Big Brother

When I was in kindergarten I so desperately wanted a big brother that I invented one.  I told all my classmates that I had an older brother who was in the army (to explain why he wasn’t around).  This was totally ok, because my best friend Jenny, also the eldest child, also created an older brother.  And from that point on I have always craved an older brother.

I don’t know what it was.  I may have been somewhat jealous of my younger sister and brother’s relationship.  Born only 13 months apart they were each other’s best friend and my brother looked out for her in a sweet way.  I also had an older cousin, Dan, who I was totally obsessed with.  He was cool and five years older than I and I would go to bed at night wishing he were my brother.  Weird.

At any rate I have always hoped in my heart that I would have a boy first to be that older brother to his younger sister.  And I can’t even begin to explain how happy it makes me to see Monster with Toots.

Monster is already the sweetest big brother to Toots.  He adores her and will randomly stop playing to give her a big hug or say “Hi!”  He always says good night to her and looks for her in her crib first thing in the morning.

Last week, while we were getting ready for our day, Toots and Monster were hanging out together on our big bed. I needed to run into their room to get clothes for them so I told Monster to keep an eye on his sister and not let her fall off the bed.  Truth be told Curious George was on the television so I didn’t really think that he had heard me or would follow through. 

From the other room I heard him say, “No, no, Toots!  No, no Toots!”  I come rushing into my room to find him holding his sister by the ankle.  She was nowhere near the edge of the bed and had maybe tried to move about an inch.  But Monster was determined to do his job and keep her from falling off the bed.  Oh my sweet boy. 

Add this to the list of things that make a mama proud.  I hope this is the kind of story that weaves itself through our family history in a way that helps to define their sibling relationship.  I hope Monster always takes care to watch out for his sister and she adores his love and attention. 

Monster is exactly the kind of big brother I always wanted.  I hope Toots knows how lucky she is.

I Think My Bangs Might Have Magical Powers...

So despite my initial hesitation regarding my new heavy bangs I’ve come to really love this new ‘do.  I haven’t felt so good about how I look in a long time.  This may be due to the fact that having bangs has forced me to shower more frequently because slept on bangs look, well, not cool.  And as long as I’m showering I might as well put on real clothes (read: not yoga pants) and throw on some mascara.  And voila!  I look 95% better than I ever did pre-bangs.  Regardless, most days I actually kind of like what I see in the mirror and that is huge. 

Recently though I’ve come to wonder if maybe my bangs even have magical powers.

For example, tonight I went to a yoga sculpt class at the hot yoga place.  I love yoga sculpt and I love it even more when it’s done in a heated room.   Yoga sculpt is like yoga on steroids with weights and cardio and none of the “Om” meditation crap.  Add all the extra sweating that comes when you do it in a heated room and I leave there feeling like I’ve actually worked out. 

Last week I saw someone that I thought may have been a sorority sister in college.  I wasn’t totally sure, and we never made enough eye contact to know for sure if she saw and recognized me.  So I left without saying anything.

This week I saw her again.  My instinctive reaction was to keep an eye on her during class without making eye contact and hope she approached me afterwards to say, “don’t I know you?”  I know it’s silly, but I always do this.  If I see someone I recognize I avoid all eye contact and let the other person make the effort to come to me.  I could try to make an excuse for this, pretend that it’s because I don’t want to bother this person, or put them in an awkward position if they don’t recognize me.  This, however, would be a total lie.  The truth is I don’t ever make the first move in situations like this because I don’t want to give someone else the power that comes with being recognized by someone you don’t remember.  I don’t want to risk letting someone think they’ve made me insignificant.

** This is where I would add a footnote, if blogs had footnotes, to say that this exchange of power is absolutely real and you are lying if you think people don’t secretly revel in it.  I know because I have.  It was in the toothpaste aisle at Jewel.  I got the “Colleen?  Is that you?” from a girl I knew in elementary and middle school.  She once belonged to a group of “friends” that hurt my feelings for most of grades six through eight.  (Middle school is brutal pals.)  And when she approached me in the grocery store after seven years I couldn’t place her.  I played it off, stalling and asking generic questions until I figured out who she was.  And then I left, taking no small amount of joy in the fact that this person who had once made me feel so bad and unimportant, was now someone I didn’t even recognize amidst tubes of Colgate and Crest.  In jr. high I would have put a bazillion dollars on this exchange going down the other way, myself being cast as still small, unimportant and unrecognized.  I know, I know.  This makes me a horrible human being.  But middle school wounds, man.  They run deep.  Ok. Footnote over.**

Any way, at some point during yoga I looked up into the mirror and saw that my bangs miraculously still looked pretty good.  This was no small feat considering the amount of sweating going on in there.  And with that discovery I thought- I’m going to approach her after class.  Who cares if she doesn’t recognize me?  That doesn’t make me insignificant. 

