be there, asking for help and giving it, moment by moment. And even when I stall and stand numb with life whizzing by, I have these things to wake me up to my need. They are sobriety and motherhood, so tangible it's as if they actually reach out a firm hand and give me a good shove in the right direction. In the direction of help.

These two labels on my life are definitely looming and so big and also gifts. I am a mother and I am an alcoholic. Those two words are reminders to surrender to today and to listen to my heart-gut. That is where I find comfort, and then give it to my boys.

A Moment

I am trying to get something written. I'm down to the last minute and it needs to get done. So while the red potatoes are sizzling in the oil on the stove, I'm pecking away at the keyboard. Miles and Asher are cats and they are meowing and softly clawing at my ankles. They are kitties who need petting and cooing or the climbing up and nudging and poking and pulling will start. Ryan is calling from the living room asking, are both of us taking Asher to his appointment? and what's the plan for Miles? I answer half and fluster {meow meow} and so I tell him we have to talk about it later. Then I'm hopping up and over the kitties to not burn the potatoes. I stir and then I'm throwing things in a bag and hugging and kissing and giving directions and running out the door.

Later, I get home and the house is quiet. Hushed, even. I stand in the silence and try to just be instead of thinking of the next things. Then I hear a sleepy cough cough cough and my heart does that little jump that comes with mothering. I wonder if his humidifier is on. I go to see and it is, so I stay and I kiss him and turn him on his side. I hope that makes the coughing stop. I look at him long and love his skin and soft sounds. And in that moment, I feel better.

I come back to the quiet kitchen and load the dishwasher. I wipe the counters and the graham cracker crumbs pull their tricks, missing my cupped-and-ready-to-catch-them hand, falling to the floor for my feet to avoid the crunch of them. I reach for the stack of always piling papers. I flip through, in case I'm missing something, like bills or any other Very Important Information. And I find I had missed something from another day, something that Miles made at school...




I laugh and laugh and I wonder what his teacher thought. Oh Miles, I think. You are something else. That is the scariest dentist I have ever met. And in that moment, I feel even better.

I head to bed and it's late. Ryan is propped up on his pillow with crossword in hand. We talk about tired and I turn to sleep. He makes jokes that give me giggles and he won't stop asking me to help him fill in the blanks. What are augmenting drugs, ten letters? How about a cultural character, what would that be? I mumble I don't knows and with a laugh in his voice he says, I annoy you, don't I?

Only sometimes, I say.

He laughs and asks for another answer to his crossword and I say, Sometimes is now. And we both laugh and the silly moment is good.


{This post is a part of Beth's You Capture at I Should Be Folding Laundry}

The insecure blogger and her train of thought

The posts that write themselves, in a flourish of creativity where fingers pound the keyboard like they have a mind of their own, are the best. I'm often confident about them in a way that escapes me most of the time.

On the other hand, if I'm driving or taking a shower or making lunch for my boys and an idea strikes me, it rattles around in my mind and heart for too long. So when I sit down to reign it in, I'm lost, often pulling thoughts from a hundred light bulb moments that don't add up. I'm editing and editing and second-guessing and insecure. I work and work here and there, and still feel I come up short.

There needs to be a freedom in this, a gut level honesty of the moment, a kind of escape. That's when the words reach out to other hearts and shake hands in agreement.

It's rarely a reality, that a person (sorry guys, but especially a mother) has the time for the kind of writing that they dream of, the kind that demands hours. If I finish one more thing, answer to three more demands and succumb to the volume of my home, all while trying not to let the aha thoughts slip away, something is lost.

Is it strange that this makes me sad?

I long for blocks of time to visit spaces, books and posts that bring me inspiration and then allow my reactions and feelings and thoughts to flow across the keyboard. But that time is not now and sometimes I grieve that. I then resent what is holding me back and then of course I feel guilty for the resentment. I think of Charrette's tag line, my children are not obstacles in my path, they ARE my path. And so often they ARE the inspiration for my heart's words, while they unintentionally create a dam to them.

