Category: transitions

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The Power of Self-Reflection: 13 Questions to Ask Yourself (during and after a Pandemic)

Remember that elevator scene from You’ve Got Mail? The one where Joe Fox, acted by Tom Hanks, and his girlfriend get stuck in an elevator with two other people and they each tell what they’ll do “if I ever get out of here.” I keep thinking about that scene.

“I’m gonna start speaking to my mama,” one woman says.

“I’m marrying Irene. I love her. I should marry her. I don’t know what’s been stopping me,” says the elevator attendant.

When Joe’s girlfriend interrupts his heart-felt survival wish to blurt out that she’s getting her eyes lasered when she gets out, Joe realizes he’s with the wrong woman.

Joe later writes to Kathleen: “There was a man sitting in the elevator with me who knew exactly what he wanted, and I found myself wishing I were as lucky as he.”

Intense life experiences illuminate the essential and dim the superficial. But we can easily miss the chance to extract meaning from our conflict and questions if we don’t stop and reflect. One man in hospice said cancer eventually led him to transform neutral moments in life into meaningful ones.

This pandemic is our elevator moment.

Educational reformer John Dewey once wrote that we “we do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience.” Teachers, spiritual leaders, athletes, business professionals, poets, and scientists already know the value of self-reflection.

Poet and novelist May Sarton wrote in her published journals, “friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened.”

When I was a teacher, I often assigned “reflections” to my middle school students after field trips, science experiments, or completing a novel as a way of shifting lived knowledge into their longer term memory. Studies show that reflecting on past experiences aid more in learning and personal growth than shoring up new knowledge.

In ancient history, the Hebrews celebrated a festival called the Feast of Booths. They wanted to remember their years of wandering in the desert when the temple of God was a temporary structure called a tabernacle. Other versions of the Bible translate the word “booth” as “shelter.”

After their experience of lostness and despair, they continued to celebrate the Feast of Shelters even after they were safe, secure and settled back in their own land. Why bother remembering something so difficult? Those of us who have lived through 2020 may also benefit in the future from instituting a similar Feast of Shelters to reflect each year on what we learned when the threat of sickness and our shuttered doors forced us to educate our children at home and erase every plan from our calendars.

Experts agree that reflection is an essential practice for those desiring a vibrant interior life. Professor Graham Gibbs created a model for personal reflection called the “Reflective Cycle.” His chart includes:

1. Description: What happened?

2. Feelings: What were you thinking and feeling?

3. Evaluation: What was good and bad about the experience?

4. Analysis: What sense can you make of the situation?

5. Conclusion: What did you learn? What would you do differently?

6. Action: If this happened again, what would you do?

As the tide of our society ebbs and flows around new guidelines and policies, fumbling for a new normal, we can benefit from self-reflection.

If we have the discipline (and courage) to carve out time to ask, write our answers, listen, and maybe even pray, these questions can guide us:

  1. What’s been good? (i.e. gains, good surprises, successes)
  2. What been hard? (i.e. losses, fears, worries, deaths, disappointments, inconveniences, discomforts, failures)
  3. What has changed? (i.e. job, school, new skills, family dynamics, friendships, church, community, etc.)
  4. How has my relationship with technology, social media, and the digital life changed? What will I abandon? What will I retain?
  5. How have I seen or experienced God, religion, or the spiritual life through this experience?
  6. What have I learned about my family, children, spouse, neighbors, roommates, or community?
  7. What have I learned about myself? What have I needed most during this time?
  8. Which books, movies, or songs have comforted me at this time?
  9. If this happens again, what will I do differently?
  10. How have I experienced healing?
  11. How have I experienced pain?
  12. What changes do I want to carry over with me to the other side?
  13. What changes do I need to make so that can happen?

Before the world opens again completely (assuming that day comes), we can grasp this unique opportunity to pause and do some soul searching:

What have we learned, how have we grown, and what will we carry with us into the future?

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I Am a Maker {guest post}

By Debby Hudson | Twitter: @debby_hudson

I don’t like fitting rooms. Some places try to look a little fancier than the slate-gray-institutional-look cubicles at Target. At White House Black Market, heavy curtains hang between you and the salesperson. Victoria’s Secret has solid black doors helping you feel more private trying on things you know weren’t made for your body.

What I really don’t like is arming myself with various sizes, because who knows how the new cut of jeans will fit this time. (That’s code for how much weight have I really gained.) The whole experience leaves me feeling like I’m the one who doesn’t fit.

But, we have to wear clothes (thank you Adam and Eve … I mean, really, thank you!) and the perfect fit jeans you bought at the Gap last year have been discontinued. And it’s back to the fitting room.

I’ve been trying some different things on the past few years. I saw a few things I thought would fit. I tried writing. I joined a few groups, took a course or two and started learning the language. I worked up the courage to submit to a few sites and got rejections and acceptances, both of which made me feel like a “writer.” But the fit wasn’t one I was going to wear long term.

