Smarter Ardor
  • Blog
  • Smarter Living
  • Homemade Fun
  • About

Silent All These Years

2/6/2023

0 Comments

 
Despite owning this website for a decade and a blog for far longer, I had to reset my password to get in today. Imagine that: I couldn't remember how to gain access to the words I've written and shared. And that's exactly what it feels like. Like I no longer have access to the words. In the three years since I've published on this site, I wish I could tell you I was scribbling madly in journals or working hard on the Great American Novel or even tapping away on an antique typewriter. But the truth is sadder and less eventful: I haven't been writing. Hardly at all in those nearly three years. And even before that it had been sporadic for a long time. 

It's hard to describe the loss that's felt when something so central to your identity feels inaccessible. Maybe it's what athletes feel when they face a potentially career-ending injury, or what musicians feel when they haven't been playing? I wouldn't know. But being a writer-- which, it turns out, for me, is maybe more a condition of the soul than just a habit or activity--who doesn't write is disorienting at best and deeply discouraging at worst. I recently read in Shauna Niequist's latest book I Guess I Haven't Learned that Yet, that a way to care for your soul is to do the things you loved doing as a child. As if these things are central to who you are. I don't know why I'd never noticed before that some of the things that most deeply nourish my soul have always been there. Being outside. Moving my body. Spending time with family and good friends. Listening to music. Singing. Creating. Reading. And of course, writing. Put those together and you've pretty much got my childhood, but also the activities that make me feel happy and whole. 

These silent years have held so much for our family, for me. The've held the entire babyhood of Navarra, our surprising and delightful last baby, of which I have tried to savor every last drop. She is halfway through kindergarten now, and thriving. They've held the dreaming, building, and launch of our family's business. We are approaching the fourth season hosting guests from all over the country at our first beach house, which I manage, and we are neck-deep in the renovation of the second, which I have designed and am in the process of furnishing. So, I've ended up with a new job, one that was a dream of ours that I'm not sure I ever thought would come true. But that's not why I've been silent.

These years have also held a decade-long nearly existential crisis of faith for me. A disentaglement, really, of my actual beliefs from the Evangelical church. What had once been my entire religious identity had become a fraught relationship, then eventually it became completely untenable. I had to determine what had always been good and what was never of God and how to proceed, and it was confusing and painful and oftentimes, lonely. That it took place in a hostile political climate helped not a bit. It's taken years of thinking, praying, processing, and sorting, but I believe i have mostly been able to keep the considerable good and let go of the harmful. One of the many things I've learned in this process is how much more expansive God's love is than I had previously believed, and how much more room there is to find him. In the last year and a half, after what felt like years of wandering in the wilderness and what felt to our children like church hopping, we found a new home in a totally unexpected place. We belong to an Episcopalian church now, and for all there is for these Evangelical kids and me to learn here, it has felt like a coming home (and to our resident Catholic, Daniel, it has felt comforting and inviting in ways he couldn't have anticipated either).  On this issue alone, I believe I could write volumes. But I haven't. 

In these years my children have grown before my eyes and are now 15, 13, 9 and 5. I would no longer write about their bloopers, troubles or lives, as their stories are no longer mine to tell. Their telling requires permission and tact, and my priorities have shifted as my children have aged. I want privacy and space for them to discover and make mistakes without it all being recorded, like their dad and I got to have. The world they're growing up in doesn't offer much of that. So there has been a protective posture and a holding of so much that is precious close to my chest.

For me, 40, with its paradox of freedom and uncertainty, has come and gone. I am baffled at the aging process I didn't think would be so difficult, the physical and metaphysical parts alike. My marriage ambles into its late teens. Our life is full and busy and challenging, as we navigate kindergarten to high school and so much in between. The times when everyone is home-- and good-- at the same time, are few and fleeting far to fast for my liking. Our definition of joy shifts now, and I'm not sure I've been able to pinpoint it yet.

It's difficult to articulate the reasons for my silence because they are legion, and also they are complex. In a culture of hot takes and Twitter wars, 24-hour news and increasingly stark divides between factions, our culture doesn't value moderation or nuance or taking time to think before speaking. For all the wondering and musing I've always done, I now feel less sure of most things than I did when I was younger. Which I'm fairly sure reflects growth, but which doesn't lend itself to a consistent platform or stance in today's climate.

All this said and seemingly to the contrary, I have long suspected and recently confirmed that I need to write, not for an audience (though if you're here I'm not sure why but I appreciate it all the same), but because creative people need to create. I have known and read plenty of books by writers who were really something else. The writing made them a writer. And that's certainly an honest way to get there, perhaps far more legitimate than where I find myself. But my predicament is different. I may never become the "author" second-grade me dreamed of being. There may never be a book or--God forbid-- a platform. I'm not a writer because I write. I write because I'm a writer. Regardless of whether anyone reads it, and no matter how many other avenues I attempt to fill the void, unless and until I am writing again, something within me will always be wanting. I share this in case maybe there is an ache in your chest too; in case there is something that needs doing too.
0 Comments

Roses in the Rain

3/19/2020

4 Comments

 
Picture
Paula, a new friend who has seen a thing or two, replied that she has what she needs. “It’s a good thing I lived through the war,” she said, and then, “in my eighty-plus years, I have never seen anything like this. Keep a journal if you can.”

I can’t shake her words. Living through what I know are just the beginning stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States is the strangest thing I’ve experienced, by a long shot. My kids are home from school. My husband is working from home. Our usually bustling calendar is totally cleared, for the foreseeable future. 

With nowhere to go and plenty to worry about, it’s almost difficult to settle on one subject. Do I worry about my grandmother and my parents, or the people around me, or the viability of our investment property, of what could be a very shaky financial future, or my kids’ schooling, or my mental wellbeing? So many choices. So little ability to affect any change.

Here’s what I’ve noticed:

I have an unprecedented lack of control over my life and the wellbeing of the people in it. I can’t control whether my pantry or my fridge stay stocked; I can’t show up for people the way I usually do. I have little control over my day, as I am now a preschool, kindergarten, fourth grade and sixth grade teacher, and I am cooking more than ever. I can take precautions, but I can't ensure that my family stays well. I can’t control how my children process the news that has quickly changed their entire world any more than I can stop myself from worrying instead of sleeping through the night. 

My inbox and newsfeed are inundated with  aggressive daily schedules, lesson plans from our amazing teachers, supplemental games and resources online to help my kids continue to learn, choreography videos from our dance studio, free art classes, museum tours, Broadway shows, online concerts, scavenger hunt ideas, DIY challenges, and a myriad of suggestions for how we can “keep busy” while social distancing.  And, while I greatly appreciate the generosity of organizations giving their valuable content away for free, the ingenuity of parents and their willingness to share their ideas, and the commitment of my friends to use this time to make headway into their home projects, I have to step back and say, “no thank you.” I know, I’m the girl who makes a daily schedule every summer, and I may do that again. But this feels different.

