It seems obvious but daily I am struck with the concept that if you want to be the kind of person who does something…..you have to make the time to do it.
If I want to be a writer I have to write.
If I want my kids to feel like they are heard, I have to listen
If I want to play the guitar I need to play it.
If I want to be a woman of the Word, I better read it,
If I want to be fit, I need to work out.
If I want to be loving I need to love.
At what point do I internalize those lessons?
One of the bonuses of being a teacher is you get to screw up on other people’s teenagers before you have any of your own. Also, you aren’t afraid of the teenage years because you chose to hang out with them as your profession. It also keeps the baby years in perspective. Oh look, these kids were all raised differently and most turned out just fine. Good to know, good to have proof.
One of the things I have been thinking about lately is the piece of advice my first team teacher gave me. She had been teaching for about 25 years and I learned a lot from Ms. Hill. But I tend to think about this quote from a parenting perspective. “It may be cute when they are two, but if they are 16 and doing it, are you still going to think it is cute? It isn’t fair,” she would say, “to teach a kid that something is cute, and then one day tell them to knock it off.” She also liked to say that if you don’t establish who is in charge when the kid is a toddler, the battle comes back with a vengeance when the kid is a teenager.”
Being teenagers reminds me that my babies won’t be babies forever. They will be people who will be spending most of their days without me around. It seems impossible right now, as I am surrounded by diapers and little shoes that need put on, my ears full of LOOK AT ME MOMMY! and AGAIN! Currently neither one of my kids can even make themselves a sandwich, how in the world are these two babies going to grow up to be functional people?
But that is the goal, and by the grace of God they will. It is so easy to forget that my babies won’t be babies forever. That eventually they will be grown women who I pray are serving their God boldly and recklessly. While it may be hysterical for the Peanut to say certain phrases now, it won’t be so cute at 4…or 8. Being kind starts now. Loving well means sharing with your sister now even when the Rooster may not even notice. The Rooster already has to learn that it isn’t always going to be her turn.
There are so many things I frett about. (The girls are currently in cahoots to ensure we never, ever sleep. Christian and I are taking turns sleeping through the night.) I spent two days ago feeling bad I didn’t breastfeed the rooster longer. And I need to know how to get her to poop less (6 times on Fathers day when Christian didn’t have to changer her. 6 times) But I spend so little time thinking about how to instill kindness and compassion. I can tell you from experience that can be spotted later in life.
It is a good reminder, to watch my students behave without their moms around. That my babies will always be my babies, but they won’t always be babies. And I don’t want them to act like it.
My pastor preached his last sermon before his summer sabbatical on transitions, the one he had preached in January my first year of teaching. The last time he preached it there was one baby in the congregation, we had 6 born this year in our congregation and another on the way. It isn’t the only transition our church has gone through, but it is one of the most obvious.
In this second rendition of this most apt message he talked about the word transition in the context of child-birth. Birth is a transition for the baby, but also for the mother, really the whole family. First there is no baby, and then when the birth is over a new life.
Birth is a transition, but more specifically there is a transition within the birthing process. Transition is the point that your body moves from dilation to pushing. I’ve written about the spiritual birthing metaphors before. But the idea of transition struck me. I am not sure on what I am transitioning into. But right now, emotionally, spiritually, I think I am in transition, and perhaps my church is true.
In both births I have personally experienced when my body transitioned, I freaked out. With the Peanut I decided I did not and could not have this baby. No thank you. I was done. With the Rooster I simply called for the drugs, “give me an epidural” just like the movies. Everyone in the room laughed. I don’t know how funny it was in the moment, but I do know that both reactions weren’t what I really wanted. I wanted to have the baby, I wanted to avoid the giant epidural needle. (I am in no way saying you shouldn’t get the epidural if that is the informed decision you are making. I am just personally afraid of it.) But when everything started changing, the feelings, the job of my body, the position of my baby, it freaked me out. It freaked me out. Even the second time. Even when I knew it was coming.
Both my girls seem to be going through major transitions this summer. The Peanut has been cut off from the bottle, and no longer sleeps in a crib. Night time has been going nicely but nap times the Peanut is attempting to phase out. I suppose I wouldn’t mind, but when she does actually go down she will sleep for like 2 hours, leaving me to believe she does in fact still need a nap. She is just fighting the new system, the one without a mid-day bottle.
Meanwhile Rooster has decided that she is not having this semi-mobile thing and gets up on her hands and knees about once every twenty minutes and thinks about crawling. I get the distinct impression that when she figures it out she is going to be quick. I am not sure I am going to be ready for it. But so far her legs and arms are not co-operating with her trunk and she ends up on her face more often than not. My normally easy-peasy good-tempered baby has become a crank fest. She wants to move already!
