Parenthood is hard

Not even 7:30 in the morning on a Saturday we were all snuggled in on the couch watching cartoons when we heard the distinct sound of liquid, coffee, pouring onto the floor...and gate...and the back of a chair that can't be washed...and a set of drawers...ending with a little one year old gasp.  He had climbed the chair reached over the gate and pulled the coffee cup down.  I cleaned up the mess while Strong man cleaned him up.  As he was being undressed we realized he needed a diaper change, aka epic-wrestling-break-to-see-who-survives-the-match-and-let's-hope-we-don't-destroy-the-new-diaper-in-the-process-causing-us-to-go-another-round.  As the wrestling match ensued the used diaper ended up poop side down onto Strong Man's foot...Finally all messes were cleaned up so I thought it would be safe, maybe even the best choice, to have my first cup of coffee.  Little did I know that the boy who put away dishes last rushed through the process leaving my favorite mug sitting on the edge of the cabinet being held up only by the door I was about to open.  Much to my surprise when I did open said door I was assaulted by a flying mug that bounced off of me, the coffee pot, and the kitchen counter catapulting pieces of itself every which way each time it made contact.

Awesome sauce.
Life is good.
Oh Joy.
All before 7:30 am.

This is real life.  Without the hard there wouldn't be any joy.  They go hand in hand, the two.  Today, I'll choose to say yes to taking deep breaths, showing grace, finding teaching moments, and remembering that someday I won't have little hands of mischief in my house.  Today I'll write it out so that I don't forget and can keep perspective because sometimes as a Momma living in the moment is hard.

When life is busy

This week I have had seven appointments, taught two boys, administered 10 Standardized tests, talked Cub Scouts details with more people then I can count, worked my one shift at my paying job, and roasted marshmallows with family from near and far.  All of this of course with a happy Babe on my hip.  The week before? Well that mirrors this one.

I love what I do and I wouldn't change any of this month, but sometimes I get so caught up in schedules that I forget to see the beauty all around me, the small simple joys that make life great.  These joys that make the schedules worth it.

As I was pulling into my driveway between appointments I realized I missed the trees budding.  I missed new life, and the gift it brings with it. 

Fresh starts. 
New Hope. 
Life. 
Breath. 

In the middle of all the crazy I decided to slow and play in the dirt.  Just one planter, a tiny treat.  As my fingers turned brown my body relaxed and my eyes began to see again.

A few joys from this month:
~ Big boy turning 10.
~ Climbing trees.
~ Camping with the Scouts.
~ Getting to be the Cubmaster of 2018. It's kind of fun.

~ Watching school wrap up.
~ Dreaming of summer.
~ Making my last lesson plan of the year.
~ Watching the boys see all their hard work help them out on the standardized yearly tests.

~Belting out our favorite songs in the car.
~ Seeing the spring dandelions bloom everywhere, my favorite flower.
~ Deep heart conversations with dear sweet friends.

~ Watching big ones and little ones grow into men.
~ Cheerios everywhere, always.
~ Baby boy giggles and splashes during bath time.
~ Bonfires with family from near and far.

~ Boys that get excited about healthy snacks.
~ Coffee, everyday coffee.
~ Colored pens and my Bible.
~ The sun to warm my face.

~ Books and boys who love to read.
~ Three pairs of feet flying high on the swing set.
~ A praying husband that holds me tight.
~ Praying friends.
~ A husband who will sing overtired boys to sleep.

Simple, sweet joys that make life fun and adventurous. One of my life goals is to see each and every one.

Some days it is hard to be a Mom

Normally I'm all over how I love to do this and that with my boys.  I post the funny things they say or do.  I take frustrating situations and turn them in #Mommaofboy moments.  I usually am able to smile through the challenges of mothering.  In fact I usually love the challenges of mother.  I really enjoy homeschooling my boys.  I enjoy watching them learn and grow.  I have fun researching and ordering the programs they will use each year.  I absolutely love watching them go from not knowing at the beginning of the year to fully grasping a concept at the end of the year.  I love going on scouting adventures with them, even when it means I wake up to a bat in my cabin or that I have to pull a tick off of one of them.  I adore the dirty little feet that walk through my house every day and I laugh at how accomplished they feel with every "battle wound" they get from rough housing.  I don't mind that they climb trees.  I feel pride when they ask Dad if they can go stack wood for the winter.

I love being a Mom.