Right now, almost overnight, everything has been taken from our daily lives. The entertainment, the socializing, the excess, the work, the zipping about, being busy. It’s all gone in a moment, and if we’re really lucky, that’s all we’re going to lose. This is to speak nothing of those fighting illness or losing loved ones or who can’t afford to feed their kids, who usually eat at school, or of my friends who are losing businesses or who work as healthcare providers and put themselves and their families at risk each day for the good of others. And I think it’s worth wondering what the takeaway of this time ought to be. With our lives suddenly stripped of school, travel, activities, obligations and plans, why are we so eager to fill them back up again? What if there is something to be gained from all this? What if there might be a lesson in the stillness?

I got to see Chris Martin’s Together at Home concert from last week, and got caught up in the lyrics of the beautiful song “Us Against the World:”

“If we could float away, and fly up to the surface,
and just start again
and lift off before trouble 
just erodes us in the rain, 
just erodes us in the rain, 
just erodes us, and see roses in the rain
And slow it down
Through chaos as it swirls, 
it’s us against the world.”

Picture
I am determined to notice what good may be found in all of this, and so far, it hasn’t been that hard to find. In a culture that had become so divided, it is a relief to feel like we are all going through something together, even if it's something unbearable. In our home,  I know we are only four days in, but I haven’t yet had trouble finding ways to spend our days. We wake up when our bodies want to naturally (except for that sleepy middle schooler; she gets a little encouragement).  I might work out, and maybe the kids will join me. We eat breakfast and the older kids get started on their work. I work  with Deacon and find something to entertain Navarra, or she joins us. Our sixth grader works on and off during the day, because her work is more extensive. We make sure we do some chores and get outside to walk or explore or ride bikes every day. We try hard not to turn on the TV or rely on devices, though I’m sure there will be days when we do, and that will be okay too.

I’m not trying to say I’m not afraid of going stir crazy: I am, and I can feel it already. I desperately crave time and space that is mine, and it is absolutely nowhere to be found. And I don't think I'm doing this the one right way; I’m definitely not trying to tell anyone how to live their lives. Maybe your days on a tight schedule are going great. Maybe that works best for your family, and if it does, that’s excellent. But if you’re trying to bend everyone to fit into a mold that makes you have control, but that doesn’t seem like it’s working, maybe it’s okay to resist the urge and try something different. Maybe it’s okay to linger over a later dinner, now that we get to eat together every night. Maybe it’s okay to lie on the couch reading one more chapter instead of getting lunch right at 12:00. Maybe it’s okay to let boredom compel my children to play imaginatively together, even if it wrecks my house. 


Usually, at dinner, our family plays “High/Low,” where we talk about high and low points of our days. We are still making plenty of room to talk about our feelings, but tonight, intead, we played, “Tell Me Something Good.” Because I don’t need extra opportunities to talk about my worries right now; I need reminders of what is still here and good.  That phrase that has haunted me since college and lives in big letters on my kitchen wall--Be Here Now--has maybe never applied more. I notice that, when I’m focused on what’s right in front of me, I am okay. I can see the beauty of my children learning, growing and playing in a way that I don’t usually have access to. I can appreciate the sun on my face, outside with my children in the middle of the day. I can enjoy this moment. But when I look around to see what everyone else is doing and how I measure up, when I check social media, when I read news articles too often, when I devote space to worrying, I start spiraling. I’m not mentally present for my kids, and I’m not my best self. 

These days we are living through are unprecedented. I hope this is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and that our actions now might stifle it from hurting too many more. I feel deep sadness for all those families who have already been affected, and I do not mean to minimize the fear or anxiety that anyone might be feeling; I feel it too. But I am trying to choose to acknowledge my utter powerlessness. I am trying to find contentment and gratitude for what I have and where I am. I am trying to help the people I can. I am trying to create adventure and model peace for my children. I am trying to behave as if the God I always say I believe in is actually who I say he is. I am trying.

But the things I’m trying hardest at involve not doing or being anything extra, and they don’t leave much time for “filling my days.” I am looking for the lessons and the joy that might be found in doing less, in resting on my faith, in just being, together. However you are spending your days right now, I wish you health and peace; I wish you time with the ones you love, and I hope you can see the roses in the rain.

4 Comments

I Hear You, I See You

2/8/2020

1 Comment

 
Picture
We weren't supposed to give each other Christmas gifts, Daniel and I. Last August, we were able to realize our dream of buying an investment property--a little bungalow on the water, two blocks from the Atlantic, in a beach community we love--but renovating it has not come cheap. And, for a host of other reasons, it had been a tough year. A year for gratitude and celebration for sure, but not a year for gifts. Neither of us had any hard feelings about that. 

So, imagine my surprise on Christmas morning, when Daniel handed me a fat envelope marked "C" and said, with a shrug, "I know I wasn't supposed to, but this is for you." I pulled out a typed letter he had written, and I quickly dissolved into tears. Daniel and I aren't known for being generous with our words all the time. It's a mutual flaw. Nor is Daniel big on writing. But this letter contained words I hadn't known I needed to hear. Proof that he'd heard me, that he'd seen me, as I had navigated the other side of what had been a difficult few years for him professionally. I am not a big crier, but I ugly cried so hard that I needed to take a break, so hard that I hid my face behind the letter when the kids became uncomfortable. I didn't need anything else. He could have just given me that letter, to read over and over again, and it would have been gift enough. But he gave me something more.

If you just meet me casually or come to a gathering at my home, you might be surprised to find out I'm an introvert. I love people. But if you really know me, you'll smile and recall my awkwardness in the face of small talk, the way you can tell I'm peopled out even if I don't say it; you might notice how I disappear when I'm hosting even family to steal a minute alone. As my life has become joyfully more crowded, I have craved solitude, and it has become increasingly difficult to find. I have stated the need for time and space, even as I couldn't articulate what that meant or how to obtain it, over and over again in my 12 years as a mother, the desperation building as our family has grown and my world feels it has shrunken. Often Daniel's well-intended solution might be to plan a date for us, or a night away together, both of which I relish. But, much like you might feel after eating a delicious Chinese meal when you were actually craving pizza, at the end of those events, I'd still be left wanting. The thing I'd had was decidedly good, but it hadn't been the thing I had needed.

For this reason, the paper I pulled out next was a revelation. Daniel had booked a half-day of spa treatments at a nearby hotel for me and then a suite with a fireplace for me to enjoy  for a night by myself. I'm not sure what meant more to me: The excitement and anticipation of a day spent alone, or the fact that this man, with whom I have lived and loved and struggled for the last fifteen years deeply knows me. He isn't threatened, at least not anymore. He isn't hurt. He feels overjoyed to give me this gift, as much as I do in the receiving.

