Five Minute Friday - Mess

Linking up with the Five Minute Friday writers today (this was an EASY one!)...

Write for five minutes, no editing, on MESS...GO

I’m picking up the scattered droppings left by her when we walked in the door after daycare…her emptied backpack, the spring picture she did with green handprints serving as a background of grass for the construction paper flowers glued on in crooked lines…her discarded socks still holding the shape of her little feet.

I would normally be annoyed at the mess I have to pick up, but today I remind myself that without this mess…

I wouldn’t also have the precious kisses planted on my face…I would miss the giggles and cries of “more” when I tickle her belly or pretend to eat her clean piggy toes after her bath…I would never hear her mispronounced words that I secretly hope she never learns how to say.

If I didn’t have to clean up the mess, yes, I would have more time to do things I want to do for myself. But then, I would never have been lucky enough to be a mom to my bonus baby – the one who surprised me and turned my little ordered world upside down. 

STOP.

Surprised By Motherhood

I've read a lot of parenting books. More accurately, I've read a lot of them, but also only started reading more of them and then stopped because I just couldn't relate enough to make it worth continuing.

I just finished reading a free sneak peek of the first three chapters of Surprised by Motherhood, by Lisa Jo Baker. Now I have to wait until April 1st when it's released (I pre-ordered it the minute I finished the introduction!) and I really wish I didn't! 

This book is so very different from all the other books I've read or only partially read. She really gets it -- that feeling you have that all the other women who say they love every minute of being a mother and wouldn't trade it for anything are so much better than you are because you don't always feel that way.

My favorite quote so far (and one that made me feel like she had somehow gotten into my own head) - "Parenting is not for the faint of heart. And it's especially not for those type A personalities accustomed to having all their ducks in a row, all their check boxes checked, and their sofa cushions, cereal boxes, and entire lives neatly arranged." Yup - this type A personality has a HARD time with the disorder that is our lives right now, living with teen, pre-teen and toddler girls!

Multitudes on Mondays

My mom has suggested this more than once and I recently read Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, so I am now purposefully looking for things to be grateful for every day. 

Some of my recent favorites from my list:

Cupping her ear with her tiny hand, she exclaims, “I hear da birdies!” After a long winter of eating breakfast while looking out dark windows, we are finally seeing light and hearing twitters of birds.

Hearing a quick and loud “Besh you, Mommy!” from the back seat right after I sneezed while driving home from daycare. 

Hugs and cuddles from my towering 13 year old who now has to BEND to put her head on my shoulder – both standing and sitting!

 Three year old wrapped in a ducky towel, asking “Hold me like a baby?” (I was struggling to find something to be grateful for in the midst of wrestling with said three year old who didn’t want to sit on the potty before bath, didn’t want to get her hair rinsed, didn’t want to get out when the water was drained…she gave it to me!)

Five Minute Friday - Willing

Five Minute Friday. Again, not on Friday, and this one's a little all over the place, but I can feel my "writer muscles" getting a workout that they've been missing...and other than backspacing once to fix a typo as I went (because I can't knowingly leave something spelled wrong!), no editing involved.

Willing…

Why is she not willing to do the same things for me as she does for her teacher at school? Why am I not willing to give up on the idea that I am somehow becoming less in her mind, since we spend so little awake time together?

I know that the job I have now is the job I am supposed to have – God couldn’t have planned it better (according to me, which, I know, is not at all the yardstick He uses when he plans things!). It came at the right time, it allows me to use my talents for the furthering of His work and it provided a second income that was needed in order to move our family where we needed to go.

But I am having such a hard time wrestling my will against hers – our stubbornness is cut from the same cloth and that cloth seems to be tying me down right now, making me unwilling to see that no matter what she does or doesn’t “do” for me, I should just stop. I should be more willing to see her as He sees me – a child who needs grace, undeserved as it may be.

Stop.

Five Minute Friday - Small

This is my first time writing with the Five Minute Friday group...but definitely not the first time I thought about writing. Write for five minutes on a one word prompt, no editing allowed. Here I go...

Small…

She is so small, made even smaller by the way she is curled up and limp in her Daddy’s lap, burning up with a fever that has taken the sparkle out of her eyes and replaced it with clouds.

I am so small, watching from across the room, racked with anxiety that takes over my mind every time one of our girls gets sick.

Why can’t I remember in these tense moments that I have a God who is bigger than all of this? Why can’t my faith be bigger?

I pray – Oh, I definitely pray, every time I feel my hands start to shake. Every time my breaths grow shorter and more shallow. Every time I feel light-headed and so cold that three shirts and a blanket can’t bring the warmth back into my shivering body. I imagine if I didn’t pray, my anxiety would be even bigger than it is, threatening to dwarf every thought in my head. It’s just that the prayers don’t always seem big enough.

We are both so small, but I will not give up. I will keep trying to grow bigger, exercising my faith muscles in an effort to bring it closer to God-size, and further from Our-size.

Stop.

Why This? Why Now?

After writing a monthly column for a local newspaper for many years, I had to quit in order to start a full-time job, set up a new household and get our kids started in new schools and daycare. But I missed writing for the sake of writing. So here I am -- trying my hand at blogging. I don't expect that this will be a place where I have updates about my kids for my relatives to see. My girls will, of course, factor into my writing and may even be the subjects of posts. But by and large, this space is for me to get what's in my head down on "paper". We'll see what comes of it!