NItty Gritty Rhythm
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This post is ridiculously long, but it answers lots of the nitty-gritty questions I get regarding how we juggle a really busy sports schedule, a traveling dad, and many kids over a big age span. If you hang in there and read, the answers are here. I wrote it several weeks ago and decided to hold it because there was too much detail about our daily whereabouts. Soccer season is coming to a close now, though, so it will all change.
Last summer, in the days before the feast of St. Anne, I offered a heartfelt (desperate?) novena. I so needed her intercession in the matter of my daily and weekly rhythm. Some of you might recall that when I wrote about the struggle I was having with burnout and exhaustion as a result of demands on my time, I offered no possible solutions. I didn’t even try. I crashed at the end of soccer season last spring and had no energy to figure anything out. Instead, I took comfort in the fact that summer would offer respite.
For as long as I’ve had children to ferry to and fro, my father-in-love has been willing and eager to help me whenever I had conflicts. Sadly, he is no longer well enough to play that role in our lives. He cannot pop over a pick up and deliver a child, cannot stay home with little ones if all the big ones have to be in different places. He cannot come fix this or that in my house when Mike is away or busy. He can’t do the late night or early morning run to the airport. He just can’t do it. When the day came last spring that that decision was made, I felt the rug yanked out from under me. All these years he’s been my go-to guy, the secret ingredient that made this crazy life more sane. I had no idea how much I depended on knowing there was a safety net until there wasn’t one. I struggled both with the fact that it rocked my world and with the intense sadness I felt for him and for us as we watch him decline.
When the time came to offer a novena in preparation for St. Anne’s feast, I recognized that the summer was half over and that very soon, I was going to have to revisit the dreaded SCHEDULE. No one on earth was going to rescue me. And I knew well that I could not figure this one out on my own.
I didn’t know how I was going to make the drive to where the boys play soccer in McLean (a good 45 minutes in traffic, a bad hour or more in heavy traffic) and get Mary Beth to ballet. I knew Christian would get himself where he needed to be, but that also meant he couldn’t help with anyone else. And when US Soccer plucked Patrick from the mix, that meant that it was a lot less likely that one teenager would remain home to care for little ones. It was going to be all of us driving, all the time. I worried that my little ones were lacking in play time and in time to make friends (particularly homeschooling friends). I worried I’d never have time to write. I just worried and worried.
And St. Anne heard it all. The plan presented itself to me in ways I could not imagine.
I get so many notes asking how to fit it all in, when to cook dinner, how to make sure family meals happen. This post is full of details and chances are your eyes will glaze over, but I offer it for the handful of people who are looking for just such details. More importantly, I offer it as a testimony to the power of prayer.
Let’s start on Monday morning. Dinner is prepped and put in the Dutch oven first thing. The day is going to lurch forward full speed ahead. If dinner isn’t ready to go before 10AM, we’re not going to eat. The rest of Monday morning is just the basics, school-wise (Reading, Bible and math), and then thorough cleaning of the house, with particular attention to the wood floors on the main level. Then we shove all the furniture out of the way to transform our home into a ballet studio.
When I could not figure a way to give ballet lessons (or any lessons) to my little girls because the times conflicted with everyone else and with retrieving Gracie from school and it was way too expensive, Mary Beth and her friend Mary Kate stepped in. Ballet is now in my dining room, sunroom, kitchen and family room, every Monday afternoon. It doesn’t cost me anything and there are 15 (18?—I’ve lost count) other homeschooled girls to share the experience with Katie and Karoline. Now, my only problem is how to keep Katie from talking the whole time. So many friends, so little chat time.
While the girls dance, the boys play flag football with a whole bunch of other homeschooled boys. My friend and neighbor Mary Chris is the genius behind the very lowkey opportunity for good, old fashioned fun. Marisa comes out for football and ballet and she brings her little guy, my godson, Johnny. If you had told me in July that Marisa and I would have a chance to chat in person once a week, I would have been astonished. Also present for this golden hour is my friend Bonnie, with whom I used to walk for an hour every day. We go way back and I’m so blessed to be able to have time again on a regular basis to just bask in the warm glow of friendship.
After ballet and football, Becca, one of the moms whose son is on Nicholas’ soccer team, hustles the boys to practice. Christian takes Mary Beth to her dance class and goes on to his practice. I gather the girls, mine and Becca’s, and meet her at soccer practice a little while later. They all play in the park near the practice field. And I absolutely, positively luxuriate in lots and lots of conversation with a bright, faithful mother of many who also homeschools and is a fellow graduate of my alma mater. This is a rare blessing for which I am so very grateful. Now, I eagerly look forward to those Monday afternoons. (And we do it again on Thursdays, too.) My kids don’t whine about being dragged along to practice—instead they look forward to meeting their friends in the park. When it’s all over, we go home to dinner in the Dutch oven and I fall into bed in time for Monday Night Football. I’ve yet to make it past half time.