And that right there is huge pals.  Her response does not determine my worth.  After spending years allowing others’ reactions to me completely influence how I feel about myself, this sweet freedom feels just like that.  Freedom.  It’s a Christmas miracle.  Or maybe it’s the magic of the bangs.  Or probably just the normal maturing that comes as I approach thirty.  Regardless, I’ll take it.  

Accountability is a Dirty Word

She sat across from me at my favorite campus coffee shop.  The night before she’d casually asked me to meet her to “discuss some things on her mind.”  She was my mentor, my role model and my friend.  I looked up to her and valued her opinion more than anyone else on campus. 

To say I was blindsided would be an understatement.  When she pulled out her notebook and opened to the list that chronicled all of my shortcomings and misdoings of the past few months, I could literally hear my heart pounding in my ears.  She loved me, she said, and she wanted to help me be better.  For Jesus.  Accountability is a necessary part of Christian community.

And I sat and listened.  The tears flooding in my eyes made it difficult to make out all those things on her list (she’d wanted to make sure her thoughts were clear and she hadn’t forgotten anything, after all), and 10 years later I still don’t recall many of the specifics of my failings as a Christian.  I do recall the way I left, after she had finished saying everything she came to say, on the verge of body wrecking sobs, with a hug and a “thank you.”  I thanked her for that wrecking ball of judgment.  I didn’t know any better.  In an instant I had become everything on that list.  I deserved that judgment.

I spent the rest of the evening experiencing a “dark night of the soul” if you will, wrestling with her words, allowing them to become truths, transforming them beyond her words, attaching them to Christ’s words.  I cried, and hurt and bled.  The wound created that afternoon was dug out a little more and suddenly guilt was a part of my faith.  Guilt was the part of my faith.

Months later she apologized for that afternoon.  Maybe she hadn’t handled it the best.  She didn’t have bad intentions; she thought she was helping.  Years later she apologized again.  Turns out someone had brought out their own list, regarding her shortcomings.  She finally understood what she had done all those years before.  She was so sorry.

Each apology acted like a bit of Neosporin on a gunshot wound.  A quiet whisper that there was healing that needed to be done.  A small sense of vindication that I did actually deserve to feel hurt, that I didn’t deserve that wrecking ball.  But Neosporin cannot heal a gunshot wound and while I quickly accepted her apology and moved on to happier topics I found my heart longing to go back.  To speak aloud how much that list haunts me.  To rehash and reopen.

It wasn’t until I participated in a ministry internship where I found myself in small groups and therapy like mentoring that I was finally able to do just that.  From the beginning I felt nervous about attending the small group.  I found myself waiting, tense and edgy, for someone to whip out their notebooks and reveal their lists.  I dreaded the accountability I knew was coming.  My memory of that day kept coming to the surface and I knew I needed to examine it.

When I went back to my journals from that time there is a clear distinction of before and after that dreaded accountability.  Before my prayers were filled with praises to God, joy in his love for me, wonder at his grace and goodness.  Did I write this?  I thought.  Did I once feel this way about God?  I don’t remember this relationship.  After my journal is filled with the shoulds and not enoughs.  I berate myself for not living up to all God wants me to do.  I am so undeserving.  I need to do more, earn more, give more.  God is the list maker and my faults are many.  These thoughts were familiar.  This relationship with God was familiar.

As I revisited and rehashed this experience I found myself asking what God’s heart was towards me on that day, and what it was towards her.  I started to see myself as God saw me.  I was not a list of failings.  I didn’t have to fix my faults in order to come into his presence.  Finally the wounds began to truly heal.  I began to have grace with myself for the first time since “After.”

