I sat across from the man I love on the bed we’ve loved in since we were first married ten years before. I sat and smacked fist into palm and said it again and again and again, “But this can’t be what I’m supposed to do with my life.”

And there it was – the old frustration that stuck in the back of my throat and that I hadn’t been able to swallow down for two long years. Two years of two-hour commutes and long hours at the office and away from my kids. Away doing work that didn’t fit the me that lived inside my frustration; long hours aching with the wanting to be doing something else.

But I didn’t know what it was.

I just knew that there was something else. And it started with wanting to be able to encourage women.

So I sat across from the man who’s known me and loved me since that night we played baseball on the national mall and then walked the long way home back to 8^th street. He was as patient with me then as he is now.

He spoke to me of callings. He reminded me that every ounce of frustration I felt was part of what helped me translate my story into one that other women could relate to. And he told me that it was these broken, hard parts I was living that would feed my words.

I watched him in the glow of the two yellow bedside lamps and saw that he heard me. He got what it felt like to not be doing the something I thought I was made to do. But he showed me that without this struggle I wouldn’t be able to encourage women the way I felt called to. Without fighting the balance of motherhood and work and self and calling and commutes I wouldn’t understand where many other women need encouragement.

I spent a long time thinking about this. And months later I wrote about it to my friend, Holley:

So, I have been thinking about you today because I am at a conference discussing some groundbreaking work to bring justice to the poor and afflicted. For many years that is the kind of work I have been involved in also. But, I have consistently felt this call on my heart to speak into the lives of women. Young mothers and wives who feel that what they do isn’t important.

I don’t know many who would consider that a needy population group. But I sure do. I am them.

So, I blog. I write my heart out to this beautiful audience who need to be encouraged as I wish someone had done for me. Because young mothers and struggling women have great needs too. And while it’s not my job, it is my delight to be used by God to be part of the plan for meeting them.

I wrote it at 1am and I found that putting those words down filled me up – with joy, with purpose, but mostly with relief. My story is useful to others because of the frustration I’ve juggled. My story can encourage because I know how it feels to feel unimportant. My story translates the stories of many other women because it is so seemingly ordinary.

This thing – this something else – that I had been waiting for? Turned out it had been unfolding in my life all along. Right there in the commuter lane, in between making school snack packs and tucking kids into bed I’d been finding my voice.

And when I write about my every day ordinary mess, I am connected to the women I so desperately want to encourage. The women I want to wrap arms around and laugh with and say, “You’re doing far more than just OK, sister.”

God has made a way for me through the frustration and into the nooks and crannies of other people’s stories.  It has grown from my passion into my job. I can lay myself down right where I am, word by word, plank by plank, and build a bridge that connects us.

There is a Carpenter who shows me how.

And you? You who fume and flail and question the now that you’re living? Maybe we have this frustratingly perfect route in common.

Perhaps what is hardest about where you are right now will end up being the wood and nails and words that connect us.

Write it down. Build the bridge.

That many might walk across.

::

Tomorrow I will share more about what my bridge looks like, but today – what about yours? What are the hard wood and nails you have to work with? It’s OK to be frustrated with them.

::

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Starts the day out with a gold ribbon ceremony for showing honor, courage, responsibility at school and all he can think about is the reprimand that ended his school day.

All praise clouded out by a finger shaken in his direction. His breath fogs up the glasses that hide his eyes as we walk home. From the minute he shuffles down the school’s steps I feel the itch in him that something is out of place.

I try to hear him above the school buses and kids racing home toward the weekend. I bend and duck awkward toward his eye level to try and lip read his sadness.

“School is stupid. I always do everything wrong.”

The bright little golden ribbon stuck to his red shirt says otherwise, but it’s hidden beneath his thick coat now and the dread at having done something wrong is pasted across his face instead.

“But what happened?” and I try to get him to go back to the beginning and tell it to me step by step. How could a day that started with me taking his picture next to the principal end with him this defeated?