Tuesday is a bit more relaxed. Same long drive to practice, but this time I do it only with Stephen. Mary Beth and/or Christian are home with wee ones. I sit at the field with my laptop and write while he trains. There’s no wi-fi in the parking lot, but that’s a good thing. It’s writing time only; there’s no temptation to surf. Mary Beth and I prep dinner before I leave and she finishes off the cooking while I'm at training with Stephen. We eat when Stephen and I get home, which is just about when Mike gets home, too.
Wednesdays are crazy but again an unexpected blessing finds us. I make dinner really early on Wednesdays and pack two meals in bento boxes. I take both Stephen and Nick with me for the long drive (all these long drives are “read aloud” time and we are cranking through our reading list on audio). I drop Nicky at his training and take Stephen with me to Starbucks. He eats his dinner, we chat, and then he reads and I write. Then, I take Stephen to practice, pick up Nick and repeat the process with a different child. At the end of the day, they’ve both had time alone with me. We’ve talked about books, maybe surfed a little together and just hung out a bit.
And on a recent Wednesday, when Nick’s training was canceled, but Stephen’s wasn’t, I discovered that I could drop Stephen a wee bit early and make it to a nearby (and beautiful) church for Adoration and confession.
Thursdays, both boys train again. Becca’s family arrives a little early for the practice time they share with Nick and they hang out with us during some of Stephen’s training, too. Have I mentioned how happy I am to have such good company? Thursday nights we eat dinner at the park. When Stephen is finished, I have just enough time to hustle to pick up Mary Beth. We get home really late and roll right into bed.
Fridays, we got nothin’. We stay home all day and love it.
Saturday mornings find me dropping Mary Beth at ballet and taking just the little girls grocery shopping. This is new for them. Ever since Michael learned to drive, I’ve avoided grocery shopping with little ones. When Michael was at home, he did with a very detailed list. Then, Christian did it for a while. Then, I’d drop Patrick off, let him do it and go back and pick him up after dropping girls at ballet.
Now, I actually look forward to the Saturday routine. I take my little girls to Whole Foods. We shop there and have breakfast. We poke our way through the craft store. Then, we go to Costco and finish out our shopping. By that time, it’s time to pick up Mary Beth. It’s an unexpectedly happy thing. Who knew I’d ever like running errands? Not me
Just before Patrick left, we were shopping together. I bought a bag for my laptop and the boys dubbed it my “McLean office.” It’s true, that my work is only being done in fits and spurts in the car and at Starbucks while waiting out soccer practice in McLean. I have a schedule for meeting deadlines, but the reality is that there are fewer deadlines and much less writing because there is much less time to do it. But there is time to do it. God blesses the time there is.
Of course, as I write (in the car on a Tuesday), the light is waning quickly. I know that fading light this early in the evening means that all the times will shift soon and the schedule will change. I am not nearly as afraid of that as I once was.
It’s only time. In the end, God is in control of time. And when I hand it to Him, in all humility, He provides abundantly to meet my needs and to bless my diligence.
Full Heart and Open Hands
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Elaine Cook wrote to me last week several weeks ago. I asked if I could share our correspondence with you. She has graciously agreed. She wrote, quoting me:
"There is no wound so painful, no hurt so raw as a mother's heart just after she sends her firstborn to college."
I know that's true because I'm experiencing it now. Anything more you can offer to help us overcome this challenge in faith, please do. I (and some of my friends) are struggling with our perceived failures as mothers, with concern that we haven't prepared our children enough or well enough and with sadness that this phase of our mothering is over.
Tell us how you have overcome those feelings (if you had them), please. I want to be happy for my son and encouraging, but I will miss him so much. I am happy I still have my daughter at home, but those little kid years are over and I'm not ready for them to end.
Yet another reason to have a big family?
Honestly, I think this is one of those "If I knew what I was doing, I'd being doing it right now" moments. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm holding on by the grace of God and learning as I go. Let's look at each of her thoughts.
First, is this a challenge in faith? Yep, I think it can be. I think that intentional, faithful mothers can get to this stage and be astonished that a loving Father would allow it to hurt so much. It's as if the more you loved and the more you cared, the more you get hurt. There are mothers doing a happy dance when their kids get on the bus to kindergarten and there are mothers who can't wait to shove their teens out the door and redecorate their bedrooms as exercise rooms. I don't really understand them. And there have been moments when I've envied them. At least they don't hurt. If we get stuck there, it's a crisis in faith.