The second part of that tag line is - Oh, but then there are all those other delightful paths.

This is why so many mothers often waffle between near constant attention to writing and reading (we bloggers, anyway) and then guilty angst that leaves us thinking of quitting completely, at least until...someday.

Then we feel like a hateful martyr and we kick ourselves for wanting anything other than this gift of time with our children. We also know time away is healthy, but it's also terribly unreachable almost always. We steal ten minutes here, thirty seconds there and sometimes even two full hours in a coffee shop. But it doesn't feel like enough, and so begin the thoughts - the fantasizing of time off, whether we work at home or not, and we once again come up against walls, no options for the kind of help we need, no money for the kind of help we need. So our time, like a line of books with no bookends leans and falls flat. Again.

That's me anyway. The irony is that I'm secretly relieved when I realize it won't work out. There will be no large blocks of time that beg me to give my all, to set down my insecurities and truly write. No pressure. I love no pressure. So I throw out what I can here and there, into the universe, and watch it float for a while, sometimes gobbled and praised and sometimes misunderstood and simply gazed. Either way, what I have to give always disappears into the archives with a shhhhh. That's how it seems to me, in my ruminating mind, my always questioning and comparing, hesitant to confidence, mind.

I did a little Twitter poll on the subject of blogging zen. Do you have it, I asked. Do you hit publish and feel nothing but good about what you wrote? Even before that first comment comes in that assures you that you were understood?

Almost everyone said no. And if they said yes, they followed that with rarely.

We humans are such an insecure bunch, aren't we? At our core, we're always wondering...Does my voice count? Here is my heart in words, now don't stomp on it, please. And since many a blogger wants to write beyond blogging, that can be hard. People pleasing rears it's ugly head nearly every time.

--------

The last part of Charrette's tag line says - Fortunately - eventually - all roads lead to Home.

I find comfort in that. I'll certainly have more time in my future, and I hope that time is met with more confidence in both my mothering and my writing.

Perhaps the writing time I long for now is elusive and slippery because I'm not ready for it.

I can't imagine a better place for stretching and warming up than here in my home with these boys, and here in this space, with you.

----------

Just so you know, I just did exactly what my very own tag line says - I wrote to find out what I'm thinking. I answered the following questions of myself- Why the blogging angst? Why am I not confident in my writing? And I found out I'm practicing, and somehow, that makes me care less about people pleasing in this space and in my life. Seems so obvious, but sometimes a girl's gotta blog to find out what she already knows.

I want to stop erasing

Ellie said something recently about addiction and motherhood that I'd like to share because it helped me so much:

"I look at it this way, now: I didn't know how to love that fiercely. It made me so afraid ... afraid I would screw it up, afraid something would happen to them, afraid I could never measure up enough for these two beautiful souls. And for so long, what did I do when I was afraid? I drank. So I was hiding from the fear. I heard, over and over, when I was first getting sober: How could you do that? Don't you love your kids enough to NOT do that? The answer was that I loved them so much I didn't know what to do.

I thought, perversely, I was doing them a favor by erasing myself from the picture a little at a time.

