Category Archives: mothering

work that God sees: for mamas in the midst of the overwhelm

Posted on by October 13, 2022

Finn is randomly stitching on a piece of cross-stitch fabric. It’s an old project that Cham started when she was about his age, and it has waited for years in the yarn cabinet’s drawer for an enthusiastic preschooler to pick it up again. It’s a beautiful mess – scrap threads, random colors, no pattern to follow. Just lots and lots of tiny stitches.

work that God sees: a series for mamas in the midst of the overwhelm

And after many attempts, I’m pleased to announce we’ve finally achieved that sweet spot every crafty mama longs for: He can now thread the needle himself, instead of me needing to do it for him every 1.5 stitches.

He’s worked steadily for about five minutes with a long off-white thread, and then he comes closer to me.

“Can you help me wif bein’ fast?”

He chose that pale off-white color and he can’t see the work he’s doing or the progress he’s making. Stitching is slow work for most of us; it runs like cold molasses for a four-year-old.

“There’s no fast, buddy. This isn’t a fast project. You just keep going.” Slow is fast, when compared to doing nothing.

Two more stitches and he’s done – finis, he can’t take it anymore, stick a fork in him – and I teach him how to pin the needle in the corner of the fabric so it’s ready for him next time. And he’s off, no cape required, to some other little boy adventure that probably requires way less sitting still and way more dirt.

I don’t blame him. I have been him so often, with the almost-invisible thread and tiny stitches, not seeing progress and wondering if all the work I was doing was going somewhere. Because that’s what mothering is – a million, trillion, bazillion tiny stitches, one at a time.

But God sees every one of them.

Every day is a new scrap of thread – and our baby is teething, which means he’s not sleeping, which means we’re also not sleeping, and the days run like cold molasses for exhausted parents and all their frayed edges, and there have been many days when I wanted to quit early. Finis, stick a fork in me, I can’t take it anymore.

And God sees.

And we don’t have to be reminded that the days are slow but the years are fast, because we are the irrational ones who ask God if He can “help us wif bein’ fast” as we go through the monotony and the madness of some of these days while also asking Him to stop time on other days. We know it’s not a fair request but for crying out loud, our kids are growing up and learning to thread their own needle and our oldest is living on his own already, and I haven’t seen his face in forever.

But God sees.

He sees all these days and efforts and stumbling and trying again. He sees the results we can’t imagine. And He reminds us that we are capable, and we are allied. We are growing, we are steadfast, we are resilient. And we are seen. And we might be something else, but He hasn’t told me what yet…so that’s what we’re sticking with for now.

work that God sees: new series

So we’re launching this new book that was His idea – if it were mine, it would’ve been way more ridiculous, probably involving countless petitions about random color palettes for cover templates and everything…oh, wait…

Anyway, it is packed full of candid encouragement for the mom who has no time for anymore nonsense – no sugar-coating, no la-la rainbows – just real truth to hold onto in the midst of the overwhelm, reminding you who you are:

Capable. Allied. Growing. Steadfast. Resilient.

Seen.

Moms, you are doing the work that God sees. And you were made for this.

dealing with the mess

Posted on by August 17, 2022

A week ago, a large bag of wooden clothespins showed up on my desk and it’s been squatting there ever since. And it wouldn’t be a big deal except someone opened the bag, which means that over the last several days the contents gradually hemorrhaged everywhere. A variety pack – dozens of clothespins, all different sizes, decorating the surface of my desk.

The clothespins need to go into a big jar, but all of the jars are downstairs in the kitchen, and why they didn’t stop there first to deposit themselves properly is beyond me. Why I can’t remember to take them back downstairs to the kitchen during any of my daily 138 trips up and down the stairs is also beyond me.

dealing with the mess: what we do, what God does, and what He can't do for us

I do love having a clean desk. But aside from moving everything to the floor (my normal method of cleaning it in a hurry) I have yet to figure out how to keep it that way.

The desk is smothered under stacks of books as I type this: notebooks, school books, research books, books I’m reading. Keeping all these company are pens, sippy cups, and other detritus constantly trafficked in and out of the office, aside from the aforementioned clothespins sprinkled everywhere. Also, there’s a half-emptied basket destined to become yarn storage that I’m planning to move to the bookshelf, which will give me more surface area on the desk. But that will have to wait, because it’s currently storing Knightley, instead.

dealing with the mess: Knightley in a basket

And just to be clear, when I say “stacks of books,” the word stacks should be interpreted loosely. Very loosely. As in, some books truly are placed on top of each other in a (mostly) congruent, vertical direction. But others are…um…just overlapping, sort of like a giant, bloated, bookish version of Jenga.

It’s not just my mess – you heard me mention the sippy cup, right? – but it is my mess to take care of. No one can clean it for me. Even if they wanted to, I have to do it myself. God help them if they try; hell hath no fury like a writer-mama (or wife) who can’t find the stack of books she needs to pull citations from that took her half a day to round up from all over the house in the first place.

