Missing my Marriage (3)

In an effort to love Bernie as deliberately and thoughtfully as I do my friends to whom I am not married:
Today I will thank him for his capacity and skill at sharing the parenting well.
Tomorrow I will kiss him passionately.
This week I will speak in only uplifting words and tones.  (I will not second-guess or verbally roll my eyes.)

Golden

Back and forth, I've got this split personality going on inside of me.  They're not yelling at each other, but there is constant bickering narrative: They are still so young and full of energy.  Why can't they just walk in a straight line?  Let kids be kids.  Can we ever do anything without looking like a gong-show?  They will grow out of this soon enough.  I can't wait for a calm entrance with regular blood pressure.   Try to savour these moments.  Walk in a straight line, dammit!  And on and on it goes inside.  Waiting for that golden moment when they are walking beside me, faces washed, laces tied, chatting peacefully.  A moment is void of running, chasing, competing, tripping, falling, hollering, wailing, and whining on their part and void of calling, reprimanding, and sweating on mine.  Is it so much to ask?

That's not my only golden moment dream either.  A shower with no one shouting for me.  All five of us sleeping until 8am on the same day. Listening to a sermon.  A day without discipline issues.  Everyone dressing themselves, walking out to the van, and buckling themselves.  Children playing pleasantly and supper made.  Reading a novel cover to cover.

Lord, don't let these hopes be the ones that shape me.  Don't let them dictate my attitudes and interactions with my children.  My constant hope of knowing You, seeing You, loving You, serving You, becoming more into Your likeness - that's the golden moment that I want to be the undercurrent of my day.  May You have cause to love my loyal heart that would rather inhale your peace than fixate on their chaos and our collective mayhem.  I'm taking a deep breath (and another and another) and defiantly pinning my allegiance on Your truth above the truth I seem to be sinking in.

Disillusioned

My favourite thing about you has always been your genuine interest in other people and ability to be enthusiastic in sharing their joys.  As a kid, I loved seeing you spend hours crocheting three baby blankets for each of your nieces' babies.  When I was a teenager, I realized that the way you could rejoice when someone shared their good news with you on the phone, was not a universal personality trait.  When we were finally able to tell you that we were going to have our first baby, I am sure you were every bit as thrilled as I was.

I longed to have that ability too - to be selflessly and authentically supportive of someone else's joys and triumphs.  I have always tried to see the many ways that I am like you, searching for that gift in myself.

A few years later, my observations seem to be shedding such a different light.  I see cynicism and skepticism and my childhood image of you darkens around the edges.  I see relationship rifts and a strip of perfection is peeled off of the ideal version of you I have known.  I see self-righteousness and believing the worst of others.  As my tears fall, I reach for one of those baby blankets, finger the crocheted edges and dream of the time when what I used to know of you was all I knew of you.

You are still who I once knew, but you are also more.  And I am learning to love the you I know now.

To 18-Month-Old Lachlan

My son, you are rockin' the 18-month-old world of discovery these days!  And it gives me great cause for laughter, for groans, and for expectation to be party to these discoveries of many kinds.

First there is the realm of trouble-making discovery - an exciting realm for you, to say the least.  You can unpack entire cupboards in record speed and you hear the sound of the dishwasher being opened from the farthest corners of the house.  You narrowly escaped great injury when I walked in to the kitchen to find you pulling the handle of a pot of boiling water from the back element of the stove toward the edge, a feat you had only accomplished by first wrangling a chair out from under the table, pushing it across the room, and hoisting yourself onto it.  You've given me practice at cleaning up a potpourri of basil, turmeric, and cinnamon from the floor and fishing your most-loved teddy out of the toilet.

The realm of self-discovery has been going on much longer and, yet, it is still mesmerizing to behold.  While it began early with exploration of fingers and toes, you are now discovering language and communication.  You are attempting words like 'mama,' 'dada,' 'sock,' 'baby,' 'ball,' 'car,' 'milk,' and the extremely important 'cookie,' grinning when you see that we understand.  And you are realizing that you also understand us, as you are eager to show that you can do what we ask when we say 'go get your bear' or 'go give Daddy a hug.'  You get beside yourself with giddiness when you become aware that your big brothers are deliberately trying to get you to giggle.