Only in sobriety can I accept myself and all my flaws, and know that the only perfect Mom for them is me. Some days I remember that easily, some days not so much." But at least I know it, now.
~Ellie - One Crafty Mother

~~~~~~~

That same day, I tried reading Ellie's comment to a friend over the phone, as we talked about our own sobriety. I couldn't stop the crying. That's what happens when something you're trying to say is the truth.

When you are doing something so damaging to yourself and your family, when you are trying to erase yourself from the picture, you are so alone and so scared. I was, anyway.

Recently, someone in recovery said I don't know how this is my life. I don't know why I'm at this meeting. I don't know what I'm doing here. I'm just so confused.

Yeah, I get that. But I guess confused is better than numb...or erased.

For me, the beauty of sobriety lies in the fact that I'm seeing through the fog and toward myself now. I'm not numbing the confusion anymore, and although that can be terribly overwhelming and there is so much work to be done, I'm not wandering aimlessly. I'm no longer blinded and hurting in the way that I was because of drinking, so focused on the drink and missing what mattered.

When you quit, the fog doesn't lift up and away easily, but it does settle. So the murky things are still there, around your feet, all the isms of alcoholism. But they are settled. In the quitting it is done. That is not to say there is no work, that would just be a ridiculous thing to say. But the fog, it is below, waiting to be trampled by your very own feet because of the clearing, the ability to see where you're headed.

This settling of my spirit is almost too much for me. Foreign. It's as if the letting go of alcohol flipped a mercy switch, chains and chains and layers and layers poof! gone, just in the quitting itself. Truth! Freedom! Even if I have no idea what I'm doing. Even if right now, I feel like a dry drunk so much of the time.

I can surrender now. I could never truly surrender before.

I have uncomfortable realizations around every corner, every hour. These are the thoughts I used to push away, erasing them frantically glass by glass...

I don't know who I am. Really. I've been 16 different people, depending on who I'm around. Are they all me? Which one is most of me? I don't know....I even do it in the blog world, I'm a part of so many circles. I like to think this is because I truly love all kinds of people and I know that's true, but it's also because I'm a chameleon. Who am I?A people-pleaser at the core so I don't even know what my favorite color is. It's probably my best friend's favorite color. I want to find my own favorite color...

I had an alcoholic personality before I ever even took a drink-fear of intimacy, trust issues... keep it all easy, give it to me now now now, angry, oh so angry, keep everyone happy, go numb...

I was erasing myself a little at a time because of all of those things, the way they were stored at the back of my heart and mind, pressed back, put away. That's why I could only really begin to see them after I quit erasing myself. And you know what? Those things are not that horrible, that impossible, or that painful after all. I was fighting them back with alcohol. And now I see that facing my deeply rooted issues is definitely not as painful as erasing myself from my own family.

Ellie is right. What my boys need and want is me. Even with all of my disheartening realizations, I am their perfect mother, just as I am, sober.

Oh, the grace.

Motherhood did not change me for the better

I was thinking about me and the way I've been living
and I was struck with this awful thought.

Motherhood did not change me for the better.

Yeah, maybe not. Maybe motherhood
and it's repetitive sameness and overwhelming emotions
sent me spinning and I chose
to cope with that in damaging ways...

That may be the hard truth
but there's another one,
a truth in the moments I have been clinging to all along.

No. Motherhood didn't change me
in the ways that I hoped it would,

but...




my boys sure are.

They are my teachers of joy and kindness,
my little mentors on how to love.



And that, is what I'm going to choose to think about.
These beautiful boys are changing me with who they are,
even when motherhood is not and until it does.

~~~~~~~

Mothers are coping everywhere and not talking about it.

What I wrote above is not implying that my boys are the reason I drank, but my mothering days played their part indeed. I've recognized that my drinking took a turn, spiraled to a deeper dependency, when I became a mother. Like I said, that's a hard reality, but a reality all the same.

The truth remains that my boys are the best thing that has ever happened to me. The daily grind is not. Learning to find time for ourselves that is healthy is at the core of the mystery that is finding the balance in motherhood. I don't know that this mystery can ever actually be solved, but there's some freedom in accepting its imbalance. In the daily grind, we handle that imbalance with care or we don't, those are the only two options. When we don't handle it with care, we end up simply coping. I'm on a new journey toward handling this inevitable imbalance with more care.

I don't know exactly how to do that, it's foreign to me, but I'm going to try.

Ours: Part Two

Sunday~ January 17, 2010

He woke himself up with a yelp from the flailing of his out of control two month old limbs. I fought my c-section pain and was up from the chair in a stumbling rush, hurrying to see what was wrong. Through his pumping arms and fists, I saw the damage his sharp little fingernail had done to his face. There was a line of blood that started between his eyes, trailing down under his eye and running over his cherub chubby cheek, finding its resting place in my heart.

