The Gradual Ascent

When I wake this morning, I can hear the birds beginning their daily shift. What seems like endless drudgery to me, the call to rise before the sun every morning and sing their hearts out, greeting the day before it exists, setting the mood before I throw covers off and stand in the cold air, is joy to them. It is their art, their love, the purpose they rise to, the clock they live by, the structure and harmony that unify their every heartbeat. There in the feathered dark, they sing, calling things that are not as though they are. Trilling the very soul of hope into my darkened room and eyes and sometimes, heart.


I sit up quickly in bed, out of alarm and startled from the solitude of sleep. Morning has come and I feel no friendship between her and me. We are so different. Me, slow to warm, slightly suspicious of everything that moves, naturally in a lazy state, wishing for more darkness at times, longing to live in dreams, keeping the bright part of myself back until all the doors are locked and it is perfectly safe to emerge. But not her.


Morning rises like a dancer, slowly, with grace and tempered light. She picks her wardrobe, explores blues, grays and whites with enthusiastic advancement, and usually settles exuberantly on gold. She is lithe and bright, with blooming flowers all done up in her hair. She sings sporadically at first, in the lilting soprano that sends the crickets to their beds, but then, she builds her birdsong, weaving a harmony, adding a player here and there, swelling the symphony at perfect pitch and tempo, but differently every morning, to eventually match that of the sun's arrival over the horizon.


I sit in bed drinking my coffee and striving to become one with the hope that is morning. Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning, great is Your faithfulness. (Lam 3:22-23)
Every single morning. My mind stretches her arms out blindly to grasp a truth that seems a lie. I sip quietly, and the children start to rise and Rosey begins preparing breakfast for all of us and I stumble through the house, putting articles of clothing into tiny, splendid, waiting hands, saying good morning in my frog-grumpy voice, hating speech, hating light, wishing for gray rain and soft quilts and quiet. Wishing for all of the things that would take this miracle of family mornings away. I climb back into bed and continue drinking my coffee.


The light outside my windows is changing. The birds have worked themselves into the height of song that tells me that any minute now, over the distant hilltop that I can see from my backyard in winter when the leaves are gone, the sun will begin to break forth, first in simple greeting that grows and burgeons into ecstatic, shouting light with the birds as accompaniment. All of the night-darkened melancholy world will begin to feel that daily lift, the aligning of ourselves to the light of a new day.


Is this the physical manifestation of those new mercies? I puzzle it over while I finish my coffee, still sitting in bed while my family continues in their morning cycle around me. "Mommy, can you put a braid in the front of my hair today, or two on either side?" 


"Mommy, did you see the dinosaur I made for you? I named it Jillian, since that's your name. That's your name Mommy! Your name is Jillian."


"Mommy, I can't find my other shoe and the laces on this one are too short."


"Jillian, do you want me to make you a smoothie or a fried egg with toast?"


The questions are my final signals that it's time to engage, my catalyst for immersing myself in the daily routine, usually with all the excitement that most people have for jumping into frigid water. I stand and rub my eyes, drain what's left of my coffee, and shudder involuntarily at the thought of being up before the sun, waiting for the promised new mercies to kick in. Where are they? Doesn't He know how badly I need them? 


Everyone is dressed and eating breakfast while I begin to pack lunches.
"Mommy, can I have two cookies today instead of one?"


"Mommy, I showed Mrs. Schwenk my carrots yesterday and she said I was lucky that my mom gave me healthy food."


"Mommy, will you put my necklace on?"


"Jillian, can I take you out for lunch on my break today?"


Amazingly enough, I answer the wonderful we-need-you questions in a voice like a zombie, still striving to awaken to their needs, their hopes, their beauty, their love. I am in slow motion, moving through these early minutes like someone wallowing in thigh-deep mud.


I can still hear the birds as I start the car, letting it warm up for awhile before we all pile in, now that the sun has fully risen they are more subdued, maybe in awe of the golden light, or in awe of how the old, sad world looks fresh and young once again. Perhaps they are just being reverent. How I wish to be like a bird, preparing joyfully for the rising sun, singing lustily with all of those in my home, swirling in an instrumental symphony of enthusiasm and grace, that crescendos and climaxes into a towering sound of life and reverent gratitude as I become increasingly aware of the sun and the light. My Sun and Light. From Heaven.


It is not until we are in the car that the Light starts to have its way with me. Driving down the hill toward the front of our neighborhood, on the way to take everyone to work and school, I naturally start to shift. I notice the naked trees, their limbs stretched up in cold surrender to the quickly brightening winter sky. I see the folks out walking their dogs, the steam rising off of cars, the fog lifting from the hollows everywhere. I see the dew, like glimmering jewels, almost wasteful, all over the dead brown grass. I notice where standing pools of water on the roads and sidewalks have frozen into ice, vast mystery enclosed in tiny dirty ruts. My mind begins to worship. Kindness for my family arrives. But it is late for this. Five minutes later, they are all gone, at school and work, and I am left to myself for the day.