I feel for them both. I think I am going through a bit of a transition spiritually. I know that my God hold good things for me, but I don’t know exactly what is being birthed out of this. There are days when my writing is more difficult (hence the lack of blogging). It is all muddled confusing, too personal, not personal enough. I am dealing with some hard emotions I think, and the way God has designed me to get them out is through writing, only I try really hard not to publish other people’s personal business on my blog…just mine.
There don’t seem to be any answers (I know it feels like you might want to, but it isn’t time to push yet!) and there don’t seem to be any on the way. If there are no answers what is the point of the publish? I’ve certainly found more questions.
In labor you don’t really have a choice. Eventually your body starts pushing. But as I learned the second time around, it works much faster if you decide to get on board and be really purposeful when it is time to push. But spiritually we do have a choice. I think that if I wanted to I could choose to not do this, choose to not work through the issues, live in the uncomfortable tension indefinitely.
I know people who have I think. They tell me that they just don’t feel comfortable, or Jesus isn’t working for them anymore. I’ve been there, heck I am there. But I’ve learned a few things about transition, like when in doubt keep doing what you are doing and you won’t miss the urge to push. If you are ready you will respond. But you have to keep breathing, keep prepping, keep doing what was working before. Cling to the things that made this thing do able, and don’t be afraid to look to the people around you. Sometimes they are the only ones who can see that you are doing fine, even when you don’t feel like you are.
I have been ignoring this transition for too long, I don’t want to be stuck in it anymore. I know that the pushing is hard, but I prefer it to this strange in between. It always makes me feel like running. I believe in the transition. I believe there are greater things coming.
I have been reading a lot this summer. Most of it is not worth telling you about. It is free on my Kindle for a reason. I suppose you get what you pay for. Quite a bit of it is just your average poorly written love story, and to be honest I am over the story arch these authors are selling giving away.
I am unimpressed with the grand gesture story of a man showing up at a woman’s doorstep because he can’t get her out of his head. Even if it is raining and he drove all night. I am especially unimpressed when his wife is at home with the kids. His kids. I can’t help it. Even when the author paints the wife as some kind of depressive manipulative mess he is chained to, I am still rooting for her. This attitude makes for a disappointing ending to everything I read.
I want to read about the time that he got in the car and despite feelings developing for another women he deleted her from his phone decided to go to GNC and buy the biggest bottle of St. Johns wort they have and a carton of Chubby Hubby at the gas station on the corner. He then comes home with both and this kind of sexy dramatic ultimatum: Honey I love you, but you only get this Ice-cream if you eat it with this herbal supplement that treats depression. I love you too much to watch you suffer, and I will be bringing you one of your favorite treats to bribe you into taking it until you are healthy enough to want the supplement and a therapist, because you are my wife, and I am choosing not to get you out of my head, my heart, my life.
These crazy stories of people seeing each other once, electric shocks of chemistry, making out in public and in closets, I get it, it is fun. But I don’t want all that mistaken for love. I mean, I suppose it is a piece of romantic love but I am tired of this one trope holding the primary spot over our love story telling. I think we are being sold a giant piece of chocolate cake and then wonder as we feast on nothing but chocolate cake why we have a stomach ache and occasionally throw up. I like chocolate cake for breakfast on all family birthdays and sometimes just because. But there is so much more out there. And most of it doesn’t cause diabetes as quickly as 24/7 chocolate cake.
I want to know why we are uninterested in stories of a man choosing to do the vacuuming every single time it is needed because his wife has a muscle disorder. Even though she has never told him she needed it. Or a man who moves back in with his parents so his girlfriend’s daughter can live in a house with a backyard until he is ready to get married. A house he owns and pays the mortgage on he gives to the woman and child he is falling in love with. No strings attached. I want that in a book.
I know that I am speaking from a place of privilege. I come from a loving home and I witnessed loving relationships from not only my parents but both sets of grandparents. I want those kinds of stories to be the ones my daughters take to heart. The ones they hope for (unless God designed y’all to be single then my girls more power to you!)
I just want more. I want to read about people who laugh at each other’s jokes every single day, people who do the dishes even when it isn’t their turn. I want stories of dream vacations paid for by children who were a witness to this love and just think these two people deserve it. Not dream vacations paid for by one person sweeping the other off their feet and they just have a lot of sex on the beach where no one gets any sand in any crevices (not likely).
My dad’s dad still teases my grandmother like they are in the ninth grade. My other grandfather remembered the first corsage he ever put on the wrist of my grandmother and made sure those same flowers were resting on her casket. That is love. That is the kind of love I want for my girls, the kind I am currently working on. That is the kind of love I am interesting in reading about. Where’s the poorly written free kindle e-book about that?
