My Thanksgiving Resolution

As Thanksgiving Day winds down and I find myself a little bit comatose due to eating too much and sleeping too little for the past couple of days, I can’t help but think of all I have to be thankful for.  Sometimes I just have to stop and wonder how I can ever find anything at all to grumble about!?!?  I mean, seriously!?!?  How can someone with the amazing bounty of blessings I have been given ever take any of that for granted and instead choose to complain about some petty irritation I choose to focus on?

As a mom, I spend the majority of my energy focused on doing what I can to help my children grow into responsible, caring, compassionate young adults who go out into the world with a heart for serving others, for giving to others in return for the amazing blessings they have been given, and for experiencing this life God gave them to its fullest.  I have been blessed to watch them begin to learn to do just that, and it brings me joy I cannot begin to describe, but it doesn’t happen without a cost.

As I spent time this week preparing for Thanksgiving, and time today finalizing preparations and saying prayers of gratitude for all our family has been blessed with.  I kept thinking about how sad I am that my Megan isn’t here with us this year.  I kept feeling bad that our children would be spending their first Thanksgiving ever not all together, and feeling sorry for myself that I wouldn’t have them all under the same roof on this day of saying thank you.  And then, I realized how ridiculous that is and I straightened myself out right then and there!

You see, Megan is doing just what I prayed for her to be able to do…she is out there experiencing this life God has given her to its fullest.  She has taken the gifts God blessed her with and she has worked to develop them and grow them and use them to take her places she never would have gone otherwise.  She has used her gifts of caring and compassion and she has developed friendships with amazing kids from all over the world.  In fact, as I write this, she is celebrating Thanksgiving in Greenwich, CT with a friend she has made at college and I couldn’t be more thankful that she and Emma are such good friends or that Emma’s family has so warmly welcomed Megan to join their family to celebrate Thanksgiving.  I couldn’t be more thankful that my daughter is out there, living life, experiencing life, and sharing God’s love with people she never would have met if she hadn’t been so willing to trust God to lead her where He would have her go.

I also see these same wonderful qualities in my Kate.  She has grown into an amazing young woman who has embraced every challenge placed in front of her and has worked hard (harder than I can even believe sometimes) to grow stronger and develop her skills and abilities to the fullest so she can experience this life.  She is strong and confident and willing to put herself out there.  She is learning WHO she is and that she can stand firm in that, no matter what choices those around her make.  She feels outrage at social injustices and feels driven to try to make things better for others.  I have no doubt that she, too, will seek God’s will for her life and will follow the path He lays for her, wherever that may take her.

And Jake.  My Jake who has been so quiet and reserved for so long and has begun to find his voice.  My Jake who is becoming strong and confident, knowing who he is, and who God designed him to be.  I have loved watching him grow and mature and seeing him step out of his comfort zone and begin to follow his own dreams and seek out the path God has in store for him, as well.  My Jake who understands so much and sees so much and who has a seemingly unending compassion for others and who has a quiet determination to stand firm in who he is, regardless of who everyone else around him chooses to be.  There is no part of me that isn’t certain that Jake is going to do amazing things, wherever his blessings take him in life.

My Nick and Emma are still so young, but I have begun to see these qualities in them, too.  I have begun to see them grow and mature and be more certain of what they believe and who they are.  I see them making quality choices in friends and finding groups and activities to join that match their talents, and learning how to be quality teammates who support the group as a whole and work for the good of all, regardless of what might be best for them personally and I am so grateful for this. 

 

As I stop to think about the amazing blessings I have been given as a result of the great gift of being a mother to these wonderful children, and the amazing life I have been blessed to share with my husband, who is also my friend (and who could ask for a better blessing than that…spending your life with your best friend?  With someone you can talk to about anything and who is your greatest cheerleader and supporter?  With someone who believes in you, even when you don’t believe in you?), I can’t imagine that there could ever be ANYTHING to complain about! 