But some days are hard.  The days when all three of them are crying at the same time.  One because I insist he does his grammar lesson, another because he's been "trying" to do his math for over an hour and I won't let him skip the rest of the page.  The third because I'm not super women and wasn't able to make his bottle fast enough.  The days where you go to pay your oil bill over the phone and realize as the kind lady says hello you have no idea where your debit card is.  Or when it's a billion degrees out and the AC is broken in your car but you go out anyway just to be stood up.  Or the days when you get pooped on and spit up on while trying to teach.  Or the days when the easiest way to pee "in peace" is to strap the baby to you and go together.  Or the days when a missing library book sends you to tears.  Every single one of these things happened to me today.

Honestly as the day ends I don't have any fixes or perfect endings or moral to the story.  Some days are just hard.  Some hard days are needed.  I know that and I love them for what they are.  In a day or two I'll be telling my funny little story about that time all four of us had a bad day on the same day and how we survived it.  This is  motherhood.  Motherhood is my pride and joy.  I'll take the good with the bad if it means I get to be a Momma to these three boys.

Finding joy always

Ever since that morning I woke to find a world void of color I have searched for joy.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  In the Wing St. apartment I woke to the sound of my one and two year old eating breakfast with my Strong Man.  I laid on my back with my eyes closed for a few minutes before rolling out of bed.  When I did blink those sleepy eyes open I couldn't help but stare at the gray wall in front of me.  After a minute or two I stumbled over to the light switch to be sure it was really true.  When I had gone to bed the night before those walls had been yellow.  I know it sounds crazy but for the next few months I would live in a world covered in gray.  Thus began my search for joy.

At first I found a journal and began numbering each joy that I found, training my eyes to see that it in the smallest parts of life joy could be found.  The way a bubble glistens in a sink full of dishes.  The feel of a summer breeze passing by.  The peaceful sound of a song bird floating through the window as a sleepy Momma tries to manage the chaos that always trails behind toddlers.  The silence of nap time.  Strong hands that hold me tight...  Somewhere into the hundreds I saw color for the first time in months.  It was dandelion yellow.  As counting the joy around me became more natural vibrant color came back into my life.

While I don't number my joy any more I haven't stopped searching for it.  Every November as a family we write out our joys together.  Simple.  Sweet.  It's just one word at a time hung on a few sticks to remind us to slow and see to find the joy surrounding us.

Fail... Lesson learned.

Last spring I spent the day with my boys, Mom, sister, and her two girls.  I ended the day with a very sore back that lasted for months, three months to be exact before I finally talked with my doctor.  After an x-ray, MRI, many visits to the chiropractor, a visit to pain management, and the back surgeon, and I am now still going through weekly sessions of physical therapy it has been determined that I have multiple herniated disks.  Three maybe four disks, it all depends on which person is reading my MRI at the time.  Either way my back hurts.

With each appointment I walked in expecting to hear that my injury isn't really as bad as the last doctor said, but as I walked away I left realizing that actually it is worse then I thought.  I had the x-ray done thinking my doctor was just being cautious only to get a phone call that I needed an MRI.  I went into the MRI telling the technician that I didn't need any help taking my shoes off or getting on the MRI table only to leave with him insisting on helping me sit up and putting my shoes on for me.  I walked into pain management expecting to be told I just needed to wait it out only to find that not only were they ready to give me the steroid shot into my spine, but my insurance company had already agreed to pay for it.  I walked into the surgeons office to find that if I had met with a younger, newer surgeon they would probably suggest operating, but since he had been around for a while he realized that if he did operate because of where my back was injured I would be signing up for three more surgeries every other year for the next eight years ending with chronic pain for the rest of my life.  Instead he thought I better continue on with PT, informing me to expect up to two years before I was back to normal and thought I might have some on again off again arthritis.  The surgeon was the best news giver of them all and I still wasn't happy with the news he gave.

I spent most of July with ice packs, and heating pads strategically placed around my spin and hips as I dreaded my next PT or chiropractic visit.  I listened to my boys play outside and watched every season of every HGTV show available on Netflix. On the few days I felt normal enough to move I over did it by trying to catch up on all the things I was missing out on.  Even when I was trying to "take it easy" one wrong step would end in more intense pain lasting for days.  In the end no matter what I did I caused myself greater pain.  When I returned to the ice packs, and heating pads I found my spirit deflated.

For years I have talked about, almost obsessed over slowing and seeing the small things.  It seems that finding joy in the mundane goes along with parenthood.  To find joy in the small not just the mile stones of life, not simply the first word, the first steps, the very last diaper change, the first day of school, but to find it in the daily grind.  All those nights that my sweet baby boys screamed and all those days I passed through blurry eyed, a whole day of punishments because he insisted on eating the dish soap, covering himself in the baby powered or taking a bath with his clothes on, somewhere in all that there was joy.  But this summer...