And I realized something else.  His heart broke for the pain his children were inflicting on each other.  It broke for me, and it broke for her.  Forgive her too; she knew not what she was doing.  And I truly know that she didn’t.  She had bought the lines that had been fed to her.  Accountability is important.  Iron sharpens iron.  She was loving me the best way she knew how in that moment. 

We are still friends and we’ve revisited that day once more in our friendship.  I was able to finally articulate just how much that encounter had damaged me.  I spoke truth to how it shaped a misunderstanding of God and tainted the way I saw myself in his eyes.  And I told her how I’m working through it and changing my story.  And she was finally able to really apologize for the fullness of her mistake.

Accountability man, it’s a dangerous thing.  Used incorrectly it can have life altering effects.  Thankfully I would find that there is another way of accountability, a beautiful, necessary, life-giving way.  But that’s another story for another day.

Vacation from No

I have incredibly fond memories of our family vacations as a child.  My parents, having met as employees of United Airlines, instilled in us an appreciation for travel taking full advantage of our ability to fly for free.  And fly we did.  I accumulated more stamps in my passport by the age of 18 than most do in a lifetime.  With my family I saw the leaning tower of Pisa, sang old Irish tunes with a live band at Oliver St. John Gogarty’s pub in Dublin, and sat in our car in the middle of a pack of elephants on the move in South Africa.  (I do also have incredibly frustrated family vacation memories.  The image of my father’s backpack clad backside, some 20 feet ahead of us, determined to see all of Rome in one day, his family’s fatigue or hunger be damned is forever seared in my brain.)  It is an incredibly great source of sadness for me to know that I won’t be able to provide my own kids with as many trips to new and interesting places as I experienced growing up. 

On the other hand my husband has less than fond memories of family vacations.  His memories include mostly arguing, driving, more arguing and eating at restaurants where no one wanted to dine.  His parents didn’t love to travel; it seemed a general lack of comfort served to bring out the worst in everyone.

So my inability to provide vacation experiences like the ones I grew up with, coupled with my husband’s desire not to provide experiences like the ones he grew up with, left us five years into marriage having taken only one vacation as a singular family unit: our honeymoon.  We’ve traveled, yes.  We’ve visited friends, traveled with my family and have taken vacations with another family, but we had yet to spend an extended amount of time as our own family unit exploring some place new.

We set out last weekend to change that.  Out of the blue my husband booked a long weekend away to Sheboygan, Wisconsin to an indoor water park and resort.  I anticipated this weekend like a child yearning for his birthday.  I counted down the weeks, flipping up the calendar to smile at those words, blue harbor.   I spent the days before our departure running errands to ensure our three and a half days together were special: movies and books from the library, forbidden junk food and treats from Target.  I deeply wanted this weekend to feel special and set apart.  I wanted my family to feel that this was sacred time to relish, enjoy and relax into.

And so it was.  I realized during the planning and preparing process that I had an opportunity to set the tone for our vacation.  My husband and I are both pretty go with the flow, so when we travel with others we often let them set the tone.  We travel with great people, so it’s never really a problem, but I was excited to be the ones to drive the ship.  As I thought about the feeling of the weekend I wanted it to feel like saying yes. 

For better or worse I am a parent who tends to say no more than yes.  Often it’s a necessary no ("no you may not run out into traffic") but I am not above saying no because I just don’t want to deal with the mess (no you can’t use markers- here’s a crayon) or to keep our routine (no buddy, it’s naptime and you’ve already had 3 stories.)  Truthfully, sometimes I say no simply because I fear being over-indulgent.  So this weekend I took a vacation from saying No.  Our routine was loose and I didn’t stress about it. 

Taking a vacation from No meant eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch for lunch. (And pop tarts and pizza and Velveeta shells and cheese)

while wearing your sister's hair clip of course

Going down the water slide

and around the lazy river 15 times.

It meant watching the big trucks work for much longer than Mommy wanted to.

It meant eating corn on the cob even though it was messy,

and watching as much TV as we wanted.

It meant staying up later than usual and sitting on Daddy’s lap during meals and buying crayons at Target because your coloring book from Chili’s is so awesome.

And it was wonderful. 

(Of course if I’d written this post on Saturday night it would have stopped there.  By Sunday I remembered that saying yes to everything creates a monster.  A cranky, ornery, entitled monster.  Still worth every single “yes” though.)