Next I tried on photography. Again, I took a few classes, joined a group or two and shot, deleted, shot, deleted. I grew my following on Instagram and sold a handful of photos through Shutterstock. This fit is closer to being true. Perhaps because it’s coming more natural to me. It’s helping me discover more about the creative part of me. Casual and fancy are both good fits with this lens.

I have always been a maker. You might even say it’s in my DNA coming from a line of makers.

My paternal granny made tiny Barbie dresses with crocheted purses for them. I was the delighted recipient of her skills.

Mama tried her hand at ceramics, tole painting, sewing, knitting and a few more things along the way. She was my biggest encourager nudging me to go further with my art.

In her family the women are particularly creative with sewing, decorating, painting and even upholstery. Yes, we are makers. Our hands need to be busy with needle and thread or brushes and paint. It’s an ingrained part of who we are.

When our children started school I took some of the things I made to local shops to sell. Some were sold on consignment and others bought outright at a margin allowing them to make their profit.

I learned what did and didn’t fit for me:

Making = a good fit

Selling = never the right size

Times have changed. Craft shows that were plentiful at the time have shrunk in size and variety. Places like Hobby Lobby sell items that can be sold at low cost.

The opposite is true of sewing. Why spend the money on fabric and the time involved when you can buy the dress cheaper at Target?

For some of us, it’s not the cost of supplies but that zen moment we get in the making.

I’ve dipped my toes in selling again. The internet makes it easier. It’s like a fancy changing room where you can hide behind the sleek black door while someone you’ll never see scrutinizes your work.

While friends have been encouraging me to sell, it’s still not easy. Increased quality of phone cameras has made everyone a photographer. Who needs to buy someone else’s work?

Even though the internet seems to have made it simple for an artist to sell their work the result is a saturated market. How does anyone get their work seen? Now we have to be makers, salespeople and marketers.

Seduced by the ease of uploading photographs, I submitted a few to Shutterstock. They were accepted and after a few weeks I had my first sale. Twenty-five cents! Reality and humility often go hand in hand.

We are facing a big change in our life next year. We are retiring and I already have visions for the Florida room in our retirement home. My mind’s eye pictures shelves in one corner holding a variety of props for my still life photography. Windows on three sides will bathe the room in light for painting and shooting stills. Perhaps an area in front of the white-painted brick fireplace to set up a revolving vignette. I envision the serenity that comes with creating, even in creating the space itself.

Maybe this new place and new chapter will lead toward more risks. Maybe I’ll try on new things in the fitting room that’s called retirement. Maybe I’ll become friends with that fitting room.

Today there are a lot of maybes. What is certain is that I’m a maker as much as I’m a wife, mama, MeMe, sister and friend. While I’m creating images on the screen and paintings in my tablets, I most want to make a place for peace in grace.

*All but title image are by Debby and are used by permission!

About Debby:

My husband and I partner in ministry as ordained ministers in The Salvation Army. We’ve been involved with the recovery community for 14 years and are Administrators of a six-month residential program for men. Through our work in this area, we see hope shared on a daily basis. We are witnesses to God’s amazing grace. When I’m not being a surrogate mom to these men, I enjoy many artistic endeavors and share a lot of them on my Facebook page. Come find me on Twitter at  @debby_hudson and Facebook at @debbyhudsoncreative. Check out Debby’s photography here and here.

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I Am a Maker. "For some of us, it’s not the cost of supplies but that zen moment we get in the making." #creativity #making #creatives #artists #art #photography #artistsreflections

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No “Late” Bloomers: Late Weddings, Old Moms & Delayed Creativity


“Are you dating anyone?” the woman asked me after church over mini muffins and bad coffee.

I shook my head.

“Oh, you have plenty of time,” she said to me. Turning to my mom, she added, “My daughter was a late bloomer.” I was spending the summer at home in Florida after graduation from college. I planned to move to Chicago to start teaching in the fall.

“Yeah, she got married in her late twenties,” she continued, my mom nodding along. I clutched my Styrofoam cup, inwardly marveling that I was no longer a college student, but was now labeled according to my marital status. I was now “a single.”

Even at the time I thought she was being a bit harsh in expecting her daughter to get married right out of college. And over the years, that phrase, “late bloomer,” has always grated on me.

Can God be “late”?

When you try to put your feet in the steps of Jesus as you live your life, can you describe any transition as “late”?

According to that woman, I would have gotten married “late,” at age 32. I would have had babies “late,” at age 33, 35, and 37. And I would have started writing “late” in my mid-30’s. But I don’t believe God is ever late.

Spring dragged her feet in arriving to Colorado this year. Tulips and daffodils, the first signs of spring, eased from the ground a few weeks later than they usually do.

We made it home from vacation last week just in time for the peonies in early June. I nearly didn’t see them because the thin stems couldn’t support the huge, fat blossoms and their faces were flattened against the rocky ground. As a first-time homeowner, this is my first summer here and I’ve watched curiously as each new flower type surges up and out, exploding in the Colorado sun, then shrivels just as a different bloom takes over the show. First daffodils, then red tulips, white apple blossoms, lilacs, irises, and now roses and fluffy peonies.

Not a single bloom has been late—each one a note rightly-timed in the rhythm of spring’s symphony.

