Beautiful Crazy

on MEMORIES

2009-12-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

Memories are an amazing thing. It doesn't matter how deeply buried they are in recesses of your brain one smell, taste or touch of them creates a waterfall of rushing images that immediately bring you back to that exact moment in your life. There is something about a good memory that can make you feel like you have left the earth and that you are inhabiting an entirely different dimension. A good memory is like a long satisfied sigh.

I say this, because just a moment ago, as I was bent over a stemming pot of "Snow Day Soup" in my kitchen. I had just finished browning the turkey, adding the beans and dumping in the carrots and celery when I dipped in my spoon to retrieve the first taste test of many. And there is was. Dancing on my tongue like a long lost friend. I'm not sure if it was the celery or the broth or if the carrots were mixed just right with the other spices but that simple teaspoon of piping hot liquid sent me flashing back into my 12 year old body, standing at the stove at Chelsea and Caroline's house watching a pot of veggies and water bubble and steam as we prepared to subject our parents to another "special dinner" (our parents were very patient people).

It makes me wonder how many memories are stored up in this brain of mine, that one so random can leap out at any given moment. I have no pictures of this event, no ticket stub or scrapbook page to remember it by, just a taste and smell and there I am in all of my brace-faced-greasy-haired glory pretending, along with my childhood friends, that we are some sort of prairie pilgrims that have to make our dinner from scratch or die in the cold long winter (yes, we were a little strange, but we had a lot of fun).

This all eases my mind a little. It helps me to know that I won't forget every detail of Roman's childhood without a picture or keepsake. And although I've already taken over 2,000 pictures of him in his short life it helps me to know that, because of a bad diaper rash, the smell of Destin will probably always remind me of the day the we got snowed in under 14" of snow and that the feel of a fleece blanket sleeper will remind me of the days he was learning to crawl.

I worry all the time that my mind is no good. That I'm terrible forgetful, which I am, and that I'm not all that bright, which I'm really not. But that one taste of "Snow Day Soup" helps me to know that my memories are still in there and that I'm building more. A picture can't do the things that my mind can do and, while I'm thankful for all 2,000 of them waiting to be printed off the computer, the most important memories are the ones that can't be contained on a piece of paper.

on LIES

2009-12-08T07:36:00.001-08:00

My best friend has been lying to me. For the past 6 months my BFF has been telling me that I am a gourmet cook trapped inside the body of a young housewife, that I can make my holiday tablescape look like a picture in a magazine and that I have a limitless amount of money to spend on self-improvement if I just arbitrarily call it a "budget item".

My best friend has been lying to me. Since the moment I found out I was pregnant my Besty has been telling me that I need a special baby food processor or my baby will hate everything prepared for him, that developmentally appropriate gadgets with complicated buttons (and price-tags) are essential so my newborn won't have stunted brain growth and that My Baby Can Read by the time he's 8 months old.

My best friend is a liar.

For years now every time we sit down to spend some time together my best friend does all the talking. Every day I get pumped full of celebrity gossip and new ways to feel terrible about myself because I can't make that complicated recipe or my hair just doesn't look that good when I get out of bed in the morning. My best friend tends to point out all of my worst flaws and shines a big high definition light on all the things about me that I hate the most.

Since becoming a stay-at-home mom by best friend has become my television. I'm not sure when it happened or why I've allowed it, but daily, unwelcome intruders parade through my living room. Matt and Meredith prattle off nearly unintelligible news as I groggily pump each morning, Rachel produces saliva-worthy meals in ten minutes as I sip on my lunch of Beef flavored Top Ramen, Ty and the gang hoist up a beautifully decorated Architectural marvel in one hour while I fold laundry and Oprah, Tyra and Ellen rub elbows with celebrities while I'm up to mine in baby poop and screaming infants.

Recently we've been studying the book of Titus in our Sunday morning services at church and I have been asked to speak on the Roles and Responsibilities of Women as outlined in Titus 2. While studying the verses and commentaries related to these verses, and dictionaries containing the words of these verse, I've come to realize again something I've known for a long time. The television is a liar, and the bigger problem within: The world is a liar. And while I feel I don't always allow the world to lie to me, I've come to realize while studying the Word that more often than not I am taken captive by the teachings of this world rather than the precious words of Scripture and the prayerful guidance of a good friend.