 

And so, I am about to begin a NEW tradition for me…rather than making New Year’s resolutions, I am going to make just ONE Thanksgiving resolution.  I resolve to focus my energy and attention on noticing all I have to be thankful for, not just today and not just a year from now when Thanksgiving rolls around again, but EVERY day that I am blessed to wake up and begin a new day.  And I don’t mean a Facebook post every day in November that finds something new to say thank you for.  I mean a REAL choice to focus on having a thankful heart.  I mean waking up every day and making time to set my mind on all I have been blessed with, in hopes that by choosing to pay attention to that, I can choose to let the petty complaints of day-to-day life go, to know that sometimes these blessings of mine will also bring me heartache as their desire to embrace God’s plan for their life may take them far from home for a season or more.  Maybe instead I can choose to see this life through the eyes I hope my children see it through…something to be grateful for and to experience fully.  It’s worth a try, right? :)

What’s Your Plan?

This is a question I ask as a teacher every day.  I ask my preschoolers to tell me what they are planning to do, how they plan to do it, what they will need in order to do it, and then to let me know if they change their plan so we can talk through their NEW plan.  Why do I do this, you ask?  Because, in my opinion, this is a skill that will be invaluable to them in their lives.  In order to find joy in life, they will need to have a goal and the ability to think through the process to determine what they will need to accomplish that goal.  They will also need to have the ability to make a new plan when things don’t work out the way they thought they would.  And they need to know that is okay.  In fact, they need to know that is more than okay!  They need to know that we all try and fail sometimes.  And when we do, we need to pick ourselves up and make a new plan.

I observed several things this week that made me wonder if this is a skill we could all use some work on.  As we go through life as a parent, do we have a plan?  What do we envision as the goal?  What are our hopes, our dreams, for our children?  And I don’t mean what college we hope they get into, what degree we hope they attain, what profession we hope they enter.  Those should not be our dreams…those dreams are for them.  Our hopes and dreams for our children should focus on WHO they will be.  What qualities do we hope they develop, what values, what traits?  Do we have a plan for that?  Do we know what our goal is?  Do we know what we need to do to get there?  Because if we don’t, then we can’t ever hope to reach that goal.

The good news is we don’t have to come up with the plan all by ourselves.  God laid it all out so clearly for us.  We know WHO God wants us to be, who God wants our children to be.  We read in Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”  There it is.  That is what we want.  We want our children to love (and be loved), to feel joy (and bring joy to others), to feel peace (and be peaceful), to be tolerant (and tolerable), to show kindness (and be shown kindness in return), to do good to others, to be faithful (to their God and to those around them), to be gentle, and to show self-control.  What more is there?  Those qualities are the hallmarks of a full life, and I can’t imagine anything better for my children.  So, how do we get there?  We embody those qualities in our own lives.  We show our children love (and show them how we love others).  We bring joy to others and we find joy in our lives.  Every day.  Because it’s there, I promise!   We live our lives peacefully, not searching for conflict and dissent, but seeking peace for ourselves and those around us.  We exhibit tolerance.  For those who are not like us, for those who are, for strangers, and for those we love.  We choose NOT to judge others.  We are kind.  Just kind.  Every day.  We do good…not just when we feel like it, but ALL the time.  We seek ways to be GOOD to others.  We are faithful followers of God, faithful wives to our husbands, husbands to our wives (and I mean so much more than fidelity…I mean are we FAITHFUL???  Do we put our faith in them?), faithful moms and dads (do we BELIEVE in our children’s potential?  Not their potential to perform, but their potential to BE?), faithful friends, faithful stewards of the gifts we have been given???  We are gentle, always.  And we show self-control.  When we do these things, we will have everything we need to make our plan work right there in our hands.