Because spring seemed delayed this year, I was more eager—desperate, even–for its arrival. Spring unlocks a suppressed something in me and I want to weep when I spy the first green shoots poking from the dirt or bright flowers decorating the yard. For me, spring is an emotional release from months of cold, dreary, color-less winter, a catapult back into lusty life.

Waiting primes us for greater gratitude when the thing we wait for finally arrives. Though I fully embraced being single and knew that marriage would not bring me ultimate joy or pleasure, I still longed for a life-long companion. And though I knew (or thought I knew) how children would alter the landscape of my life, I still yearned for the interruption. The long years of hopeful winters made me more thankful for spring when it finally came.

I’m not a young mom, but I do have young kids. I don’t fit the “young mom” category that many church ladies cluster women into. In fact, many moms with kids the ages of my kids are at least ten years younger than me. But I still don’t believe I got married or had kids “late.”

I published my first piece of writing at age 36, not because I was a “late bloomer,” but because my talent bloomed exactly when it was supposed to.

“My soil is like silk,” my 78 year old neighbor—my gardening mentor–boasted when I lamented that mine is like a rock. “You need to really work on your soil before you try planting in it,” she advised.

Art, too, often requires years of silent cultivation before the first flower can break through the ground.

Art, too, often requires years of silent cultivation before the first flower can break through the ground.

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Browsing through a bookstore recently, I picked up a book from the shelf about Laura Ingalls Wilder. I was surprised to learn that she didn’t start writing until she was in her 40’s, and didn’t publish Little House in the Big Woods until she was in her 60’s. Perhaps her childhood experiences needed years of marinating before they were ready to share with the world.

“Late” implies something didn’t go as planned. Perhaps the Master Gardener needs a bit more time with his hands in the soil, kneading, folding in nutrients, transforming rot and death into healthy soil for new growth to form. We may long for change, but waiting doesn’t mean Jesus isn’t there, that God isn’t working, or that plans have gone awry. Because in God’s kingdom, nothing blooms “late,” but always right on time.

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What are you waiting for? In what ways are you a “late bloomer”? How would your life have been different if everything had followed your own timeline?

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Our theme this month is “Create.” If you are a maker, artist, or creator and you would like to guest post, I still have a few spots left! Otherwise, check out the themes for the coming months here. The theme for July is “Hospitality Around the World.” And if you’re not interested in guest posting, follow me on social media (buttons on the top right) to be sure you don’t miss a post this month!

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No "Late Bloomers: Late Weddings, Old Moms & Delayed Creativity #marriage #motherhood #creativity #transitions #timing #Godsdelays #oldmoms #metaphors

 

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Time to Be Out with It: I’m Writing a Book

I’ve been hesitant to make a big deal out of this. In fact, I’ve mostly been telling myself it’s not true. But after opening the envelope with the advance check made out to me last week and having a conference call today with the whole team, it seems pretty official.

I may as well get it out in the open: I’m writing a book.

I haven’t wanted to plaster it all over social media for a couple reasons. For one, I have friends who have been trying to get published for years without any luck. If you’ve ever tried to get pregnant, then you know the pang you feel seeing one announcement after another of friends getting pregnant “on accident.” Having yet another friend announce their book deal is painful and I want to be sensitive to that.

Secondly, I’ve mostly been in denial. I kept thinking I’d get a call telling me they’d made a mistake, that they didn’t mean to tell me they wanted to publish my book. Until I held the check in my hands, I truly didn’t believe this was happening.

But it is. My book will be published fall of 2019. It’s really happening.

In August of 2017, an acquistions editor contacted me via the query form on my blog, telling me she had found me through Redbud Writers’ Guild and wondered if I was working on anything. I wrote a writer friend, “What do I say??” She told me to say “I was working a few ideas into proposals.” I quickly emailed the editor back, surprised that I had three ideas. She said she’d love to see a proposal for one, maybe two of the ideas.

“I’ll get back to you in a few weeks,” I said, which turned into three months.

Writing a book proposal felt like packing for a long trip, but not being sure what I should take and what I should leave behind. And much like packing, it wasn’t until right before I was finished that I felt close to being done. Clothing, shoes, books and cosmetics were strewn around the room in a huge mess–ideas, words, stories and quotes all piled in a heap.

I probably spent 100 hours on that proposal, inviting over 10 different friends to give their input on various parts and stages. People had said it was difficult, but I had no idea what it felt like to pull a book magically out of thin air and write a one page book overview on a book that DOESN’T EXIST.

My husband took a couple mornings off of work just to watch the kids so I could write. I stood in my office and nearly burst into tears because 1) I had an office and 2) he actually believed I could do this. He is the only reason I’m even walking this journey right now.

Looking back on the book proposal process, it felt like piecing together the outer edges of a puzzle–enough structure to guide your next step, but not enough of the picture to tell you what the whole puzzle would actually look like in the end.

I turned in my proposal on December 5th, 2017 and I felt like the answer would be a lose-lose rather than a win-win. If they didn’t want it, then I did all that work for nothing. If they did want it, I’d have to actually write a book. They got back to me on January 23rd.

