Mother's Day

 
 



Mother's Day is tricky. Every year I really want it to be a day that allows my family to celebrate me. That's what it's for, right? Family celebrating mom?  Every year though, since I've been a mom, it's a day that leaves me physically and emotionally exhausted.
I love my kids with all my heart. I prayed for them to be my kids. Chuck and I tried for years to bring these kids into existence. They are each a blessing to my heart in ways I will never be able to make them understand. My heart swells with joy and pride when they smile at me.
I still hate Mother's Day. It's a reminder that my own mom gave up on life - and me - and succumbed to depression, taking her own life. It's a reminder that being my mom was not enough if she could no longer be a wife.
I hate that.
I want to focus on what I have. I want to revel in the flowers and the grilling of yummy foods prepared just for me. I want to lay back with a book and put my feet up and fall asleep with my kids laughter lilting on the breeze.
"Focus on your blessings!" others suggest.
"Look at what you have, not what you have not!" some have said.
Yes. Yes. Those are great ideas that I have tried many times over. My heart aches anyway. I'd rather skip the day altogether. My husband and kids do a great job of appreciating me on any given day. I don't need a special focus day. Maybe next year we can go away somewhere where there is no Mother's Day. Is there a place? I should start planning now.

Chaos in the Still

This is one of my favorite places in the whole entire world. I don't have to go far to get there because it's right in my back yard. One of the best times of day is early, before the heat of Houston becomes outrageous and the humidity is still packing it's energy to unleash on the day.

I like to take my coffee out and sit as still as possible. This is a feat in and of itself for an extrovert. Being quiet and still goes against most of who I am but yet I find it a necessity lately. I can sit with my feet propped up and watch the chaos of the yard.
It truly is chaotic, which may be why I can go there to be still. The water is flowing from the spa into the pool in a gentle rushing while the wind is making light waves on the tanning deck. The bees swoop in and out of the bottle brush flowers right behind my head, forcing me to be statuesque as to remain unnoticed. The blue jay sees me and is angry that I'm in his yard but when he realizes how still I am he makes his way to the feeder with the cardinal. The sparrows that have recently built a family home in my dryer vent race back and forth to the feeder, making lightening fast darts through the porch. The doves are on the ground cooing as they pick up the seeds the cardinal and blue jay knock down below. The branches on the tree need trimmed so they are scraping the gutters with a low screech and the squirrels are using  the branches as a personal walkway from the treetop to the roof of the house.
All of this noise amidst my quiet time reminds me how I need to take time to be still and breathe. I have to remember that God is God and that the world spins and moves regardless of my noticing. Really though, it's so much sweeter when I notice.

Deceiving Eyes

As I sit at my desk, knee deep in both Holy Week and VBS prep, I have been thinking a lot about Jesus and where I go to find him. I was reading about the women going to the tomb on that famous Sunday morning, fully expecting to find the body of Jesus. He had told them that he wouldn't be there yet they cried and wondered and fretted that his body had been stolen. They were so wrapped up in their own doubt that they didn't automatically recognize The Lord when he stood before them.
Then, this morning, as I was drinking coffee and perusing Yahoo News, I ran across this story of a snake that was found dead with a centipede hanging out of it's body. It has really awesome and gross pictures (You can read the whole story at this link.) and I couldn't help but think of how that snake thought it had just bagged a really good meal. It thought it knew exactly what it was seeing. It looked at that centipede and thought, "Yum! I've hit the jackpot!"and it ended up killing her.
How often do I think I'm looking at something good, something righteous, something holy, only to find out that it could've been the death of me? How often do I get wrapped up in my own thinking and my own actions and totally miss out on the beauty of the Savior standing beside me all along? How many times have I felt certain that I had hit the jackpot, found toxicity, and totally missed a blessing Jesus was holding out before me?
Today my prayer is that I would have eyes to see truth and that I will have wisdom to reach out to Jesus.

Prayers for Peace

Some days I think that I have problems. I think that my dilemma of beef or chicken for dinner is something to spend time pondering and that my place in the car line is a stress.

Then I get a text from a friend who is pregnant and her blood pressure is too high and she's been put on bed rest to protect her health and the health of the baby.

Some days life falls out of perspective and I see that my worries are not worries at all but instead inconveniences of a suburban mom.

I've placed a link below for a beautiful song. This has been my prayer for peace lately...whether I'm thinking about chicken or my friend.

See it here.

Poison Drink

Someone shared a special nugget of truth with me today that said, "Resentment is the poison we drink expecting someone else to die."

I've been mulling it over all day and can't find an ounce of untruth in it. I'd go so far as to add "unforgiving spirit" to the dose of resentment because I think they are toxic together. Do I have that mastered? No. Do I ever drink the poison? Almost every day.

