Today, I brought in cupcakes for my department. It is I Love My Neighbor month at church, and while I was a bit of a disaster on Wednesday, the lovely ladies in my bible study managed to pull it together for me and we (mostly they) decorated the 6 dozen cupcakes I managed to bake on Tuesday. We packaged them in sets of three and off they went to our co-workers and neighbors.

I sent off an email this morning telling the English department that they were there, and by 2….only a few have been eaten. It is making me crazy. And that craziness is uncovering a piece of my heart that is not cute: I want credit.

It is not enough for me to bring in cupcakes to my work because God called me to love people and food is a way I communicate my love. I want those cupcakes to be eaten and appeciated. I want an email that says they were delicious, for people to tell me that they were delicious and I am kind so that I can deflect that, “Oh it was nothing.”

I want whatever it is I do to be noticed, to be appreciated. To validate me. Often, it is where I find my worth. It is one of the reasons staying home with the girls first semester was so hard for me. There wasn’t anyone telling me I was doing a good job as often as  needed or thought I deserved. Christian did a good job encouraging me, but the Peanut and the Rooster just don’t have the words. (As though when they are 6 and 7 they would not take their mother for granted.)

I know this is not the heart of the Jesus Lover I so desperately want to be.

What is worse is this. I hesitate even to write it. I sometimes feel the same way about this space. I love writing, and feel strongly that God has called me to share my story as honestly as I can. But now, I want people to read it. More people. The crazy amount of encouragement I have gotten, especially since moving to this space, the fact that people choose to read what I write when there is so much else they could be reading or doing, I don’t take that for granted. I very much appreciate it. But if I am honest, I check my stats compulsively hoping to have another 100+ day.

I see the spiral this could lead to. If 100 hits becomes consistent I will strive for 200 and so on and so forth. I am not the first to notice that blogging is a little like middle school. Like me! Notice me! Tell me that I am clever! That I matter! That I mean something! I’ll follow you if you will follow me. I will share your stuff in the hopes that you will return the favor. It would never be enough, it would never leave me satisfied. I would always want more.

I suppose I could pretend that this wanting credit is righteous. After all, I write about Jesus. If I say “To God be the Glory” then the more glory I get the better off He is, right? I do sometimes, pretend that I want credit so that it can be deflected to Jesus. As though Jesus needs me to not just be obedient, but then showcase that obedience or else He will get missed in it all.

I know that it is important to be encouraged sometimes, that God often brings life giving words through our peers. I recieve them frequently, and I am grateful for the ways they fill my heart, or throw me a flotation device to cling to just when I am dried up or drowning. But there is a point when those words become more important than His words, than what I know to be true about me.

I have heard the critiscism often, that Christians cannot or do not just quietly go about the business of being the hands and feet of Jesus. We Christians don’t want Jesus to have the glory initially, we want that spotlight turned on us so that we can deflect it to him. I know how this turns stomaches and hearts from Jesus. And yet, I am having trouble controlling the desire to recieve the glory. But I want to control it. I am done having that desire rule my heart and actions.

Lord, I want to be a Jesus Lover, please get me out of the way!

I was directed through various blog rabbit holes, to the places in the Bible where God describes himself as a breast feeding mom. I do certainly feel like I have learned a lot more about the heart of my God since I have become a parent. (This is not to say others who are not parents cannot come to the same conclustions, it is simply the route I have taken to get there.)

Any way, yes, I am lactating. I don’t pump at work because frankly I hate it. (I was about to type something in here about how I am a selfish mom, then I heard the voice of a girl in my first period who told me I had to be nicer to myself. I love that God put her in my class. I hear her truth resonate in my head often. Look at me, giving myself grace. Way to go New Year’s Resolution!) I will scream like a banshee for a woman’s right to breast feed wherever and pump when needed. But personally, I don’t want to exercise that right. We have been doing the “when I am here we breastfeed, when I am not take a bottle thing,” but the Rooster and my body are getting confused which leads to an unhappy mommy and baby.

There are a number of other reasons but short story long, we are weaning at our house, which made me consider this verse. God does that for us. He weans. He doesn’t just cut us off, he gets us ready for the next thing (hello pureed carrots!), grows us up, prepares us for changes.

Sometimes we are reluctant to wean, we like it just the way it was thank you very much, but it needs to be done. Sometimes we are hungry, we have been followiing that fork for sometime and we just want it to go in our mouth! And eventually we become like the 4 and 6 year olds that we spend so much time with. We are doubtful that we ever needed breast milk in the first place, let alone miss it. What a silly concept.

The Lord is weaning me off of external validation. He weaned me off of identifying myself in my job this summer and fall. What about you, what are you being weaned off of? And can you see your next thing? I am hopeful that I can….hopeful about the big juicy steak God has for me….once I am ready. I just need to grow teeth first.

This post is brought to you by Sara Harless! We met in college working at the Writin’ Desk and I genuinely look forward to all Facebook updates about her work mothering Anne, aka “The Scarlet Tornado!”