I feel the knot in my own stomach and the hairs of defensiveness rising on the back of my neck. I want to make it right, by pointing out how wrong everyone else must have been.

But the wind’s cutting off any words I try to get out and he’s so hunched against the cold and his sadness that I don’t think he can hear me anyway. My forehead is as scrunched up as his posture and I can hear the frustration mounting in my mind as I push the stroller, focusing on the puddle, the ice patch, the path with the too-close cars.

It’s the cold; it bites through my frustration and makes me notice other things. The minivan parked around the corner, the hill home, the Friday evening pizza and a movie night.

And then it hits me – I’m the grown up. I’m the grown up and Jackson’s just six and soon he’ll be seven, eight, nine, ten. I am not actually going to be able to barricade all disappointment or misunderstanding out of his life.

But I can help put it in perspective.

He gets in the car and slumps into his car seat- staring out the window. I pump the heat, look back over my shoulder and describe to him how the day started. We walk through the ceremony again; the ribbon, the hard work and 30 accumulated mini gold tickets it took to get him there.

And then, after I’ve heard the outline of what went wrong in the afternoon I tell him that’s ok. Even though it’s a bummer when a day starts out great and ends with a bump, that’s part of growing up. That I know how it feels because it doesn’t stop when you’re a kid.

Grown ups make mistakes too and wish they could have do-overs and feel frustrated when the one small thing they got wrong clouds out the big thing they got right. And it’s up to us to choose which thing ends up being the story of our day.

I suggest we make his Friday story about the gold ribbon. Hot chocolate at home helps the decision go down. As does an adoring baby sister, a little brother and a movie night with dad.

And somewhere in the middle there’s a moment – a moment when I get to look into the eyes that I know are mine and tell him that I don’t need a gold ribbon to know he’s special.

That I’ve known since a summer afternoon in Kyiv, Ukraine when I whispered to God what I wanted for my birthday. Since I walked Kreshatik street with Peter and met Heike and Cliff, Bob and Colleen, and all the Skinner kids for cake and ice cream at the Golden Gate restaurant. Since I looked up at the sun with squinted eyes and knew that God had saved the best till last.

Since I asked and God answered and the answer was Jackson.

::::

I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him.
~1 Samuel 1:27.

No gold ribbon and no mess up can add or subtract from that gift.

::

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This week I’m traveling for work. Alone. And I laughed out loud in a dark Arkansas parking lot when I saw the rental car I’d been given – a mini van.

Motherhood isn’t a sweater we can shrug out of when we feel like it. It’s a change in our DNA.

It’s what makes us want to comfort the mom with the crying toddler at 3,000 feet, what makes us smile at the dad wearing a baby through airport security, what makes us tingle all over at the anticipation of 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I open my white mini van on a dark and rainy night in Razorback country and I’m smiling so hard to myself at this secret the mini van and I are sharing. There’s the seat where Zoe’s chair would normally go and Jackson would be over my right shoulder and Micah all the way in back yelling directions, questions and instructions I can barely hear from way up front.

But tonight the car is crazy quiet. And I get to choose what’s on the radio and no one will ask me, “are we there yet?” I’ve already slept three hours on the plane, unhindered by embarrassment – another fringe benefit of motherhood – sprawled across three seats with my cheek resting on my computer bag. The deep exhausted sleep is totally worth the strange imprint I’m sure I woke up with.

I miss my kids. But I find there’s something inside of me that’s been lacking oxygen and suddenly I can breathe and I take deep gulps of being alone in that big, beautiful mini van.

It’s dark and raining and there’s nothing ideal about the driving conditions except my heart that is looking around with fresh eyes, remembering the me that lives inside this mother’s DNA.

There is a good man stewarding those kids we made so I am not afraid to say my tight, monkey hug good byes to them and drive an Arkansas mini van down this rainy road with prayers of gratitude for stolen moments alone.