Today, I packed a suitcase just for me, drove a car with no car seats. got a manicure and pedicure, a massage and a facial. I drank two cups of tea in a beautiful conservatory while I thumbed through fashion magazines and looked forward to a night by myself in a hotel. What would I do? What would it matter?

Thus far, I have eaten crackers and cheese and the chocolate-covered almonds I told my brother-in-law I didn't have (sorry, Keith), drank wine out of a plastic hotel cup, cracked open a new novel, caught up with a friend, and dusted off this ol' website. Room service is coming soon.

I hesitate to tell you any of this, because I know it's dripping in privilege. I know this is extravagant, and it doesn't matter if I tell you it was paid for in points and Fantasy Football winnings; the point is, this is extra, and I am well aware that it's not accessible to a lot of people. It hasn't been and won't always be accessible to me. Of course, I am not saying this is the only way to love or to be loved. But I am saying, it took us 15 years to get here, and I'm not talking about money now.

I'm talking about the time it took in our relationship  to get to a point where we knew and understood each other-- and ourselves--well enough to give and accept a gift like this with the joy that we're able to. And I think that is worth sharing, despite my discomfort with how unnecessary all this is. Please, don't dream of telling me I deserve it. Of course I don't. I live a comfortable life where I have been afforded plenty of choices and luxuries, and I hold that loosely enough to realize it could all be gone tomorrow and tightly enough to know how fortunate I am. I am deeply grateful for this life, for knowing ourselves and each other better with each passing year, and for  this this man who really sees me. It is such a joy to be fully known and loved anyway. (I'm looking at you,  Justyn, who delivered my room service and did not hide your discomfort that I wanted to give you my breakfast order too. I am not leaving this room until you kick me out, and I am not ashamed.)

1 Comment

The Ministry of Staying Behind

3/17/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Almost eight years ago, we found ourselves finally, reluctantly going. For three years we moved each year: first to the outskirts of the city we loved, then 700 miles southwest to Nashville, and then another 700 miles to the coast of Virginia, 250 miles south of where we started. Leaving was hard. Starting over stole my energy, drained my confidence, tested my courage and sapped my strength. In Tennessee, for the first time, our little family was all we had.

When we moved to Tennessee, thinking it would be for two years, I dove into trying to meet people. And though I often felt lonely and out of place, I now know that I hit the jackpot. There I found a group of women who threw their doors open wide. They managed to hold each other tightly while always widening their circle.

Picture
​After a whirlwind year of growth, we arrived in Virginia, halfway through my pregnancy with our third baby, trying desperately to make an adventure for our two little girls of the series of temporary homes until we found this one. Despite joining a large and established MOPS group of nice women, I didn’t have the energy to pour myself into cultivating friendships. Our son arrived shortly after we moved into our rambling fixer-upper, and I struggled to homeschool our daughter while managing the other two little ones after Daniel headed back to work a mere five days after I gave birth. I didn’t sleep for almost fully a year, and though we had started attending a church regularly by then, it felt like our life didn't make it easy for us to connect the way we longed to.

What I’m trying to say is this: I  know what it’s like to be the one who leaves. I know how hard it is to start over—again—the energy it takes to muster another awkward meeting, wondering if maybe this encounter will be one that finally turns into a lasting friendship. I know the anxiety and work of ensuring the kids thrive in transition. I know that, unfair though it may be, it seems like the new girl is usually the one who does the inviting, the one on whom the burden to find a place falls. When you move where everyone has already found their people, there isn’t always room for one more, even when the people are nice. And that stings.
​
When we moved here, the only thing I liked about it was that it meant no more moving for a while and less travel for Daniel, despite very long hours. I had no idea whether we would learn to love anything else. I would never call any place my “forever home;” I just can’t see that far around the bend. But we really like living here and don’t have any plans to leave. Here’s the problem with that: Everyone else seems to. Because of the military, and a host of other reasons, this is a transient place. To live here is to love and to lose. It happens in cycles; every two years or so I have to say a big goodbye, not to mention the smaller ones sprinkled throughout every year. 

Two years ago we sent off a family that felt like family to ours, and I said goodbye to the best friend I’ve had the joy of making since I became an adult. It’s a strange sensation to be left like that. Because when you’re the one moving on, in order to survive, you have to summon the energy to move forward, to make friends, to establish patterns. But when you’re left behind, you don’t. You already have the rhythms and necessities of life, so you carry on, navigating around a gaping hole. I'm not at all suggesting that being left is harder, only that it's an entirely other thing I wasn't prepared for.

Picture
Maybe it should get easier the more often it happens, but that’s not been the case for us. We had the enormous good fortune of getting to live across the street from my brother and his family for the last year. We knew it was temporary, and though I knew it would be sweet, I could not have anticipated how precious it would be to watch cousins become best friends; I could not have predicted the way a sister-in-law I’ve known for nearly ten years would become so close that I can’t seem to find a word to do her justice. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I’m heartbroken in their absence. It was magic that could never be repeated, and I have cried often over the loss of it, but also over the ridiculousness of the opportunity in the first place.
​
In the wake of this loss, we also prepare to watch our next-door neighbors of whom we’ve grown very fond and a number of other friends start new chapters. We are excited that our friends get to realize dreams that have been years in the making, but still exhausted at the thought of starting over; as with so many things in life, we live in the tension of both, not or. We are weary, bruised, and a bit unsure what the point is of building this community in what feels like such shifting sand. If we are the only constant, really, why do we open our door and our hearts, again and again?

Picture
​I feel unmoored every time we are left; I feel it deeply now. But isn’t all love—and life, for that matter—tenuous at best? I am not guaranteed my health, my husband or my children even through the end of this day, let alone for a lifetime. The weight of that realization can crush me if I let it, can cause me to preserve the imperfect current condition of my heart by whatever means necessary. Maybe I won’t love again, but definitely I won’t lose either. The temptation is real, and it’s happened enough times now that I can recognize the pattern in my coping. I tuck into myself and the sadness each time. I grieve and hide, sometimes a little longer than is helpful. I decide that the amazing friends I have who are now scattered all over the country, the incredible women who would fly through the night if ever I called are enough; maybe I don’t need proximity; certainly I can’t weather this pain again.

And yet I know that’s not true.  The trick, I think, is to stay soft and open when logic says it would be unwise to do so.  If my focus is inward, if my goal is to guard my heart from further pain, then the vulnerability of venturing out into new friendships—particularly with people who are bound to leave me—is reckless and foolish. But if my focus is outward, if my  goal is to love—as often and as many and as wholeheartedly as possible— then I have no choice but to walk to my door, with a limp if necessary, and throw it open again. Absolutely I have been loved like that, and I will always be grateful for it.