I linked up to the parent hood with this post!  This is my very first link up (and pretty much the first time I've even really shared my blog!) Head over to Fried Okra to see other links in the parent hood!

Questions for God

I spent the evening with my middle school youth group talking about doubts.  We discussed the pros to doubting, to wrestling with God.  I told them a faith that has honest questions for God is the best kind of faith; God can handle those questions, invites them even.  Breaking up into groups, the students brainstormed some doubts and questions they have for God.  We wrote them down on yellow poster boards and put them on the wall of the youth room under a sign that says “Questions for God.”  Their questions ran the gamut from “did Adam and Eve have belly buttons” to “why did you make me so ugly” to “why do you allow some people to hurt so much and others to live without the hurt.”

I have been a long time doubter and wrestler with God.  I find myself constantly staring down a reality of life that seems to contradict the truths I’ve been taught about God.  On the day I finally get to sit down across the table from him I will have a million questions for God.  Why do you constantly allow your reputation to be tarnished by people who do evil things in your name?  Why weren’t you more clear in your word about all these topics that tear your believers apart?  How can you create someone with an attraction to members of their own sex and then leave them in a world that is so, so cruel to them?  Where are you?  Why didn’t you?  If you created us and loved us and wooed us during all the days of our lives why do we still hide in our gardens from you like Adam and Eve did?  How have I been so fortunate and blessed and sheltered from pain when others have received ten times the curses?

My heart can literally ache with the doubting.  It stops me short and leaves me dejected, despaired, faithless.  The doubting paralyzes me from the doing God has asked of me.

It would be so much easier without the doubts.

And yet as I told my students that night, and as I truly believe deep in my bones, doubting is good.  We must examine life and face our doubts.  Questioning God works a muscle in our faith.  This muscle must not lay dormant but rather needs to be worked, exercised, prepared.  Because this muscle will be our lifeline.  When that darkest of tragedies comes crashing into our world it is this muscle that will push us through it with our faith intact.  This muscle will allow us to face our grief and despair and still claim that God is good.  The doubt muscle is the only thing that will keep us running to the arms of a loving God.  But if we never worked it during the days of light we will find ourselves woefully unprepared for the deep dark.

And, as I told my students, doubts are best exercised among community.  We put our questions for God on the wall for all to see because it’s important to wrestle with God in the community of others.  When we are too tired and unable to believe in the goodness of God our community can tap it and take over.  When we are in the thick darkness of doubt our community can shine the light on truth.  When all we see is the bad and ugly and hard of life our community can remind us of the lovely and beautiful and true of God.

Without others our doubts threaten to overtake us like the avalanche tumbling faster and faster, scooping and burying all in its path.

But sharing your doubts is vulnerable. I fear the weakness my doubts convey.  I believe the lie that my doubts will taint my faith and leave me untrustworthy.  I fear the avalanche will scoop everyone around me up as well, burying them under its weight.  I believe the lie that my doubts are too great for another to bear.

So I must practice the discipline of doubting in community.  I must give name to the worry I hold that God isn’t bigger than this doubt.  I must work that muscle even though it would be so much easier to let it atrophy and hope I never need to use it.  I must invite others to witness wrestling match that leaves me exhausted, spent and pained.  I must now because I know it will be the lifeline later.

Like all true things of God, doubting is hard but so, so good.

Sweet Dreams. You’re a Good Boy

Monster is starting to talk so much more these days.  It’s amazing to watch him imitate and mimic and communicate.  Last night, as we sat snuggled together on the couch for pizza and a movie night, I gave him a kiss and said, “I love you buddy.”  He responded with a sweet, soft, “I love you Mommy.”  Oh my heart.  He hasn’t said those words strung together like that ever. 

Out of the blue the other day he took my husband’s hand, shook it and said, “Hi, how are you?”  I’m fairly certain he got that from my dad, as Granda shakes his little hand and says “hi, how are you” whenever he comes over.  It amazes me that, days after Granda’s last visit, Monster remembers this detail and tries it out on someone else.

Recently all has been made right in the world by another act of mimicking.  Despite my initialsadness about our silent bedtime routine, I discovered that if I put my mouth right up to Monster’s ear and speak loudly he can hear without his aids.  Thus began our new goodnights.  Now Monster cozies up in his big boy bed and I lean over him with my mouth to his ear and say, “I love you.  Sweet dreams.  You’re a good boy.  I love you.”  Somewhere along the way he has taken to repeating back each phrase.  “Wuv you.  Weet Weams.  Good Boy.  Wuv you.”  It is all enormously comforting to know that he hears me.  That the last words he hears before slumber takes are words that speak to his worth and general loved-ness.