If we see how much it hurt the Blessed Mother to lose Jesus and then to find Him in the temple, we can see that God is in this whole thing. He wonders at her dismay. Didn't she know that He was going to leave her, to talk among the learned, to go out into the world. Of course she did. And still, it hurt.
Now, what about the failures and the worries that we didn't do enough, care enough, listen enough, train enough...anything and everything enough? Some of those are legitimate, I think. None of us will look back without regret. None of us can say we did everything just perfectly. I think we can express those regrets--to ourselves, to our spouses, maybe to our children, and definitely to God. We can bring it to the throne of mercy and leave it there. Those of us with younger children can gratefully embrace the opportunity to do it better the next time. We pray we won't make those mistakes again. (Chances are, we'll find new ones to make:-).
If we get stuck in the regret, we will be tormented by both anxiety and depression. I know. I was in that particular stuck place. It wasn't pretty and it didn't do me or my family any good. We can't have a do-over. All we have is a do-now.And now, we have the circumstances at hand. What lessons He is teaching me in my year of Now! How could I have ever imagined how necessary Now would be when this year began? We spend a moment (okay a day, a week, or two) crying over the loss, but then we have to embrace the season we are in, lest we begin to sow new seeds which will grow into weeds of regret. We have the now. We have to live it as the gift it is.
I do look differently at the children who remain at home. I know where this season of mothering goes, where it ends. I know it's going to hurt like heck. And still, by the grace of God, I throw my self into loving them with reckless abandon. If anything, I am more mindful of investing every moment of intentional love into these relationships. This is the life for which I was created. The life of love.
Elaine wrote to me three weeks ago, as Patrick was leaving. I had just read an offhand remark a friend made on Facebook about how it was easier to let her second child go. That was not the experience I was living. Perhaps it was Paddy's age. Perhaps it was the distance. Perhaps it was the schedule and the controls which make daily contact brief and fleeting. Or maybe it was because I'd been through it before and I knew how irrevocably a relationship with a child changes when they leave home and I don't much like the change [yet? It's still a work in progress, no?]. Whatever the case, the second time was more difficult. And I looked at Elaine's question and wondered how I could hurt like this seven more times.
It's been three weeks. And right now, all I am allowing myself to see is the Now. And in the now, I still have children to cuddle, favorite books to revisit and late night teenage talks. I'm not ready for my days with wee ones to end yet, either, and by the grace of God, they don't have to. Now. It's a full, rich life in a well populated nest. I can't borrow pain from the future. I know better. And in the now, there are two boys making their ways in the world. They bring new light and dimension to our family's tapestry. They weave their stories uniquely into this year's length of fabric. To wish it any other way is to wish away those experiences. And they are good, just as they are different.
I am assured by a small handful of mothers who travel before me on this journey that the next season of life is a great and glorious one. I choose to believe them. I want to believe them. Some mothers don't understand your pain, Elaine. They did a little jig when the nest was empty. Some people don't understand how anyone could even contemplate having more than two children. Those people aren't me. And in my trying to understand this experience, I wonder sometimes at how little is said or written about it. And then, I don't wonder at all. For all its universality, it is a very unique and personal experience, one that is different for the same mother even, with each child.
And that brings me to my final thought. Like no other experience in my life (even cancer), the experience of letting my children go has been one of profound prayer. Of course, I am praying for them. But I am also very aware that no one in the world knows exactly how I feel. It's just me and God. I try to steep my soul in the psalms, to pray the Hours with full faith and confidence in the prayers of the ages, to beg His mercy with every breath. And to think that this is all part of what was meant when the Word spoke that women would be saved in childbearing. We birth them; we nurture them; and we bear them into the world to go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
Gentle Wisdom
/after five years, this is best advice i can give to you: when you areonline, love. listen.
assume the best. speak life. pray. learn. leave nothing but
traces of grace behind you. arguing over perfect doctrine,
shutting people out because they read the wrong books or like the
wrong authors, pointing fingers, pointing out sin, endless discussions
over politics and religion, mocking brothers and sisters who don't see
things the way you do, all of it is such a waste of time and i believe
it grieves our Lord. please, leave something behind you that testifies
to the life and joy of your salvation! ~tonia@study in brown
Velveteen Me--New Beginning
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...once you are Real, you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always. ~The Velveteen Rabbit
Fifth in a series.