Picture
A couple of weeks ago, the day after I cried in the airport drop-off line,  I hosted some friends in my kitchen for a planning meeting.  Halfheartedly, I pulled together an agenda, made a pot of soup and lit some candles. And something happened around that table, as it so often does. As we filled our bowls, I exhaled a little. My sadness persists; my fatigue is real, but the act of opening is slowly healing my heart, again.
​
Five years ago, Daniel and I bought our house with a purpose; we knew we were called to open it often. But we couldn’t have known then what staying put would require of us, the courage it would take to open our hearts over and over, knowing we would be left. After an extended season of living in shallow soil, we couldn’t wait for our family to grow roots. But we couldn’t have known that calling would come with a catch: that we would be an oak tree surrounded by gorgeous annuals that bloom brilliantly for a season and are then gone. 

​We never really get over the beauty of the friendships we’ve made with people just passing through. But we hold each other tightly, reluctantly taking a step back to widen our circle. We remember what it was like when we were weary travelers, how grateful we were to be welcomed in.  So, we grieve our losses, then take a deep breath and extend an invitation again. Of course we have room for one more, we say.  Come in and sit by us, if only for a while. 

0 Comments

When the Shine Wears Off

1/22/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
Susan, a stranger to us, leaned across the bar where Daniel and I were sharing a plate of Brussels sprouts and bacon and interrupted our conversation. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out, “but I just have to ask, are you two newlyweds?”

“No!” I laughed. “Far from it! We’ve been married 12 years. We have four children.”

“I don’t believe it!” she scoffed. “You cannot have four kids. You cannot have been married that long. You just have the glow!” she said.

“That is such a compliment,” I smiled, “you’ve made our day.”

This happened a week ago, which is important to note.

Susan told us she’s been with her second husband for 22 years, but that her friend Pat beside her, with the enormous diamond ring, had been married for 50. 

“You know how we made it to 50 years?” Pat asked, flashing that ring.  “He stays in Florida and I stay here. When he wants to come up, I go down there.”

She wasn’t joking. I raised an eyebrow at Daniel. Pat caught this and said, “How long have you been married? Give it some time, you’ll understand. You stay together by being apart.”

At the work dinner we attended next, Daniel wore the compliment like a gold star he wanted to make sure people noticed. “Guess what someone just told us?” he greeted our dinner companions, and then our house guest, once we got home. He even mentioned it to me again the next morning. And if I had written this like I intended, that next day, it would read a little differently. It might make you feel that your relationship were somehow inferior, that you were somehow inferior if you didn’t wake up thanking your lucky stars for the person sleeping next to you. I didn’t have the heart to hit publish a week ago, because it didn’t feel like the whole truth. And I’m glad I didn’t, even though the story would have been wrapped up neatly and would have presented us and our marriage in a rosy-gold light. But real life is rarely like that.

Picture
This morning, despite an all-day date on Saturday where we had real conversation and dreamed together and even took a cooking class, our footing feels shakier. It isn’t, of course, but we are navigating patterns of behavior that trip us up. He does this which makes me feel that way, which makes me say what I shouldn’t that masks what I really meant. This happened, and will continue to, even though we are doing all the hard work and all the “right” things. This year, we will mark 15 years together. Our love has been hard fought, and our affection for each other maybe even more so. This morning I’m not feeling it, despite my affection being so apparent a week ago that I fooled a stranger. The volatility of my emotions isn't a problem, but if I trusted my feelings as a barometer for my marriage, I would be in serious trouble. The first 10 years of our marriage taught us what every veteran knows: that love may be constant, but affection ebbs like the tide. War heroes don’t receive medals of honor because they survive times of peace.

Maybe what I’m trying to say is this: I am proud to have been mistaken for newlyweds more than 12 years in because I can remember how hard the hard times were, and I know they aren’t all behind us. I remember lying in bed crying when beside my husband was the loneliest place I could imagine being. I remember the Christmas I had the desperate thought that, just maybe, being alone—even with the two babies I had at the time—would be easier and less painful than staying together. I remember the tears, the hurt, the feeling that I might never be understood by this man that was supposed to love me. And I remember so many slow, reluctant slogs back to each other, the space between us feeling like so many miles. I remember when we couldn’t cobble together enough money to buy groceries or gas before we got paid on Friday, living in a couple of houses that weren’t our home, staying put through lost babies and new jobs and ruined credit and late nights and so much travel, date nights at home or on Groupons in lean times and unlikely trips to Europe for anniversaries where we felt like the luckiest and dates Daniel insisted we go on even though my heart wasn’t in it. I remember so many conversations I would rather have avoided, vulnerability and a level of trust that still doesn’t feel fair. I remember long, tense seasons, and I know they will come again. But the only way out is through, together. We won’t stay together by being apart; we will stay together by being together.
 
Those hard seasons will keep coming, since that’s what seasons do. So, we will hold this one close and treasure its beauty, its warmth, the ease we feel now—even on imperfect mornings— knowing that it can’t stay forever. But we will not grow complacent: we will keep dating; we will keep talking; we will keep showing up for each other, especially when we don’t feel like it. We will work to keep ourselves healthy and whole, not asking more of our marriage than it was meant to provide; we will rely on our faith in God, not our faith in ourselves or each other, which will often let us down. When we get restless, we will resist the urge to look outside and practice turning inward, pouring our efforts into ourselves and our marriage, not outside of it. We will fail. Often. We will forgive. But we won’t hide from each other to survive the years; we will stay and fight—with each other if we have to—but ultimately for each other, our marriage and our family.
 
We only slightly resemble those bright-eyed newlyweds.  I have to remind myself to be gentle to those untested kids who fought over so many stupid things. We were learning who we were, learning each other, learning how to live together, learning what acceptance and unconditional love look like lived out. We were learning what it means to love the person you actually have, not the person you thought he was or the person you wish he’d become. No, we aren’t newlyweds anymore. The shine has worn off, for sure. We both have wrinkles and extra weight; in so many ways there is a softness that wasn’t there before. We remember how it used to be. Sometimes we get wistful for things it feels exist only behind us—for youth, for beauty, for excitement, for spontaneity, for sleep—but we know what we have instead is truer, more solid. It is beautiful enough to make a stranger wonder, even if it isn’t Instagram worthy or poetic or perfect, it’s real and it's ours.

0 Comments

Broken for You

8/19/2018

5 Comments

 
Picture
I don’t know if they never told me, or if I just didn’t want to hear it. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Because how could anyone ever be ready?

On communion days, I used to sing this song, Jesus’ words at the last supper set to music: “This is my body, broken for you.” I sang it in an automatic way, or at least without connecting myself to the brokenness, not really. Until motherhood and its holy awakening, its spiritual reckoning. Why didn’t anyone tell me about that, either?

Birth is a breaking open, always, no matter how you get there. There is no other way. But I wasn’t prepared for how motherhood, again and again, would break me open, lay me bare. Nothing I have encountered has been more vulnerable and strong, more generous and sacrificial than pregnancy and birth. Our bodies make space where there is none, go without, bear pain—so much pain that we think we might die--and then the breaking open, new life, new relationship, new identity. Nothing is ever the same as it was before.