At speech therapy the other day he was playing with a baby.  At one point he rolled the baby onto it’s tummy (his preferred sleep position), patted it’s back and said, “good boy.”  And I know he gets it.  He remembers these acts of love throughout the day.  They carry him beyond the moments before slumber.  They carry him through his work and play and fears and joys.  They teach him how to love others.  They teach him how to love himself. 

He gets it.  

New Look

Inspired (shamed?) by Saturday's post about leaving the house looking like a homeless woman, I set out to change my story.  Truth is the 5 extra pounds I can't get rid of, and the balding/too long hairstyle I've been sporting are taking their toll on my heart and confidence.  Taking a page from the "if you look good, you feel good" playbook I made a hair appointment for yesterday.  Then I went super bold and asked for heavy bangs. Motivated by this and a need to change my part and cover up the bald spots, I told Antoinette to have fun and go for it.  While your at it, chop off 6 inches.  Ugg.  Why do I exist in extremes?

Anyway here's the bangs

To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about them.  I'm hoping they just feel a quarter of an inch two short and in two weeks I will love them.  But maybe I'm just not a bangs person.

Luckily my hair has Harry Potter magic growing abilities and in two weeks it will end up looking like it aways does.

Which is to say, the hairstyle of a tired, homeless mom... :)

On Leaving the House Looking Like a Homeless Woman

I distinctly remember the drive home from a babysitting gig at age fourteen when I noticed that the Mrs. Brown* hadn’t shaved above her knee.  Below the knee it was clearly shaven, but her thighs revealed fine blond hairs, shockingly long in my early teenage opinion. 

I remember being baffled and somewhat judgmental.  Why wouldn’t she shave the whole leg?  It takes an extra ninety seconds.  Could she really not have ninety seconds to spare?  And how is she ok with hairy thighs in the summer?  She’s wearing shorts.  People can see.

Fifteen years and two kids later…I totally get it.  To be fair, I probably stopped regularly shaving above the knee before I had kids, but now- let’s just say I only remember to shave the upper part of my legs when it starts looking like I have man thighs.  At fourteen the novelty of shaving my legs had not yet worn off and the embarrassment factor surrounding exposed hairy legs was high. 

Nowadays I sometimes marvel at what I look like when I leave the house.

It starts in college I think.  8am classes give way to the roll out of bed sweat suit look that I was incredibly fond of.  (And really, the multiple “sweat” items I owned emblazed with my sorority’s letters made it so, so easy to do.)  Post-college affords you a few years of career life where it is fun and exciting to get dressed for the work world (followed by some years where it’s not and you push the limits on “work appropriate sloppiness”).  And then, for me anyway, pregnancy and motherhood hits and it all goes to hell.  For the last three years I have been pregnant, post-partum, pregnant and post-partum again.  After Monster’s pregnancy I enjoyed about 5 months at my pre-preggo weight before starting all over again.  Five months after Toots’ entry into the world…I’m still working on it.  Add to that the whole breastfeeding factor wherein I must always wear something that allows for easy access to the boobs.  This means friends that for three years the only things I can count on fitting in are elastic waistband pants and nursing tanks.  Enter my best friend, the yoga pant.

Then there’s the whole showering/hair/make-up issue.  The discovery of dry shampoo has greatly improved my overall look, but still- it’s pretty dismal.  On most mornings the only make-up I wear is the mascara I put on the last time I wanted to look a little presentable (mascara that could be anywhere from 12 hours-2 days old).  My hair is in that awesome postpartum falling out phase, so it’s nice and thin and straggly and I’m in dire need of a bang trim.

So yeah.  You could say I’m looking pretty good.

The hard part is that I think I look ok.  I’m sporting a casual, low-key cute mom look.  I’m just a hip mom out running errands.  In my head I look like the girls who work at lululemon.  But then I catch myself in the mirror on these days and think, “how did I leave the house like this?  Was I so busy that I couldn’t have done something to improve this look?  What do other people see when they see me?”