All of the other posts in this series were written a couple of weeks ago and queued up at Typepad, ready to go. This one is mostly being written in real time. That's because I have used this last week, the ninth week, to come to an understanding of the eight previous weeks. I thought I had it figured out, but God had other plans.
On Monday of this week, my first real day back online and the day I planned to integrate all my new habits into my real life, I woke up sick. Sick enough that I didn't exercise. And I didn't pray the Hours. I didn't get dressed. I dragged myself through the day, feeling sicker and sicker as time went on. I did manage to get drawn into an internet dialogue. Spent more time hunched over the computer than I had in the last eight weeks. And then I spent too much time on the phone. At the end of it, nothing good was accomplished and I had a headache and an overwhelming urge to go to confession.
The day ended with me curled up in a ball in excruciating pain from my waist to the top of my head. My entire left side burned. It was the kind of pain that when they say, "On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst pain you've ever felt..." I briefly remembered the time they forgot the meds right after my c-section and said "Nine, but almost ten." All night long, I kept considering how very wrong the day had gone. Did I mention that I also ate leftover brownies from the weekend party? Yep. Blew that whole thing, too. It was as if, in one day, I had the opportunity to see how critical every component was.
Tuesday, I went to the doctor. People who know me know that I never go to the doctor. The last time I had a sick visit to the doctor, I had taken a child to the pediatrician and he made me stay until he managed to diagnose pneumonia--in me. It had never occurred to me that I needed a doctor that day. I have just a wee bit of post-traumatic stress where doctors are concerned. This was not improved by my last [life-threatening] delivery. But I went to the doctor because I was that sick and that desperate. Turns out I've been nurturing a staph infection for sometime now. That might go a long way to explain the recurrent mastitis and the fatigue. I left the doctor, filled the prescription and went home.
Wednesday, I read Amy Welborn. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Amy Welborn? She articulates the good and the true and the beautiful so very well. I read all of Come Meet Jesus on Wednesday. And then I began to read it again on Thursday. It's my new gift book of choice. I think everyone should have a copy and I mean to put one in as many hands as I can.
Wednesday definitely found me trying to make sense of it all, trying to hear what He was saying clearly. Turns out this wasn't an eight week experiment. It was the unveiling to me of a rule of life.
I need to start the day with prayer. Lots of it. And I need to pray it in the rhythm of the real Church, not the Church that other people represent to me.
I need to exercise every single day. (No, I don't mean when I'm sick, but I could really tell how the lack of routine could upset the apple cart even if I felt fine.)
I need to start the day (after the prayer and exercise start) with a shower, clothing and lipgloss, and then some quiet time with the Bible. I want my children to find me in that room, with a candle lit and the Bible on my lap when they first wake up. I don't want them to find me staring into my laptop.
I need to refrain from internet drama, even a little bit.
I need to limit the phone to times when my children and husband aren't present, so that I can be fully present in my home. And oh boy, I need to be fully present. To them.
I can't eat sugar or flour--not even a taste.
On Thursday, I packed up the children and went to visit my father and his wife in Charlottesville. Because even after all these years, Charlottesville still calls my name. I am the child of a naval officer and my parents divorced in my late teens. Those two things make it very hard to know where to go when every bone in your body wants to go "home" to someplace where someone will take care of you for a day or two.
My father and stepmother live in Charlottesville--the only town I've ever chosen for myself. It was my town before it was their town. I went to school there and around every corner are little pieces of me and of people I love.Those are my trees, my mountains; the air smells like home to me. It's a good place to be. Sometimes, when we're very tired, a change is as good as a rest. And if that change takes you "home," all the better.
So, surrounded by people I love, in a place I cherish, it's been easy to reflect on the past nine weeks and know what I need to do every single day to live the seamless life I so long to live, to walk in the peace of Christ. Over the past couple of days, I've had heart to heart, face to face talks with people I trust. I bought new lipgloss and a new candle. I met a friend for lunch and kind conversation and then put two tiny girls in the van and drove around while they napped. I drove past the places where I was educated. I drove past the places where I taught--and where I fell in love with teaching. I thought about how dear it all is--the things I've done, the places I've been, the people I've loved.
And I thought about how dear the time to come is. I want it to be everything God intends for it to be.
The last big question remaining for me has been whether to continue to blog or not.
One of the things I did when I decided to take a month-long blogging break was to sift through lots of old columns and give them to my children as copywork to keyboard. In such a way, I preprogrammed posts and continued to blog, using writing that was sometimes 15 years old. The process of choosing those pieces was lovely, indeed. I spent several hours reading my own writing and remembering things I know I thought I'd never forget.