I don’t know a mother who isn’t better for time alone.

Time without a hundred hands all held out waiting, asking, holding, poking, clinging. Time without someone constantly in your me-space. Time where you get to cut only your own food and don’t have to be strategic about planning bathroom breaks and outings aren’t scheduled around someone else’s nap schedule.

Some days you don’t realize how over-stimulated you are until you’re in a car alone listening to the rhythmic thud of wipers across the wind screen and you can almost cry from the beauty of it.

Alone is essential to a tired mom because it’s really time to spend listening to herself – her own thoughts and prayers and desperate ideas for creativity and plans and a future longer than next week’s school recitation of “Chicken Soup and Rice.”

I may be driving toward Siloam Springs, AR for work, but I am headed toward time spent apart from my everyday crush of the urgent, the predictable and the routine.

Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, [Jesus] said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

I turn off the freeway and find a drive through chicken place. There’s a hotel room waiting for me and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep ahead. A shower without someone knocking on the bathroom door and a bed that won’t have two extra people in it when I wake up.

I am not running away from this mothering DNA of mine, I am simply remembering what it needs to keep running.

And you?

When last did you have time to remember yourself- what do you need to keep running?

::

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But the radio sings of winter. It plays song after song of worship that sounds knee deep in snow. And sometimes we stand in the living room with arms up to the sun and let the words of a small town in Bethlehem wash over us.

“Fall on your knees
oh hear the angel voices”

I can hear it. The echoes still ringing through the sky from over two thousand years ago.

And when I stand in church with the music echoing through me, with the memory of my short temper from last night and the two boys this morning who got into a fight over who would give the donation box they’d filled to Ms. Dee, the baby who suffered a hair tourniquet and an allergic reaction to eggs in one week, and the moments of beauty in the midst of all this chaos that make me cry, I know there is a God who was a baby and understands me from the inside out.

Literally.

The weather, the bickering kids, the moments of love so profound for this family my insides ache from it.

Immanuel.

The God who moved into the neighborhood.

It’s OK to be bring the whole of who I am to Him.

Because He came a long way – on purpose – to meet me.

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Let’s do it. Let’s just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Won’t you join me?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Most importantly: leave a comment for the person who linked up before you – encouraging them in their writing!

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

Color…

GO

I love them in shocking shades of vermillion.

She is the pink and they are the purple and firework children explode in my heart. They paint me shades of amazing I didn’t know existed. They splatter me in gobs of frustration.

Angry reds spill across the countertops. There’s a trail of magenta despair some days. But the crimson, oh the crimson.

My life is on fire with color.

Kids kaleidoscope my future and my heart chameleons their moods. We nap in warm pools of Sunday afternoon yellow. Their dad serenades us bright blue in the morning and by afternoon the colors are starting to run and we jump in our own puddles of murky gray.

But each morning is a new box of crayons; fresh paints to color in this family.

No memory left blank.

STOP

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::

::

One night that place rocks me hard as I rock my baby girl in one arm and cell phone cradled between cheek and ear with the other. I kick gently back and forth, back and forth between my quiet confession whispered into the listening ear of my mother-in-law and the loud ache in my gut at what I share with her.

Sometimes I am scared of my three-year-old son.

The one whose name means “gift from God.” The one named after the apostle who was Christ’s rock. I think of him as our bulldozer. Our passionate compassionate child of temper so fierce we catch echoes of his berserker ancestors on an otherwise ordinary Friday afternoon in Virginia when I’m scared of what mood he’ll be in when I pick him up from preschool.

Scared how he’ll react if he gets the blue cereal bowl instead of the red one, scared what he’ll do if we can’t find the Woolworths Teddy Bear come bed time or nap time or car ride time or any old time when he needs it.

He can storm harder and longer than my temper can usually take.

I am tattered and frayed and frightened of how I am starting to feel about him. Worried that I can’t find the necessary reserves of love to remember to like him. I simply want to mute him.