My favourite realm right now is discovery within family.  I cannot help but treasure up the moments when you are figuring out how you fit in to us.  Your eyes light up when the shenanigans of your brothers can include you, because when you are 'kaboofing' with them on the bed, we can all feel how perfectly you belong.  Watching you recognize that for yourself is a powerful thing for a parent.

To know that you are so confident, at this young age, that you are always in the centre of our love for you brings me to my knees before Jesus as I seek wisdom to parent in a way that you can remain secure in that love.  And it simplifies my own Father-daughter relationship as I remember that there is nothing I have to do or be that could put me any more at the centre of God's love as be watches me 'kaboof' and chuckles to Himself contentedly.

1 John 5:20

I want to sit at your feet and listen, because you are the one whose words make sense.  They are authority given voice.  They are truth and comfort and wisdom and grace in a baritone that makes my knees shake.  You are the one sent to be born in the very same flesh I was born in.  To dwell among us and be one of us.  To know my human experience for yourself.  And you are the one sent to change that human experience forever and for right now.  To speak simply and open the complexities of the universe.  To be of HIM and like HIM and from HIM and bring the whole of HIM down here so I could begin to understand.  You are the only logic and peace and order that ever make me whole.  I want to sit and your feet and hold up my listening heart to you.

Seen

God, who is unseen, You see what is done in secret.  (Matthew 6:6)  Right now, I don't even need to know that you reward these hidden things.  Just clinging to the hope that they are seen is more than enough for me as I wrestle.  There is so much and it is so heavy.  My processing has slowed down because my heart is bogged down.  It is loaded with a hefty heap of burdens-of-others lumped together with a substantial helping of discovery-of-me as I recognize in myself empathy and gut-wrenching compassion for those whom I love and whose lives I touch.  I recognize that You are giving me greater and greater grace by which to see the people around me, though I never would have thought that grace would bring such a weightiness.  As so much is quietly going on inside me and in the fragmented whispers of my ongoing conversation with you, I thank You, Lord, that you have eyes to see what no one else does.  I, every bit of me, am seen.

Why Do Church?

Maybe it's because it's so long and so tiring.  Three hours is a long time to keep the kids walking not running, in sight, safe, occupied, focussed, decently behaved, fed, bathroomed, and generally pleasant in a public setting.  Also, it's a long time to be close to a bunch of people I like and would enjoy talking to, but always feel multi-distracted.

Maybe it's because the exhaustion and multi-tasking has been going on for so long.  I feel like I remember when it was enjoyable, relaxing, and energizing.  It was both socially and spiritually satisfying.  But that was a very long five years ago.  And the end of this stage doesn't seem to be in sight.

Maybe it's because I'm not involved enough to see the good stuff that is happening.  I remember when I used to know more of what was going on and why it was going on.  But it just isn't practical to do more in this season.

Maybe it's because it feels bigger.  It's grown and I don't know the people or the programs or the leadership.  I don't know what decisions are being made or why they need to be made in the first place.

Maybe I've been there too long.  Thirty-one years is a long time in the same place.  At some point does it stop being faithfulness and start being laziness?

I don't actually know what it is, exactly, but I'm starting to wonder if I belong at our church.  It scares me a bit to even think those words, because it has been so long and it is all I know and I do so love the community I have there.

But even on the good days, when the kids are contained and happy, when I get to chat with someone, and when I hear the majority of a sermon, I'm still not fully convinced.

And there is the conundrum that if I shy away from involvement I feel like the whole church experience does not have a lot of value.  Yet if I get involved, I so often feel disheartened.  Years of being turned down for music ideas.  Processes that move so slowly.  Repetition and predicability and so little vision or passion or excitement or change.  My spontaneity and my personality don't fit in.  Maybe I just wasn't made for church.  I don't want to bail, but I need to be reminded of why I am doing this.  Instead it just feels like another disappointment is on the horizon.

Give me grace, Lord Jesus, for my brothers and sisters.