How do others do it?  I don’t want to buy new clothes for a size that I don’t want to keep, don’t have time to get all done up most mornings, don’t have the kind of job that requires me to gussy up.  Someone please reassure me that this is just a phase that will pass once I’m done birthing and nursing babies.  Please tell me I won’t be sporting homeless chic at my son’s graduation.

*names changed to protect the hairy

Toots

She arrived in her own laid back fashion- two weeks late.  (Make no mistake, it was laid back for her.  Meanwhile her mama was a hot, stressed out mess.)  But as soon as the midwife laid her on my chest I uttered the words I imagined myself saying during those last long weeks, "you were worth the wait."

Because I like surprises I waited all 42 weeks to find out her gender and, while I gave the proper line about just wanting a happy, healthy baby, deep down I hoped for my girl.  Specifically a blue-eyed girl with a head full of dark hair.

She was exactly what I couldn't dare to dream for.  It felt like too much to ask for.  I couldn't possibly be that lucky.  

But God had blessings beyond blessings in store with her.  She came out of the womb eating, sleeping, and playing like a champ.  All that I had learned during the dark days of her brother's first months about getting babies to sleep, eat, and allow themselves to be put down was completely unnecessary. Because she knew intuitively how to be the world's easiest baby.

She is also the world's happiest baby.  She smiles all. the. time.  Laughs full belly laughs at the slightest hint of funny and cries close to never.  She is sunshine.  

 And the nickname, Toots?  Well, like her brother she earned that too.  It started with the 5 am wake up call.  She would grunt and struggle every morning at 5 am ending in the biggest, loudest toot.  Every day.  The morning toots no longer occur daily, but she still passes gas more loudly than anyone else in our family.  She'll love this story when she's 16.

Monster

This is my monster.

He earned this endearing nickname during the very tumultuous newborn months where he basically hated sleeping, eating, playing and being put down.

They were much more tumultuous than this picture indicates.

We had some shining moments during that first year.

like this one

Once he reached his first birthday he had all but shed those monster-ish characteristics (on most days) but the nickname stuck.

play on playa

Somewhere along the way he turned into this sweet, beautiful, tender-hearted little boy.  He has an intuition about people and seems to know when someone needs some extra love.  And then he gives it freely.

He still has a little monster in him, with a devilish grin and a twinkle in his eye when he's being naughty.  When he was younger he used to giggle right before he was about to get into something off limits.  It came in handy as I could always tell when he was causing trouble.  The boy loves to be out and about and gets his shoes on the second he finishes breakfast, ready for a new adventure.

He is his daddy's boy.  So similar to him in both looks and personality that sometimes I question if he carries any of my genes at all.  

Shortly after the monster's first birthday we discovered that he had a severe hearing loss for which he now wears hearing aids.  It explained a lot about the difficulties of his first year of life.  Since then my little monster has fought and worked and thrived.  The things I worried about and lost sleep over when he was diagnosed have proved to be minor hurdles.  There are still things to worry about: being the kid with hearing aids on his first day of kindergarten, the first pool party he will have to navigate without the use of his aids, wondering if his first dose of rejection has to do with the things that help him hear.  But there is time for that.  In the meantime I celebrate how far he's come.   

Room at the Table

I’ve been listening to the Oprah Channel on Sirius XM Radio whenever I’m in the car lately.  Which is a lot.  I’ve always preferred words to music, lyrics being the dominating factor in choosing songs I love.  My iPod is loaded with audio books and podcasts.  Anyway, these days Oprah and I are besties.  The Oprah channel runs a lot of stuff from her new network, and old episodes of the Oprah Winfrey Show.  It has that Oprah “live your best life” stamp- lots of self help and words to live by. 

Recently she had on some life coach lady who will have her own show on OWN in the fall.  The topic was on “hurting others” and Oprah was talking about why women in particular seem to hurt others.  The life coach lady said it was because women, unlike men, tend to view success as a finite entity.  There is only so much success to go around.  As she put it, “if you get yours, if you get some success, then there won’t be any for me.”  As a result we tend to sabotage each other at our very worst, deny each other joy and congratulations at the very least.