You see, I believe that parenting isn’t a reactive sport.  We can’t go through our days simply reacting to what is thrown at us.  We can’t make decisions based on the circumstances of the moment.  When we do, our destination is clouded.  It would be like doing a dot-to-dot with no numbers.  The random decisions connect, but the picture at the end looks nothing like we had hoped.  We must be INTENTIONAL in our decisions as parents.  We must keep our eyes on the prize, so to speak, so we know where we are headed and we must make decisions that move us along that path.  Doing that in the moment is daunting.  It can even be overwhelming.  But that is where the plan comes into play.  If we HAVE a plan, we can make our decisions, make our choices, we can PARENT according to that plan, and that takes the burden of having to make those day-to-day decisions away.  We can relax, and just do it.

And sometimes, we will fail.  Sometimes we will get it wrong.  We will mess it up, we will make a bad choice, use words we shouldn’t have used.  But it will be okay.  Because we will pick ourselves up, and we will find a new way to reach our goal.  And we will remember that the choices we make as we parent, the things we say to our kids matter, but they matter so much less than WHO we are.  Whatever else we try to do as parents, our children will be influenced a million times more by who they see us being in our day-to-day lives.  If we are the mean girls, they will be the mean girls.  If we are the bullies, they will be the bullies.  If we are negative and critical, they will be negative and critical.  So the first and most important part of our plan must be to BE who we hope our children will become.  If we get that part right, then the rest is all gravy.  And that is a very, very good thing.

Just Listen

I had one of “those” moments this week…you know, the kind that make you feel OLD!?!?!?  I generally subscribe to the theory that you are truly only as old as you think you are, and as a general rule the creaks and aches of an aging body don’t make me feel old.  I often forget how old I actually am and have to stop and think what my number is. :)  Every once in awhile, though, something happens to remind me that the hands of time just keep on going while I’m not paying attention.

I had the great pleasure of spending time with friends this week.  Often my crazy schedule doesn’t leave room for such luxuries, but this week, despite the looming deadlines for a multitude of projects, I chose to MAKE time, and that is a good thing.  One of my favorite things is sitting with a group of amazing, inspiring women just discussing LIFE and sharing the moments that make us laugh. This activity has a way of filling me up so I can go forth and live, and I cherish those moments.  The discussion, however, is not what struck me most this week, though.  It was my friends’ children that stopped me in my tracks.

A few of my friends still enjoy the blessing of having small children in their homes, and so we had the wonderful company of three- to four-year-olds while we visited.  There is nothing quite as joyful as the sweet grins on little ones' faces and it was surely a blessing to have them there.  The moment that stopped time for me was when they sat at the table with scissors and paper, crayons and glue, and talked.  They talked and they talked.  They giggled, they were serious, and they talked.  As we all noticed them, their moms commented that they really need to get them together more because then they could talk to each other since neither of them ever stop talking.  I wanted to cry.  Because I remember those days.  I remember listening until my ears hurt, and then listening some more.  I remember pudgy little three-year-old hands drawing me pictures and cutting out hearts and talking, talking, talking…I flashed back to conversations I remembered and to so many long forgotten.  I also flashed back to that feeling of hardly having the energy to listen for another moment, and I wanted more than anything to go back to that me and say, “Listen.  Just listen. Because you will blink and that little boy will be a teenager who will talk, but only if you wait, and wait, and wait…  That little girl will be a teenager who will talk, but only when she is home, and her schedule will be so full that you will long for her to be there to talk.  So just listen and hang on their words because someday you will want to remember every one.”  

Our children need us for so many things when they are little.  They need to be fed, bathed, and dressed.  They need us to make things better with a perfectly placed band-aid and to read a bedtime story before we tuck them in.  They need to be hugged and kissed and loved and taken to Sunday School to build their faith.  As they grow, some of those needs change.  They still need to be fed (in fact, I would argue that there is no greater need for a teenage boy :)) and hugged and kissed and loved and taken to Sunday School, but they start putting their own band-aids on and they start reading their own books.  They slowly become more and more independent and clearly that is what we want.  But one thing that never changes is their need to be listened to.  Truly, isn't that something we long for, even as adults, more than anything?  Someone to listen to us?  To hear us?  To show us that we matter enough to be heard?  

