Whether I’m hiding behind my kids or not. Whether I’m tired, wraggedy, or manic.

He sees me.

Not my undone laundry or my messy house. Not my fraying door mat or my futon with the chocolate milk stains.

He sees me.

Beyond the color of my hair or the size of my waist. Over the grocery lists of immediate needs I rattle off to Him every morning. Behind the worry.

He sees me.

Inside my inside dreams, my secret hopes; at the crux of where mommy meets wife and woman.

He sees me.

Over the rim of my computer screen, behind my blog posts and inside the head that spins these words in circles.

He sees me.

In the hard watches of the night when I rock her and ache and slip lower and lower down the lip of the rocker. Alone. Or so it seems.

He sees me.

When I scream with my face set in a shrill whisper at the boys to drop what they are doing and take heed, ’cause mama will be on the war path if baby girl wakes when there’s a chance of some more sleep at 6am.

He sees me.

As I scrounge for a few minutes to read a single Bible verse; to listen to a chapter on my phone as I soothe and rock and repeat.

He sees me.

Beyond how I see myself. Beyond my lens, beyond my point-and-shoot camera, beyond my life of diapers, juggling and writing. Beyond my homesickness and current dearth of frequent flier miles. Beyond my accent, my zip code and my passport.

He, and He alone, truly sees me.

And oh dear friend, I hope you know He sees You too.

His eye is on the sparrow
and I know He watches me.

Edited from the archives

::

I think motherhood should come with a super hero cape and a cheerleader.
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There’s all these things you used to love about yourself and your life. Those late afternoon naps. Those spontaneous movie nights. The tidy house and pretty things that could easily break. Lots of pretty things. Unbroken, pretty things.

Uninterrupted meals, sleep, bathroom breaks.

Children arrive and blow through what used to be your routine.

They huff and they puff and they blow your life down.

You wake up at 2am because someone calls you mother. Except they don’t say the word, they only offer the wail and you find yourself stumbling out of bed, groping for sense and the nightlight and in that moment it’s over.

The old you is left in the wake of washing out bottles and warming milk and walking 500 miles of carpet to be the one who wakes up next to new.

I’ve walked and I’ve rocked and I’ve learned to run to keep up with a nearly-seven-year-old and some days I can’t catch my breath.

Some days I miss the Lisa-Jo I used to be. But those days are rarer now than they were when Jackson was just 5 months old. I’m committed to being their mother.

There were days under the lilac jacaranda when I shook my head and couldn’t understand how I’d lost myself in the wash and spin and rinse and repeat of new rhythms I couldn’t find my groove to.

I used to dance when I was still single. Give me a bass beat and a girl’s night out and I would lose myself in the music.  I could rock myself to sleep on the beat of a night spent devoted to nothing but two girlfriends, mushroom hamburgers and french fries at Ed’s diner.

And when I was just a two-month-old mother I asked a friend when it would happen, the part where the baby adored me.

When the exhaustion and frustration and feelings of incompetence would give way to adoration. When the mini-me would want nothing but to declare his devotion to me.

Lindsey looked at me over her own sleeping babe and told it straight like mother’s do best, “It’s because of the exhaustion and the rocking and the soothing that he will come to love you. The only way is through.”

So I rocked and walked and soothed and wrangled my own confusion. And still I stood with one foot in the life I thought I loved as I waited for the baby I’d lived to start to love me.

Nonsense.

I lived a lot of nonsense before life started to make sense again.

But that’s because the breaking up can be a slow process.

And it takes time to find a new rhythm.

Micah led me and Zoe spun me around when I arrived.

Some days my head is still spinning from the rock and roll beauty of motherhood. The way it gut punch takes your breath away with the sheer exhilaration – I grow babies, hear me roar.

I spin and spin and there in the distance is the small unremarkable speck of who I used to be.

I wave.

And the dance carries me on.

For those of you in the midst of the whirl and swirl and rhythm and rhyme of motherhood – I’d love to give you this: my wee, free eBook –> The Cheerleader for Tired Moms {just click to download}.

Much hard, tired, happy love,

Lisa-Jo

Click here to download my free eBook, “The Cheerleader for Tired Moms: A Collection of Posts from the Gypsy Mama” {please give it a few moments to download… cheering for you!}

Most of it’s wonderful.  We’ll have hours over late night coffee dates to talk about that. I’m already planning all the desserts I want to learn to make so we can linger over our plates and that kind of delicious conversation.