Picture
In ten years’ time, I carried six babies, brought four into this world and our home. And when you look at me, I think you can probably tell. When we first had four, I would say it almost for effect; “I have four children;” I would wait for a reaction from strangers. Now, mostly, they nod as if to say, “Yes, that seems about right.” Maybe it’s the softness in my eyes or abdomen that wasn’t there before, but I look like a mother now. I feel no sadness but considerable confusion about this.
​
We knew we would be giving things up in exchange for these beautiful children, right? I know we did. I knew I would lose sleep, but I was ill-prepared for how much and how long it would last and how competent I would be expected to be without it.  I hoped my marriage would shift and adjust, worried as it groaned under the weight of all these extra people to take our attention, felt relief with its eventual expansion to accommodate all this love we had made.  I knew my jeans might not fit again. But nothing prepared me for the spiritual sacrifice it would feel like to give up this body, or how readily I would do it, almost without thinking, again and again. ​

Picture
My fourth baby’s little feet slap the hardwood floors all her waking hours as she runs and plays and discovers. She says, “hi,” “dada,” “dog;” she signs, “more,” “all done,” “eat,” “please,” “milk.” Her first birthday has come and gone, and we are gradually weaning; my body is changing again.

No one told me my body would never be the same. I might return to the same weight, but everything wouldn’t be where I left it. My hips would be wider, my chest flatter. Wrinkly marks would radiate down from my belly button, marking its expansion to flattening four times. Veins I never saw before would snake themselves down my legs long after the weight is gone. My body reads like a map, but that’s not all. Studies show that a baby’s cells alter the DNA of her mother for years after her birth, and this makes sense to me; it must be true. How do you recover from creating life, then birthing it, from raising a soul you created and gradually letting it go? How do you  release a literal part of your body to make her own choices, her own mistakes while you watch—and even encourage—her to walk away from you? How do you bounce back from that?
​
We couldn’t possibly, right? Surely we can’t. And so, I resolve not to bounce back. Not now, maybe not ever. At thirteen months postpartum, I have not reclaimed my pre-surprise-fourth-baby weight. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.  I do more sitting on the floor soaking in this last little one than I do on my yoga mat, more time running around with my children than running in the neighborhood. It won’t always be this way, and there is time for fitness and wellness amid the chaos of young family life—there must be—but I don’t have to figure the whole thing out today. I can smile and congratulate my loved ones—and even my younger self—when they “bounce back” without requiring it of myself now. ​

Picture
​As I gently wean this precious last baby, I think about all it took to get here. Breastfeeding never came easy to me. With my first babies, I fought to pump at work, crying when I never got more than a few ounces at a time. I cried again when my day care provider told me she thought my first baby was hungry and when our pediatrician suggested I supplement with formula. Late every night I fought sleep with our second, squeezing in a pumping session before bed to ensure she got one full bottle of my milk each day, for a year. With our son, I battled to get a tongue-tie diagnosis, fought through seven months of painful nursing and plugged ducts to nurse him for a year. And then came number four: the one who latched immediately, who nursed happily, who is reluctant to stop. When I contemplate what will be left when this is all over, when I lament the changed body I will learn to accept as my own, I cannot divorce the loss from the love in the giving.

Maybe I didn’t understand the concept of communion before, of Christ’s body being broken for us, maybe this comparison shows that I still don’t. Certainly, I'm not suggesting that the sacrifice of motherhood is on equal footing with that of Jesus. But carrying, giving birth, and nourishing my babies with my body feels like the closest I will ever come to understanding what it means. I carry the marks and scars, I live with the loss, and I wouldn’t tell you it’s been easy to accept any of it. Motherhood and time are thieves, both of them, and while the gifts themselves redeem, I still miss what’s been stolen sometimes, still lament what once was mine.
​
But as I try to memorize the way this baby relaxes into me as she nurses, the way it soothes her as nothing else can, even as I look forward to my coming freedom, I mourn how I will never feel this again. I relish the closeness, the power and simplicity. Mothering my older children isn’t nearly this simple, and days are coming when I will wish I could cause myself physical pain to spare them theirs, but those days will be long gone, these lines and marks and scars on my body the only proof they were ever here.

What a privilege it has been, this opportunity to expand, to grow, to break, to heal. Motherhood is to walk with a limp: I will never look the same, never walk the same, never be the same as before my body gave itself up for these four children. Sometimes the shock of all of it still reverberates, still catches me off guard when I catch my reflection, but I would do it all over, again and again, for the joy and the pain of being their mother. In that, maybe, I see a small sliver of what Jesus meant. In these permanent remnants of the things I carried, a remembrance. The giver forever marked by the giving.   

5 Comments

Betwixt & Between

4/9/2018

1 Comment

 
Picture
I’m writing from my bed, wrapped in a monogrammed robe, a bridesmaid’s gift from one of my dearests, married almost ten years ago. I’m fresh from a lavender-scented bath, with a candle burning on my dresser proclaiming, “LOVE HEALS EVERY BODY,” and I think that must be at least partially true. A novel sits on my night table along with a mostly-untouched glass of good Californian red—also a gift—and an unopened bar of good dark chocolate, which was a gift I bought myself.

​This night is an anomaly; it’s not what it seems. It represents neither luxury nor pampering but grasping. There is something to be said for feeling and articulating a need, but knowing how to meet it seems to be something else entirely.

​I never knew I was the type of person who needed to be alone until I found myself never, ever alone. It’s the night before school starts back after Spring Break, and I feel no gladness over that. I nurse a vague sadness, knowing the big girls will be back to school tomorrow and Daniel will be back to traveling for work, and I will try to find the rhythm of the days and nights again with an infant who is not going gently into that good night, despite my dogged attempts at sleep training.  I will not miss the fighting or the mess, but I will miss my big kids. And though I will rarely—sometimes in the bathroom or the shower and for a couple of hours at a time in my bed—find myself alone, I will feel the gnaw of loneliness.

Picture
This season has me thrown. It is everything I knew it would be, at least as bittersweet as that 72% chocolate I’m contemplating opening. Being up all night for months on end with this delicious, squishy baby is even harder than I imagined it would be. Being present and pleasant for my other children, I am ashamed to admit, feels such a burden. I find myself between peer groups—in the throes of nursing and sleep deprivation, so unable to hang with the moms of big kids, but older and more hardened than the other moms of babies—I don’t feel like I fit well anywhere.

I tell myself daily, in the face of words from well-meaning older women about long days and short years: I am not missing this; I am right here. I am soaking up the way my oldest daughter looks at me over the top of her tea cup when she tells me about her day; the way her canine teeth stick out and don’t yet meet the others as they grow in; the way my suddenly lanky son whispers, “I love you, my sweet Mama,” into my collarbone when I snuggle him at bedtime; the way I am the only one who can soothe the tension out of my middle daughter when she is overwhelmed; the way I am still sometimes the only one who will do, for all of the people in my house. I relish that honor even as I struggle under its weight, the burden of it made somehow heavier still by the realization that it will not always be this way.