I have a pretty simple voice. It is strong and I can carry a tune, but I was always a soprano in choirs so I can’t pick the alto line out of the hymnal like my mom. or make up a descant on top of the melody like my sister (the music therapist). But strong and steady I can sing the chorus and verses. As loud as you want it I can sing out. It came in handy from the back of the stage in the musicals I was in.
This summer as I was praying about what to do, what would honor God, what would restore me from the whirlwind of this school year, God moved my heart and settled on my guitar. The one I got for my twenty-first birthday. The one that has spent years in silence interrupted by a couple month stretches of me attempting to re-learn what I forgot.
While most of my friends spent their teenage years dreaming of a boy who could play them the guitar, I always wanted the guitar myself. I wanted to be able to play.
It is the simple melodies I am attracted to. Nothing on the radio or to remind me of high school. I am learning to play old hymns and songs from the toddler music class they have free at the Y, Old Macdonald and Twinkle Twinkle. Tonight I wanted to look up some songs from serenade night at Church camp I now sing as lullabies. I love anything you would sing around a campfire.
It is true that I heard the Lord tell me he would use my voice right there at that camp. I thought for a time He meant singing. I was drawn to my Mom’s old guitar because I thought I might need the skill.
I have since received a different vision for those same words, that the Lord would use my voice. I believe I am supposed to tell the stories I have been entrusted with, starting with my own. It is in a way the exact same thing I pictured when I was twelve. A simple story, a strong melody, the Lord leading, and I sing out. My taste in stories and songs are the same. I find the simple ones the most compelling, the old stories new again the most beautiful.
I like the way the shallow water feels. I dip my feet in and remember what someone once told me,, that the skin on your ankles is extra thin, or the veins are closer to the surface. This someone told me that the water on the outside somehow cools the blood on the inside and your heart pumps that cooler blood through your veins, cooling your entire body. I don’t know if it is true or not, but standing there in the shallow waters it feels true. I feel my whole body cooling off.
It is safe there in the shallow waters, and I am cool enough. I don’t even have to take my hat or sunglasses off. I can still hold my camera. My feet are steady on the sand and I do not have to think about my breathing. I just go about my business with my ankles in the water. Never fully submerged.
There are days when I have stayed in the shallow water the entire day. It just is the easiest thing to do. I don’t have to find anywhere to put my cellphone and keys, and I expend less energy that way.
But it is not the same thing as swimming. As filling your lungs up and diving deep below. Staying in the shallow waters does not give you that free feeling with your hair swimming all around you, and everything is quiet. You do not get to move the space around you to make a way for yourself, feel that space move past you like silk bed sheets. You do not experience the warmth and brightness of the sun, or the rush of air back into your lungs.
When you stay in the shallows all day you do not feel like you could be floating that night as you lie in bed. Every muscle exhausted and satisfied with the effort exerted. Your food does not taste better that night, seasoned with hunger. Those are prizes you cannot grasp with the tide swishing away at your ankles.
It isn’t as safe out there in the depths. You become breathless sometimes, there is nothing to protect you from the waves. Sometimes, all you can do is float on your back and wait for the calmer water to come. It can be dark and cold and for a split second you cannot figure out which direction you need to swim to breather.
But it is worth it, away from the shallow waters. The weightlessness, the freedom, they are found in the deep end.
I put the pajamas over her head and hope that the word sprawled across her chest is true. Dreamer. IIs my Peanut a dreamer? I wonder how we got the pajamas in the first place. I buy almost nothing for the girls, have been ridiculously blessed by hand me downs and doting grandparents. The PJ’s she is wearing are baby gap, so I am sure I did not buy them myself. Are you a dreamer? Does God speak to you in dreams?
I want to believe that God does not withold dreams from a two year old simply because she is two. I want to believe in a God who gives beautiful, marvelous, even prophetic dreams to a two year old, simply because He loves her, and she would think they were wonderful. Surely God knows that about my baby. He made her after all.
Lately the Peanut has been playing with a co-conspirator or two. It is either a monster named Grrr, or Monster, and Grrr. Either way he shows up mostly in the car and is always blamed for taking of the Peanut’s shoes. While we were on vacation he sang an entire verse of Row, Row, Row Your Boat for our entertainment. It was delightful and hilarious. Imagine a two year old attempting to sing in a deep growly monster voice all the way through a song.
We know that she has an incredible imagination, but is she a dreamer? I hope that she dream dreams that are bigger than her tiny self. With players that are beyond her tiny scope. I want her to dream the things of God, and live them here on earth.
Perhaps those pajamas were merely hand-me-downs. But I will choose to believe that prophecies can be worn on someones chest, and found in a bag of pre-worn clothing.
Abby Norman 