parenting Archives - Page 20 of 44

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Hospitality {9}

We are having company for dinner tonight, which means I am in a mad scramble to make it look like no one lives here. I have almost finished the lasagna but the floor still needs to be mopped and the kitchen is a wreck and there’s an entire corner of the living room where random Christmas trimmings have been collecting since the morning of December 25.

I look up at the clock where the minutes keep on ticking by and I realize that I never fixed that tear in the couch. I notice that I don’t have enough matching dishes and I’m completely out of napkins. I have forgotten all about making the brownies for dessert but I have become acutely aware of the fact that my children still have not learned to flush the toilet in the hall.

Anxious thoughts flood my mind. I don’t know what to do next. I can’t think. Then the children stomp through and demand my time with comments and questions that seem so menial in the light of my greater responsibility. “I had it first!” “He hit me!” “Can we have a snack?”

I feel anger welling up. Why are they bothering me now? Can’t they see I’m busy? “I don’t have time for this!” I snap. “Go find something to do!”

But what I really mean is, you are too much of a bother. You are getting in the way of the little show I’m trying to pull off. You are messing up the mirage that we have it all together.

Why do I do this to myself? I think as I mop the floor. Every time we have company over, it’s the same way. I fall into a trap of trying to be perfect. I suddenly become dissatisfied with my home and my children and my husband and especially myself. My husband can never be helpful enough and the children can never play quietly enough and I can never do enough to make myself look much better than I really am.

It’s the old hypocrite in me coming out to play. I talk a big talk about grace, but on Friday nights when company is coming over, I don’t want it. I want a clean house. I want to keep up appearances. I will worry about all that sin that is death after the company goes home and no one cares if I have dirty dishes in my sink.

After every one goes home, I will apologize to my husband and the kids and say things like, “I’m sorry I was a little cranky,” because saying “I’m sorry I was a little cranky” is easier than saying, “I’m sorry I yelled at you” or “I’m sorry I didn’t have time for you” or “I’m sorry I loved a clean kitchen sink more than you.”

I will say it sincerely enough, though, as if I learned something. But really, all I want is to justify the tyrannical behavior that got me what I wanted. I acted unlovingly toward my husband and children but I got a clean house. It seems like a fair enough trade.

But of course, it isn’t. Trading grace for works is the ransom of a birthright for a pot of stew. It is a cheap exchange that leaves everything around me tainted no matter how hard I clean.

Today, getting the house clean in time seemed to be more important than love or grace or any of those things that tend to leave dirty footprints on my floor. Today, checking off the to-do list was more important than being honest and real and kind.

But on this beautiful day, God did not leave me in my sin. He reminded me of grace. Deep down, I know that a friend will not care if my house is clean or not. I certainly don’t care if hers is. In fact, I don’t mind if there are a few crumbs on the floor or dust on the windowsills because I can understand that. That makes me feel right at home and I love her all the more because she trusts me enough to know that it is okay for me to see her smudges.

And I am nothing if not a little smudgy. I fall short just like everyone else. I understand that, I think, until it’s time for me to be on the receiving end of grace. Then I don’t like it. Then, I want to work it out so I can give grace without having to swallow any of it myself.

But it’s not enough to give grace. I must receive it. I must let people in to the mess and the brokenness and trust that they will love me all the more for my weakness. I must hold on to the promise that Christ will indeed be more glorified through the broken pot than the whitewashed vessel.

On this beautiful day, I got to be a broken pot, an open door, a woman acquainted with grace.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: The Stuff of Shadows {8}

The view sold this house. I walked into the living room, newly pregnant with the news of twins, and was captivated by what I saw in the window. On that crystal-blue day, I could see the rise and fall of the Olympic Mountains and the calm tranquility of the Pacific Ocean as it worked its way through the fingers of the Puget Sound. I could see trees where eagles sit and a valley hued in purples and blues. I could not take my eyes away long enough to notice the mint-green paint in the kitchen or the outdated gold light fixture above the table. It did not really matter when the house came with a view like that.

Nearly five years later, I have not grown tired of looking out my window at all that can be seen of this world. It is comforting and peaceful to be able to see so far, to know all that can be seen in miles and miles of looking.

But today, the view was hidden. The fog unfolded off the ocean like the fabric of a veil, keeping common things from sight, hiding both the known and the unknown. The valley below us descended into deep uncertainty.