Of course, it would help if people would stop spewing their mess in my space. I have my own junk to deal with, but all we sinners share the love, and we have a tendency to give each other more to forgive and clean up. We all add to each other’s messes.

Oh, wait – I was talking about physical messes. Not the other kind, when we are hurting and we hurt others, and the mess goes everywhere, and it’s so much harder to clean up than a hundred scattered clothespins.

May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

– 2 Peter 1:2, ESV

Finn is on the floor by my feet, putting together a puzzle. He knows he can play up here while I’m working as long as he’s quiet. And our versions of quiet are two different things, but normally he’s fine.

And usually Knightley is in here, and normally she’s fine too, except when she walks across the laptop and makes me bless the inventor of the Undo button, so help me.

The mess the kids leave on the floor is usually theirs to clean up. But when the mess bleeds onto the desk, with all my own stuff in various states of organization and disarray, it becomes my job to take care of. Mostly, I take care of them by not allowing them to be made in the first place. Boundaries, rules, whatever you call it – the desk is my space and the kids have mostly learned to respect that.

Prevention is the easiest way to take care of everything, right? If we could just keep the hurtful words, the hard feelings, or the negative habits of others out of our headspace, life would be so much easier. I have my own thoughts to take captive, and that’s a job of its own to deal with. But once those other things penetrate, they’re my problem, too.

Oh, wait, I was talking about physical messes. I keep forgetting.

It would be easier if it none of it ever happened in the first place – the physical or emotional messes – but the world is a bloody battlefield. It would be easier to just not enter the fray, but we can’t prevent everything…and really, would we want to? We’re made to help each other navigate the mess.

But we have to be invited to do so. And if the mess is ours – whether we made it, or we just inherited it and now it’s all over our space – we have to be the one to initiate the cleaning.

I read this verse a few weeks ago and haven’t been able to get it off my mind:

The LORD your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

– Zephaniah 3:17, NAS

Most versions of this verse end with “He will rejoice over you with singing” but when I read this version and the phrase “shouts of joy,” the Lord told me something new.

When do parents shout for joy over their children? He asked me.

Well, I thought, parents shout for joy when they see their kids achieve – when they succeed, when they score a goal, when they win something big, when they hit a milestone. We cheered over Kavanagh getting his first tooth, and we’re ready to whoop and holler when he takes his first steps.

But as adults, all of our success, achievement, or milestones are things He does for us, and through us. We know we’re not doing them on our own. So why would He shout for us when He’s the one doing the work?

I don’t, He said. I shout for joy over you when you do something I can’t do for you.

What can’t You do for us? I asked.

I can’t choose surrender and obedience for you, He said.

I can’t choose for you to clean up your mess. I can help you do it, but you have to want it first.

I can’t choose for you to stay steadfast in the battle, still fighting and standing, in spite of everything around you. I can want those things for you, and I can help you through them, but only you can choose to move forward in growth, instead of retreating.

That is what I shout for joy over. 

 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, 

and virtue with knowledge, 

and knowledge with self-control,

and self-control with steadfastness,

and steadfastness with godliness, 

and godliness with brotherly affection,

and brotherly affection with love. 

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

– 2 Peter 1:5-8, ESV

Just as the main battle we fight is less about violent movement and more about steady abiding, the victories He shouts over in our lives are the small-but-huge efforts that come in the quiet:

When we choose truth over rumor, or grace and forgiveness over hard feelings.

When we address our own bad habits, and choose healthier thought patterns.

When we choose to pray and thank God even when things look ugly.

When we tackle the hard-but-necessary conversation when it seems easier to let it slide and pay the consequences later.

When we push forward in doing the good things: Gratitude, repentance, teachability, honor.

When we stop to hug the kid, kiss the spouse, and clean up our mess…even if someone else started it.

He can’t wait to for us to take those first steps, and to cheer us on as we keep moving forward. It’s our obedience, and integrity, and gritty steadfastness that He shouts over.

dealing with the mess: clothespins

_________

This is an excerpt from ABIDE volume 6: Surrender to Win, available here.

plowing through: finding grace and balance in seasons of crazy

Posted on by July 7, 2021

The weekend is here but the house is a disaster, so let me introduce you to our normal method of tackling it: The Quick Boogie.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a Quick Boogie, it is when everyone launches into a five-minute clean-up – a few people pick up the floor and put stuff away, someone throws dishes in the dishwasher, someone wipes down counters, and we all take turns bossing Finnegan, who, as the resident toddler, made most of the mess in the first place.

plowing through: finding grace and balance in seasons of crazy

Usually five minutes is enough. At the very least, it enables us to sit on the couch without getting gouged by a pick-up stick.

But this weekend, to indicate how much (or how little) sleep I’ve had over the last few weeks with a teething baby, I announced it like this:

“We need to do a quick boogie, real quick.”