But sweetheart, there’s some other stuff that comes with girlhood too. Some stuff I’d rather you heard first from me. It’s stuff that isn’t as scary if we say it out loud and don’t let it sneak up on us.

My love, there will always be girls who are mean.

And you won’t outgrow it. There will always be mean girls. One day you’ll be thirty seven and reading the long line of stories that mean girls have left in their wake.

But daughter, that doesn’t mean we hide our hearts. That doesn’t mean we find a tower and Rapunzel ourselves away from the world.

No darling, it means that we learn to be braver than the mean girls. We out-love them.  That is the secret weapon. To pour on the unexpected love.  To meet them with open arms and mind, knowing that meanness is what bleeds from scars at their most raw.

Meanness is a symptom, not a condition.

And when they want to hurt you with their words, I will teach you how to hold up the shield of faith and firm belief that Jesus has declared you good and beloved. That you are precious and ransomed – His life for yours. There is nothing insignificant about you.

I will wrap my words, His promises and both our lives around you.

You were made to have friends, sweetheart. You were not made to be alone. This is a Jesus body we belong to and some days you’ll feel like the heart and soul and other days like just a bit of dried skin on the elbow and that’s OK.

It’s never a bad thing to be reminded that the whole world does not revolve around you.

But on the days when you feel like an outsider, on the days when your best friend stops talking to you, on the days when everyone gets invited to the sleepover and you don’t, on the days when you wonder if you fit in –

on those days, Zoe, I will remind you that love never quits.

Love always believes the best

And that sometimes the benefit of the doubt is the most precious gift we can give anyone.

I will treat your bruised heart with chocolate brownies, a tall glass of cold milk and The Princess Bride – yes, I’m certain it will still be my favorite movie even a decade from now.

And then I will send you back out into the fray, my love.

I will always send you back because friendship is worth fighting for. Women need one another. And if we give up at girlhood, what chance do we have during the minivan driving years?

Friendship is all or nothing Zoe.

A month ago you stood up and walked for the first time. Since then you’ve fallen often. But you set determined hands to the floor, tilt forward, push back up again and take the next step.

Never stop getting back up again, darling.

It’s the only way to keep moving forward to all that life waiting for you.

::

I think motherhood should come with a super hero cape and a cheerleader.
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Some days when I see ugly, hard, hurting places in the world I want to counter them with beauty.

I want to bury my head in piles of freshly mowed grass and just bathe in the tender spring sunshine. I want to curl up in our king size bed between two softly snoring boys and let their peace wash over me. I want to eat chocolate frosting right out of the tub and call my brothers in South Africa and catch up for hours.

I want to find the everything that is true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable, excellent and praiseworthy and just wallow in those things. And I don’t think they need to be especially religious things to fall into that category. A favorite book that traces the character of courage; a favorite sweater that wraps me around with memories; a song that comes onto the radio and serenades the afternoon with a tribute to the ordinary -

a carrot top who can barely walk
With a sippy cup of milk
A little blue eyed blonde with shoes on wrong
‘Cause she likes to dress herself. ~ LoneStar

A baby girl taking her first steps and boys who hug so hard we all land in a laughing heap on the ground. Chocolate covered raisins and frothy cups of hot chocolate. Friends Stateside who speak Afrikaans.

I want to drink in the good and remember that the Light of the world is not set on a dimmer switch. He blazes. Always.

Give me eyes that I might see.

The tenderness, the compassion the mercy. The meeting of minds to circle our social media wagons around our children. The blazing comet that lights up the Internet on nights when good triumphs over evil.

I want to dance. I want to dance underneath a sky of fireworks blazing His goodness across the vast expanse of seeming dark. Because morning is coming and we are the morning people.

We might have nightmares, thrash around in the dark and grope towards a night light. But we are the destined-for-morning people.

We are the sunshine creeping over the edge of a dark rock rolled away people. We are the gaping hole in the side of a hill defied by the Light people. We are the dew early rise with the Gardner people.

We are the Sunday morning people.

We are the promises of new mercies every morning people. And those promises are our flaming torch in the midnight hour. They blaze a trail for our confused hearts and blind feet. They carve a way out of the darkness when there seems to be none. And they lead us towards the horizon.

And the whole universe testifies that morning will come.

As surely as the earth turns on its axle and rotates around the sun. As surely as the sun burns at a temperature of 13,600,000 kelvins at its core. As surely as its light travels to Earth in 8 minutes and 19 seconds to crack through the clouds and paint my son’s eyelashes golden.