So I rock and whisper my secrets into the phone over the baby’s whispy soft hair and the dark room cocoons both of us. My mother-in-law suggests we go back to the beginning. We trace family trees and genes and remember that blue eyes aren’t the only things children inherit by blood. I stop being mad at him and instead start to research him.

I study my son.

And God starts to show me how to see. Not with a magnifying glass, but a mirror.

I see my own temper. I see generations of temper before that. I see how lazy my prayers are and how haphazard my approach to helping him. How it’s mostly a mixture of embarrassment and frustration.

I see how long it’s been since I’ve enjoyed him.

I begin to exercise my motherhood again. I stretch and bend and pray. I fast and pay attention and listen. Instead of floundering in the stories everyone else tells me about him, I begin to draft his narrative. I write it down. How I want to see this son of mine. How I want to teach others to see him.

I send these words to his teacher,

We so appreciate your partnership. We value Micah and the work that Christ is doing in his heart. He is extremely sensitive to the stories of Jesus and understands that his name means, “Like unto God” and his second name means “the rock”.

We are encouraging him to be a man who lives in the blessing of his name and is a leader and encourager and protector of others.

I begin to sense Micah growing in my heart with flutters much like when I first felt him moving in my belly. I cradle this new story. It is a relief to be writing it again and not just turning the pages terrified of what comes next.

I pray for him more in one month than perhaps the rest of his months combined.

I pray and praying is writing and writing is realizing and realizing is seeing. I see the story God has for my Micah.

I speak it out loud over him.

Sometimes, in the beginning, when I am still finding the words, only when he’s asleep. And when he wakes up and asks me what I’m doing I’m too embarassed to tell him. I start to make something up, to say I was just checking on him. But then I catch myself and I give the truth to his sleep-grogged ears straight, “I am praying for you. I am praying you will be a great warrior for God’s Kingdom.”

He yawns, whispers, “OK,” rolls over.

As I stare at the back of his sleep matted hair. As I listen to him start to snore gently and count the seven, eight, nine stuffed animals surrounding him. As I wonder how he even fits into that bed with all the swords, pliers and puppies clamoring for space alongside I catch something unexpected. My stomach aches with a tender like for this son of mine.

I like that this is how he chooses to sleep.

I like how it so perfectly illustrates his compassion for all living things.

I like how his big, clumsy limbs that he is still growing into are draped diagonally across the bunk.

I like that the radio’s on because he was dancing for me just before going to bed.

I like how he sleeps in the same position as his dad and how he thrives on the same routine every night.

I like the glass of water he always asks for and keeps close to his bed just like me.

I like the discarded book on dinosaurs he was reading and the pen and note pad he always has under his pillow.

I like him so much I can hardly breathe. I just sit in that room between a toy tiger and Casting Crowns playing on the radio and stroke the sweaty forehead of a nearly four-year-old and let the like keep filling me up.

All the way up to overflowing.

::

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The day ticks by much slower than we’d planned.

Slower and perhaps better.

The fall sunshine slants across the sofa and the hamster’s cage that’s made its way into the living room where blanket forts and baby toys compete for attention.  Going to the grocery store for medicine, strawberries and other sick-day supplies is the furthest we’ve been today.

I’ve got Simon and Garfunkel in my head,

Slow down
You move to fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobble stones.
Looking for fun and feelin’ groovy.

I spend an hour on the phone with South Africa and soak in their voices and updates and can imagine my dad sitting across from me over a cup of tea. My brother gets married at the end of this month – on Thanksgiving weekend – and they tell me that my little sister just got engaged last night.

I talk to them while Zoe plays in her exersaucer and the boys watch Pink Panther cartoons. The house is chaos but the people in it at peace and I could not be more grateful.

A girlfriend from college who knew me long before I ever knew I wanted to be a mom asked me on Friday, “What’s the secret to this?”

