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My House: A War Zone

It is 8:42 pm, and my house looks like a bomb went off. Inside-out and mismatched socks litter the living room floor, library books sprawl lazily across the couches, and thirty-two fingerprinty water glasses gather for a conference on the kitchen counters. The dishwasher needs filling and the laundry needs folding and five sets of teeth need to be inspected before they are sent off to bed.

When the last child has asked the last question before finally acquiescing to bedtime, I stand in my living room in a state of shell-shocked exhaustion, assessing the damages. Every surface of my home looks like it has suffered a direct hit, and I feel responsible, as if my home wouldn’t look so much like Ground Zero if I was just…better at this.

I didn’t keep up very well today. The house looks like a war zone, I sigh.

It looks like a war zone because it is a war zone.

The words crowd out my thoughts before I can stop them. It is a war zone, and you are at war.

I gasp, because I have forgotten. In my self-criticizing, I have forgotten all that I have done today to raise up a mighty little army and to equip them for battle. Now, at the end of the day, my house reflects the effort that has gone in to the more important task of preparing my children for war.

It’s just that it doesn’t seem like war when I hold my children on my lap and sit with them at their desks and serve them at the table. But it is. I do not like to look into their sweet, innocent little faces and think that they are engaged in a battle for their souls. But they are. I do not like to think that our enemy will stoop so low as to rob the cradle. But he does.

It is a war, and I must spend my days pouring truth into my babies, demonstrating love, and fighting against sin—both mine and theirs—because I only get one chance to arm them well. Already the enemy is noticing weaknesses, looking for chinks, and hoping I’m too busy cleaning the kitchen to notice them myself.

But I know that one day, they’ll have to face him alone. One day, I won’t be there to gird them up. So every day, we’re hauling out the armor, messing with swords, and building up defenses.

It makes an awful mess of the living room.

But then, war isn’t pretty. It is messy and exhausting. It requires so much focus, dedication, and perseverance that other things simply cannot get done. We don’t always have time to put the tanks back where we found them because we are just too busy keeping them loaded.

Some days, it’s all we can do to make sure everyone makes it out alive.

If my house looks like a war zone on those days, then let it be. Those are shields and swords littering the living room floor, not sippy cups and Nerf guns. This is a battleground, and I am raising an army.

Today, it just happens to look like it.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood, #? I have so lost track of numbers.

Ordinary Days

I got married in my home church in Wisconsin on a day in January when the sky was blue and biting. The lake was frozen solid and dotted with shanties the sturgeon fishermen had hauled out and stocked with beer as soon as the ice was thick enough to hold a pickup truck.

I stood at the back of the church in a dress that could have been warmer with my brothers on either side. They were both as tall as my dad, or taller, and looked so much like him, it made my grandmother catch her breath because when she saw them, she could almost swear she was looking into the face of the son she lost so many years before.

It should have been my dad on my arm that day.

But it wasn’t.

I had my brothers instead, and it was fitting and right because we had been down so many other roads together. I wanted them there beside me the way I wanted them beside me when my father slipped into eternity without saying goodbye. We stood together when we looked into his coffin and we stood together then, stepping awkwardly down a too-narrow aisle in time to the music. On that bitter cold day in January, they gave me away in place of my dad to a man my father would never meet.

It was hard not to feel the loss. There’s something about a bride walking down an aisle without her daddy that makes people blink fast and swallow hard.

My dad with my older brother and me on just another ordinary day.

Dads should be there on days like that, on the red-letter days when the calendar screams of life-changing events like high school graduations and college commencements and birthdays and marriages and babies and the news of twins growing inside.

My dad missed every single one of those.

And I miss him on those days.

But I also miss him on the brown-paper bag days, the ordinary days filled with a million insignificant events like scraped knees and bedtimes and cold cereal mornings.

Dads should be there on days like that.

Because life is short. I learned that fast and young when a snowy winter road took my dad before I even had a chance to say good-bye. I watched him go, that morning, you know? I watched him go and I didn’t say good-bye because I thought he’d be back.

I missed him hard, at first, like some piece of me had been cut out and replaced with cold air that kind of numbed but mostly burned. I missed him every day and in so many different ways, I didn’t think I’d ever stop grieving because I kept finding new ways to do it.

Many years later, when I looked back on a grief-journey that spans more years than my father ever lived, I realized I have learned something along the way. It is something so important, I wish I could grab you around the shoulders, dads, and make you hear it.

Someday, you’re going to slip right out of your body and your kid is going to be left grappling with the loss. It’s kind of strange how one soul can be free and another weighed down by the same event. You will be gone, and they will be here, remembering.