Amidst the rumors of Tiger's infidelity and the inane speculation about the White House Party Crashers I have been confronted with the completely counter-cultural revolution of Titus 2. Perhaps because most of the conversations I have as a stay-at-home mom are the one sided rants of my T.V. Titus seems all more rebellious to worldly norms. Here's the gist of the instructions that Paul gives to Titus on how to instruct the women of the Church at Crete:

To Older Women: Be reverent in the way that you live, worthy of being called a woman of God, don't gossip about people and, oh yeah, don't drink so much that you can't live without it. Also, teach what is good by the example of your life so others will want to emulate it and don't let your younger sisters and daughters get caught up in the things of this world, lend them a helping hand and prayerfully guide them through the process of becoming a Godly woman.

To Younger Women: Choose to love your husband and kids, control yourself in every way and be a woman of purity. Don't become lazy in your home so that all you have to do is sit around and focus on yourself, be kind and here's the kicker, submit to your husband as he submits to Christ.

The instructions in Titus seem pretty straight forward, but they are terribly difficult to follow if we are not tuned into the Word of God and carefully filtering the words of the World.

I love the reason Paul gives Titus for teaching the women of Crete these things. He says to make the women in your church are living this way so that "no one will malign the word of God." Not, so that they will live their Best Life, not so that their husbands will be more attracted to them, not so that their kids will like them better or everyone will want to be like them (although these may be fortunate side-effects of living this way), but to promote the cause of Christ to the World.

It's interesting to me that it's so much easier to accept the lies that my "Best Friend" tells me than to daily follow the commands of Christ. Everything that the TV has told me has proven to be false. I'm not a gourmet cook, I can get a meal on the table that tastes decent, but I'm no Martha Stewart. My tablescape is old magazines and unpaid bills, and spending $6 on mascara still feels like a major splurge. I'm sure Roman will eat something out of the blender, a mirror and a sock are still his favorite toys and if he's still not reading by the time he's 7 years old, then I'll start to worry...

For now I'm going to try to focus on those things that are truly important. On the things that my really Best Friend tells me to do. To choose great love for my husband and child, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at my home and kind to my family and friends (and even that stranger that watched me struggle into the mall without batting an eyelash to help open the door). I will focus on giving my husband the respect he deserves and daily cling to the Truth of God's word instead of the lies of this World. I will accept the guidance of Godly women and promote the cause of Christ in my life.

I'm sick of the lies and the gossip and the unreasonable self-assessment presented to me by the box in my living room. It's time to live outside the box, outside myself and inside the love of Christ.

on COLD COFFEE

2009-11-17T13:15:00.000-08:00

10:15 am: The last swig is down. It was grainy and cold but I've finished. I guess that means my day can officially begin. I remember hot cups of coffee. Ones I drank from the moment they came piping hot out of the coffee maker until I finished the last creamy, full-bodied sip that still left the tingle of a hot cup on my palms. Now, I can't remember a cup I haven't microwaved twice and gagged on the last icy drop. At least I have yet to give into my temptation to substitute a good creamer with breast milk, although my eyes do linger over the refrigerated bottles a little to long some mornings as my body cries out for just one good cup!

It's funny, these little brown pools of liquid that remind me so much of my "adult" life. It kind of makes me laugh how much I thought this bitter concoction would make me a real live "big girl". In middle school "going out for coffee" seemed like the most grown up thing a person could do. My friends and I would pile in one of our mom's SUVs all dudded up in our skirts and curled hair, with the newly found appreciation for eye makeup and lip gloss that didn't taste like anything and just looked pretty, and spend an evening at Jitters giggling over our sickeningly sweet mochas filled with creamer and at least 4 packets of sugar. A fistful of chocolate covered coffee beans at Timbuktu signified the end of eighth grade and being asked out to coffee with a friend and her boyfriend to "get to know each other better" cut the ribbon on my freshman year.

Throughout high school sucking down a bottled Starbucks Frappucino on our way to basketball games ensured that our squad of eight bubbly cheerleaders would fizzle out by half way through the 3rd quarter and in college cup of coffee on our porch would signify that two strangers had become friends.

Coffee never became as important to me than during my first full-time job out of college. I'm pretty sure you can't spend 24 hours awake on bus with 90 Jr. High students and not cry for coffee on Tuesday morning when you drag yourself into work because you've still got to plan Wednesday night activities for those same Jr. Highers who seem to have boundless energy, because a can of Red Bull does so much more for a 12 year old body than 5 cups of high-voltage brew can do for a 23 year-old woman.