I wish that I could say otherwise but it's true. So often in life we skip over conversations that could be awkward or painful because we don't want to go through the work of it all and then we end up hanging on to resentments for months or years.

There are so many areas of my life that I wish I'd set boundaries or had hard conversations years ago. There are people I've allowed to take up too much space in my head because I didn't have the courage or the maturity to take a stand either towards or against.

To put it on paper (or screen) makes the process seem so much simpler than it truly is. Forgiveness is tough and does not come naturally for mankind. It's a choice I have to make every single day and one that I can only do with the help of God. Some days I'm more open to his grace than others. Some days I fail miserable and I swallow a shot of poison willingly.

So how do I move forward with less poison? I think I need a lot of Jesus and good friends who will speak truth to me when I'm being hard. I need to surround myself with truth-speakers who will put their hands over my mouth when they see me raising a shot of resentment to my lips. I need to bow before God daily and beg to be reminded of the grace he has blanketed me with so that I can offer it to others. I also think I need to value myself as a precious creation made in the image of God and demand that I be treated accordingly. I can make a choice to not allow myself to be  a door mat. I can make a choice to be treated with respect. It all goes hand in hand in the walk towards health.

The Desert Before Dessert

I have not written a blog...or anything else for that matter...for quite some time. I've been walking through a desert of silence. That sounds dramatic and meaningful but the truth of the matter is that it really has been like a desert. I battled some depression, couldn't hear God speaking for the life of me, and I felt parched and dry.

Two weeks ago I told my husband, Chuck, that I felt like God had left me because I didn't feel him and I couldn't hear him speak. Chuck had just got out of the shower and was dressing at the time. He looked at me through his reflection in the mirror and said, "Well, you know that's not true, right?"

Did I? I guess my logical brain did know that but I rarely live there. I spend most of my days in my creative, emotional brain. I sometimes hear messages from my logical brain but for the most part, I shoo them away. I knew though, in that moment, that I needed to pray. I grabbed my phone and pulled up my Bible app (I use YouVersion) and prayed, "God, I need a word from you so that I know you are here. Would you give me something to hang on to?" I got Psalm 139: 15, which says, "My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth."

Well, that'll do. Yes, God was not only present right then but he had been since the beginning of me. Since then I have been praying for God to reveal all the things that I had piled up and put between us. He had never left but I had done a great job of pushing him back and building a wall up so that I didn't have to look at him or listen to him. He's been faithful though, as un-fun as it may be, in revealing my stack-o-crap. It's crazy how high it had become and I am embarrassed at some of the old stuff that I thought I was over that I had pulled back out. I've also asked that as he reveals my junk that I would be bathed in his grace and peace so that I don't just move the stack somewhere else. I want to receive total healing. Total. I want to be done with the desert and dive into the dessert of his grace. It's too sweet to run from anymore.

So as this process has been happening I felt a need to start writing again. I guess if God is doing a work in me he's doing it in someone else, too. Maybe my words can be a spur for someone else.

Performance Development

I just finished filling out my half of my annual performance development evaluation for my job. I fill mine out and my supervisor fills one out about me and then we sit down together to have a discussion about how our notes line up. Or about how they don't line up. It's a fairly painless process that I really don't mind doing. I have a great supervisor who is far more generous with his responses about me than those I have for myself.
I got to thinking today about how helpful it would be if everyone had to fill one of these sorts of forms out each year regarding their personal life. What if I had to sit down at least once a year and ask myself how I've been handling conflict with my family and friends? Are my communication skills both loving and effective? Am I seeking God's will on every decision I make? What sort of answers would I give myself regarding my personal time management skills? Have I been adhering to my family budget and taking active measures to implement cost saving measures? Do I ask for help when I need it?
The beauty of the performance development evaluation is that it isn't one sided. It is completed amidst a discussion with someone who has authority over me but also cares for me. Could I sit down with my family and have this discussion? When my boss gives me suggestions on areas I could focus energy on improvement I am generally in agreement and we work together to come up with a plan for me to move forward. If my family told me they saw areas of my life that could use a second look would I take their words so readily? I'm thinking no.
This is why I am grateful for a few people in my life who are honest to a fault but love me to no end. We can lay it all out for each other, have a laugh, and then a "but seriously" conversation. I don't always like what they have to say and they don't always like what I have to say but we know that we're being honest and want the best for each other. When the bible talks about "iron sharpening iron" I believe this is exactly what it's talking about. God has given me accountability with a few people who believe that God loves me enough to both bless me and push me forward in hard ways. These people want to see me living my best life possible in a way that's bringing growth to myself and glory to God's kingdom. We just don't have forms for our process.