“Look,” I said to my husband, holding out the phone. “They want to publish my book…” The tears came and the familiar feeling I had when I found out I was pregnant the previous three times: elated, but overwhelmed.

I didn’t have an agent, so a few friends with Rebud Writer’s Guild helped me navigate the intricacies of the contract and I finally signed it in early February.

I’ve written seven chapters of a 10 to 12 chapter book that I’ll turn in this December. It still feels surreal.

When I’m writing, I believe it’s happening–I get caught up in the flow and follow where it leads, but as soon as I step away, the voices start in on me.

The hardest part has been writing more than 1000 words. Most blog posts and articles I’ve written are short, so writing a book feels like trying to run a marathon when I’ve mostly trained as a sprinter. It can feel choppy and disjointed. But I’m also enjoying indulging in long-form narrative, much like the episodic story arcs of T.V. shows with six, seven or eight seasons. For the first time, I can laze about with my story.

“So what’s your book about?” is the million dollar question these days. Honest answer? I’m still figuring that out.

But according to the edges of the puzzle that are guiding me, and the outline I offered in my book proposal, my book is about reimagining biblical hospitality from a cross-cultural point of view.

It is a mosaic of personal stories and lessons I’ve learned from living overseas, studying culture, and having international students live with us. It’s about what the western church can learn from non-western cultures about practicing biblical hospitality to family, friends and strangers, living in community, and deepening our relationships.

Biblical hospitality is less about pretty tables and more about dying to ourselves. Less about image and more about imagination. It’s about inviting and being invited by Jesus and turning around and doing the same thing in our ordinary lives. It’s about quenching our loneliness by pouring ourselves out.

This book is kicking my tail, because I can’t write one way and live another way. If I’m going to write about selfless hospitality, I need to be living it. If I’m going to write about reserving space for people, I need to actually do it.

So that’s the scoop. I’m writing a book and I’m terrified. I’m scared no one will read it and that I’ll get it all wrong. But I’m also trying to let go and trust the woo woo writer magic to wave it’s pixie dust on my words. Mainly, I’m trusting the mystical Holy Ghost to guide me and give me words as I go. I didn’t seek this out, the book found me.

And on my runs as I slow to a walk along the lake in the gold morning light, I’ve been praying like crazy for myself and for you, my reader. (In fact, the other morning on my run, I was praying loudly and very audibly for my readers when I spotted a man on his back deck cradling his coffee just a few feet away. I pretended I was talking into my phone). I’m praying this message will be for us.

Writing a book feels scary and sacred, weighty and wild, so I appreciate your prayers for me as well. Please send me personal messages if I come to mind to let me know you’re mentioning me in your prayers. I’m going to need all the help I can get.

xo

Leslie, soon-to-be author

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Simplify Friendship {Guest Post}

By Anna Moseley Gissing | Twitter: @amgissing

Exactly one year ago, I hopped in my Smart car and drove across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, to a basement apartment in Wheaton, Illinois, where I unloaded a few boxes and settled in to a new home. The next day I drove to my new job as an editor for a Christian publisher. I left my husband and two kids in Pennsylvania until our house sold and my husband found work.

A couple of months later, my family joined me in Illinois, and my husband started work the next week. We frantically searched for quality sitters and fun summer camps in a place where we knew no one and nothing.

But finding a permanent home in Illinois wasn’t easy. We moved into another temporary place but left our furniture in storage and lived out of boxes for the rest of the summer.

At last, we found a new home at the beginning of August, and we started the long process of unpacking and settling in. But we were also registering the kids for school and sorting out drivers’ licenses and doctors’ visits, now that we had a permanent address.

When our kids started school just a couple of weeks later, we thought we might make some progress toward feeling “settled.” But then I changed editorial positions within my department. The chaos and complexity of life in transition continued.

I was discouraged when I missed my goal of being unpacked by the time we’d been in our home one hundred days. Based on past experience, I knew that I should keep up the momentum. If I didn’t keep pressing forward, treating my weekend days like unpacking boot camp, I might wake up ten years from now to see those same boxes still stacked in my laundry room.

I needed to be single-minded: Until the one-year anniversary of our move in August, I would focus on working hard at my new job, helping my kids adjust to a new school, and unpacking. We could meet people and explore our new community later.

It felt like simplicity. Instead of spreading myself too thin, committing to new activities and social events, I’d do fewer things and do them well.

And then an Instagram post made me reconsider my simple routine.

Some good friends had reunited for a retreat in North Carolina. Their smiling faces caught me off guard. The retreat happens every year in early February, but I forgot. I had decided that friends were on the back burner until I was fully unpacked and settled at work.

Though there was a simplicity to my plan, it was oversimplified.

I had put off friendship indefinitely. I had isolated myself from friends far away, waiting for more time to invest. I hadn’t met new friends either—I couldn’t find the time.

In my quest for simplicity, I cut out vital parts of life. It was time to reconsider.

During Lent, I committed to connect with a friend once a week. I started with a bang—coffee out with a local friend. The next week I took a long lunch break to get to know a new colleague. Later our family connected with another family to cheer for our favorite sports teams as they battled one another.