Do you know what they’re going to miss the most?

I do.

I want to tell it to you because it’s important, and I’m a kid who lost a dad so you need to hear it because one day it might be your kid who’s learned it, and by then it will be too late.

More than anything, they’re going to miss the ordinary days.

They’re going to miss those brown-paper bag days, the days that drone on and on and you kind wish you could fast forward because they’re all so much the same. They’re going to miss the days you thought didn’t matter.

Turns out, those are the days that matter the most.

You know those soccer tournaments you manage to make it to? Those are important. So are the graduations and the weddings and everything in between.

But they are not the most important thing.

What is most important is all the countless minutes filled with nothing much but you and them and the span of time between waking and sleeping when you say and do the mundane things that make them feel loved and important and a part of you.

Anybody can show up at a wedding.

But your daughter is going to remember how you talked to her at breakfast.

Anybody can cheer at a playoff game.

But your son is going to remember what you did when you came home from work.

Anybody can drive the family to church on Sunday.

But your kid is going to remember what you said when he messed up, whether or not you showed up, and if you lived up to all you said you believed.

Your daughter will think of you on Christmas, it’s true, but she will miss you most on some Monday morning when the sky is perfect for flying and the smell of an engine makes her think of all the hours she spent in the hangar, watching you work. She will think of you when a wood stove crackles and someone makes popcorn late at night. It will be stale jelly beans and Risk games and badly-sung hymns and mustached smiles and grey-blue eyes that search out the hurt and motorcycle roars and coffee first thing in the morning that will make her wish she could bring you back, just for a second.

It’s easy to think it’s enough to be there for the big stuff. But I’m here to tell, dads, it’s not the big stuff she’ll remember, and it’s not the big stuff she’ll miss.

It’s the ordinary stuff, the stuff you never thought twice about because it was just life.

Hear me, dads–that’s the part of your life that is everything to her.

I know.

I think of it today because it’s Father’s Day, one of those red-letter days when dads get new ties and handmade paperweights and everyone is together because they’re supposed to be, and it’s good.

But tomorrow is Monday. There’s Wheat Chex for breakfast and groggy kids to get up and a long day before you come home again. It’s tempting to slide a bit because there’s a good show on TV and you’re tired and after all, you just made a memory on Sunday, if you believe holidays make the best memories.

I’m telling you, they don’t.

Give your kids Monday. Give them Tuesday too. Give them all the ordinary minutes you can, dads. Because one day, you’ll be gone, and those are exactly the minutes they’ll miss the most.

They will miss your ordinary.

Give it to them.

My dad enjoying an ordinary day with my younger brother

The Very Worst Pianist

The building was crawling with parents and children who had all come to that one place on that one day for an annual event that tests the skills of young pianists like my oldest daughter.

It was our first year there, and we were lost.

Insufficient maps sent us weaving through the building like ants carrying sacrificial bits of sheet music in our hands. Fragments of scales and bits of well-rehearsed compositions floated up from the rooms while everyone waited in crammed hallways for the next child to play.

I had no idea there were so many musically inclined children in all of Washington. “This piano thing is really catching on,” I whispered to Faith as we squeezed our way through jutting elbows and perfumed women and clusters of children who wished they were still in bed.

She nodded anxiously, hugging her red music folder to her chest.

I grabbed her around the shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “It’s going to be fine,” I said, even though I had no idea why room 5B wasn’t next to room 5A and it was very likely she was going to be late to her first event.

“Yep,” she said simply.

She was one brave girl, and I was proud of her. I figured I was the proudest mother of all the proud mothers in that place, and some of those women were acting like the mom of Mozart.

I was not the mom of Mozart, and I knew it. I was the mom of the very worst pianist in that place.

Yep. The very worst.

The night before, and not a moment sooner, I realized how unprepared Faith was for this competition. She sat on her bed, shaking with sobs, and told me all about it. She didn’t have her music memorized. She couldn’t play her classical piece well, even with the music, and the contemporary piece needed so much work, it wouldn’t be ready to play if she had a whole week to practice.

“It can’t be that bad,” I said. “Why don’t you play them for me.”

She did, and it really was that bad.

It was so bad, she couldn’t get through a single line without a mistake or ten. Halfway through the second piece, just when things were getting interesting, she broke down and started crying all over again.

“See?” she said.

I did see. I saw how I had completely failed to help her with her piano. I saw how I had been so distracted by house repairs and a kitchen remodel and all the work involved with moving that I had totally neglected her upcoming piano competition.

In fact, that was the first time I’d listened to her play her pieces. It was the first time I had sat down with her and looked at her music and made sure she was ready. Did I know she was playing a song called Skeleton Bones? Nope. Did I know she had to brush up on her scales and chords because she was going to be tested on them? Nope.