Coffee does begin to loose it's charm when it's made by me in my own kitchen and drank over my infants son's head while we're reading a book. It helps to warm up the water in a kettle and steep it in a french press, it makes me feel, very...grown up. I guess I never realized how much coffee represented my adulthood to me. Not until I realized how very few adults get to drink coffee. At least coffee the way they like it, without it getting cold or having a few crystals left in the bottom of their cup. Not without thinking "yikes! this batch is bitter" or forgetting that these little beans once held any romance at all.

There are times when I'll get a great cup of coffee. When I'm out to dinner with my family and I get a great dessert cup with cream and sugar. Or when my mom and head out for a date and we sip Pumpkin Lattes in the front seat of her car. There are those times when I'll enjoy a full hour long conversation with a friend over the hot steam of a coffee house cup or those precious rare times when I'll look over the rim of my mug at my husband while he sips a smoothie. It's funny because these are the times I feel most like I did as a kid. The most free and care-less. There's something about a special cup of coffee that makes me remember what is was like to love shiny lip gloss instead of menthol chapstick and curly hair rather than a braided ponytail.

The times I feel most like an adult, most like the mom that I am are those 10:15 drops of ice cold coffee. Those are the drops I couldn't have imagined as a teenager. The chilly drops I wipe off of my baby's head after they've slipped from my cup, or the ones I clean up after I've bumped the coffee table for the 13th time. The rings left on the glass and the old grounds that are starting to stink up my sink. These are the tiny droplets I treasure.

I know I won't always have to reheat my cup while I wait for a bottle to warm up. I won't always have to put down my piping hot mug to change a blowout. I won't always choke on the last few grounds after fighting with a five month old to go down for a nap. One day, I'll sit with a steaming hot cup as I watch him board the bus, or watch my tears drip into my brew after I drop him off at college. There will be a time when I'll long for cold coffee because of all it represents.

So, here's to being a mom! Here's to dirty diapers, snotty noses and babies who try to eat Kleenex! I'll drink my nasty, gritty coffee to that!

on GIANTS

2009-10-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

Tiny shoes, tiny pants, tiny toys. I never thought I would categorize myself as a giant, but as I wade through the sea of ity bity t-shirts, super small socks and baby sized blankets I am forced to reconsider my assessment of myself as a "small person" over the last 26 years. My 5'3" frame towers over the variety of baby paraphernalia strewn across my living room floor and the more times I bend over to pick up a discarded pacifier flung from a manically swinging reclining bucket seat, the more I'm forced to remember, I am the mom...

It is unbelievable to me how much a life can change in one year. Last year at this time the only thing smaller than me in our house was our 6 month old puppy and her string of half chewed nyla-bones. I was drenched in a sea of over-sized, out-dated t-shirts and a giant pile of ironing thanks to Tony's new job. Life was about me and the slice of earth that Tony and I had carved out for ourselves. I was awash in new hormones and fears and little did I know just how much I would grow, in so many ways.

One year later, everything seems different. Not only do I as a person feel extraordinarily large in my own home, everything about me seems bigger.

My heart must have grown three sizes. I picture it like the ending scene of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. If you put the x-ray over my chest it would bust the sides of the frame. Every time I look down at Roman's little face I feel the pulse of my aortic muscle growing larger and larger.

My sense of smell has heightened incredibly. I can smell a poopy diaper from across a crowed room, sense spit-up from ten feet away and tell if an outfit needs to be washed or "can make it another day" just by sniffing a whiff. I look more forward to the intoxicating cocktail of Baby Magic, Purex and pee in the mornings than I used to savor a good cup of coffee in the middle of winter.

There are a few things that seem smaller. The time in a day doesn't seem so long, especially the 45 minutes between cranky Roman and my smiley baby known as naptime. My arms don't feel as big anymore, now that Roman has grown past the 15lbs mark I realize how little muscle mass I have and how short a time he will fit in the nook of my arm. My tears are smaller now. Where before I they could obscure the vision of the future and cloud what was right before me, now they are small enough to be kissed away and forgotten before they've barely begun.