Morning will come.

We must not become so accustomed to the dark, so confined by its four walls, that we doubt the morning. But even if we do, even if we lose our sight and our will to keep walking forward, the morning sends a Messenger back to find us – to bring us out into the light.

He is the DaySpring from on High – all light, all days, all morning springs from Him.

He will lead us tenderly, blindly forward, one foot at a time, until we feel the first flush of warmth on our cheeks. And eyelids swollen shut with weeping will be bathed in sunshine. And we will be the reflected glory of the Son who saved us.

The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death a
a light has dawned. Isaiah 9:2.

Amen.

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.

::

I think motherhood should come with a super hero cape and a cheerleader.
My {free} ebook The Cheerleader for Tired Moms might be the next best thing.
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Her – over there – with the easily strung together words or the pretty blog or the stylish shoes or the way with making sense of motherhood.

We see the 4×6 snapshot and call it life. That tiny printout. We don’t look beyond its paper thin borders. We throw our hands up and shrug our shoulders and mutter, “Well, if I had what she had I could do it too.” I could be enjoying my own Polaroid moment.

I could write if I had the time.

I could craft if I had the supplies.

I could have a book deal if I had the connections.

I could bake if I had a baby sitter.

I could make music if I didn’t live in an apartment.

I could make a difference if my blog was bigger.

You know how it goes.

But here’s the footnote we too often, too easily, too breezily ignore: what she’s doing didn’t come easy to her either.

Promise.

She had to fight for it. She had to dig in teeth and tenaciously refuse to give up on what she wanted.

She had to carve out time, space, energy, determination, play dates, juggled appointments, budgets, and every other un-photogenic reality to make it this far down the path of the dream she’s been chasing.

There are no short cuts.

There is only through.

Through the hard seasons when you have no clue what you’re doing as a mother. When the baby is still an alien to you almost as scary as all the other mothers who seem to never need sleep, sympathy or chocolate.

Through the jobs that don’t have the word “dream” anywhere in the title, but pay the bills with honor.

Through the heart breaking daycare drop-offs.

Through the long commutes and desperate prayers and bad radio stations.

Through the online classes or the mentorship programs or the writing workshops or the tutoring or the practicing, practicing, practicing.

Through the lonely nights.

Through the working all day and writing late into the night.

Through the empty comment boxes.

Through the questioning it all.

No picture can do those thousands of words justice.

Through is hard and lonely. But keep going anyway.

Let’s not compare. Especially not our beginnings to someone else’s middle. No, let’s not compare.

Let’s cheer instead.

::

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Tenderly.

There is crisp, pink tissue paper and tiny fingers. A small foot. A pair of dimples.

Cherry blossom love kisses the sky and my daughter’s cheeks. My daughter. There you are. One full year of memories. All those midnight hours and aching bones and swaying shoulders and desperate prayers and spilling gratitude and tentative attempts at sitting, crawling, walking away from me.

You always turn back toward me at the last minute and I cup your heart in mine as your face burrows into my neck.

I unwrap the gift that this generous God has saved till last. Again. He surprises me with His ridiculous goodness. The day serenades – a love song chorus of dappled pink trees, South African accents, strawberries and life.

It’s right there on the plate – in fifteen different languages. One of them home to me.

Lewe.

Life.

My tiny daughter – everything about you exclaims this truth.

And even if I were deaf I would still hear the day proclaiming in a thousand different tongues that God is good and He brings good gifts. He unwraps life alongside me on a rundown deck in Northern Virginia on the most perfect March 19th.

He’s been doing that since I first promised Peter I would never want to have children.

And then again when I was certain I would never want to mother a daughter.

He’s at it again today. Patiently waiting for me to unwrap more layers still of His goodness. How could I have known? How could the desperate teenager orphaned from her womanhood have known that He had life waiting for me on a spring morning in the States?

Roots grow best in hearts, not soil.

Days have felt heavy lately and I have felt empty. All poured out. People I love are grieving and I know with my own two eyes what Jesus meant when He said, “in this world you will have trouble.”

But today I see the sky and the blossoms just dancing there on the branches. And I hear the second part of that promise, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

A baby girl walks holding my hand.

Her fingers laced through mine like ribbon.

::

Motherhood should really come with a super hero cape, shouldn’t it?
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We finger paint with words. We try to remember what it was like to just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

Where your words are welcome, just as they are! (<–-Tweet this!)