“How do we parent without feeling like we’re going crazy?”

I answered her from the warm inside of our minivan sitting in the driveway because I knew once I went inside with the groceries it would be game over for any quiet time or conversation.

Today as I look over at the floor strewn with super hero capes, mismatched flip flops and shredded cheddar cheese I think about my answer.

“The only way I know how to parent without losing my mind is by learning to let a lot go,” I’d said.

And with each child I’ve felt my grip loosened further.

Felt the God who is re-making me, re-shaping me, re-birthing me through these children help me let go of more.

The perfectly folded clothes, organized cupboards, planned meals. The compulsion to tidy in the wake of every game concocted by brilliantly imaginative boys. The determination that no one come over if things weren’t just so. The insistence that there is a right way to hang towels.

Parenting with room to breathe, for me, means letting go of the lists I’d thought essential.

Because I’ve discovered that they were strangling me.

While I love order and tidy rooms and neat cupboards as much as the next girl, I will no longer let them be an idol in our house.

I am learning my limits. I have two boys under six and a seven month old baby girl. I have a full time job, a husband with a long commute and yes, then there’s also the hamster.

Something had to give.

For me it was the dream of the perfect home. I traded it for the reality of a lived in one.

Remembering that choice helps me breathe through the mess on nights when I would give almost anything for maid service. Remembering that helps me wrap my boys up in the blankets from the unmade bed and wrestle them instead of rolling my eyes at the mess.

Remembering that keeps me sane when shoes pile up in doorways, socks never make it to the laundry hamper and someone spills chocolate sauce on the kitchen floor.

Remembering that gives me the freedom to take a deep breath and just let go. Some things will get done and some things will not.

Especially on sick days. On days when boys slow down and chores mount up. Days when the choice is between stroking someone’s head and sorting the dirty clothes.

Days when a six-year-old tells me, “I won’t always be your boy, but you’ll always be my mom.”

So I stroke his forehead and leave wet clothes in the washing machine.

I read Power Rangers to his brother.

I rock that baby girl longer than she needs instead of finishing the meal planning I started this morning.

And part of me might still feel frustrated that not enough got done. That the laundry hamper is still half full and the last load of dishes isn’t put away. That the living room got tidied but the carpet wasn’t vaccuumed. That the plates I bought months ago are still not unpacked. That I forgot to buy gifts for the weekend’s birthday parties and haven’t figured out what to pack for the kid’s lunches tomorrow.

That I wore pajamas for a large portion of today.

But that part? That part is no longer the boss of me.

::
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I barely have time to brace before all that stocky, nearly-four-year-old life slams into my knees. Amazing, to be missed like this.

Today he asks me to wave from the door while he chops down that oak tree in the front yard. The tree that’s lived at least ten of his lifetimes. He’s going at it with a hammer and a rusted screw he found in the toolbox we barely ever use.

His determination is matched only by his desire to be watched.

“Come closer,” he tells me. “Come close to the door, so you can see me.”

“Are you waving, mom?”

“Yes, yes Micah. I’m waving.”

“Come closer!” he bellows.

I stand at the screen door and watch all that determination. It’s beautiful. He belts the tree and shovels raw earth and stops to watch and see if I’m watching.

I am.

“I see you,” I yell out to him.

And I do. I see that spirit of bright, flaming passion. I see that heart always ready to rush in and save. I see that strength. I see that warrior. I see that rock.

He is hammering hard at the tree. Last days of fall have set it’s leaves on fire. I work just as hard at not noticing the mess – the hole where there was once lawn, the rusting tools lined up next to his illuminator sneakers, the cup I just bought last week for the bathroom sink and the bathroom sink only.

There’s the boy beyond the mess, beyond the notes from frustrated teachers, beyond the boxes and labels and challenges.

“Do you see?” he asks again.

“Yes,” I say.

And I do.