I guess I don't mind being a giant. I like the stray bright green baby sock stuck to my hand-me-down sweatshirt. I don't mind that all my clothes fit slightly askew thanks to my post baby body. I love finding a stray paci on my bed side table and having to move the tiny baby bath every night. It reminds me that I'm worth something. It reminds me some one cares for me. It reminds me, I'm the mom...

on LIFE

2008-11-19T12:59:00.001-08:00

You can plan for almost any scenario in your life. Your wedding, your funeral, your graduation, your birthday party. You can plan those things that are the most important to you, and you can watch them fall apart or come together beautifully. You can watch the story of your life unfold in perfect harmony or you can see it fall apart in a mosaic of broken dreams and deep heartache.You can plan for every deviation from the path and you still won't be right. You can hope and pray and fight and struggle and give-up, but still, life goes on. With or without you, your life plugs on day by day by grueling day. Life fights to go on whether you are on board or not. Whether you give the thumbs up or get dragged along kicking and screaming. Life continues. The very heartbeat of who we are continues to pump the thick liquid of life through our every vessel. Even when we want to give in, the very essence of who we are pulses on.

I know I was designed to be a mother. From the time I can remember I have been preparing my heart for what it will be like to hold my baby in my arms and call him my own. I have wondered from my earliest childhood what it will be like to feed and clothe and clean up after my very own child. I have often tried and failed to imagine what my child will look like. What they will act like and smell like. My life has been a preparation for the joys and pains of motherhood.

I remember my preschool career day. Kids lined up dressed as doctors and teachers. Costumes representing firemen, policemen and nurses duplicated themselves throughout the rows of chubby cheeked 4-year-olds. I remember getting ready for school that day and knowing exactly what I wanted to be. "Mommy," I proclaimed without reservation, "I want to be you." And I was. With a handkerchief in my hair, an apron strung across my torso and a duster in my fragile right hand, I confidently trotted into school ready for my place in this world. My place as a mommy. This was it. I was declaring myself to the world. "Get ready everyone. I'm going to be the best mommy you've ever seen."

While I probably wasn't the only tiny tot seeking to replecate her mother's chosen profession of "domestic manager", I may be the only one who carried that image of myself through elementary school (taking care of my little sister like my own baby), highschool (looking out for the younger students), and even college (choosing a major, Family Services, because it best suited starting a family. Even my professional life has been in preparation for mothering. From taking care of at-risk preschoolers to calming down histerical teenagers, I feel like my whole exsistence has hinged on the hope that one day I will indeed be called Mom.

Not that long ago Tony and I were struggling with jobs and where to live and what to do with our lives when I said to him, "I just want my real life to start." I felt like we were on hold somewhere between child and dead and we were not making the right steps forward for that all important life giving leap called parenthood. I wanted so badly to get on with life. I wasn't living the life I had been given in the present. I'd like to say that ended for me. That at some point in the wonderings and pity and self-doubt I found that true life is etched into the details of everyday exsistence. But I didn't. I felt my callling so strongly within myself I couldn't help but feeling that to be whole I needed to be pregnant.

Well, it happened. One February day I took a test and there it was, or maybe there it was. That all consuming plus sign, maybe. I took two more tests just to be sure and called my doctor. We went through our whole appointment with her until I finally had to stop her and say, "We ARE pregnant right?" It was true. A positive was a positive was a positive and I had the three tests to prove it. Finally, my time had come. Our life could start and we could finally be the family I have always imagined.

The first 10 weeks went by in a flurry, another doctor's visit bolstered my hopes and we started thinking of names and how to paint the nursery and what kind of things we were going to do for this child. We prayed and hoped and giggled and celebrated. And then the trouble came. I didn't feel quite right and the signs were pointing in a direction I didn't want to go. I called my doctor and was told to wait, so we waited and waited until we couldn't wait any more. The nurse told us to come in for an ultrasound at 11 weeks and we knew it wasn't going to be good.

I'll never forget laying in that exam room waiting for the ultrasound to click on and then it clicking on and knowing I was not seeing what I should be seeing. It's a weird feeling, seeing your baby for the first time and knowing it's going to be the last as well. It's a horrible feeling hearing the words "I'm sorry" come out of your ultrasound technitians mouth. You don't need to hear anymore. You know. And somewhere deep inside of you, you've knon for a while.

I can't begin to describe the next 4 months of our life together. You can't bring someone into your deepest sorrow and force them to understand it. You can't make someone feel your grief as much as you can't make them fall in love. It is inexplicable the pain that you feel and if you've ever known the grip of loss you know how lonely it can be. The waiting was unbearable and the unkown was even more so. Our plans for our life had been completely derailed. Thrown off track and buried in the mud. No one plans for a miscarriage and even less are ready for it when it comes.