It is then, as I drive home in a now silent car, with the beautiful well-made world scurrying all around me in her winter state, that I realize they were there all the time. Did I think new mercies an intangible emotion, or a spiritual state? Did I fancy they would be like that of an abduction of all of my most hostile morning thoughts, a lobotomy of my tendency for early suspicion? No. They were in the open hearts of those I love, the simple acceptance of my human inability to be cheery in this fragile state. They were in the sweet declarations and the hopeful questions of need. They were in His love for me, His placement of all of this around me. All of this! His mercies, new in every way, treating me as the best, while I swam in the knowledge that I was the very worst, humming over me while I trudged and dreaded and stumbled. All of this loving-me-as-I-am forcing me to realize.


All of it. All of it is a mercy. My whole life is a mercy, given newly, given freely, every single day.


Oh teach me. Teach my heart to rise joyfully to each new day, to hold reverently these early moments, to see, really see, the untold riches I am given, the grace that permeates my life. Teach me to see your mercies, to recognize them at the onset of every dawn, to prepare for them even in the darkness.


Teach me to know everything that You are for me, and in every place.

What I want to be When I Grow Up

"Mommy, what do you want to be when you grow up?", My 7 year old daughter asks me one Tuesday afternoon as we lounge on my bed reading books. The boys are sleeping and I have invited her to read with me in my room until their nap is over. She is reading The Secret Garden. I am reading The Hunger Games.

"A mommy. And an artist. And a writer. And a missionary."


"What did you want to be when you were a little girl?"

As I sit there, looking into her sweet inquisitive heart-shaped face that is so perfectly framed with blonde tresses and set with blue eyes and a tiny nose sprinkled with just the right amount of freckles, the question takes me back.


I didn't want to be a mom.


When I was a little girl, I used to tell anyone who would listen that I wanted to be an artist. 


In college I seriously considered joining the Peace Corps for awhile. And before that I wanted to do a year long missionary internship but my parents couldn't afford to send me. I went to Guatemala on a missions trip with my youth group when I was 16,  and I remember not wanting to come home. I just felt like I could have stayed there indefinitely, turning the blisters on my hands from tying wire around rebar for the foundation of a church building into something more permanent, callouses. I loved the cold nights and scorching days, the way we had to drink Coke out of a bag with a straw because they wouldn't give you the valuable glass bottles at the roadside stands. I loved the open markets, the hand woven fabrics, the winding mountain roads, and most of all, the generous, open-handed people. The thought of spending my time and life in aid and practical care to families and villages in the mountains of that overlooked Central American country appealed to me like nothing else.


Even now I entertain fantasies of wild adventures in the vein of humanitarian aid somewhere in desolate, jungly third world countries where they speak Latin-based languages. I've felt the intense pull to be a foreign missionary since I was 15. The kind who would totally immerse myself in a culture and figure out the way to translate God's love and story across the language barriers, while supplying blankets, clothing, shoes, medicine and clean water. This has truly been my largest and seemingly most unattainable dream in life. To just go, with no strings attached. In fact, I told Derek I didn't think I could marry him unless he had the same calling.

So you can understand why I was a tiny bit confused when I ended up in a middle American life, and in all appearances seemed to be chasing after the American Dream, something that had never been important to me. It still isn't. Yeah, I get that we need to pay the bills, and provide the necessities for our families, but all this acquiring of stuff and chasing down of the latest and greatest and watching of hours and hours of television and caring what everyone thinks about everything has always been a bit exhausting for me. I try to stay away from those particular stumbling blocks, since I think they rot your brain and waste your time (sorry, just saying...) but you still get sucked in, somehow, to a little bit of it. Especially if you want your voice to have any relevance with those you hope to reach.


And I do want to have a voice.


But there I was, in 2002, with a newborn baby girl, and I felt trapped. I felt the importance of being home as a mother, but I also secretly felt like maybe God had made a mistake and given the wrong life to the wrong girl.  I wasn't sure where the old me, the adventurous, artistic me that I really admired, fit into the mix.  I spent the first six months of motherhood in the house, scared to go anywhere, insecure about my new limitations, unsure of who I was anymore.


I think a lot of stay at home moms feel this way.