Picture
What I don’t need is to be reminded that this will all be over before I know it. Because, good gracious, don’t I know that? Don’t I feel an undercurrent, an ache, with every breath and, in fact, doesn’t it sometimes take the breath right from me? Where have ten years gone? And will the next ten be gone even faster? I lie awake sometimes, longing for sleep, unable to bear my inability to slow any of this down. I have made “Be Here Now” my mantra for almost twenty years; I aim for it every day, but to whatever degree I am attaining it, it is but a small consolation.

Because even as I know I am where I’m meant to be—where I want to be—I struggle against the desire for something else. Something more? Something that’s mine? Certainly our baby didn’t take that from me—I never had it to begin with—and even if she did, she’s given us joy in spades. But as I find myself at 36, up all night and sitting on the floor with a baby during the day, again, lamenting the list of modest things I had hoped to accomplish that still didn’t get done, again, I can’t help but feel the tug.​

Picture
Daniel and I went antiquing today, a hobby of ours which I couldn’t have seen coming a decade ago, and I found a writing desk. I had been looking for several years, never finding the right one. This one is simple and lovely and refinished well, with a modest price tag to match. I made note of it and we kept walking. Having covered the whole mall, Daniel said, “Did you want to get that writing desk?” I suggested we look again. A second look returned the same result; it was as good a fit as any we’d seen and a bargain.


“Do you know who needs writing desks, though?” I wrung my hands.

“Writers?” Daniel replied.

“Exactly. And I’m not anymore. I’m pretty sure I don’t remember how.” I said it like a joke, but the tears in my eyes betrayed me.

Daniel smiled and suggested that maybe this season could be blamed, that of course I was still a writer.

I’m serious when I say I’m not so sure. But we bought that desk that wouldn’t fit in the backseat of Daniel’s Acura. And we stopped at a brewery on the way home where we talked about a dream of ours we may just be on the verge of. When we got home and my plans for the evening fell through, Daniel insisted that I go out anyway, but tere was nowhere to go.

So, I shut myself in my room with the red and the candles and the chocolate and the book. I soaked in my little clawfoot tub and read a couple chapters. I sipped the wine while I wrote in my robe, letting tears come as they might but not allowing myself to buy the lies of either extreme: that it will always be this way or that my feeling the difficulty of this season somehow negates my recognition of the beauty of it.

Picture
It’s annoying to have to remind myself the things I so readily share with others, but here it is, for myself and maybe even for you:

You are not missing your life. It would not even be possible.

Your children are not a distraction from bigger things, but neither were they meant to satisfy all of your ambitions or needs. Feeling that pang doesn’t make you a failure.

It’s right and good to ask for what you need, but it’s also okay not to know what that is. Just don’t give up the search.

That it's hard doesn't necessarily mean you're doing it wrong; sometimes it's just hard.

Lately I find myself using the term “worthy struggle.” The fight for a space of your own, for friendship, for work you can believe in, even in the midst of life and love and motherhood is a worthy struggle. Among the worthiest, perhaps.

So, I will continue to show up in a thousand mundane, invisible ways for these people in my house that I love so much that my heart could burst. I will thank God for the love of a man committed to seeing me through all the noise and distractions of so many seasons, for the health of these gorgeous children in my care. I will outlast that chubby-cheeked babe and reclaim sleep for the both of us, eventually.  I will fight to stay present and notice the good and reject the voices that tell me I’m missing it even as I’m knee deep in it. I will fight the overachiever who expects to get more than a couple of things accomplished on only a couple of hours of sleep. I will occasionally write terrible drafts in the hope that flexing that muscle will make it remember, but I will not allow myself to despair when I am overcome by the difficulties of this season. And I will strive to accept this strange new space where I am a veteran and a rookie all at once.  
​

I will keep showing up, imperfectly: for my husband, for my children, yes, but also for myself. None of us will ever mistake these efforts for perfect, but we will also never be able to deny that I was here.

1 Comment

Breathe like Mama

11/15/2017

2 Comments

 
PictureFamily selfie in Philadelphia, a few days before learning I was pregnant.
A year ago today, I stared blankly at a positive pregnancy test. A year ago today, I mourned another baby because it felt like so much being taken away. 

Of course, a baby does represent a loss of sorts: of control, of time, of space for self, of body, of sleep, of the ability to order life. Even then, I knew it was infinitely more than that—a gift, despite the shock in its giving.

I thought I had processed all of this before Navarra came. But then, after two weeks of strong contractions, I labored in an L&D room at 39 weeks, looked at the incubator beside my bed and mused, “Daniel, can you believe there is going to be a baby in there? TODAY?” The discomfort on the nurses’ faces told me maybe I had a little more work to do.

Picture
Almost four months later, I’m still praising God for another healthy, unmedicated VBAC—the birth I had hoped for—but that’s always easier to say on this side of things. In the moment, I said, “The first time I did this, I couldn’t believe I could endure that much pain and not die.” At first, it played like a joke. But as labor progressed, it all became more real; I needed real reminders. “It’s coming from you; it can’t overcome you,” my doula repeated.

I’m still thankful for the nurse who allowed me to labor on a ball in the shower for what must have been over an hour; when I went in it was dark, when I came out the sun was up and I was sure it was time to push. But it wasn’t. I’m still embarrassed and thankful that a dedicated nurse knelt in front me—even by the toilet— while I labored, ensuring the monitor stayed in place so that I could have the birth I had prayed for.

I’m still in awe of the midwife whom I had only seen once the entire pregnancy, the one I loved who had delivered Deacon, our miracle baby, who had stayed home until just the right time and brought hope and peace and calm to my room and delivery—again. 

I still well up every time I think about that moment when I yelled at my patient doula that I couldn’t do it, how she looked deep into my eyes with the knowledge that my feeling that I couldn’t meant that I already was.

I’m still teary thinking about the circle of women that closed around me at 8:16 when I said, “I need to push, and I can’t stop;” how they deftly moved into place, how my moans became primal screams, how they deposited a tiny, wailing baby on my lap at 8:17. How I shook and shook and cried in disbelief. I had done it, one last time.

Picture
“Baby!” I shouted, “we did it!” And then, “I NEVER HAVE TO DO THIS AGAIN!” His hand clutching mine, his lips on my forehead, the tears in our eyes, his uttering a name the nurses weren’t expecting, almost automatic, again, but for the last time.

I held that baby to my breast and she nursed instantly, like we had done it a thousand times already, and somehow it felt like we had.