Today, I was living behind a veil.

All my certainty faded away and I felt a little bit like a child, longing to see in the dark. I wanted the comfort of living on a mountaintop, but I was in the valley.

Some seasons of motherhood are like that, when the fog clouds my vision and I can only see in vague shapes and shadows. My eyes strain to focus, to deduce clarity from the dimness. But it is not there.

I wonder, some days, if I’m walking in the right direction, or if I’m making any progress. When the children fall into the same old fight or I find myself muddled by some unconquered sin, when my mind is filled with more questions than answers and I can’t even imagine how all this is going to turn out right, I wonder. How can I keep walking where I cannot see?

On those dark and uncertain days, when I cannot see where the next step leads and I feel uncertain in my footing, it is good to know that my destination is secure. I grab onto that when I can’t grab on to anything else. I am heir to a promise that one day, I will see clearly. One day I will know without shadows, understand without doubt, and see from one limitless horizon to the other.

But for now, when the fog settles in and I cannot walk where I feel most secure, I rest in the knowledge that what I know to be true does not change just because I can’t see it. The mountains are still there. The ocean is still there. And God is still there. Sometimes, His face is hidden so I can see His hand, leading and guiding me over the unfamiliar terrain and around the obstacles I cannot see.

I look before me and I cannot see the road. But it is okay to walk where I cannot see because it is not my eyes I trust.

I trust in the One who sets my feet upon a rock.

I trust in the One who makes shadows flee.

I trust in the One who tears the veil.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: I Have a Little Girl {7}

He was a very old man. Hunched over and faded, he looked like a wisp, a memory, an hourglass whose sands had almost all slipped from one side of eternity to the other.

My little baby was sleeping in my arms, young and pink and new. He saw her. Slowly, he shuffled toward me on the arm of an aide who looked like she wished she could do something more than walk the hallways with an old man.

“Is this your baby?” he asked in a deep voice that still held some of its strength.

“Yes, it is. Would you like to see her?” I uncovered a bit of the blanket to reveal the dark hair and curled lashes of my child.

He looked in but didn’t say anything. I wondered if he could see or if his eyes had already abandoned him.

After a minute, he said from some far-off place, “I have a little girl.” Then turning to his aide he asked, “Is this my little girl?”

“No, it’s not Charles,” she said, her face softening to him.

He nodded slowly. “I have a little girl,” he repeated.

“She’s all grown up now, remember?” the young woman pressed his arm and smiled.

“Yes, yes,” his voice trailed off.

“What’s her name?” I asked, then immediately regretted it.

Charles peered up at me but didn’t see. He was looking for the memory he couldn’t find.

“What’s her name…?” It was not there. Shame filled his eyes in hot pools of tears. Desperately, he looked at the dark-haired woman by his side. “I…I…I don’t remember her name.”

But he remembered enough to know he that he should.

This woman did not know his daughter, not really. “Isn’t it Susie?” she offered. “The one who came to visit you last week?”

“Susie,” he tried the name on his tongue and then looked at my daughter to see if it fit.

“I’m sure she’s beautiful,” I offered.

Something in Charles changed. His eyes lit up with old light and he smiled at me like a brand-new daddy. “She’s perfect. Don’t tell her momma but I think she’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”

“I’m sure her momma feels the same way,” I grinned.

Charles rocked back and forth like he could almost press into the memory.

“Would you like to hold her?” I asked.

“Naw,” he said sheepishly. “I might drop her.” But he reached out his curled fingers and stroked her hand. “I have a little girl,” he whispered. He could not take his eyes from her so he could not see the tears in mine.

Some days, I think that parenting is my undoing. It is not. It is my becoming.

From the moment I knew I held a child in my womb, I was changed. Something in my heart opened that could never be put back. I was altered. Every woman who has ever known she was a mother, whether her arms ever held a baby or not, knows it is true. A mother can never again be anything but a mother. It stays there, in the deepest part of her being like a healing scar, a memory of being all at once undone and all at once completed.

Years from now, when I hold another baby, it will be my baby. When I long to go back in time, it will be to these days. I will think of my children when they do not think of me. I will look on their grown-up faces and drift back in time to a place where they are all with me, like before, and I will long to have them with me still.

These are the beautiful days that define me, the beautiful days of my making, the beautiful days that are mine all because I have a baby girl.

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