::
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How that tiny, new human being can cripple a back with endless nights of swaying and leaning and crouching over a crib to listen to her breathe. They could have mentioned the ache you’d feel at the pit of your heart when she smiles or burps or rolls over.

Perhaps they could have prepared us better for what tired feels like. Not just, “a nap sure would be nice” tired, but the kind of “I can’t remember if I brushed my teeth this morning, I’m so tired I could fall asleep in the carpool lane if I’m not careful” tired.

They might have mentioned that we’d be able to sleep through a hail storm but be out of bed before we’re even awake when a child coughs or sighs or cries for his favorite toy.

They could have told us we’d wake up one morning to discover we’d become someone’s super hero.

Our parents should have painted the picture of what a meal of BBQ ribs will do to a carpet when shared with small and enthusiastic boys. Or how hard mud is to remove from a rug or how wet, food colored flour can set to the consistency of cement if it’s not washed away immediately.

Perhaps they might have whispered about the ocean of vulnerability we’d be swimming out into when we had kids. How before we knew it we’d be left gasping for air on the days when someone gets hurt. And how many nights we’d spend pleading with God for wisdom, for patience, for strength.

They might have done it, if they thought we’d believe it. They might have packaged up so much truth and hand delivered it if only they didn’t already know it had to be earned.

Because earn it you do.

Every hard mile of parenting is hard won. And desperately worth it.

So tell me, what did I forget?
What else could our parents have told us if only we weren’t too inexperienced to believe them?

::
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I like spending hours reading books, alone, in perfect quiet, in a pool of sunlight on a late fall afternoon.

I like a clean and tidy house. I like to eat food while it is still hot. I like clean clothes. I like to brush and style my hair in more than 2 minute increments.  I like to concoct bowls of  ice-cream delights liberally topped with chocolate sauce, strawberries, and powdered sugar that I do not like to share.

I like to use the restroom alone.

More significantly, however, I like to help, listen, visit, sit up with, comfort, grocery shop, cater to, clean, share and generally be there for someone else when it is convenient to me.

I didn’t realize these things about myself until I had kids.

The most gentle and simultaneously ruthless way to discover who you truly are is to have children. A cataclysmic shift of focus away from yourself and onto someone else takes place. It hurts at first.

It hurts at 7 am when the big kids wake up after you just laid down from being up with the baby most of the night. It hurts when a gift you treasure gets broken because your boys are leaping from counter tops and accidentally kick it crashing and smashing to the ground. It hurts when you can’t remember when last you had an uninterrupted conversation with a grown up, an outfit that someone didn’t wipe sticky hands across, or a night’s sleep that didn’t end with someone else’s bad dreams.

I feel all stretched out, softened and squidgy around the edges of my temperament.

I am learning to live in peace amidst the chaos of a house torn a muck by raucous boys. Laundry is rarely put away, but rather retrieved straight from the dryer. My favorite books bear the marks (often in purple or bright green sharpie) of my boys. Sunlight is not for catnapping in, but rather for tearing through the backyard en route to slaying dragons and rounding up the herd. Sleep is a dance between a baby’s needs and a mother’s dreams. Any food, treat, ice cream or drink is considered fair game by kids and nothing caters to my own convenience.

Everything is an educational experience.

Yes, even using the restroom.

But I have never been closer to a glimpse into the Father’s love for me than when I am lying in the pre-dawn dark between a six year old who now only admits in his sleep how much he still likes to snuggle and a baby girl who breathes so close to me you’d think we were the same person.

So I ache and stretch and succumb to the growing pains for them.

“By God’s marvelous design, few life experiences humble us quite as effectively as parenting. …This tiny tyrant is providentially placed in our house with one grand program: to mold his or her parents into the image of our Lord. The way up spiritually, is by looking down physically.”
~Gary Thomas, Devotions for Sacred Parenting, pp. 46, 48.

And looking back, it’s a marvel to see how far I’ve come. And a wonder to think what still lies ahead.