Since Navarra’s birth, there has been a calm I can’t explain that exists somewhere above the swirl of chaos in the everyday. When her excited siblings and my parents descended upon our room and my bed, it all felt like it was falling into place; our older children falling in love instantly, just like we had. We came home not much more than 24 hours after her birth to a house filled with flowers and food and love by family and the best of friends. My generous parents took our big kids to their house for the weekend, and we ate and rested and stared at our last baby in our quiet house.  The big three returned a few days later, anxious to get to know their sister. They still are—we all are. We welcomed a steady stream of company for the first two months of her life and Daniel was able to spend the better part of a month home with us. It’s not an exaggeration that this fourth baby has propelled him into super dad and husband status as far as we are all concerned.

Picture
Would it be unfair to say this baby has cemented us? Is that too much pressure for such a tiny one to bear? We felt stable before. But we are partners in a way that feels different now. Unshakable. The questions that might have divided us with babies before can't reach us now. Which is not to say that it hasn't been an adjustment or that eveything is perfect, but it is very deeply fine.

Our sweet-tempered babe has been here almost four months to the day now, and sometimes it feels like she always has been. Those bright, almond-shaped baby blues that all our babies seem to have; it feels like I’ve looked into them four separate times now. They watch me every day, all day, as we are still practically inseparable, but it doesn’t feel endless like maybe it had with previous babies.

I still felt that almost suffocating fear and creeping darkness after the unmistakable high of the first few days wore off—was she still breathing? Was I? But I felt aware of the waves it all came in. Whereas contractions had felt like waves I needed to ride on top of and then fall from, the lows of hormones after felt like waves that washed over me; I had to duck under them and hold my breath until they passed me by, and pass me by they did.

Picture
This fourth baby comes with the gift of perspective; we keep saying we should have started with our fourth. Sleepless nights aren’t any easier. But if I didn’t know it before, nursing an infant while googling ideas for a ten-year-old’s birthday party has brought it into shocking clarity: this will be over in a blink. The exhausting baby days, but also the indescribable drug of a tiny one snoozing on my chest. The feeling that I exist only in liminal space will subside; my writing and I will find our place. But my time in this place, the time that used to feel endless and confusing, I now know is the shortest and sweetest of seasons.

Navigating life with an infant and a tween and two in between has made me cry almost daily. Because it feels like that poised, brilliant almost-ten-year-old was just here in my arms. But she wasn’t, and now she’s calling bye to me over her shoulder on Halloween night, running off with a friend’s family without even a second look.

It’s so fast and hard and beautiful and sacred. All of it. But the weight of it this time somehow makes me free. Three mornings per week, I drop Deacon off at preschool. Before Navarra came, I would rush out, eager to make the most of my childless time. In this season, there is no childless time, but it doesn’t feel as oppressing as I had dreamed it would, as it did before. School starts at 9:30, and lately that’s been when Navarra demands second breakfast. She is not shy about it. So, I kiss Deacon good-bye and settle in on the couch in the church lobby to nurse my sweet, smiley last baby. I don’t often leave the church before 10. Navarra reminds me that, in this stage of life, there is no point in hurrying, I’ll only miss it. I used to wonder what the larger point of all of this was, and in this time she reminds me, being present is the entire point.

Picture
These last ten sleepless nights have brought back hard memories from when Deacon was a baby. He didn’t sleep for ten months, and I was really, deeply not okay. I’m working not to allow myself to fall into that despair, reminding myself each day that far fewer things need to get done than what I tend to tell myself; I’m stripping my priorities down to the quick. Last night, I went to comfort Navarra, her crying had caused her breath to come in quick gasps. I held her firmly, settling into the rocker and pressing my cheek against hers. “I’m here, baby, it’s okay,” I whispered, “breathe like Mama.” And when I heard myself say it, tears pricked my eyes.

So much of motherhood across all the seasons our children are currently in is exactly this: just being here. To listen, to respond. Not to keep the dangers and troubles at bay, because of course we’ve realized by now that we don’t have that kind of power. This baby has represented exactly what I feared she would: a total loss of control, and for that I could not be more grateful. She is a gorgeous, tangible reminder that I can’t control the whethers and whens: of sleep or tears, of the kindness of others, of sickness or loss, of dreams and their passing, of all of those 10,000 little good-byes as we prepare our babies to launch.
​
I can’t control any of it. But I have the enormous privilege of being here for it, even when they start to flap their fledgling wings and roll their eyes and threaten to leave us behind. And when the trouble comes, I can show them how to weather it; I can point them to the One I run to in times of chaos and struggle. I can stay close and show them how to breathe.

2 Comments

A letter to my surprise baby, while we wait

7/15/2017

1 Comment

 
I've been anxious this week, and out of sorts, waiting for our baby to come. A good friend said it helped her to write a letter to her unborn baby, inviting him to come and releasing herself into the next stage of life. I took her advice, and am sharing my letter here. To my friends who have struggled to get or stay pregnant, to whom an unexpected baby would not bring such conflicted emotions: please know I hold you in my heart always and pray often for you. I have chosen to share this because I find great value in allowing ourselves to feel the way we actually do, as a means of being present, processing, and growing through our circumstance, and I find that sharing difficult emotions has a way of helping others muster the courage to do the same. Thank you, as always, for reading.
Picture
Baby girl,

It's strange to be waiting for a baby we weren't expecting. You are on our minds every day, all day: as we walk by your room--where felt poppies spin gently over your crib--as I feel contractions on and off throughout the day, as I toss and turn each night, as I wonder how many more days we will be waiting.

This last week I have felt restless and anxious, like I should be enjoying these last days as the mom of three more self-sufficient kids, before things devolve into the sleep-deprived state of bringing home a newborn. But I struggle. I'm worried about how I will do it all: how your birth will go, whether you will be healthy and strong, how I will nurse you all night and tend to you all day while welcoming company and mothering your sisters and brother well. It feels an absurd amount of work for one person, and I wasn't expecting it. I thought nine months would be plenty of time to get ready, and physically and logistically, I suppose it was. But emotionally and mentally, I am surprised to find I still can't believe it.

I can't picture your face, what color your hair will be, how it will feel to hold you. I'm trying to tell myself this is the last time I will ever be pregnant, to enjoy the way it feels when you move in my belly, to remember what it's all like since I will never feel it again. But I'm so uncomfortable that I'm having trouble embracing it. I am at the point where I am anxious to have my body--at least the inside of it--to myself again.

Unfortunately, I can remember all the hard things. The way it feels not to sleep for so long, the pain of endless nursing, the sheer exhaustion of being needed so completely by so many people. But I'm having trouble remembering what it's like to meet my baby for the first time, to triumph through the labor and birth, to hold my baby, to kiss her and smell the top of her head, to marvel over the perfection with which she was formed. I know that all of these things are true too.