But it was going to be tough to do something that intentional each week.

So I started experimenting. Instead of setting up phone dates with my far-away friends (which took weeks to schedule and inevitably fell on days that were super stressful so that by the time the appointment arrived, I wanted to crawl in a hole), I took chances and called when I had only ten minutes to chat. Out of the blue, at odd times.

Sometimes I got voicemail. But sometimes I didn’t. These brief calls warmed my heart and changed my days. I didn’t hear about everything that had happened in the last six months. But it wasn’t necessary. I never realized that ten minutes could change so much.

Those ten-minute calls were ten minutes that I wasn’t working or unpacking. During those calls, I branched out from my simple plan to put off friends until I had finished my other work.

And yet, I discovered a new simplicity. Simple friendship. Simple ten-minute visits.

In your life, you may not be preoccupied with unpacking or editing books. Maybe you have decided that you can’t invest in your friends while you have toddlers at home. Maybe you feel like you have to choose between friends and exercise or friends and sleep.

Perhaps you should give simple friendship a shot. Who can you call today?

About Anna:

Anna Moseley Gissing loves words—reading, writing, speaking, teaching, and editing. When she’s not editing books for IVP Academic, you can often find her unpacking or helping her kids with homework. Connect with her on Twitter or Instagram at @amgissing.

 

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This concludes our month on the theme “simplify.” Thank you to Anna for guest posting! Our theme for April is “Books and Writing,” and I hope to share my favorite books, podcasts and resources for new writers. I recently signed a book contract, so I am in the thick of it and have many thoughts about the writing process. I’ll also be attending The Festival of Faith and Writing in April, so I want to share some of the content I learn there with my readers. Be sure to follow me on social media and sign up for my newsletter below so you can be alerted of new posts. Please get in touch at scrapingraisins (dot) gmail (dot) com if you are interested in guest posting on this topic!

I’ll be writing a post this month for SheLoves about fasting from my Smartphone and from some social media during Lent, so you can read about how “simplifying” went for me this month.

What about you? How are you continuing to simplify? What is working for you? What isn’t working? I’d love to hear on social media or in the comments here!

Happy Easter!

xo

Leslie

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How to Simplify Friendship? The older we get, the more complicated friendships seem to get. How can we simplify and still have friends as we age?

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Selling Out by Settling Down? {for The Mudroom}

Like Belle, I never planned to live a provincial life. I, too, wanted “adventure in the great, wide somewhere.” I wanted it more than I could tell.

But today we bought a house.

An ordinary, provincial house with a two-car garage and a Whirlpool dishwasher. As we walked out of the title office, giant trees with fresh green leaves waved gently against the cobalt blue sky. The walk-through had unearthed no new knowledge and was the same sturdy 1977 four bedroom split-level home on 0.20 acres in a mid-sized town in Colorado we saw when we put our offer in. Far from exotic, we will now be six minutes from Target, seven minutes from a grocery store and eight minutes from locally roasted pour-over coffee (a must for my coffee snob husband).

We were so sure this was the right house for us that we made an offer the first time we saw it, standing in the living room with the light slanting across the wood floor, the baby fidgeting against my chest in the baby carrier. We wrote a letter, pleading our case to a family who, based on the Brennan Manning books, Bibles, and Christian bookstore plaques on the walls, were also people of faith. We wanted to raise our children here, open our doors to friends and family, and would respect that sacred, holy life had already been lived here. We acknowledged the grief they must be feeling in parting with their home.

There were nine offers. Three were more than ours and four were cash. But they chose us.

At 38 years old, I have never owned a home, nor did I think I was ever likely to, since my biggest fear has always been living the White Picket Fence Life. Perhaps that is why as an eighth grader, my favorite movie was Beauty and the Beast (the “nerdy princess,” as a friend of mine pointed out). I had no intention of becoming a stay-at-home mom in the suburbs like my mom had been. I was destined for greater things.

Lately my four-year-old has been asking me what I want to be when I grow up. The first time he asked this, I chuckled, “I already grew up,” I said. “I’m doing it—I’m a wife and your mommy. I’m also a writer. And I was a teacher and lived in China before that.”

He nodded, crunching his Cheerios and raisins from the blue plastic bowl. I don’t think he understood. Just like I didn’t understand that my mom was never “just” a stay-at-home mom. That we are never “just” anything. Life is not static. Our identity can never be reduced, only expanded by time and experience. Life breathes into us like a balloon. Yes, I am a wife and mom—in addition to all I was before that. And—God willing—more life will be breathed in even when my children leave home.

In their retirement, my parents moved from sticky, tropical Tampa, Florida to 9,000 feet elevation in the Rockies. Snowshoeing with my mom on their twenty-two acres on a clear winter day, I asked her how she begins new friendships now that she has lived so much life. Doesn’t she want her friends to know her history? How does she feel truly known without them knowing her past? “Where do you start?” I asked.

“I start from now,” she answered. My mom has learned what I am still beginning to grasp.

We are not a chapter or a single experience or identity. We are a composite.