Oh my word did that hit home.  I do this.  I have a few dreams for my life that feel too good for me.  One of those dreams used to be a career as a youth pastor.  I can vividly remember a journal session with God where I held out that dream and felt like God was maybe calling me to it.  And yet I couldn’t speak aloud that dream or God’s call.  I felt so unworthy of it.  I wasn’t good enough to be a youth pastor!  I wasn’t trained enough, educated enough, smart enough, disciplined enough, Godly enough.  (And yet, here I am, 4 years into a career as a youth pastor.  Silly really.)  Meanwhile I saw green whenever I heard about anyone else going into a career in youth ministry.  Every person obtaining a job as a youth pastor was stealing my job (never mind the fact that I already had a different career and I wasn’t even applying for any of these positions).

When I sense that someone I know is going to try to achieve one of those dreams that feel too good for me I get panicky.  I stress out, worried that their success will take my place at the table.  I find myself miles ahead of the actual situation, secretly hoping they will fail at achieving something they haven’t actually started- I just perceive they might want to start.  And of course they will succeed, they are worthy of the call (unlike me).

I don’t know why that is.  Why do someone else’s’ successes have to threaten my own potential?  Why do I think there are limited numbers of places at the table?

Why don’t I trust that the passions and dreams God has laid on my heart are there for a reason? 

Corks

I don’t really collect things.  But I do have two vases filled with wine corks.  Lest you think I’m an alcoholic, let me explain. 

These corks have dates written on them.  Dates and a description of what happened on that date.  These corks came from bottles of wine that were shared with friends, commemorated an important event, or were consumed on a night I wanted to remember.  Some traveled back in my suitcase from vacations to Arizona, New York, Nashville.  These weren’t corks from you average bottle of wine, opened on a random Tuesday and stretched out over a week or two.  No these bottles mean something, celebrate something, remind me of something.

I recently looked at a few of these corks.  There was one from the Halloween dinner party we had on our porch.  It was the first year we had made a conscious effort not to do the Halloween scene (you know, at a bar, in a silly costume, with lots of strangers).  A few friends sat around my favorite table in the house, handed out candy to the little ones that came by, laughed at the teenage boy who mooned us later in the night.  It was one of those nights that made me feel like I was living the grown up life I wanted- full of laughter, community and love.

There was one from the first holiday I “hosted.”  I use the word hosted loosely as my mom still made all the food.  In this instance hosting means everyone had to come to my house and I had to clean up the mess.  I used my fancy china for the first time (even though I only had 5 sets and most of the guests had to use my mom’s fancy china).  I had a sweet seven-month-old baby who was celebrating his first Christmas.  My family drank a little too much around our dining room table.  It was lovely.

There was one from the night my two closest girlfriends came over for dinner.  It was a middle of the week dinner and Tommy was gone.  We had just learned about Monster’s hearing loss.  I remember emailing my two sweet, wonderful friends needing to be with them.  Needing to unravel all the chaos swirling around in my head.  Needing to unload some of the burden.  And, as always, they came through.  They listened and supported and loved and helped.  I remembered marveling that nearly ten years later, these friendships still carried weight.  These girls were still the ones I turned to.  We had come a long way from late-night conversations about boys in our shared room at the sorority house, but they were still the ones I needed when the load was too heavy.

I love these corks.  I love that sifting through them can bring back so many memories.  I love the reminder they give me about the importance of life lived in community.  I love the hours of laughter and happiness; tears and support they represent.  I love the reminder they give me of the beautiful life I have lived and the hope they bring of many more memories made around the table with a few bottles of wine. 

You Do it for the Kids...

My husband commented as we pulled into our directed parking spot, "It's weird, I never understood why Parker would spend his weekend finding things that he thought the boys would be into.  I thought you should just make your kids fit into whatever you want to do...which is mostly to drink beer and watch t.v.  But now, I get it.  It's totally fun to do stuff that the kids like to do."

"I know," I responded, "it's why parents go crazy at Christmas.  You don't actually care if your kid has whatever toy you got him.  You just can't wait to see him all geeked out on Christmas morning."

So we spent the morning looking at trains.  Big trains, old trains, new trains, and life size toy trains.  I never thought I'd spend so much time looking at trains without a word of complaint.  (In fact Tommy was probably more geeked out than Monster)

We do it to see his excitement at being allowed to climb on the back of a real. train.  We do it to see his smile as he waves to those already on the train, and those standing on the side as he takes his tide.  We do it because for the rest of the day all he can say is "choo choo!"  We do it, despite, and maybe even because of the melt down that happens when we finally return home instead of back at the "choo choos."