It's not just the insecurity from being thrust into a new place where this tiny little person, and the world at large, is expecting us to meet all of their needs, but it's also the dissatisfaction that can sometimes come as a result of this life. Especially if we thought we wanted this. And I do want it, really, we say to ourselves, but it's just so hard! We feel discontent, unhappy with how our days are spent. We even feel bored. Some of us came from really fast-paced jobs, or thrilling social lives. Some of us planned on having a totally different life. A few of us used to have a great body before having babies. Some of us are struggling with depression. Then there are those of us are lucky if we brush our teeth before noon. 

Some of us thought this was all that we wanted, to be a wife and mother, but it turns out that we don't feel full, that something seems missing.


And we can't admit it, because that would show the eager-to-judge-us world just how ungrateful we are for the blessings we have. So we go on, day after day, with a fake smile, in guilt and unhappiness, until we finally realize that it's a choice.


That's right. Being content, finding happiness, seeing the beauty, finding the extraordinary, it's all a choice. But you need help. Supernatural help. You have to surrender, stop fighting, stop acting as though you are living in a wilderness and "Rejoice, and blossom as the rose." (Isaiah 35:1).


And that's what I did. I finally heard God's voice. I stopped pretending He wanted something different for me, and I made a choice. About three years in, with two children and another on the way, I finally learned to embrace my life. I realized that I only have one life. I only have one chance to enjoy my children when they're young, to teach them and form their character, to show them the unconditional love of God, to provide a safe place for them to always come, to be their mother.


I only have one shot at this.


And I was wasting days, months, years even, in the pit of discontentment, wishing I was anywhere but here, certain that the grass was greener elsewhere.


What about you? Are you trying to find your old self in the middle of a new place. Do you feel out of touch with your own life? Do you feel guilty for feeling this way?


Know this.


The grass is never greener somewhere else. That somewhere else is a place full of regret. We were meant to be always being made new. We were meant for a life of  "the old is gone, behold it is the new!" (2 Cor. 5:17) Your old self is gone. It is time for the new you. The grass you're standing on right now, is as green as it's ever going to be, because you're standing on it. Right now. Make sense? So why not throw some fertilizer down, plant some flowers, install an arbor, train roses to climb a trellis? Why not make your grass as beautiful as you can, and trust God to do all the rest?


After my perspective changed and I wised up to the riches I was wasting and decided to bloom where I was planted, my whole life changed. I started making friends, other moms who were in same place in life that I was. I joined some different groups. I started running again, and eating right. I got into gardening and began writing poetry and making cards. I began to flourish. My kids started flourishing even more. My kids wanted me to be happy, because I'm so much more fun, and it started to show in their creativity and security level. But it took that first honest acknowledgement that I was struggling, and then the willingness to open up my heart and let God change it.


It was fully worth it. I love love love being a stay at home mom. You could try to pay me millions of dollars to do something else, and I wouldn't take it. Really. I am happy right where I am and what's more, I am in bloom.


But one day, Derek and I will hit that foreign mission field. I'll pack my bags, say my farewells, and board a plane without a backward glance. I'll run with steady legs toward the certain hard work and adventure that I look forward to being a part of. I'll sleep in hammocks. I'll wash my clothes in the river. I'll bake bread on a rock. But instead of going on my own, I'll have my family with me. And I'll be well trained, ready for any possible situation.


How's that, you ask? When did I have time to attend a missions training seminar?


Why, it was all those years of sleep deprivation, three ingredient meal preparation, budgeting down the last penny, organizing and stocking cupboards, killing insects I was afraid of, letting insects live that I was afraid of, handling massive loads of laundry, breaking up fights, cleaning up poo and vomit, turning a blind eye to mistakes, turning a deaf ear to whining, giving grace, laying down the law, taking time to teach my children how to do every good thing I know how to do, hours of homework instruction, even more hours of lengthy explanations to toddlers who don't get it, bargain shopping, apologizing, and ultimately, being willing to follow God so my children could follow me.


That was my missionary training field.

And it was exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Celestial Seasonings

I write this, sitting on my bed, which sits at a 45 degree angle from the corner of my room, and allows me a perfect view of the backyard.

It is snowing.

The whole world is lost in a dusty whirl of snowflakes. There are  just a few right now, but the day holds the weatherman's promise of heavier snow later today and tonight.

The snow is causing me to remember the post I keep wanting to write about seasons.

All  my life I have wanted to live in a place with four seasons. I can't remember a time when I haven't wanted to see the changing of the leaves in autumn or the falling of snow in winter. I have loved living in Florida but have always wanted to end up in a place where contrasts were seen throughout the year, in the same trees having and then not having leaves, the grass being green and then brown, the air being warm and then cold, and all of the in betweens. I don't think I have a favorite season. I think my favorite part of each season is the beginning, when it starts to look like itself and unlike the last season. Each season, spring, summer, fall and winter, has its own distinct face and personality, and after living here for a full year now, I feel that we've been properly introduced.