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We are not a chapter or a single experience or identity. We are a composite. All our past experiences intertwine into one exquisite design the longer we live. We begin from now.

We bought a house … Continue reading at The Mudroom

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Are You Done Having Children?

People love to ask this question. And I’ve been thinking about my answer.

***

Uncapping the black sharpie marker, I scribble a price on the neon green garage sale sticker: $4.00. Placing the tag on the light brown maternity dress, grief suddenly tackles me. I don’t know if I can do this…

This dress was the first piece of maternity clothing I ever purchased back when my body barely revealed a bump. In the Target dressing room, I stuffed my bag under the dress to try and imagine what my body might look like with a tiny human curled inside me. It seemed so surreal.

The dress was a staple in my maternity wardrobe through the wilting heat of three summers in six years. I wore it while in labor from Monday to Friday with my son, the week we determined I was a “slow laborer.” And I was wearing it the day I barely made it to the hospital to give birth to my daughter nearly two years later. I had been in labor 48 hours, but had chosen to ignore the squeezing contractions until I couldn’t anymore. “Now.” I demanded to my reluctant husband, who was remembering the long days of labor with my son. “She’s coming now, so we need to go.”

“Let’s check how far along you are,” the midwife said just minutes after we got to the hospital, pulling on her gloves. “Oop! There’s the head! You’re ready!” she said.

“Do you want to change clothes?” the nurse asked. “Your dress might get ruined.” I let her help me into the gigantic green hospital gown just in time to push out a tiny pink stranger just 30 minutes after arriving at the hospital. My sweet daughter was born on a brilliant sunny day in Chicago in July. And this was the dress I wore just minutes before she entered the world.

Folding the dress and placing it on the pile of other maternity clothes I’ve acquired over the years, the sadness hit.

Is this stage of pink lines appearing on a plastic pregnancy test, baby kicks, musical heart-beat checks and sacred, powerful, life-ripping childbirth really over? Are these the final days of having a tiny squishy body curled against me in bed as I nurse at dawn before the rest of the house wakes? Is it the end of magical baby giggles, laughing at the grimaces babies make as they try new foods or clapping like fools when your child experiences all the “firsts”?

Are we really done having children? And how do we know when we’re done?

I’m still not sure. All my reasons for having a third child obviously still apply for a fourth or fifth or any number of children we may want to have. But here’s why I’m thinking we’re done.

Mainly because in spite of my hesitancy to have an odd number of children, I’ve been surprised by how complete the number three feels. Sitting at a restaurant, when I see a family with two children, I find myself thinking “Not enough.” But when I see four, without even realizing it, I think, “Too many.” So I think—for us—three is the Goldilocks amount of children. “Just right.”

But I also feel I don’t have the capacity—physically, mentally or spiritually — for another baby at my age (I’m 38). My last pregnancy spun me into depression and my body has felt like it aged five years with each baby. I fear another pregnancy would break me.

But having “just” three children also leaves wiggle room for other people God may bring to our home. Just as I always want to have a guest room in our house, I know my heart only has so many rooms available, so setting this limit may ensure I’ll have the space to offer a place at our table to anyone who needs a temporary family. I often pray God will give us the capacity to extend our arms around anyone God brings into our life. Perhaps not having a baby in my belly or nursing on my breast will free me to nurture those who are not my own children.

My other two children are enjoying having more of me again. My baby is now eight months old and more interested in exploring the world through his hands, mouth and however far his chubby legs will take him as he crawls from drawer to cabinet, shoving every stray cheerio in his mouth along the way. He is no longer content to sit still.

Not always having a baby on my lap means more of me for the other two. The times when I force myself to stop folding laundry, picking up clutter or organizing toys and simply sit on the floor to be physically and mentally present with my kids, a child always ends up climbing into my lap. They have missed me. I push away the guilt that creeps in, accusing me of neglecting my two and four-year-olds during the past year of being hugely pregnant or nursing around the clock. They have learned to be more independent and are discovering they have a built-in playmate when mommy is busy with the baby. But they are still little and need me.

So for all those who are asking, I’m saying I am 98 percent sure we are done. As stressful, painful, stretching (in so many ways) and difficult as pregnancy, childbirth and the baby stage have been, I have loved it. I really have. There were moments in my twenties and even as I turned thirty and was still very single, when I wondered if I would ever have children. Once I married, I convinced myself I would have fertility problems. I wanted to shield myself from disappointment. So many of my friends had miscarried or had problems getting pregnant that I wanted to be prepared.

But after five months of waiting, on a cold December morning, I woke my husband up, jumping back in bed with a huge grin on my face.

“I’m pregnant.”

And so I want to celebrate this gift and grieve the passing of such a sacred, special time of life. It has not felt like it “went fast,” but I do wish I could bottle up the magic and open it up every once in a while.

Wouldn’t you love to relive the moment you found out you were pregnant for the first time and you walked around all day with the most amazing secret you’d ever carried? I wish I could encapsulate the feeling of those first butterfly flutters and finally the indignant kicks from a silent being that drew life from my body. Or relive holding my baby for the first time, staring with wonder that there actually was a life inside me all that time. Time suspended and reality spun in those early hours of precious life.