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Meet & encourage someone who linked up before you.

OK, are you ready? Give us your best five minutes on:

::

Brave…

::

GO

Words can hug the distance between us. Friends can step through computer screens. Women can connect without fear of other women’s shoes. We can invite you into a heart gone all velveteen with wanting to be known.

But will you come?

Will you put on the brave boots and face and show up so that we can tell you you’re welcome?

Friends are hard work. There’s no getting around it. The only way is through. Through the knowing and the showing up and the forgiving and the laughing and the folding laundry together and the walking kids to school and the daring to do the ugly cry in front of you.

What is there to lose other than the bad mascara?

We feel real in the bones. In the seam of who we are. Real stitches new lines, strengthens frayed edges. And real makes us brave, to connect, to trust, to tell our true stories. Something always has to give – perfect or real.

I’m practicing the brave choice these days.

STOP

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OK, show me what you’ve got.
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::

You’re lovely! Happy Friday. Eat chocolate.
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::
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All I could think of is my long list of things I get wrong. On repeat. I’m not afraid of this list. I’m not embarrassed by it. I don’t feel the need to hide it. I just know that it’s not very preachy. It’s a list of who I am and also who I’m not.

At 37 I have made peace with that combo. It no longer makes me want to weep that I forget dentist appointments. Micah has two cavities and we got all the way through the numbing before he was done. Sure, they didn’t get filled because he wouldn’t keep his mouth open for the drill. But we showed up.

Should I tell them that the tumble dryer’s been slowly dying for months and while I think I should mention it to the landlord, I never actually get around to it till it’s good and dead and churning out stone cold wet clothes.

There’s a birthday party I promised Micah back in December that still hasn’t happened and this week I invited people to Zoe’s first birthday party for the wrong month, for goodness sakes.

For two days {and one night} a diaper genie sat outside our front door. Don’t ask.

I sound like a woman stuck together with chewing gum and twine some days.

But on the inside I’m rock solid.

There’s this growing sense of who I am through Jesus’ lenses. Far, far from perfect. But deeply and profoundly loved. So thoroughly loved that my places where I get everything wrong aren’t as terrifying to me anymore.

And I’m learning that much like that storage closet we all have – you know the one – where left over odds and ends go to die and that we have to shove closed with a shoulder – cracking that closet open can be liberating.

I open a door into my mess and the women I know and the ones who read here can exhale. So even though I wondered if God would give me something super spiritual to say on Saturday, He just shook His head and told me to keep doing in real life what I’ve been doing over here –

open the door to your mess and let other people in.

I am convinced that the shortest distance between strangers and friends is a shared story about our broken places.

So Saturday morning finds me standing in front of a lovely group of women and an even lovelier array of cinnamon crunch bagels sharing how desperately inept I’ve felt when it comes to mothering a daughter. How for years I attended a church where I didn’t know anyone beyond “fine.” And how my new strategy for making friends is going to be sharing more than they’re expecting to hear.

I read to them from this blog.

My worlds collide and my words blur and my heart comes home.

Friendship lives beyond the margins of blog posts. Friendship cups real hands around paper cups of coffee. Friendship can see when your mascara runs.

Beautiful reader, believe me when I tell you that we need those friends. We need to pack up our excuses and join that Bible study or moms group or coffee hour or book club or running team that we’ve been meaning to for months now.

I promise it won’t be perfect.

Friendship with skin on will let you down. It will likely hurt you some times. But it will laugh with you, not at you, over the every day bits and pieces that make us real. So these days, I’m going all in. Random diaper genie outside the front door and all.

How about you?
::

Thank you for sharing life with me. You’re lovely.
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On the days when I hurry them through brushing teeth and climbing bunk bed ladders and demands for just one more sip of water. On evenings when I rush and mutter and long for the solace of bed and laptop and online. On mornings when I rush to find lost shoes, chug down honey nut Cheerios and pack lunches and stuffed bears.

How much does the rush cost me?

We want to be on time, yes. But on time and frayed around the edges, on time and in tears, on time and relieved to be parting ways is no one’s win-win.

The rush is all mine. I can choose to shelter them from it or not.

The clock is all mine. I can choose to dictate from it or not.

The rhythm is all mine. I can choose to dance to it or not.

Because the melody of any day ebbs and flows around a mother’s mood.

And if I can set my mood by the desire to send them off at peace and full of the knowing that they mattered then they will have a gift to unwrap the rest of the day.