Physical seasons always invite me to ponder spiritual seasons.

Recently, as I was in Florida over the Christmas holidays and spent some time with my friends there, I became very interested in the topic that kept coming up in different circles of friends. As I spent time with different girlfriends, eating dinner at restaurants, shopping and getting coffee together, we kept discussing the seasons of motherhood.

Like how you'll go through a season of the baby biting, or the toddler throwing temper tantrums, or even major sleep deprivation from the newborn's messed up sleep schedule, and you think it will never end and can't wait for it to do so. You pray for the end of those seasons. Much like I think most people pray for the end of winter, and smile holistically at the first signals of spring.

Beyond motherhood, there are many seasons we pray to see the end of, aren't there? When your husband is in school and working full time, or there are more bills than money at the end of the month, or a loved one is very ill or in danger. 

Then there are those seasons that you want never to end.

The seasons that make you feel special, alive, young and needed. For  me, one of those seasons was Saturday morning snuggle time. When the kids were tiny, almost every Saturday morning that we didn't have to be somewhere or Derek didn't have to work, we would sleep in and the kids would get out of their beds in the morning (or be freed from their crib) and they'd come climbing up into our bed to snuggle. Usually we'd lay there for awhile, all toasty warm, having silly conversations and tickling each other, and this would turn into wrestling with Daddy, while I dreamed up what I wanted to make for breakfast. Derek would make coffee and I would engage the kids in helping me with breakfast, which, since I like to cook, would usually be something yummy from scratch. 

I have pictures of those Saturday mornings in my scrapbooks, photos that capture the fun and creativity of those moments in the kitchen, my family and me making scones, crepes, omelets, fresh bread, fruit salad and muffins together, usually in our pajamas. I look like a mad scientist with my morning hair and there is usually flour or food residue on at least one face in these photographs. There was almost always singing and dancing, and since Derek and I have different taste in morning music,  whoever got to the CD player first got first dibs on what was going to be played.

We would cook and dance to Louis Armstrong, Anberlin, Taylor Swift or Michael Buble' (my picks), or Squad Five-0, Matt Redman, Tom Petty or Led Zeppelin (Derek's picks). Some of the heated debates over what everyone wanted to listen to and furthermore, what kind of berries to put in the scones, seem ridiculous now.

But they are among my most cherished memories of the times our family spent together when the kids were babies and toddlers.

That was just one of the seasons that was, for me, very hard to say goodbye to.

Of course, we still have Saturday mornings together, and we all listen to music, dance, and cook together all the time. But no one (besides Derek) is ever really interested in crawling up into bed with me anymore, and rubbing a cold nose up against my cheek, because there are cartoons and Legos, light sabers and a puppy to play with immediately upon waking up on Saturday morning. I usually sleep in and Derek usually makes breakfast now, either his fabulous pancakes or cheesy eggs. It's different.

It's not bad. It's just the natural progression of things.

But it's still hard to say goodbye to the really sweet seasons that I know must healthily be replaced with their betters.

That's right. I said betters.

As mothers, or even just as parents, it's sometimes hard for us to imagine that the next season could be better than the current one, or that the sweet, snugly season we enjoyed so perfectly could ever be outshone. We tend to think that as our children grow up, the sweetness and level of fulfillment in parenthood will deteriorate. But I'm finding that it's not true.

One of my verses for 2010 and 2011, Isaiah 43:18-19 is deeply reassuring:

"Do not remember the former things,
 Nor consider the things of old.
 Behold, I will do a new thing,
 Now it shall spring forth;
 Shall you not know it?
 I will even make a road in the wilderness
 And rivers in the desert."

A new thing. Springing forth. Forgetting the former, losing interest in the old. Pushing forward, to the road He is carving in the wilderness, to the place of saturated life He is filling in the desert.

And the future can sometimes seem very desert-like, can't it? We don't know what to expect and we think it could never be better than this. How could it?

But what hope in this scripture! Not just that God wants to give us new fun and life at every bend in the road, but that He intends to do it.

As I spent time with my friends on one particular night, some very special mom friends I met and grew close to while in the early trenches of motherhood, we decided to walk from Kohl's to a frozen yogurt place, and while we walked we kept talking about saying farewell to the beautiful seasons of motherhood. One of us started up in song, being joined by some of the others after the first few words, "Oh, it's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday...."

I bet Boys II Men never realized their target audience should have been all the nostalgic mothers out there. Forget screaming, hyperventilating teeny boppers...

I'm not saying I'm good at moving on into the new. In my life, in every category, not just motherhood, it's at the bend in the road that I stop and hesitate, unsure of how to proceed, and let's just be honest, unwilling to move on, full of bittersweet reluctance, and with the tears wet on my cheeks. I have trouble trusting that what is to come will always outweigh, outshine, outsmart, outfill what has gone. It is a conflict of the mind and heart.