“So what do you do for a living?”
Such an innocuous, friendly question that caused me to cringe every time it was asked.
For three years, I would proudly reply, “I teach preschool for Head Start” and tell funny anecdotes about my students. I loved teaching; I was passionate about my students and the care and education I provided for them. I prayed for my students. I cried for them (and myself after particularly trying days!). Much of my identity (more deeply,my pride) was wrapped up in my chosen career.
Then I saw the heartbeat flickering on the ultrasound screen. I had never had any intention of returning to work after my daughter was born. Primarily, I didn’t make enough money teaching to make paying for childcare feasible or worth it. Who wants to work more than 40 hours a week for what amounts to $2 an hour? More importantly, I wanted to stay home with my little one. I felt strongly that this was best for our family (with no judgement or condemnation for families that work differently). My husband agreed and so I put in my notice after the school year ended (I was due in July). I was nervous, but excited and ready to start my new career.
I didn’t think about teaching the first couple of weeks home from the hospital. It was a bleary-eyed time of nursing, rocking, napping, diapering, washing various bodily fluids from my clothes, nursing, nursing, nursing. I had no idea how many hours per day would be devoted to quietly rocking and feeding my Annie (and how few would be devoted to sleeping!). Then September rolled around, and I was getting groceries (considerably more difficult with an infant) when I saw Elmer’s glue was on sale for 10 cents a bottle. In my sleep-deprived state, I started putting several bottles in my cart for the classroom before I remembered that I no longer had a classroom. I was so unexpectedly sad. I didn’t realize how much I would miss the crazybusy schedule of school, miss helping kids compromise and use words instead of fists, miss leading a less-than-straight line of 16 three, four, and five year olds down the street to the park, miss finding random marbles/crayons/sorting bears in my pockets that I had confiscated from mouths.
The more I went places and met other moms, the more I dreaded the question, “So what do you do?” I felt strangely ashamed to admit that “all” I did was stay home with the baby. A baby whom I loved with an intensity that I didn’t know was possible. I never anticipated needing to mourn my life before her. That life was over and I grieved for all the wonderful parts of it. Then God gently showed me I was also grieving for my pride. I was clinging to a sense of self-worth derived from that pride of “Look what I have done with my college education! I am making a difference in the world!” Key words–“I, my, I” God called me to a new job with crappy hours, no pay, and no puffed-up pride in myself. It’s hard to feel proud when you’re the one in the restaurant with the screaming baby that everyone is staring at. It’s hard to feel proud when your baby managed to smear poop on her ear and you only notice it several hours (and a trip through the grocery store) later. Losing that source of pride, of sin, was a hard thing, but a good thing. I embrace this time with my daughter, and smile with (somewhat) good grace when another mom melodramatically tells me, “I don’t know how you do it! I would be so bored all day alone with a baby!”
“Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up.” James 4:10

I was probably four when my dad came home from the mediation conference practically drunk on the Holy Spirit. He had a new phrase too, one that would be spoken to us many many times. “Words of life, girls, words of life!” We joke about it now. Sometimes those words were not spoken in the most life-giving of tones. But the message stuck, your words hold power. Things live or die by the power of the tongue.

As a parent I see how true this is. We carry the story of our early years throughout our entire lives. Parents insist that their child has always been that smart, that talkative, that stubborn, that relaxed. When the child is thirty something and winning an award, we parents insist we knew all along. Even from the womb my child was this way, we say.

I do it with my own two girls, attribute innate characteristics to their lives yet mostly un-lived. The first one came just 7 hours after I started laboring. At not yet two she is always full speed ahead. My 4 month old had me in latent labor for three weeks. The contractions didn’t bother her and she has already earned the nickname “Chill-a, Priscilla.” Nothing fazes her, nothing.

This is where the words I speak matter. The way I frame the mantels my children will carry is important. My oldest daughter (as my friend put it) has “strong self advocacy.” She is not a fit thrower, or a brat. She is practicing advocating for those who cannot shout for themselves. I hope that one day she is a voice for those without one. This doesn’t mean that I give in to every “full body affect display” but it makes me a tad more willing to be patient as she tests my boundaries. She is learning what works and what does not. This is an important lesson.

It may be annoying that my daughter stops to laugh at all the things her little mind finds funny, but if she is “the funniest person I know” –And I promise you, the Peanut is hysterical– then it is easier to not rush. She is simply exercising her amazing sense of humor, not trying to purposely make us late.

I shouldn’t be surprised that this is the thing that has been pressing on my heart. My husband is getting his PhD in rhetoric. He studies how we shape words, how words shape us. He explained to me that there is no solid definition for words like patient, loving, kind. We just know them when we see them, and when we proclaim them, we notice them.

So, the more I tell my daughters they are children of God, the more they become them in action, but also in my mind. So what I say, is what I notice and reinforce and sure enough those beautiful things manifest. So much did this resonate with me that I wrote a series of rhymes to remind my daughters and I what exactly is true about us.

I want to cover my girls in those words of life. I want the mantels they carry to be blessings and not burdens. I want the truth of God to run through their lives, and the place that running starts….is out of their mother’s mouth.

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