Our children are growing up in a world that can be daunting and scary.  They are dealing with many of the things we dealt with as children, but they are also dealing with so much more.  When I was a child, bullying meant that some boy pushed another one down on the playground.  Today, my children deal with texts, Facebook posts, tweets, blog posts, and more.  When I was a child, being ignored by a friend meant they didn't call you on the home telephone to talk or to invite you somewhere.  Today, it means being excluded from group messages, left out of activities in a public way as every moment of every event is plastered all over social media via posts and pictures that you aren't a part of.  Kids today have so many new ways to be mean and so much of what our children face is overwhelming and they simply cannot process it on their own.  So, they need us more than ever to just listen.  To listen, to understand, to hear, to care. 

And so it goes.  We pass through seasons in our life and it is always so much clearer from the other side just how amazing our life was.  Life with five children under ten was full and exhausting and made my ears hurt, but it was very, very good.  And now, life with five tweens and teens is busy and crazy and exhausting, but it is still very, very good.  I will make it my goal to remember that every day.  I won’t always succeed, but when I struggle, I will think of those little voices and I will smile.  And I will keep on listening.

My Mama Arms

For years I have wanted to start a blog, if for no other reason than to record the happenings of my life so that when my mom-brain acts up I can go back and retrace my own steps.  However, the very reason I need to do this is because my life is so harried and busy that I can't find time to tie my shoes, let alone write blog posts.  And so, I never took the plunge.  I was convinced that it would simply be something I would begin, but never stick with, and so would just induce guilt...and goodness knows, as a mom to five children I have managed to heap enough of that stinky feeling onto myself without adding more! 

2013 has been a year of change in our family.  Actually, many of my nearly twenty years of marriage have involved a great deal of change.  There were five children born, many (MANY) changes of address as we moved frequently, job changes, new school years begun, and so much more.  I've always just rolled with it.  I learned long ago that if I was going to survive my life, I would need to be flexible.  Very, very flexible.  But 2013 has been different.  It has been the REAL beginning of my mama arms letting go of one of my babies, and that is a change this lady hasn't loved.  In fact, I might even go so far as to use a word I don't prefer to use.  I have HATED it.  But, I have also loved it.  And that is something that requires more work for me to process.  So, here we are.

In June of 1995 I was welcomed into the most amazing club in the universe...MOTHERHOOD!!!  And it was (and still is) an indescribable blessing.  From the very moment I looked into the face of that beautiful baby girl, I felt as if everything I had ever done, every word I had ever said, every breath I had ever taken, had been leading up to that moment.  Because nothing else that I had ever done or said had ever really mattered as much as everything I said and did after that.  My Megan was a beautiful blessing and I loved her more than I could describe.  And I had the remarkable opportunity to feel that love grow, four more times, to encompass four more amazing little ones that God chose me (ME!!! with all my failures and shortcomings!!!) to be a mom to!  And I have spent the past 18 1/2 years waking up every day trying to do better than the day before.  Some days I found success in that goal, and some days...well, some days I didn't. 

In June, my Megan turned 18, just weeks after she graduated from high school.  These were both milestones in her journey, but also in mine.  As a mom, each step your child takes away from you is significant.  The mixture of emotions is nearly as difficult to describe as the love you feel for them.  There is no part of me that is unaware of the fact that everything I have done for over 18 years has been work to prepare my child to go out into the world without me, to prepare her to love, live, and thrive as the woman God created her to be.  And yet, watching her walk away, even just a bit, does - to be perfectly honest - break my heart just a bit.  Knowing that I can never go back to spending days with my little curly-pig-tailed, brown-eyed beauty holding my hand while we explored the world together makes me weepy.  Realizing that the moments in time where I will have all my ducklings in my home all together are now fewer and fleeting causes me angst.  And reflecting on all the times that I could have done better, should have done better, would give anything to have done better, is just plain exhausting. 