I had totally blown it.

To complicate things, she had blown it too. She had failed to practice even though her teacher reminded her every week. She had rushed through her pieces and hadn’t worked on the tricky parts because the weather has been grand and it’s much more fun to play outside.

And she doesn’t like scales.

“We messed this up,” I admitted.

“I know!” she sobbed. “I feel terrible about it!”

I felt terrible about it too. My daughter’s eyes were red and her face was splotchy and she was crying uncontrollably on her bed because of it. But there wasn’t much that could be done about it with less than twelve hours to go before the competition.

“I think you have two choices,” I told her. “You can stay home, and we’ll try to be better prepared next time, or you can go and do your best.”

She sniffled loudly.

“Unfortunately, your best is not very good right now.” I thought it was best to be honest. “You’re probably going to make a lot of mistakes. You know that. But you can go and play what you can, and maybe you can even learn something.”

Faith nodded. “I think I’ll go,” she said, and promptly started crying again.

“You don’t have to,” I said, secretly hoping she would change her mind. I mean, it was really, really bad. I could just imagine her bursting into tears in front of the judges and suffering permanent psychological damage because of it.

“No, I’m going to go,” she said, letting the tears stream down her face.

It was one of those instances when I wished I could say, “It’s not going to be as bad as you think.”

But I couldn’t say that.

So I hugged her instead and said, “You know, Faith, very few people get to be the best. If you think about it, most people are just average. They’re just okay.

“And every once in a while, you get to be the worst. Every once in awhile, you get to be the person who makes everyone else look good.”

She nodded.

“You’re just going to have to be the best person-who-makes-everyone-else-look-good you can be.”

Faith grinned. “I will.”

The next day, she came out of the first competition and smiled. “Well, that didn’t go very well,” she laughed. “I don’t think I’ll get a ribbon.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” she shrugged, and I marveled at her, this kid who could mess up with more grace than her mother ever could.

“It was actually kind of fun!”

We went through the day like that, with me waiting in the hallways with other parents, listening to the sounds of perfectly-played pieces and knowing it was not my kid playing those notes. Every once in awhile, a dissonant sound was played, or a child tripped across the keys and fell flat, and all the parents in the hall looked at each other and thought, “I hope that’s not my kid.”

Except for me. I smiled and thought to myself, “Don’t worry, everyone. That’s my girl.”

Faith, playing at her first piano recital

At the very end of the day, I was allowed to go in with her and listen to her play her final piece. The child right before her was a maestro. His fingers looked like they were made of ivory. Faith leaned over and whispered loudly, “Mom! He’s really good!”

Then it was her turn. She sat down at the bench and began to play, but it wasn’t long before the music was lost and she couldn’t remember what came next. She growled at the keyboard in frustration and punched at keys that were not the right ones.

We’ve gotta work on the growling, I thought.

Deep inside, my stomach flipped. I couldn’t breathe. I thought about my mother-in-law, who paid for all of her lessons, and my sister-in-law who had been teaching Faith for nearly two years. I thought about the mother of another one of my sister-in-law’s students who was sitting in the same room with us listening to my daughter botch the whole thing, and I looked at my daughter who was in serious jeopardy of bursting into tears and I did what most moms would do: I thought about myself.

My failed parenting was shining through loud and clear, and I wanted to sink right into my folding chair.

Just then, Faith managed to finish the piece with one triumphant chord that mostly sounded right. Everyone exhaled and clapped respectfully.

We all stood up. I turned to say something conciliatory to Faith, but she was already running up to the child who played before her. “You played really, really well,” she said to him, her face shining. “I mean, really well. You did a great job.”

The other boy look surprised. He couldn’t say the same thing back to her so he mumbled, “Thank you,” and looked down at his hands. Faith skipped back to my side. “He was so good,” she said.

For the hundredth time that day, I marveled at Faith, a child whose first thought after a performance like that was how well the other kid played, and how much she couldn’t wait to tell him so. She was not proud of her own performance, but she wasn’t ashamed of it either. She knew she had done her best, such as it was, and that was good enough for her.

It certainly was good enough for me, although it stunned me to see something good in her that I find it so lacking in myself.

“I’m proud of you,” I said, “really, super-duper proud of you. I couldn’t be more proud of you if you played all your songs perfectly.”

“Hum!” she sang happily.

“You’re the best person-who-makes-everyone-else-look-good I’ve ever seen.”

She smiled.

“I just wish I knew where you learned it.”

“Um–from Dad.”

Ah. That explains it.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: 41

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