But I had forgotten.
And it was a joy and a consolation to read them again. I read about our happy times, my moody times, the struggling times. As soon as my eyes met the word on the page, I instantly remembered every column in great detail. I even remembered where I was when I first composed them in my head. My children enjoyed reading them and I think they were touched more than once to see in black and white how very much they are loved. Those columns have value. And it's a very personal value.
The blog is even better. This place has always been the place on the web where I am at home; I am myself. I am real. There is more writing and many, many photographs. It's a family treasury and my immediate family has never been anything but extremely supportive of my blogging. I know that every post is a deposit in a treasury of family memories. Some of those memories are family anecdotes and others are the personal musings of a mother's heart. I think, when I sift through them fifteen or thirty years hence, both will be of worth.
More than my memories though, I want these posts for my children, particularly my daughters and daughters-in-law. I want to connect with the young mothers they probably will be. I want to empathize and to encourage and to support. I want to be for them the hand up, the strong shoulder, the warm hug I have wanted so many times on this journey. I think these posts might help us both. I want to remember the struggle of these years. I want to remember how hard I tried, how much I pondered, how deeply I loved. I want to remember because I want to be able to empathize. Going forward, it is my intent to write with those young ladies of the not too distant future as my audience.
So, why publish?
Because of you. Because despite the nasty notes and ugly threads and hurtful comments hurled through cyberspace, mostly the people who read this blog are very good people. And you wrote to me. You told me how and why this blog mattered to you. You told me your stories and you touched my heart again and again. You sent me birth announcements.
We are given gifts. We all have our talents to bury or to squander or to invest. All my life, God has given me words. When I have been lonely, afraid, without comfort or attachment, He gave me words. I write to make sense of the world around me and I always have, for as long as I can remember. Actually, He gave me the Word and He gave me words. Late at night, huddled under the covers with a flashlight and the Children's Living Bible, I had a very strong sense of understanding that to know this--really know--the God of these words was the only way I could stay sane.And then I scribbled notes in the dark, reams and reams of notes. I write because it's my gift--the lifeline God has thrown me, for me. But, He showed me that when I have the courage to share those words, they can bless someone else. I can give them as a gift. I can articulate something that she is thinking and so help bear the burden of the thought.
As I recently told a friend, if you have a beautiful voice, and you sing the Hours faithfully at home in total privacy, that is certainly a beautiful thing. You are giving God a beautiful gift and you are allowing yourself to be open to His transcendence. But I would be ever so grateful if you would consider recording your voice. When I lay down to nurse my baby to sleep and start to sing to her, she ceases nursing, holds up her hand and says, "Stop." I cannot sing. Your song would be a gift to me.
I want my words to be a gift.
I worry, though. When I first started blogging, one thing several friends who are writers agreed upon was that this is a great medium for people who think in narrative. At last we had some place to actually put all those thoughts. The last few days have me wondering. Are we supposed to think in narrative? I don't think so. I think we're supposed to think--or not think-- in prayer. Thinking in narrative focuses our minds and our hearts on ourselves. Living a one-piece life of genuine prayer focuses both heart and mind on God.
To know Christ is a gift, a gift I am tempted to shelter and carefully protect, lest it slip away somehow. A gift I can scarcely believe is mine. A gift that seems so precious that my first instinct is to protect it deep within my soul.
I think I'm making this all too complicated. Maybe it's really much simpler. Live the life of prayer--make it genuine and true and real. And if the Lord gives me the words and the time, share abundantly.
I know that I cannot control how I am received. I cannot control what people will write and say and do. I cannot begin to take into account every possible situation. I can just remember how much I wish someone would sing the Hours for me in clear voice and how I might somehow bless someone likewise with clear prose. I can share a life of prayer--just as long as sharing it does not cause it to cease being a life of prayer.
I could sit for hours and try to do a cost-profit analysis on pushing the "post" button. And I have. In the end, it doesn't matter if blogging has caused more pain or more happiness in my life. In the end, what matters is whether I have the words and whether I have the means to share them. These words are God's gift to me. I cannot, in good conscience, smother a gift so dear. Instead, I give thanks for this new media. I give thanks for the opportunity to see words come to life on a MacBook in the small spaces of my day when my children leave me in the quiet with my thoughts. I fully understand that those times may be scarce and I promise not to squander them wandering mindlessly online. I give thanks that I can and will tell my children and anyone else within earshot that there is joy.
The whole series:
Velveteen Me~To Desire Him More
Velveteen Me~My Heart in My Home