Mostly, I want to tell you I'm not ready for you to come. I don't feel like I will be enough for you and your siblings. And in my own strength, I know that is true: I am not enough. But I'm trusting that the God who is bringing you to us is faithful to provide what we need. You are not an accident: I am meant to be your mother; you are meant for this family. I will mess up so much, baby. I make so many mistakes, many of them loud and large. I'm already sorry and you're not even here yet.

But also, I want to tell you it's okay to come. Even though I don't feel ready, I know that I am. I know we will cry as we see your sweet face for the first time, that we will touch our noses to yours and marvel over your existence. We have made space for you and we want you to come. I am saying a long goodbye to the way things have been, and I am releasing myself into this new season. It will be hard. It will feel like too much--it always does. But I will take it moment by moment, with you. I will love you and keep you and care for you. You are already so wanted, so loved.

Please come. We are waiting.

Love,
Mama

1 Comment

Almost Here

7/2/2017

3 Comments

 
Picture
When I learned I was pregnant, in November, I often sat in stunned silence. I tried to make sense of our new timeline, our new life. I’d tell myself, “you’ve got the whole school year, and then some,” or, “the baby will come when the crepe myrtles bloom,” which, uttered in the midst of dreary, cold rain, felt oddly comforting.

School has been out for two weeks and the crepe myrtles that line so many streets in our city and decorate our backyard are bursting blush and crimson, dark pink, white, lavender and deep purple.

Nine months have flown by, and I find myself aware that the time is growing short. My mind races with all that needs to be done: lists to be made, supplies to be procured, meals to be prepared now and eaten later, tiny clothing to be washed and folded, pictures to be hung before they sit where they are for a year, closets to be organized, and—most noticeably—a POD in my driveway that needs to be emptied and taken away. Of course, that is not to mention our new closets that still don’t have doors or our foyer that is prepped for paint but remains unpainted, our “five-week” renovation bleeding into its fourth month.

This is nesting. I prepped and froze five dinners last night, in addition to the one we ate. I start some days with energy, but it wanes throughout the day. My body feels heavy and foreign; I analyze every ache and pain in my back and abdomen, mentally checking the clock for regularity. The calendar says we have twenty-three days until our baby may join us, but I feel certain that she will be here sooner than that. So, I buy and make food and try to sneak in moments with my older kids and relish opportunities to slip out—anywhere—alone, and attempt to rest during these days since sleep has been eluding me at night.
​
I also find myself loitering in the doorway of our latest nursery. Once, almost ten years ago, it was ladybugs: baby pink and white, mint green and red gingham with a crib tucked into the eave, and then, two years later, it housed two babies. In two houses, we didn’t have a nursery, just a little girls’ room. Until we moved here and decorated our smallest bedroom in red and navy, with vintage cars, trucks and airplanes that our son systematically took apart or off the wall as he learned to climb. Now, our girls have moved clear across the house, to the room over the garage that has built-in beds decorated with teal, grey, coral and yellow—no sign of pink, per their request—it’s the room we always intended would one day be theirs. But I feel vaguely sad about them being so far from me. What if they need me, I think, but am then reminded that they don’t as much anymore. I still check on them each night before I go to bed, climbing the stairs to tuck in spindly limbs and standing on tiptoes to kiss flushed cheeks, and it always makes me ache. Back in our hallway, Deacon has moved to the larger room, with patchwork plaid and stars, airplanes and cars on the wall, a train table, and a nightstand filled with pirate and cowboy and superhero costumes that he loves.

Picture
And so, in the littlest room, we have a nursery again: navy and deep coral, poppies and stripes and a particularly cogent verse from Jeremiah framed on the wall: “Before you were born, I set you apart.”  I stand in the doorway at various points each day, trying to envision the tiny person that will soon inhabit that room, the thousands of diapers I will change at that table under the Bible verse; the countless hours I will spend nursing and rocking her in that chair, the songs I will sing as I pace that floor comforting this newest—and last—piece of my heart whose face I still can’t picture. And a lump rises in my throat, and I still can’t believe it.

For months we have dithered over a name. It still eludes us, days before her arrival. We think we have it down to two, but neither feels the clear answer to either of us. I hate it. I feel like I need the name to connect me to her, to help me see her, to mentally add her to our family. Annoyed with our indecision (and unwillingness to share our thought process), the other kids have named her Cleopatra and are content with that. They don’t need to picture her to love her. They don’t need to know her name. They talk about her constantly, Deacon with his hands and little face pressed against my belly, telling her to “come when you are ready.”

I feel anxious about another child, about how I will care for her well while doing right by the rest of our growing children. How will they get what they need? How will I maintain my health and sanity? Will I ever sleep?
​
But this nine-month process isn’t random. Looming larger than the fear, as my body grows tired of being pregnant, I allow my mind to venture into the next few weeks. I remember the pain, the lows, the tears, the lack of sleep, yes. But I also remember the sheer joy of meeting each of my children for the first time, the high privilege of welcoming them into the world. I remember the indescribable feeling of siblings being introduced. The warm comfort of being surrounded by family who will come to meet her. I am grateful for the space of this summer, to slow and process and adjust. As I try to relish these last days being a family of five, I fold impossibly tiny clothing and imagine the little body that will rest inside of them and wrestle with what she will look like and who she will be.  I cannot wait to find out. 

3 Comments
<<Previous

    RSS Feed

    Picture

    About Me

    Christina | Virginia Beach
    Psuedo Yankee, city-loving former working mom of four finds herself home with the kids and transplanted to the somewhat Southern suburbs. Finding her feet while still attempting to harness the power of the passion of her youth for useful good.

    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2020
    February 2020
    March 2019
    January 2019
    August 2018
    April 2018
    November 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011

    Categories

    All
    Anklebiter Anecdotes
    Bendetto
    Careful Feeding
    Charm City
    Complicated Joys
    Family Affairs
    Family Conference
    Festival Of Estrogen
    Grace For Moms
    Help Yourself
    Inanity & Insanity
    Looking Up
    Making It Home
    Mothering Missteps
    Moving Onward
    Music City
    Part Time Lover
    Part-time Lover
    Part-time Lover
    Soapbox
    Stumblings
    Su Casa
    The Village
    This City Life
    Wanderings
    Wifedom
    Worklife

    Links

    Grace for Moms

    MOPS International's Blog

    Amber Hudler

    Smarter Ardor.
    Copyright © 2011-2018.
    All Rights Reserved.
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photos used under Creative Commons from lungstruck, Orin Zebest, yaquina, warrenski, Jing a Ling, The Shopping Sherpa, Sir, Rony, orangeacid, adrianvfloyd, SierraTierra, benjaflynn, Homeandgardners, eye's eye, katerha, LivingOS, wolfB1958, andyarthur, Jeremiah Ro, alextorrenegra, ShironekoEuro, mabahamo, iMorpheus, openuser, kamshots, nickHiebert, VinothChandar, Yashna M, mike138, Dougtone, cogdogblog, x1klima