My mind knows it to be true.

Life was meant to be ever-increasingly fulfilling.

My heart longs to hold on, staying put in the warmth and glow of spring and summer.

But fall and winter have their own lessons to teach me, and spring and summer will be all the more greener and lush with the knowledge of those harder, and hardier, lessons. God builds, with seasons, the knowledge of His faithfulness in our lives, and the latter lessons that we are not ready to embrace until we have experienced the former.

What is the season you are saying goodbye to?

Maybe it's as simple as bidding adieu to the old year and embracing the new. Maybe it's a change in diet, or schedule, an addition of discipline into your already busy life. Maybe its the busy pace you are used to, that must be traded in for something a little more substantial and purposeful.

Or maybe you just need to come to terms with the forever closing of a particularly special chapter, one that has made you feel so very full of life. I exhort you to say goodbye. Stand at the bend in your road, knowing the scenery that you've smiled upon for these last months or years to be passing quickly out of view, hold that season dear and close for one more moment, and then let go. Open your hands, turn your back, and walk forward into the promising days to come.

Letting go of the old.

Knowing He is always up to something new.

My Boy Toys

On any given weekday, if you show up at my house unannounced after school, you may find any manner of blanket and chair built contraption in our living room. You may find a tent set up in the family room, or a rock city being constructed in the backyard. There could be small people running around in inexplicable combinations of costumed attire or someone in the bathtub with every spatula I own and a towering display of measuring cups, each with a different army man in them. There may be a pillowcase tied to a sword, hanging off of the trampoline net in the backyard and billowing in the breeze. Or a series of sticks stuck in the ground in a row and then tied with string and spaced with pieces of paper marked with random letters and shapes on them. There might even be a huge hole that has been dug and filled with sticks, water and inflated plastic bags. Everyone could be hiding in the closet, or someone could be guarding the laundry room door with a pair of chopsticks. You will have no idea what any of it means.

But they will.

You see, in the time they could have spent watching television or playing a video game, my two little boys were inventing a new language, or putting on a play, or playing pirates on the trampoline. They were stealing all the spoons out of the silverware drawer to dig up worms. Or singing freshly invented songs on the tire swing, and trying to build a catapult out of sticks, rocks and yarn. They were involved in a heated debate about how high the Lego tower around the tree trunk should be, which ended in someone tattling, and were instructed to work it out like gentlemen, without violence. They may or may not have followed this wise advice.

They play outside constantly. Sometimes they drive us crazy because they're not in a trance in front of the television so they require a lot more interaction. But it's worth it. Just ask a couple of poor tiny trees with a spider webbed network of ropes tied all over them in the front yard where homemade swings and child-engineered brilliance are experimented with daily. Some future genius architect of some amazing physics-defying building is probably living in my house right this minute while I write this, smearing toothpaste all over everything in the bathroom every morning as he gets ready for school, and forgetting to put his dirty laundry in the hamper every afternoon.

I grew up with boys.

I had three little brothers and our house was never quiet. In fact, in a two story house with wood floors in my brothers' rooms, if you were unfortunate enough to be meditating or trying to find inner peace on the bottom floor, it often sounded like the ceiling was about to come down. They were always wrestling, pummelling and ambushing each other.

I remember playing manhunt and capture the flag with my brothers in my teenage years in the orange groves near our house late at night with thirty or so people from school and church, everyone decked out in camouflage and war paint, armed with pocket knives, rope and flashlights. We usually had to sneak over the ditch and under the fence to get in the groves in the first place and then there was no shortage of muffled shrieks (from all the girls), blinding lights being shined into eyes and random oranges and grapefruits hurtling past one's ear as he or she crouched in a hyperventilating state, trying to avoid capture or worse, the huge spiders that lived in the orange trees.

I shudder now just thinking of those disgusting spiders.

I was always a bit of a tomboy and spent plenty of time climbing trees, exploring the woods, and building forts. I still think that kind of childhood, with tons of time spent outside, to be sacred. And rare. You just don't see lots of kids playing outside anymore.

So I think God knew what he was doing when he gave me two boys.

I realize that quite a few parents don't have the type of schedule or freedom that gives their children hours of time outdoors to learn uninhibited. And I know a lot of video games are educational.

But leaves are more educational.

And rocks. Trees. Lizards and worms. Dirt and kitchen utensils turned props. And puppy dogs.
Usually when our children ask if they can watch television, the answer is no. I believe deeply that Derek and I are doing them a huge service in this regard. Less television is more.

