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Out of the Mud

When you woke up this morning, did you spring out of bed? Or did you roll over and pull the covers up to your ears, clenching your eyes tightly shut in hopes of getting back to whatever fantastic dream you were having. Maybe little voices, or even little feet and elbows, woke you up. The sunlight creeping between the slats in the blinds. The list of things to do that began rolling around in your head.

We all go to bed with the expectation that today becomes yesterday, and there will be a tomorrow waiting when we open our eyes again. That today sucked, but tomorrow won't; or vice-versa; or if we're lucky, we'll have two of those good ones in a row.

We go to bed mad at our spouses because we can wake up in the morning and take back the things we should have held inside. We put off reading a goodnight book with our kids because the dishes are piled up tonight and we can do it tomorrow instead. We make plans--okay, you take this one to get new shoes, and I'll take that one to tryouts, and then I can go workout while he's there, but don't forget about the birthday party, and when can we get a date night again?--and say to the ones we love that this is just a season.

Things will change and settle down. We'll quit slogging through this mud soon.

This morning, my friend woke up alone for the first time, and not because her husband left early for work or wanted to go on an early run while the sun was just coming up. It wasn't on the list--buy milk, get the car tags, become a widow--but it happened, nonetheless. Things changed, just not in the way they'd planned.

This morning, my friend was the first person I thought of, and my heart was so heavy for her and their boys--two, older than our two boys, but not so different. You see, it wasn't hard to put myself in her place. If you stop for more than a minute and let it settle, fear creeps up and grips your heart, tight and fierce, and you begin to play that game--that What if? game. The mud turns to quicksand.

And I tried really hard today, in an effort to follow all those old proverbs and modern sayings on glossy posters about grabbing life by the reins, not putting off things until tomorrow, being present in the moment. But I fell off that wagon pretty hard, and I didn't drop everything for the family Wii tournament, and I stayed in bed for an extra thirty minutes and soaked in the pristine silence of those moments before the rest of the family knew I was awake. Because life is full of the beautiful, the mundane, and yes, the painful.

I ache for you, my friend. I cry with you, I dance with you. And with you, I praise our Father who loves us enough to hold us tightly enough to ease our sobs, and gently enough to spin us around in circles, our hair flying wildly as we laugh. Because we both know that faith is huge, even when we are small.

Tomorrow, I will wake up again and think of you, and you of him. My eyes may tear again and subside, while yours may be red-rimmed and aching from the tears that never seem to stop. But I know that one day, you will wake up and finally be ready to dance again--and I will be ready and willing to dance with you.

I'll be waiting with no excuses, with a whole load of friends and 4-year-olds who want to dance with you, too, our feet moving so fast that we're breathless. But we'll still be able to sing at the top of our lungs: He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire. He set my feet on the rock, gave me a firm place to stand...yeah, and here I am!

http://www.seedsfamilyworship.net/listen-online/ 

The Mathematical Equation for Cool

I am not cool.

I'm okay with this. I know it. I own it. After all, I lived through my own junior high years and I know just how supremely uncool I can be. Can a girl with enormous tinted glasses and a bad spiral perm ever truly rebound?

By the way, I think there is a scientific formula that shows that your cool factor is inversely proportional to how hard you try to be cool. It just happens naturally, like being a 5' 10" supermodel. The universe cannot predict these things, and the harder you work toward it, the faster it slips through your nail-bitten fingers.

Which only goes to prove my point--sometimes (most of the time for me) we just luck into being cool. The planets align so rare, as Olivia Newton John would say, and there's magic in the air. And the uncool mom accidentally buys her son the hot new tennis shoes that "everyone" has.

Apparently, "Zigs" by Reebok are the new thing. I know this because someone told me, which is what happens when you are on the fringes of the cool crowd. Those people just know it; I have to be told.

Anyway, I came home with these shoes--primarily because they were all over the stores and I really didn't have many other options--and my son greeted me with more jubilation that I may ever see out of him ever again over a pair of shoes. "Oh Mother!" he proclaimed. "You are the most wonderful mother in the entire world. Please, let me do the laundry for a week for you. Sit down, let me rub your tired feet. Can I make dinner?"

Okay, perhaps I'm exaggerating. But the point is, this was one happy kid, who generally gives me no more than a shrug when I bring home clothes for him. Fashion isn't a word in his vocabulary. Comfort, however, is. If he could wear athletic pants and t-shirts every day so that his clothing just barely touched him, he would be ecstatic.

So, sometimes we just luck into these things. And since my guy is only 9, I have a better shot of it. There's another universal law that says the closer your child creeps toward being a teenager, the dumber things you will do as their parent. Until right about when the kid hits age 17, when I think parents hit the peak of their stupidity. I wasn't a cool teenager, and even I remember this phase that my parents went through. I'm so glad they're over it now.

A wise woman would have gotten out the video camera (a cool one would be able to use her iphone, but obviously, I don't have one) and recorded that moment for posterity. So that when I hit the peak of my own stupidity, I can play it back for my child and remind him that once--ONCE!--I was really cool.

But by then, he'll look back at these shoes and say, "Aw, mom! I can't believe you made me wear those shoes! How embarassing!" Yes, cool mom points are fleeting, especially for one who quotes Olivia Newton John in her blog.

Anyone know where I can get a spiral perm these days?

A Word is Dead When it is Said, Some Say

End of the year mini-rant:

I realized the other day that words like "veggies" have made their way into the mainstream. It isn't often you hear someone actually utter the full word "vegetables" anymore, have you noticed? Even waitstaff, giving you the rundown on the dinner specials, will call them "veggies." Am I two? Do they come with ranch for dipping?