Motherhood is a holy experience. Nothing scrapes the ceiling of the divine like pregnancy and childbirth. Giving birth and being a mother to these three souls has been the honor and joy of my life.

Nothing scrapes the ceiling of the divine like pregnancy and childbirth.

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I place the stack of clothes with the brown dress in the large plastic bin, labeling it “maternity” and slide it over to join the pile of baby clothes I’m also pre-grieving the loss of. I walk over to the rug, plop down and grab my first son, wrapping my arms around him and tucking his long legs into my lap. “Do you know how much I love you?” I whisper. He smiles. Yes. He knows.

Blurry picture and squinty eyes, but this is the dress!

Are we really done having children? And how do we know when we’re done?

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A Letter to the One Returning Home {for Velvet Ashes}

Seven years ago, with all my earthly belongings bundled into two 50 pound suitcases, I flagged my last taxi to the airport. I dozed on the 13 hour flight arcing over the North Pole to return back to the U.S. after living in China for five years. I was returning home.

If you are preparing to leave or floundering to find your footing back home, then this letter is for you.

To the One Returning Home,

Like a transplanted lilac bush, you are being uprooted. Roots severed, your heart, mind and body are undergoing the silent trauma of displacement. You feel lost, alone and out of sorts. You are a misfit in a place where you should belong. Home is now a wild and unfamiliar landscape.

Like a woman’s body after giving birth, you are forever altered. Even when back to your original weight, your body mass has shifted with the weight of new life, your skin stretched to capacity and back. And yet perhaps only you will notice the difference. Some will never know the life you birthed abroad and how it transformed you. People will want you to wear the same clothes, but they no longer fit.

You have changed in a million indescribable ways.

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You carry hidden scars and surprising superpowers. You suffered in large and small ways. But you also celebrated. The first time you were able to tell the shopkeeper exactly what color fabric you wanted to buy, the first time you went across town in a taxi alone or the time you finally detected a spark of something you doubted would ever happen cross-culturally—true friendship. You developed competency in a foreign culture. By the end of year three, you dared say it. You were thriving.

But now your gifts are useless. You no longer need to barter for every item you buy. You don’t need to know where to get your umbrella spokes repaired, your socks darned or how to cook without cheese or butter. Your language skills and cultural expertise are wasted. You cry the first time someone asks you, “So are you using the language you learned?” Because you fear you never will again.

You feel guilty. You believed living abroad was the pinnacle of faith for a person completely “sold out and radical” for Jesus. Even on the hard days, knowing your sacrifice brought a smile to God’s face spurred you on. But now you can’t wave The High Calling Banner everywhere you go. You are just ordinary you.

And you have unspoken questions. Will God love you as much? Will the people who know you admire you? Will you keep loving yourself when you are “just” a teacher, mother, accountant, engineer or computer programmer?

Will your faith survive being transplanted from foreign soil to familiar land?

Garden experts advise you not to prune a lilac bush that is being transplanted. But a person going through re-entry experiences the pain of simultaneously being pruned and replanted. You will survive, but your growth may be stunted for a time. In fact, the garden manuals warn it may take up to five years for a lilac bush to bloom again. This rate of new growth will frustrate you.

But you need to grieve. You may cry every day at first. This is normal. You have mourning to do. You’ve left behind stand-in mothers, fathers, grannies, grandpas, aunties, uncles, sisters and brothers. They adopted you and were the fulfillment of God’s promise to you to “put the lonely in families.”

Perhaps you are leaving spiritual children behind. You bumbled and fumbled with language, but trusted God would speak. And He did. You saw lives transformed by God working in spite of you. A transplanted lilac bush inevitably leaves some roots behind. You will need to mourn the parts of you that will stay in your foreign country. Not every piece of you will return …

Continue reading at Velvet Ashes.

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The New Normal

He’s finally here!

Our sweet son was born last Saturday, 9/10/16, at 11:52 am, just an hour and a half after we arrived at the hospital (though after many more hours of labor at home).  The midwife nearly missed the affair, arriving at the second push.

My parents took the other two kids for the week, so my husband and I have been home alone with this new one.  We have been drinking in his soft soft newskin, curled leg cuddles and succession of suspicious looks he directs at us.  I am relieved to have him out of my body and in my arms.

The house has been quiet.  I never noticed how peaceful our neighborhood is before.  

Like childbirth, this homecoming and postpartum week has been surreal.  I remember feeling this way when we brought my other two home–like you are living outside of time, in an alternate reality.  You gaze in wonder at those around you doing normal things like having garage sales and mowing their lawn and marvel at their ignorance.  Have they not felt the cosmic shift of a new soul breaking into our atmosphere?  

Life will never be the same.

Our windows have been open all week, early fall breezes sashaying into the living room as my husband and I share the responsibility of feeding for the first time.  Our son hasn’t figured this breastfeeding thing out yet, so this particular dance of life looks like nursing a short time, then pumping as my husband bottle feeds our little one.  