I have to admit, in my normal crazed goal-setting self, I'm a little bit Utopian about my children. As much as it is in my power, I am determined to see them to adulthood with every opportunity for their betterment, and have many ideas of what this finished product looks like. For my boys, my forward thinking involves qualities such as being Christ-followers, men of their word, punctual, wise, able, tender-hearted, self-controlled, articulate, comfortable with leading and following, and gentlemen. I want my boys to be well educated, both with books and the outdoors. We're trying to raise men. Men in the real definition of the word.

So Derek and I decided a few years ago that we didn't want our boys to fit in. We didn't want them to take their cues from Hollywood. We didn't want them to be addicted to video games, television, or entertainment. We wanted them to treat women with respect and honor and never to judge the value of a person by what is on the outside. We wanted them to value their time and not to be always bored without electronic forms of entertainment. We wanted our children to be able to use their ingenuity and God-given creativity to invent their own entertainment.

We wanted them to love God.

We wanted them to read good books.

And we wanted them to play outside a ton.

For us, the idea is that their lifestyle as adults will be inspired by the great and the beautiful, principles from the Bible, nature and the classics, so we knew we'd have to give them the kind of childhood conducive to that.

I don't pretend to be an expert at this kind of childhood.

We make truckloads of mistakes.

And this is all still in the experimental stages. They are still small children. And we will always be a parenting work in progress. But I believe in parenting on purpose, in writing down what we hope the finished product of our children will be, and then aiming accordingly with our habits and allowances. I get excited about this kind of strategizing, about the huge influence I have in the lives of two very special someday men.

Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it."

With our sights set on excellence, I hope and believe that in allowing our boys hours every day in exploration of nature, promoting the reading of good books like Treasure Island, Gulliver's Travels or My Side of the Mountain, and by studying and upholding the principles found in the Bible, despite our many mistakes, we are helping to make them into the finest kind of men. The kind of men that will make a difference.

The kind of man you'd want your daughter to marry.

The Last Summer of the Sippy Cup

Whew. August 2010.

While it was rather warm, the heat was not the only thing making me sweat.

I've waited to write this post for two months now, anticipating a peace to overtake my sentimentality, a settling of the mom-turmoil in my heart. It is with a finally peaceful, albeit a little sore, heart that I type these words. All three of my children have been in school since August and I must admit, it has been an interesting adjustment for me. Unexpectedly, I feel almost like I'm grieving the loss of something. In a healthy way. For me, these last couple of months have been a time of remembering the past quietly, and a bit tearfully, and saying goodbye to it, folding it up gently like a newly washed favorite quilt, and putting it away somewhere that I can always find it, but nevertheless, putting it away.

In our house, this was the last summer of the sippy cup.

For me, the month of August signaled the end of an era. The baby era. The toddler era. The morning playdate era. The I've got to get out of this house or I'll scream era. The era when you have conversations about bowel movements with other moms that you barely know or when going to the grocery store is a grand getaway because the kids are in bed at home with Daddy and you can't spend money anywhere else. It was the end of what I always fondly referred to as "the wiping decade". For the last 8 years of my life, I have spent much of each day wiping faces, spit up, bums, noses, potty chairs, high chairs, tables, floors, innocent bystanders, throw up, slobber, doorknobs, snot, carseats, booster seats, toys, and well, you get the picture. I have spent these years in every imaginable frame of mind. I have been incandescently happy, overwhelmingly depressed, deeply grateful, full of regret, happy to help, sick of being the maid, ready for anything, grossed out by body fluids, undercaffeinated, overcaffeinated, unconditionally loving, a jerk, full of wisdom, and mean and vengeful, all in one day. I have been at home with my children since they were born and now they are all in school. The change I am adjusting to goes far beyond the newness of having them all in school. It is a new season altogether.

These last eight years I have fished bugs out of mouths, changed sandy diapers (when we went the beach and Lane ate a mother load of sand while I wasn't looking), looked for shoes that had been tossed out of car windows on the side of the road, had arguments with pediatricians about immunizations, researched rashes in the wee hours, read Green Eggs and Ham eighty-four million times, watched The Jungle Book ninety-four million times, made macaroni and cheese ten thousand times, ordered chicken finger and fries from every restaraunt I know, and stood helplessly baffled in the middle of the grocery store while my 2 year old repeatedly banged his head against the floor, in the throes of a temper tantrum because I wouldn't let him write on his jeans with a pen.

I have had three C-sections.

I have stayed up all night a lot. Feeding newborns, praying for wisdom, worrying about money, cleaning up vomit, rocking a colicky baby, watching over fevers, putting together Christmas gifts, and making cakes for birthday parties.

I have actually hidden in the bathroom with the door locked, eating chocolate and praying that they would all just go away. Please, stop banging the door down and just go away...