This summer is different.  Now they sleep through the night.  Now they obey.  Now they know right from wrong.  Now they know what is safe and what isn't.  Now they are easy and fun.  This summer it is because of me that I search for the joy.

This summer I have hardly seen the joy.  I have gone to bed many nights frustrated reflecting on all the things we didn't do rather then all those small joys.  The way they took care of me.  Those times they offered to make me lunch.  The many times they got an ice pack for me.  The way they played together.  They way they did extra chores so I wouldn't have to.  The way they helped me cook dinner.  The way they snuggled.  All those joys I let slip by.

Next time, because it's a fact of life that my body will fail me guaranteeing there will be a next time,  I intend to see the joy in the mundane as it comes along.

Joy is...

Dandelion yellow...

...The hundreds of petals that make it so...

...And the extraordinary detail of each.

Joy is...

...Symmetry.

Joy is...

...Creation being birthed into the living.

Joy is...

...Veins of color.

Joy is...

...the ability to see.

Time is my enemy, or is it?

My head pounds.

My body aches.

My soul throbs.

I'm not sick.

I'm overwhelmed.  

My job, 48 hours doesn't seem like enough.  It's one of my loves, my team, working all positions, dealing with both the satisfied and unhappy customers, learning; the never ending learning, and the quit times of maintaining my store, all of this I love.

And yet my true love is at home being super Dad, as days go by where this Mom sees her boys for minutes only.  Two in a half days, really 30 hours a week is not enough time to be a mother, a wife, a housekeeper, a cook, and a friend.

The throbbing of my soul? Some how even in the thrills of life when I should see the blessings of a job I love and boys who are growing into men, and a husband who fights for our family, and the beauty of nature surrounding me, some how I forget the Giver; the Maker of all things good; both the heavens and the earth.  My souls throbs from the disconnect.  What is life without the One who gives me breath?

If only I cold slow time, or maybe just add a few hours here and there.  Then maybe I could find rest and beauty in these three loves of mine.  As I sit in the quiet this is what I contemplate.  How can I make time?  The answer:  I can not only God can add time to life.  All living things are bond by it, chained by it being dragged hour by hour, minute by minute, helpless to slow it.  Even so this these chains should bring me joy.  Without time there would be no end.  If there is no end why would there be any hope for what is to come.

What is it that I hope to have before my time runs out?  I hope for a home that is ours to share with hurting souls.  A Haven for others to find rest, for us to find rest in, a place full of Life.  I hope for my own store where I can daily be in the kitchen doing what I love in a small hole in some back ally corner where my cooking and the atmosphere does the advertising for me.  I hope for my boys to grow into men, and then fathers, friends of mine, but most of all lovers of God.

My conclusion, Keep on keeping on, and to remember the words of a wise man, "It is good that you grasp one thing and also not let go of the other; for the one who fears God comes forth with both of them."  

To all my friends...

...Who are fighting for the joy in both the daily life, and the unexpected that we are given.

Gifts...
246. The ability to choose Joy.
247.  Music that heals the soul.
248.  A God "who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works withing us." (Quoting the apostle Paul who being locked in a prison for years still was able to say it perfectly.)

May I give Him the glory of all my Joy, by slowing to see life for all that it is.

Sitting to blog

It has been months since I've sat to truly blog.  It's been weeks since I sat to even write up my list.  Honestly after months of photographs and months of life passing and changes happening my finger's still don't know how to transpose life into written memories.  What used to be a daily habit, a habit formed to calm my soul now has become a strained work that never ends trailing off into empty white space...

Here's to the hope of thoughts flowing as fingers record the workings of this Momma's heart.  But until then:

93.  Boy treasure's that will all too soon pass from my eyes.
94.  Growing pains that require midnight cuddles.

95.  Walks in the city forest.

96.  Puddle jumpers and bug nets.

97.  Streams to fall into.

98.  Sticks and little boy pocket treasures.

99.  Tired little legs and strong Daddy's.

100.  Family hobbies.
101.  New quivers.
102.  Good cluster's and imperfections.

103.  Spring; the cleanse of death, the feel of life.

Summer days are for...

Fresh fruit.

Worms and dirty boys.

Fishing adventures.

Dried up streams.

Grandpa's who carry little boys through grass twice as tall as they are.

Nature's surprise treats.

Naps to end wild adventures.

Picnic lunches in the back yard.

 

Stories read in the sun before nap time.

Backyard fun.

Sun showers.

Summer is for reviving the soul.

Praise Him, sun and moon; Praise Him all stars of light!

~ Psalms 148:3