I’m trying to not let it break my heart. I nurse, then watch him greedily feast on the bottle.  My offering feels inadequate.  My pride in not being his sole provider is pricked.

But my husband gently reminded me that this dance is not about me.  It’s about our son.  And he is growing and thriving under this rhythm my husband and I are waltzing together.

Our son wakes every two and a half to three hours, rolling and gnawing his fists.  For the night vigil,  I groggily scoop him up and head downstairs.  When it’s time for the bottle, I call my husband and he takes our babe to feed him while I pump.  We’ve already binge-watched the entire last season of Downtown Abbey, laughing and crying together in the wee hours of the morning.

Though this is not what I hoped for, there is goodness in it.  Unexpected gifts and new connections with this man I am privileged to love first. We are bonding in and through our exhaustion, new solidarity rising up between us.  “We” are tired, now.  “We” need to feed the baby.  “We” are his primary caregivers.  Not just me.

My other children arrive home in just an hour and our new normal will begin.

I miss them as if a piece of myself has been absent all week, not quite knowing who I am apart from them.  But I’m also bracing myself for the challenges, noise and stress.  Yet I’m thrilled for them to fall in love with their brother as we have.

I’m trusting that though God does not promise rest right now, He does guarantee strength measured out in its perfect portion.  Just as my son looks to us on an hourly basis, so we are looking to our Father to fill us, only to be emptied again…and again…and again.

He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power.  Though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength…” 
Isaiah 40:29-31a

***

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SAHMs and the Need to Create

SAHM's and the Need to Create~ Almost four years ago, at the age of 33, I walked away from my teaching career, independence, and most aspects of my identity as I knew it...

“When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.”
~Maria, The Sound of Music


Almost four years ago, at the age of 33, I walked away from my teaching career, independence, and most aspects of my identity as I knew it.

My husband and I had made the intentional choice for me to stay home with our new baby.

Before marriage at 32, my personal and professional resume of experiences, travels and adventures attested to the advantages of singleness. As a result of a generally happy singlehood, the mourning period for that time of life has been unexpectedly long and difficult, though our marriage has been a joyous one.

The first year of staying at home was probably the sweetest. I had begun to feel burned out as a teacher and wanted nothing more than to be with my precious son every second I could. Having been extremely single by the time of my 30th birthday, I had begun to wrestle with the possibility that I might never marry or have children. So every day of marriage, pregnancy and cradling my new baby truly felt like a gift that I never expected to have. I soaked in his smell, stroked his soft head and didn’t even mind being woken up in the middle of the night to feed him because it meant we got to spend more time together.

But around the time I got pregnant with our second, I began to feel fidgety. Unsettled. Dissatisfied. Giddiness was replaced with groaning. Delight with discontent.

The change was subtle, but the desire to use my education and past experiences to feel the rush of problem solving and growing in knowledge increased.

Leaving my past behind had left a void that I wasn’t sure how to fill with the limited time and energy I had after caring for my son on a 24-hour basis. And as a Jesus follower, a part of me also knew that I would never find my identity in those places anyway.

So I started a blog (which I never told a soul about). I learned to sew. I painted furniture. And in 2015 I finally followed the impulse I’ve had my entire life and began to write—for people to actually read.

And I’ve begun to notice a trend. Stay-at-home-moms are creating. In the void left by careers and education, we are given the gift of expanding into our potential as creators. From sheer observation alone, this is the time of life that stay-at-home parents are most likely to begin an Etsy shop, start a non-profit or business, write a blog, explore a new art form or become serious about a hobby. I used to belittle women who would spend hours on Pinterest for their children’s parties when a friend said to me, “Hey, we need to get our creativity out in some way!”

Trees and plants are routinely pruned not so they will be miserable, but for their own well-being and growth. And in the place of the cut branches, new ones are allowed to grow. So it is with those who sacrifice to stay at home with a child. Though we may feel naked and strange without our careers, God does not leave us shivering and bare. He brings us new growth. New foliage. New life.

Women are incredible. If needed, they can work three jobs and raise children to go to college all on their own. They can give birth in a field and keep on working. They can keep ten balls in the air at once and make it look easy. They can earn as much as men and climb the corporate ladder just as stealthily.

But women are also creators. They are given gifts and talents that begin to ooze out if they are not given permission to flow. And today, I give you permission. Sometimes to love well, we need to use the gifts God has given us whether they make money or not. Whether they seem to be making a “dent” on the kingdom or not. Whether they serve our families or not.

As long as our desire to create does not supersede our commitment to God and our families, I believe that God will use our gifts to honor Him in ways we cannot imagine.

So create, mama.

We have the special privilege of co-creating with God as we experiment with what has been lying latent in us for so long. And I believe our families will benefit from the shade and life-giving fruit as we stretch out our branches. 


What new windows have opened for you since your transition to motherhood?

~~~~~~


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Related Posts:
Art & the Alabaster Jar
The Narrowing
For the Mom Whose Life Feels Small
Motherhood and the Big Picture

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SAHM's and the Need to Create~ Almost four years ago, at the age of 33, I walked away from my teaching career, independence, and most aspects of my identity as I knew it...
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