Then he cried and cried as I bounced my normally calm and peaceful little boy, a screeching kind of sound coming from him. The sound of a surprise hit of pain.

Oh I'm sorry Oh I'm sorry Oh I'm sorry, I said.

I thought I'd failed him, that's what I thought. Not cutting his fingernails right or some such thing.

And now I look back at myself in that memory, and I'm a bit confused at my own capacity to feel every little thing with him. It was only the beginning and yet I wore myself out with his every movement and experience.

I've only been a mother for about five years, but here I am already a bit calloused, a bit shut down to the constant intense emotion of this gig. Because there is no end to the things that will hurt my children, things that will go missed by me or things caused by me or them, things that will leave me wondering how I could have failed. How did I miss it? He's mine. I'm his mother, how could I?

Now, he turns to me and he shouts NO I WILL NOT as we fight, and his tears are like his blood hitting my heart and yet I'm so mad, so mad, so I just shut it off and try to think clearly about what to do next and how to keep him from thinking he can act this way. Then we fight some more and he kicks and screams until he's just too tired. He gives me a half-hearted apology while I hold him, wiping his tears and going numb because I don't have a clue if I'm doing even one thing right.

I can't and won't always be able to pick him up and hold him. After it, whatever it may be. I suppose this move toward feeling less is a natural step back, so he can grow up. I suppose going numb sometimes is serving its purpose. But here's the thing: I'm afraid of it.

I'm afraid of turning into one of those mothers that shuts down completely, waving her hand in the air like a white flag, rolling her eyes and saying oh I guess they'll be fine, what else can I do? Isn't all this cleaning and laundry and cooking and driving enough? There's just too much to worry about. So she stops feeling. So rarely does she feel that it surprises her family if she finally loses it, crying and rushing off to her room.

Yes, I know her. I know many of her.

I know it. I see it. Because I do it, too. I feel so much, so much...that sometimes I have to just stop. Just go numb for a while.

And it's exhausting. This roller coaster of connection and then swinging to disconnection. This push and this pull.

More than anything, I want to keep feeling for them, keep trying to understand. I want all of their wounds to hit my heart.

But of course, I could not survive that.

Oh yes, there you have it. Yet another of the thousand ways a mother looks to find balance and can't.

The balance of sharing her heart completely or just enough or not at all.

Pick one.

Finding just the right balance is as impossible as sprouting wings and learning to fly.

How did I miss it? He's mine. I'm his mother, how could I not know? That's what I'll say, whatever the balance, that's the thing.

And like that small cut to his head I will wonder, did I do it wrong?

Even if it's not my fault, I'll blame me. Because even now, I watch him sleep and see the way he clenches his jaw, grinding his teeth and I wonder...is he anxious because I'm anxious? And I wonder...is my impatience making him feel like he can never ever do even one thing right?

Paralyzing. Terrifying. Numbing thoughts. Many that have no grounds but creep in.

Those thoughts are there because even though I'm not entirely responsible for his actions today or in ten years or twenty, I still feel so entirely responsible.

I so badly need the thoughts that bring peace, some hope...

This hope is in a balance that I can actually count on, one that I cannot see and would never predict. It is of all things working together, my failings and my strengths, his failings and his strengths, until there is a completion that I never thought possible. A beautiful mess. A person growing up who learns to feel deeply for others even when his mother could not always do the same.

Two small people, growing up to be exactly who they were intended to be, no matter what my failings.