Seriously though, my resume, if I were allowed to have one for being a stay at home mom, would rock.

However, I have given up much to stay home. I haven't gone back to school to finish my degree. I haven't gone back to work. I wanted to be home for all of it. I knew I'd regret it if I didn't stay home when my children were babies. I haven't had that power career I started to think I'd have right before I got married. I haven't even hit the foreign mission field yet, like I thought I would when I became a christian. I haven't had much spending money, or the cool designer clothes and shoes that I would have loved to wear. I haven't gone to Spain or Paris or Ireland or even Alaska, like I thought I would do before I turned 30. I haven't hobknobbed with sophisticated people, or decked out my house with the coolest antiques or mod retro furniture or that white slipcovered couch that I made the mistake of buying and then sold pretty quickly when Lane spit up on it.

I have gained weight and gone whole days without brushing my teeth, given up on having fabulous hair and, in some ways, let myself go, because for most of those years, there just wasn't room for what my family needed and what I needed.

So, at the beginning of the summer when 4YO Matthew, the last of my three to go off to school, was having trouble giving up his sippy cup I told him he had until the end of the summer, when he started school, in August. Since he would be in school every day, he needed to be able to handle it without a sippy cup. Every other trace of babyhood had pretty much been done away with except for the sippy cups. We had already grown out of cribs, pack n plays, diapers and pullups, strollers, and baby dishes.

The last day of summer came. I remember waking up in the morning and thinking this is the day that we throw away Mattie's sippy cups. He was ready. After breakfast he took one more last long swig, stared me directly in the face and said, "Here. Throw it away." As I tossed those faded, chewed up cups and lids into the trash can,whose spill proof seals no longer worked and Cars characters couldn't be discerned anymore, I watched his face for signs of panic. Nothing. He smiled up at me, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and turned and walked out of the kitchen. I found myself standing there staring down into the trash can, bereft. There, among the potato peels and empty egg carton, next to the junk mail, lay the remnants of almost a decade that changed me forever from a whining burden into a capable set of hands and feet and heart, from a wimp into a warrior, from a woman into a mother.

Since then, I will admit, I've been throwing a little bit of a pity party. I've been holding back from really engaging among new acquaintances at our new church here in Tulsa. I've delayed making plans, making friends, making my peace. It's as if, with the kids in school and all this time for me to now pursue those other dreams of being a writer and an artist, of getting healthy and going back to school, I don't know who I am anymore beyond being a mother to very small children. I know it's time to find out again.

So I ask you to picture me now. I am sitting on the couch, a cup of tea on the table next to me, the soft lighting of the lamp on overhead. I am holding a book. The book of these last eight incredible years of motherhood to my three children as babies and toddlers. It's not an attractive book. It's old and kind of smelly, with smears of food and ripped pages. It looks like someone has taken a black marker to some of the pages, and scribbled with abandon. A few of the pages are crumpled, some have been chewed on, and one is missing. If you look closely, you'll notice different chapters in this book. There's the chapter called "Sleepless With a Rattle", and then there's one named, "Will Rock For Food", and "Ancient Times: Date Nights". Then there's that last chapter, about something as inconsequential as a sippy cup, for Heaven's sake. Though not attractive, it's a very well-bound book, built to last. Certain pages are dog-eared. It is full of memories that only a mother could love, experiences that made me know how strong I really was, love that made me even more certain of the daily involvement of my Heavenly Father, teachable moments, and milestone celebrations that are among my most precious posessions. But now, it is time to close it. I have no regrets. I have peace about where our family is and have felt the guiding hand of God every step of the way. But this is the end of this season.
Picturing me taking my one last swig...
As I sit there, in the soft lamplight in a quiet house, while everyone is sleeping, I am ready to say goodbye. I must prepare my heart for what is next. I must ready myself and my life for the next season that God has for my family, for the fresh page to write upon, for the brand new book in which to chronicle my continuing journey as a mother. With prayers that have no words welling up in my heart, and tears that have their source in both joy and sadness upon my cheeks, with gratitude that makes me feel among the richest and most blessed of women, I close the book. I am saying goodbye to those wild days and to the particular brand of joy that surrounded them.
It is time to embrace what's around the bend and acknowledge that the best is yet to come.
I guess, without a lid on my cup, I can heartily drink to that.

Turkish Delight: A Mother's Day

Derek recently asked me what I would do if he took the kids out and about to have fun and I had a whole day to myself.

First, I told him, I'd faint. I wouldn't believe it was true. I would watch them pulling out of the driveway in the minivan to go to oh, I don't know, the zoo followed by the park followed by a movie followed by ice cream followed by bowling and putt putt golf...and upon contemplating the wild and often fantasized about complete freedom that the next 12 hours seemed to unbelievably promise, I'd probably pass out from the weight, the sheer volume of all that glorious time to myself. Untold riches to a stay at home mom who is currently in rare form by homeschooling.