And it makes me wonder what blessings God is excited to give us.  What joys and treats and happy moments he so lovingly creates with the sole purpose of seeing our smile, our excitement, our joy.  Does he get excited as we do?  Does he smile and chuckle and endure what would ordinarily be mind-numbing boredom exclusively to make our joy complete?

I hope my expressions of joy and happiness and gratitude make it worth it for him.  I hope he smiles at my laughter and happiness and enjoyment of his gifts.  I am reminded to let myself be geeked out about life's blessings.  If only to make God smile.

The Other Side of the Conference Table

Many moons ago I started off as a high school English teacher. I was 22, but looked even younger, teaching at an inner city high school in Brooklyn, NY, which was a far cry from the Midwest suburban educational experience of my youth. I can still vividly remember my feelings of terror and intimidation during my first year of dreaded parent teacher conferences. The details of the parents’ faces and the content of the conversations are mostly a blur. I will forever remember the father who sat across from me, arms folded, with a stern and somewhat disappointed look on his face as he asked me how exactly I was going to challenge his advanced level son and prepare him for the state Regents exam. Aside from him, however, very few of these many conferences really stand out. What I can recall as easily as the day I lived it is the racing heart and sweaty palms, the stuttered conversation, the many “ums”, and “wells” I inserted into my speech, and racking my brain to clearly communicate all the things I knew about each student. I remember feeling like I wasn’t even really sure of what I was saying; I was just trying to fill the 20 minutes and get through the conference. It was as though all the hours and hours I spent with them had never happened and I couldn’t think of a good example of why this kid was getting a D in my class (which almost always had to do with the fact that he hadn’t turned in a single homework assignment in my class all year). I just remember feeling defensive and wrong. Most parents didn’t challenge me and yet I felt as though somehow they were seeing through me, through my inexperience and inability. I could imagine the conversations between parent and child when they returned home. “That Miss Kehoe sure doesn’t know what she’s doing, does she? I should call the principal tomorrow and see if I can get you transferred to another class. Dr. Rampersad has a lot more experience. AND a PhD! If Miss Kehoe wasn’t white I’d have thought she was another student in your class.” “Yeah, she’s dumb. I should probably start a fire in her class tomorrow to show her a lesson. Then I’ll fall asleep and refuse to wake up. It’ll be awesome.”

Ahh the horrors. I wanted so desperately to show these parents how much I cared about my job, about their son or daughter, how much I wanted them to learn. And I sat tongue-tied, intimidated and scared.

Last week I had a chance to sit across the table during another parent teacher conference. Only this time, I was the parent. Monster is in school now and every Tuesday and Thursday he spends the morning in Ms. Brandi’s class learning and growing and transforming before my very eyes. I sat across from Ms. Brandi for our first parent teacher conference and I felt scared, intimidated, and tongue-tied. I found myself racking my brain trying to think of an insightful question, wanting so desperately for this teacher, who is likely younger than me, to approve of me. To approve of my son. I worried that she could see through me and realized I have no idea what I’m doing with my hearing impaired son and most days I feel inadequate and ill prepared for the task of raising him. And I found myself awkwardly emotional as I tried to convey my appreciation for this teacher and this school. They are doing all the things I can’t. They are teaching my son to listen, to hear, to communicate, to understand. They are nurturing him and loving him and giving him all the tools he needs to thrive in life despite his hearing impairment.

As I recall this experience I am struck by how very similar my conference experiences were as both the teacher and the parent. It had never occurred to me, those many moons ago, that the parents who sat across from me could have been just as nervous, overwhelmed, scared and intimidated as I was. Or that Ms. Brandi could have been feeling some of those same emotions as I had been during our conference.

And it’s moments like these, when I come face to face with the reality that we are all really just the same, that my insecurities and fears are really no different from someone else’s, that I could weep with relief that I am not abnormal. I think we all walk around assuming we are the only ones who have ever thought these thoughts and felt these feelings. We let that isolation sink us deeper into negative self-talk. Reminders that the voice that lurks deepest inside our heart is more alike to one another than different is good for me. It quiets that voice when it tells me to be fearful and it opens up my heart to allow God to speak peace and love and freedom.