I saw an interview recently that said even Scarlett Johansson hates the whole ScarJo thing. Maybe JLo thought it was cool back when she was a fly girl, but can we be over this now? Our parents gave us names for a reason. They spent months arguing over just the right moniker for your little toothless self. If you're going to have a nickname, have one that we can all appreciate. Like "Duckie."

We have a generation of people who can't spell, and it isn't because of a rampant illiteracy problem or some No Child Left Behind hullaballoo. U no who u r. Unless you are a shortish, extremely talented gentleman with a purple suit and a penchant for girlfriends with names like Mayte or Vanity, you need to learn to write out entire words. Pls.

Do you see the common theme in my rant? I guess it is because I grew up in the '80s, when we threw in extra words just to be cute--I mean, rad. What-EVAR. Totally awesome. Totally. See? We liked it so much we said it twice. We just had more of everything in the '80s. More hair. More makeup. More synthesizers. Oh wait--scratch that last one. I forgot about Will.i.am.

I was a journalism major way back in the day. I think we are nearly obsolete now. But then, we were taught that USA Today was the enemy--everything was getting fed to us in graphs and bites, no one wanted to read a whole news story anymore, people just wanted the highlights. Now we only want the highlights of the highlights.

Maybe I'm the oddball. I love words, how different people--next door or worlds apart--can string together 26 letters in new ways every time, and come up with something beautiful, or sad, or passionate, or inspiring. I love the way they make you think, make you believe, transport you.

I could go on and on, but I'm way over my 140 characters. So I'm off like a dirty shirt.

Totally.

Five

Today our baby turned five. And yes, I understand that five isn't fifteen and asking for the car keys; honestly, that's a whole other blog, if in fifteen years we haven't all moved on to holographic reading. But still, five--when it's the LAST five-year-old birthday you'll celebrate in your home--is pretty traumatic.

And when he's a younger sibling (translation: he is fully aware of Angry Birds, and knows everything about Star Wars and Harry Potter, where his older brother would have still been building with wooden blocks and not allowed to eat sugar) it is even more upsetting.

Example: "Mommy, FIVE-year-olds don't like Thomas." He said this to me within fifteen minutes of waking up at his new, prime-numbered age. As in, Thomas the Tank Engine, in whose theme we've had not one, but two birthday parties, and even dressed as for one Halloween and a good forty-six random other days during the year? Even though, personally, I'm a little over Thomas and Percy and Gordon and all those emotional engines, I don't know if I'm quite ready for my little guy to be over them.

Especially when, weeks before Halloween he approaches me with this. "Mommy, I want to be a Deatheater for Halloween." If you cannot say the "th" sound, you cannot be a Deatheater for Halloween. And thankfully, someone in Harry Potter licensing land had the smarts to not even make a size small in that particular costume. And to maintain my "good parent" status, let me explain that he only knows what that is from playing the LEGO Harry Potter game on my iPad, which is not wooden blocks but still slightly better than the alternative, I suppose.

So he's growing up. They're growing up. No matter what we'd like to think to the contrary, this is only the most recent of my bittersweet moments in what will be a long list. I'm already stocking up on tissues for his pre-K graduation and trying to figure out how to get my car not to go on autopilot to the preschool I've driven to for eight solid years.

It is a beautiful thing, to watch these little guys grow and learn, and make new connections and spout out amazingly insightful comments. And I wouldn't want either of my guys to stay little forever. But don't we all just want one more day?

Every moment is precious, and I'm looking forward to the next 364 days of Five-dom. Starting with this one--when he says, holding his hands about 15 inches apart, "Maybe five-year-olds like Thomas THIS much."

Thanks for tossing your sappy mom a bone, sweetie.

 

 

 

Tube Tops, Shaun Cassidy and Consequences

Being a grown-up isn't all I thought it was going to be.

I can eat chocolate for every meal. I can stay up as late as I want. I can walk into a liquor store with my head held high and buy anything on the shelves. I can wear whatever I want to and it doesn't have to match. I can put posters of Shaun Cassidy all over the walls.

Except I can't. I mean, I can--but there are consequences. Ew, that's such a dirty word. But it's what keeps (most) grown adults from staying up all night in their Shaun-Cassidy-papered bedrooms drinking Mad Dog and eating chocolate ice cream for dinner, while wearing tube tops and leg warmers. And aren't we thankful for that?

This morning, I was contemplating the pros and cons to being a grown-up, while I was thinking about all the things and people I needed to pray for--a prayer that usually goes much like author Anne Lamott's two most common prayers: Thank you, thank you, thank you, and Help me, help me, help me. Except I would throw in a third--Help them, help them, help them.

All the stuff that our parents shelter us from as kids becomes reality as we shift into adulthood. Today I'm praying for friends with new jobs, and novels they are giving their hearts and souls to, and who are going back to school to find their passions. For new babies, and babies yet unborn. For cancer that is in remission, for cancer that may not be in remission, for the thing that could be cancer but we have our fingers and toes crossed that it isn't. For moving away from friends and family, for moving to the unknown.

What happened to the joy of eating chocolate for every meal? It sneaks up on you, this grown-up stuff. It isn't always fun--but it's meaningful. Once that Hershey bar is gone, it's gone--except for the part where it shows up on your hips about 30 seconds later. But all of these friendships, and relationship crises, and jubilant celebrations--getting to pray for these things is a blessing no matter what the outcome.

It means I'm not alone on this journey, in my tube top and leg warmers. Thank you, thank you, thank you.