When I came to, lying sideways on the driveway with my arm asleep and pinned backwards under my body, drooling, with a slight sunburn on my right cheek and an ant crawling up my forehead I'd immediately check my watch in order to assess how much time I had left.

Then I'd go back to bed. I'd sleep and sleep and sleep, neverminding all the laundry that was whining in the baskets or the dishes that were dying to be put away. I would sleep the way I did when I was 15.

Until noon.

After awhile, I'd wake up and eat the rest of the Ben & Jerry's Mud Pie ice cream I'd stashed behind the frozen corn the night before when I got home from the grocery store (and then ate half of it and watched "The Real Housewives of New York" while Derek took a shower, switching it back to the news when he walked back in the room). I think I'd eat it in bed. For breakfast. Then, after yawning and stretching really loudly and maybe doing a downward dog or two, I'd take a really long, indulgently steamy shower and I'd shave my legs and exfoliate my skin. I'd stay in there, writing my name in the condensation on the shower door, like I used to before I was a mom and took speed showers while yelling threats about not choking your sister out the door. I'd write my name in big, looping cursive letters -J-i-l-l-i-a-n- and I'd finish it off with a little flower. Then I might write some other things, or play M.A.S.H., or try my hand at calligraphy. Finally, when all the hot water was gone, I'd get out. I'd stay in a towel for at least an hour and a half, doing a clay mask on my face and painting my toenails with two coats and a topcoat, plucking my eyebrows to unparalleled perfection and even trying out some different facial expressions to impress the checkout clerk at the grocery store the next time she said she couldn't take my coupon. I'd pretend talking to her in all sorts of voices, finally deciding on a really lofty stare, my voice dripping with the condescension that would surely make her quiver in terror while she subtracted one more dollar from my grocery bill.

I'd get dressed in another pair of pajamas, leave all my dirty clothes and wet towel on the bathroom floor, ignore my unmade bed, mosey on into the kitchen and have some coffee with Ben & Jerry's Phish Food ice cream in it, instead of half n half.

Then I'd watch the news. And a quilting show. And a cooking show. And an extra long special on the history channel about the history of medicine and it's contributions to overpopulation. I'd watch some ridiculously liberal political talk show and argue belligerently with the television, putting them all in their place. Then I'd check out the sci-fi channel and watch the latest movie, "Centurion Centipedes" before finally switching to HGTV and leaving it there, yes, leaving the television on, all day while I was in other rooms.

I'd go outside and water my vegetable garden and pick a few weeds. I'd stop and contemplate the way the wind was rushing through the leaves on the trees and I'd run inside for my journal and spend an hour lounging on the trampoline and writing a poem about it.

I'd come back in and play with my fabrics, working out a brightly contrasting palette for a new throw quilt. I'd piece it together with my sewing machine and play Cindy Lauper or Celine Dion or Amy Grant or Taylor Swift on the CD player as loud as it would go.

Then I would change and go for a really long run beside the river, taking my time stretching and warming up, jogging slowly underneath the trees, nodding politely at approaching runners and pedestrians, breathing deeply of the sunny afternoon air. I'd run 6 miles, just to see if I could. When I was finished I'd sit by the river for awhile and watch people and dogs and birds, thinking of ideas for a good novel, daydreaming about international travel.

Back at home, while taking another long and luxurious shower, I'd sing the National Anthem as an opening for the World Series. I'd sing it a few times in different keys, just so I could get it right. After I got out I'd put some more pajamas on.

And then I'd read. I'd start a new book and I'd read all afternoon and into the evening. I'd read on the couch and in bed and in the chair out on the patio. I'd read on the futon and in a bubble bath. I'd read until the sun started to set. Then I would go outside and sit in the backyard on a soft blanket and I'd watch the sun go down. All by myself. I'd listen to the crickets as they began their nightly disco, I'd watch the tiny bats come out and fly around in the dusky air, I'd contemplate building a pergola onto the back of the house and extending my garden a couple feet more, I'd pick long pieces of grass and braid them, I'd examine my fingers for signs of old age, I'd hum the Moonlight Sonata, and watch as the sun and moon high fived each other and traded shifts.

I'd go inside and then, in the pause between commercials on HGTV and Love Songs with Delilah on 92.9, I'd hear the minivan drive up in the driveway.

I'd sigh over a day so rarely and well spent, I'd smile because they were home, and I'd jump up and run out to kiss Derek and tuck my babies into bed, realizing that the whole day I never even said one word.

That's what I'd do.