It has taken me two and a half months to reach a point where I can objectively step back, take a breath, and "talk" about the way this makes me feel.  Driving Megan to college -and, as a side note, I should throw out there that the college Megan chose is 1,400 miles away from our home, so when I say I had to let go, I REALLY had to let go!!!- was an adventure.  Rob (my husband and partner in crime for over 19 years) and I had never been to New York and so it was all a new experience for all three of us.  We loaded up our SUV with everything but the kitchen sink and more pairs of shoes than I could count and set out on a cross-country odyssey.  We had a great time, spending time at Navy Pier in Chicago and even taking a detour to the Scranton, PA mall to take our daughter's picture by the infamous "Welcome to Scranton" sign in tribute to her love of "The Office." :)  We arrived in New York a day early (as an intentional part of my obsessive need to plan) so that we could spend a day exploring the public transportation system from Megan's dorm to the city because I knew it was only a matter of time before she would be using that mode of transportation on her own and I knew I would never sleep a wink if I wasn't sure she knew what she was doing.  We boarded the Metra North train and made our way into New York City, navigated Grand Central Station and the subway system, took in some true tourist sites, and then made our way back again to our hotel near campus.  That night, I didn't sleep at all, and not because I felt like Megan wasn't going to be able to navigate her way to and from New York City, because she is a brilliant girl and she did a wonderful job of getting us where we needed to be.  I didn't sleep because my mama arms were aching from all the letting go I was about to have to do...

We woke up bright and early to shower, dress, and have some breakfast before we headed to campus.  For hours, we worked on unpacking and setting up her room to make her as comfortable as we could.  I simply turned my brain off and focused on the task at hand, with more zeal than was probably necessary but it was simply the only thing I could do...I knew that in just a few hours I was going to have to turn and walk away from my baby, and I just didn't know how I would ever manage to do such a thing.  Ever.  And yet, no matter how much I turned my brain off, the clock still kept ticking, and eventually 5:00pm arrived.  It was the hour designated for goodbyes...the hour where parents were asked, oh so politely, to LEAVE so that "orientation" could officially begin.  As Megan walked us down the stairs and out onto the lawn, my feet felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds...I couldn't believe the time had actually come!!  Tears streamed down my face, no matter how much I willed them not to...I knew the more upset I was, the harder this would be for her, too!  And yet, I couldn't stop myself.  The emotions were simply too raw, too strong, and so I cried.  And so did she.  And we hugged.  And we hugged again.  And, finally, I knew I just had to walk away because if I didn't, I would just march myself up the stairs of her dorm and camp out until Fall Break.  So, I told her I loved her and that she should call me, constantly, and I walked away.  I did it, and I still don't know how.  My mama arms ached and my feet felt like lead, but I made my way to our truck, crawled inside, shut the door, and sobbed.  My poor husband...what a mess I was!!  The next few days, as we packed our suitcases and made our way back across the country were filled with conversations about how on earth this had happened...how had we ended up with a college freshman?!?!?  Hadn't it been just yesterday that we brought her home from the hospital?  That we took her to kindergarten?  That we watched her go to her first school dance?  It had, and so how was it possible that we were really driving away from our baby and leaving her all alone at college!??!?!?

But, as in all things, time has a way of healing.  My mama arms still ache, but it is just my new normal and I have learned to embrace this new life.  This life where she "calls" me via FaceTime with a room full of friends so all her friends can talk to her mom, too.  This life where she texts me wanting to call me during the day to tell me how excited she is that she has been chosen to host an alumni event in the city and will be picked up and driven into New York and be eating dinner at a five star restaurant, and has no idea what to wear!!! :)  This life where my daughter is growing up and is strong and smart and independent and confident.  But where she is still my little girl, still wants to hear her mom's opinion, still wants to talk to me about the adventures she is having, the friends she is making, the experiences she is having, and where she, too, is counting the days until she flies home to us to visit.  This new life is different, and it's a little hard to get used to, but it is good, too.  Because, after all, my mama arms are still my mama arms, and I have learned that just as they can stretch to love five children with so much might, they can also stretch 1,400 miles to love my little girl who isn't so little anymore.  And that is very, very good.