That is my hope, and I know it's all wrapped up in grace.

~~~~~~~

The first post with the title Ours is about the feelings of mixed grief and joy a mother has when first bringing her baby home. You can find that here.

Ours

I can't. That's what I thought.

I can't.

We pulled in the driveway over four years ago, me in the back seat with this new foreign person, aching in every way. And I thought those words. I thought, I can't.

I asked Ryan to take the baby in without me, to introduce him to the dog without the excitement of me, the dog's everything, in the picture. So I stood outside and shivered in the heat alone, looking around at everything being different than it had been just a few days before, all overly bright and textured from the pain pills. Standing there in my suddenly roomy maternity shirt, I shivered. Empty.

Ryan came out and said everything was going fine. The dog sniffed the baby and the baby slept. There were no big events as I had imagined.

I walked up the steps, not quickly because of the surgery, and passed through the door. I looked down at the sleeping child in the car seat. Our child. My child. In our house. My house.

I walked slow circles in our tiny living room, trying to figure out what to do. My Mom and my husband said that I should take a nap, but I don't do naps. I just nodded and repeated over and over that they should get me if the baby needed to eat, and I disappeared into our room, knowing I wouldn't be able to sleep. I sat down, frozen and staring, thinking and thinking.

The baby, I thought.

Our baby.

My baby.

Our life.

My life.

Different. Changed.

It was all new and foreign and big and too much. What was ours and mine and we and us was over and done and final and past.

There was a new ours and a new us that I didn't yet know and so it scared me.

I sat on the bed and shook with fear and tears like never before. Until I was empty. And then I called for him, my husband. The we from before. I told him the truth. That I was sad and alone and hurting and scared. That this wasn't anything like the movies or the books and that I was guilty and ashamed for feeling so empty and alone. I told him that I didn't know what to think of the fact that my life would never ever even once be the same again. That I was grieving that. That I was sorry. Sorry that I didn't know I would need to do that. Sorry that I wasn't prepared for it. Sorry that I felt sorry.

Then that tiny boy, that little sleeping guy opened his big blue eyes and asked to eat with screeching sounds. And I loved him deeply despite my shaking and shivering. So I sat for the first time on the bed that was once ours and mine with this new baby on top of that macaroni shaped pillow thing that everyone said I needed to have. I struggled to get him all lined up and open-mouthed to eat.

I struggled. And I loved him enough to share something that was mine and ours and now his.

Me.

~~~~~~

Tonight, over four years later, he was pounding on the door on those same steps I walked up slowly when we first brought him home. After playing outside with Daddy and his brother and the dog, he was screeching and wanting me. He cried Mama! Mama! until I ran for him and opened the door. I was there like before and I asked him, what sweetie? why the fuss?

Mama, I needed you. My hands are cold.

So I pulled off his mittens and I covered his hands with my own warm ones. Because they are mine and they are his and they are ours.

And I can.



This post is linked to Blog Nosh magazine's HOPE carnival sponsored by Tide's Loads of Hope, an amazing effort to bring hope to those in distress. The call is to write a post about HOPE and link up for a chance to be featured. This was the inspiration for the above post, as I thought about the times I've felt hopeless and discovered hope in the midst of the fog through the beautiful things of grace, such as the blue eyes of my first baby boy.

This post is also linked to Tuesdays Unwrapped at Chatting at the Sky, a chance to write a post about the beauty in everyday moments and experiences.

Present Tense

Wednesday~November 25, 2009

Does it seem that being present is something that comes easy for me? I write here about the beauty in the mundane, the joy of having children amidst the backdrop of chaos, and I mean what I say. But maybe it appears that being present, especially with my boys, is a gift of mine. The truth is that I struggle immensely with it, this ability to remain in the moment, focused.

I know I also write about my struggles with depression every now and again, and occasionally I write about actually running out the door to escape the whining and mess, but for the most part my posts are goodness and light, and that might make it seem that I'm constantly in that state of being present, of seeing through my heart's eyes.

I was interviewed over on A Design So Vast on this subject, hence my thoughts here today. The questions got me thinking about how I come across and why, and reminded me that it is such a lovely thing, saying it like it is, answering questions with raw honesty. It connects us when we confess openly what we struggle with, and maybe even why. Not all the gory (how DO you spell gory?) details need sharing, but a simple expression of our struggle can free someone else to share their own, feel more known, more normal, less alone. And that's good stuff.

You can check out the interview Present Tense by visiting my lovely friend at A Design So Vast.

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