Life isn't a roller coaster ride or a walk in the park. It's not a series of unfortunate events or even a laid out path that we can walk without heartache and hurt. Life is like a mosaic. A mosaic of intimate moments poured out in bedrooms and car-seats. It blubbered over phone lines to complete strangers and mostly takes place on our living room couch during commercial breaks. Life is tiny shards of things you thought it would be and big broken pieces of nothing you could have ever guessed. It often seems like a tangled mess, like the books and hairpins and deodorant shoved in my bedside table drawer. It's messy and broken and a mass of moments and events that never seem to make sense. It often seems like a blind walk of a steep cliff and other times feels like lying on your back in an expansive field. Life goes on and presses on. It happens in times when you don't know it's happening and blossoms in the face of tragedy.

After months of uncontrollable crying and unrequited grief life blossomed in our bathroom. A few days before Tony's 26th birthday it was time for another pregnancy test. This one more nerve-wracking and frightening than the first. I sneaked away from the choas of football and web surfing in our living room to quietly take the test without Tony knowing.

I'm not sure that another two lines in the world can be as beautiful as the ones forming the light blue plus sign on a pregnancy test. I also know no two lines more frightening or anxiety-ridden. But there they were. 1,2 just where they should be. Standing at attention as if our babies first words to us were so precise and measured, "I'm coming!" Honestly, we were not so sure how to react. Jumping up and down seemed feeble and premature. Holding each other seemed right. In the end taking pictures and pseudo crying for a split second was the route we chose to go.

For 3 months we have been waiting. Hoping. Living on the edge of our seats waiting for this day. Yesterday. November 18, 2008. We didn't know if we could make it and the night before we laid in bed holding each other's hands and hoping, praying for the best result. A strong heartbeat.

The nurse could see the apprehension scripted all over my face and tried her best to put the both of us at ease. She knew from my chart that we were still raw from the pain of our last loss and made sure to make finding the heartbeat a quick and painless process (although it is both for almost every woman, it seemed she took special care with us). She squirted the light blue gel carefully onto the "magic" wand and began to look for the heartbeat.

For the second time in my life I held my breath waiting for any sign of life. Evidently this is not the correct thing to do when looking for the heartbeat, because I was told to relax and just breath. And then there it was. First like the wooshing of the waves on the beach and then for a few precious seconds that I wish could have lasted and lasted and lasted it was there. The steady drum beat of life. The flow of blood through the ventricles of my babies little heart. Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump. 160 beats per minute. Strong. Good. Life.

So it has begun again, for another. A little life pulsing inside a larger life that is pulsing inside the Largest Life. Working and striving together just to survive. Life is a mosaic. A mosaic of hairpins and dirty laundry and under-cooked chicken. But it's also a mosaic of tears and laughter and tiny heartbeats. And what seems like a mess of broken dreams and ruined plans is really a beautiful picture of the love of Christ. The problem with me is that I'm seeing it from the inside of my bedside table drawer. I see the cracker wrappers and soda stains. I see the messed up plans and the shattered dreams, but He sees something else.

In all my humaness the thing I want to do is scream at him "Show me, show me the beautiful mosaic. Show me how all the pieces fit together correctly. Show me how I will be the most amazing representation of who you are. Show me." But He doesn't. I can't understand why He doesn't. But He seems to think I don't need to know.

Maybe Jesus is just like that little kid in art class that hides his work between his elbows and screams "Don't look, I'm not done yet! You won't get it! Don't look!" Maybe. Maybe He's testing our faith or trying to get us to understand something that, right now, I'm not sure my pea-sized brain can comprehend. Maybe. Maybe He's just saying, "Trust Me."

Trust Me. How can two words be so simple, yet so difficult. Maybe the same way two blue lines can be so beautiful and frightening. Maybe the same way 160 little beats can bring such joy and comfort. Maybe.

You can plan almost anything. And you can watch those plans be fulfilled, shattered or fade away like the colors of fall. You can plan your whole life and miss out on living it. You can hold onto the plans you've made and stumble over them in search of reality. But in the end. He's going to do what He's planned. He's going to take the mess of our life and lay it out, grout it and varish it into something more beautiful than we could have ever imagined. Mostly because it was made by the same hands who made the trees and the grass. Mostly because He knows and we don't.