And then – don’t try this at home, husbands – Vince announced, “Watch out, kids. She’s using redundancies.”

I gave him a Look and told him to watch out himself, or I’d start using adverbs, too. (In a marriage of writers, this is how fights start.)

“In that case,” he said, “I’ll quickly leave the couch.”

“You’d better, or I will violently kick you off it.”

The night before, Kavanagh woke up right as I was going to bed, and he stayed awake until 3 am, all kicky and restless. The next day was a filming day, and it was hard. I couldn’t remember simple pieces that I knew perfectly the night before while rehearsing, sentences and phrases wouldn’t come out clearly (hence the new “vabucolary” I invented, mentioned in the last newsletter), and we just sorta plowed through it.

Toward the end of the day I was utterly unmotivated to do anything. I didn’t want to be productive, and I didn’t want to think.

I wanted to veg on the couch. I wanted to clock out hours early and be done. I wanted to take a bath and read, but I was so exhausted that would’ve been dangerous, at least for the books. (I’ve only ever dropped one book in the tub, but that was Gulliver’s Travels, and it deserved it.)

I was out of gas. But when I realized that, it felt less defeating than failure. It wasn’t failure, it was exhaustion. When cars run out of gas, we don’t scrap them – we refill their tank. And we learn to pay better attention to the gauge before we run on empty (some of us, at least).

It’s hard to be clever and helpful and hopeful when you’re exhausted. It’s hard to think clearly or to know what to do next when we are too tired to even trust our judgment on simple things, like our ability to pair socks.

I know people like to say “Sleep when the baby sleeps” but that only applies to newborns around here. If we followed that advice to its logical extension, such as “Fold laundry when the baby folds laundry” or “Write when the baby writes,” this place would be a wrecking zone, like a Fisher Price tornado ripped through a library after loading up at a taco truck.

So when Kav is napping, it is our chance to work with two hands – exhausted or not. There’s no guarantee how long a six-month-old will nap, or how long his three-year-old brother will let him. We do other important things when he’s awake, like answer email, package books, and swear at the internet for being too slow.

As a result, most of my journal entries begin with “Kav is napping,” and, also as a result, are very short. Sometimes they look like this, broken into several efforts throughout the day:

Kav is napping so we are working. The next three sentences are about children playing too loudly and our need to reestablish quiet naptime rules to prevent me from turning into Raging Dragon Mommy. But it’s too late for now because Kav is already awake…

The next attempt yields seventeen lines of family events and work stuff; coffee is mentioned twice. That entry ends with, But Kavanagh is awake again, fifteen minutes later.

And then, one more try:

Aaaand he’s back to sleep, now that it’s time to clock out for the day. But Vin took the kids to youth group so maybe I can squeeze in a few more minutes.

[Nine lines here, in which I gripe about a podcast I got sucked into that turned out to be a condescending sales pitch. Boo, and also, hiss.]

And Kav is awake again. See? It was just a few more minutes.

Don’t misunderstand me; I love these tiny days. I love his wakefulness and don’t want to miss it and his blue-eyed smiles. But every new season brings new structures and routines, and learning to steward our time best in that adjustment takes some trial and error. So when he sleeps, we plow through.

Today, it’s warm and he’s just wearing a onesie; he falls asleep as I nurse him at the desk, and I pull my flannel off the back of the chair and wrap him up in it. At six months old, he’s still small enough that it makes a perfect blanket.

We had thunderstorms all last week, and I was in the bathroom when the loudest clap of thunder I’ve ever heard shook our house. It must’ve been right on top of us; the lights flickered, and the subsequent rumbling made me wonder if we were having another huge earthquake.

My first instinct was to look at the battery on my phone and immediately turn it off. My phone was woefully undercharged the last two times we had a major outage, including when the earthquake hit.

My next move was to down the glass of water I was holding, and refill it. Then use the toilet, and flush. These are the things we regret not doing as soon as the power is out and we wish we still could.

So I did all those things and went downstairs, and the lights were still on and everything was fine. It was just thunder. But every so often it isn’t, and we’re caught off guard – unprepared, slacking off, or just undercharged and dehydrated. There’s a balance to be had in plowing through. And there’s no shame for seasons of craziness when you can’t help it, but there’s also no harm (and much good) in getting in the habit of keeping things refilled, and charged, and flushed, and ready. Like ourselves.

So I preach to myself:

Rest when you can. Work when the baby sleeps. Drink the glass of water.

Write the sentences when they are fresh and flowing. Keep short accounts, and forgive the person who hurt you.

Don’t overschedule, so you have room to be impulsive for the right opportunities. Do that thing you keep putting off. Or, if it’s not really not worth doing, take it off your to-do list.

Hug the kids when they pass you in the kitchen. Teach the toddler over and over and over, to the point of redundancy, how to clean up after himself.

Show grace to yourself and others, as we all plow through — even if we have to use adverbs.