Knowing that they mattered to their mother more than her to-dos.

And yes, I hear you saying that there are things we can’t actually be late for. And to-dos must be done sometime or lives will unravel. I agree, I do.

But I am learning to tell the difference between the rush of the doing vs. the gifting of the doing.

I am learning to spot the wonder in the ordinary. Because if it is all a gift to me from the Father who gives good things, why don’t I re-gift it to my kids before we rush out the door?

Time and again I have to reel my fast, wagging, frustrated tongue in and slow down the crazy that’s about to spill out of me. And because we do still need to be on time these are the things I’m trying out in order to get us there with tempers and kind words in tact:

This doesn’t make breakfast any more nutritious than a bowl of cereal or a bagel and cream cheese most mornings. But it does make us all feel filled up in the ways that matter most. Some mornings we still snap and no one brushes their teeth and car doors are slammed. But other mornings – more mornings these days – there is time factored in for slow. Time factored in for connecting before parting.

We don’t have big prayers or profound Bible readings – but we have the heart of the thing. The rhythm of secure kids and restrained parents. There is give and take. An episode of Mighty Machines if breakfast is eaten. Time with the hamster if teeth have first been brushed. A half hour of swashbuckling in the yard if they’re dressed in full ready-to-leave-from-the-yard-when-mom-calls clothes.

If I want our kids’ morning routine to work I have to work the hardest at keeping it together. Myself first. My tongue, my temper and my temptation to dish out blame for being late.

So I take a deep breath when I’m lying there listening to Zoe start to wake up, before I can will myself out of bed. I take a deep breath and picture the hand of the carpenter who lived over 2,000 years ago – rough and strong and tender – ready to lead me into the dance. There will be crazy and whining and bed head. There will be the same red cereal bowl and yellow spoon Micah’s used a hundred mornings before.

There will be trails of socks and cries that someone is out of undies. There will be missing library books and someone who insists on wearing his camouflage pants again. There will be a raggedy toy bear and a baby that trails around behind every body, unpacking everything.

But on the very best mornings, oh yes on the best mornings, there will also be dancing at our house.

::

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To feel caught on a hamster wheel of wake up, breakfasts and packed lunches, a load of laundry, the dishes from last night, vacuum, work, write, tweet, connect, call, walk to Kindergarten to pick up kids, panic about dinner, serve it, wipe down counters, wrestle pajamas and tooth brushes and last sips of water until the wonder of 9pm arrives and a few hours of stolen time for me and him and trying to breathe creativity into the tired.

Yes, wheels within very ordinary wheels is how many days can feel.

Until.

Until someone you love gets a diagnosis you hate.

Someone who is woven into your story so tight you can feel the tug when they move.

Or maybe it’s when someone loses a job or someone’s spouse walks out or someone spends painful time on the inside of their daughter’s rehab.

Then ordinary cracks right down the middle.

And when you wake up it’s to that sense of displaced unease that has you feeling along the edges of your memory until it hits you before you even open your eyes. Yes, yes it’s still going to be as broken today as it was yesterday.

I got up every day the last two weeks and made toast or bagels or bowels of honey nut cheerios for the kids and every day part of me was watching it all unfold, unable to accept that ordinary can trickle through our fingers when we least expect it.

Ordinary is the gift we take for granted until it’s the woobie that someone’s trying to steal. Like my favorite Detroit Lions sweatshirt or ratty yellow blanket or dog-eared book inherited from my mom.

Ordinary is where the DNA of our lives is housed.

And when it’s threatened for those we love, we start to linger over our own ordinary Cheerios-crushed-underfoot moments.

Zoe took her first steps this week.

Right there in between the art easel with the cracked leg and my old Ikea desk. She stood up, swayed, flashed her dimples and took three steps into my arms. No one saw it but me and Jesus.

The whole world caved in. Or maybe it sang. I think there was an angel chorus; surely it was more than just the singing Elmo.

The joy, when it comes in the midst of the ordinary we’re remembering not to take for granted, can overwhelm. I cried so hard, Zoe and I were both surprised. I clung to my little 11-month-old life preserver.

Everything about her screams, “life!”

How her hair smells of cinnamon and her body like crackers and baby lotion and maybes. She walked and our playroom was a Thursday temple.

Tomorrows will come and cracks will likely spread but I am anchored by my ordinary and I’ll take all the Cheerios underfoot I need to remind me.

::

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