Everyday Life: The Weight of Even Good

On a Monday, I read aloud the letter slowly and deliberately for the first time. 

We sit around my dining room table as the boys play not-so-quietly in the adjoining living room.

Our hands -- they are so very full, I explain, smiling at the goodness of blessings in arms. 

Our employees, who are more like family, friends, they nod as my words unfold and then come together again realizing that this letter I'm speaking isn't one of just gratitude but rather one explaining our decision to seek out new hands to take the ropes of our Curves. 

Our hands, I say again, they are too full.

I can feel the heaviness lifting out of my arms when the understanding comes pouring out of their lips and shows in their knowing nods. 

Everyone knows what I'm saying is true, and I probably was the last one to realize it anyway. I've been feeling the heaviness we've been carrying since the first of this year brought about an unexpected health journey and the emergence of two growing boys who require more than just extra muscle to haul their lengthening bodies but also extra endurance and strength to shoulder the pangs of getting older. 

Then God, being good and being God, well, he's been pulling me toward living out the strengths He's given me, by not just opening doors, but hand-crafting them with only a carpenter's skill out of seemingly enormous and solid and unlikely walls. 

I can almost feel the stress in my arms when I think I about trying to carry it all ...

or when I think about trying to strong-arm my will against His out of the simple fear of change. 

We don't entertain the thought of carrying the entire good but heavy load -- the club, the boys, our marriage, writing, the ministries, the new callings -- for longer than it takes to pray and seek council and hear

that something has to be given into new hands

because we simply can't carry any of it well, if we keep dropping pieces of everything along the way.

And, so on a Monday, I turn my palms up and unclasp my grip

willing to let another set of hands unload from our arms 

some of the weight of blessing we're no longer meant to carry.

Adventures: Up and Running

So in college, probably just after John and I were engaged, I was inducted into this wildly hilarious, mostly innovative, completely out-of-the-box and totally off-the-wall type of problem-solving club I mostly refer to as the Mugford Way.

My initiation revolved around transferring a hot tub from John's best friend, Jamey Mugford's parent's old house {catch that?} to their new home.

Sounds standard, right?

Well, um, not so much.

Because they didn't just want to move the hot tub to the new house; they wanted to move the hot tub onto a platform deck they built so that they could access said tub from the second floor of their home.

So with no crane or heavy machinery, essentially the Mugford family along with John, me and Jamey's then-future wife, invented some sort of system to get the hot tub on the platform.

And it worked.

I don't know how it worked because mostly I closed my eyes during the whole process, but it did.

A few months later, I experienced another moving project where my husband and the Mugford men thought it would be way smarter and easier to move Jamey's couch from his third-floor apartment by rigging up a pulley system and lowering it out of the sliding glass door.

From the balcony.

It also worked. {Although, someone forgot to account for the swinging effect of a dangling couch, and the couch almost ended up smashing through the patio door of the second-floor neighbor's. But as I've learned almost DOES NOT count against success. Therefore, it was successful.}

This whole Mugford Way of innovation and problem-solving methods when it comes to home renovation or the moving of all things within a house -- be it hot tubs, couches or even pesky walls is like something you would see on a Discovery Channel show.

You kind of want to close your eyes while it's all happening, but it's so darn entertaining and mostly there is major success involved.

Needless to say, my extremely intelligent husband has lovingly adopted this thought process; so much so he now he often devises crazy plans to get the job done.

Like he did last night at our business.

You see, we were ushered into Monday morning with surround-sound booms of thunder, bold streaks of lightening and wild winds whipping through branches and leaves, all which shredded power lines and uprooted and rehomed century-old trees through out Grayslake.

The storm sent us running to take cover in our basement; when we emerged we didn't know how grateful we would soon become for having electricity and a roof and siding on our house.

Melissa, who still doesn't have power, said her neighborhood, which is closer to our club, was littered with trees and void of power, so when the boys and I ventured over to our Curves, just about three miles away from our home, we saw the reality the of the storm for many with our own eyes: no electricity, gaping holes in homes and broken windows.

Our club, while thankfully structurally undamaged, was left without power, which basically forced us to close Monday and, I thought, probably until the power was restored.

But that hubby of mine, he put on his thinking hat and tapped into the Mugford Way of problem solving {did I mention that both my hubby and the Mugfords have mad-business smarts and engineering brains?} to creatively get us back up and running for a few hours Tuesday night so we could at least offer a few hours of workouts and our hour-long Zumba class.

And this is what he did:


After all was said and done and I looked around our only sun-lit club with the fans whirling, carrying cool outside air into our Curves while the music was pumping -- all powered by John's station wagon, all I could say, a smile beaming on my face was
"Wow, honey, I kind of feel like a Mugford right now."


As a few of our ladies happily entered the club to workout, John and I stood there grinning like idiots for a minute looking at John's master plan in action, and, I think, for the first time ever, I felt the way John has felt from the beginning of his friendship with Jamey -- like I've been fully indoctrinated into the Mugford Way and may be at the point of no return.

{Awesomely, half way through our hour-long Zumba class, the power miraculously switched back on and we are up and running, but Melissa still doesn't have any. Will you send her some love via blog or Twitter {@Pbinmyhair} today? She can see a few things via phone Internet, and it might make her day.}

Virtual Coffee: Twelve

If we were having coffee today, this cloudly, overcast third of May, I'd be sipping my almond oolong from a steaming mug because it's still chilly enough to need the warmth of tea.

I'd ask what you'd like for your afternoon caffeine fix, and we'd likely let the conversation naturally drift from complaining about the bleak midwestern weather.

Because my irritation with the weather is getting old. :)

So I'd share with you something else that I am SO done with -- G's whole sassy almost-four attitude that's creeped into his normally sunny {albeit strong-willed} personality.

And I'd ask for prayers and any guidance you might have with helping to curb the sass.

Because the kid is driving me bananas. Ba-na-nas, I tell you! I just don't do sass well.

But, in positive news, I am doing well at something with which I normally struggle. Yesterday my Curves coaches and I began the Curves 90-Day Challenge, one issued to us by the head honchos of Curves at our spring training regionals event last month.

We're using the Curves Weight Management Program for the nutrition aspect and getting our exercise from working out the Curves circuit, which we all usually do anyway.

And it's going swimmingly! Curves has come out with some new awesome interactive tools to help guide us through the Weight Management program, and the coaches and I are test piloting it.

When it's all said and done, I'm hoping to have shed this last 15-20 pounds so hopefully I'll be meeelllllting. And maybe eight weeks from now you won't recognize me?



Maybe, also, eight weeks from now when I take another body shot I'll have cleaned the bathroom mirror, too, before inviting guests over for coffee?

Probably, also, we'd talk about how I broke my own heart yesterday: without fact checking, I posted a non-quote on my Facebook wall. Turns out, the first part of the quote was from someone else who wasn't nearly as famous as the person to whom I attributed it.

Don't you hate it when that happens? Or is that just me because of my inner journalist? I just hate printing anything that isn't totally accurate, even if it is just to Facebook or Twitter.

And I could probably drone on and on about the myriad reasons why I simultaneously love and don't love those social mediums. But I'll spare you my Neil Postman-esque monologue.

At any rate, it was a good reminder for me to always double check my sources.

And, yes, in that moment of truth when I realized my error, my mind went flashing back to the time in college when Dr. Murphy marked a big fat D on one of my papers for her senior-level journalism class after I'd misspelled someone's last name.

And that her heaping out a mega-dose mercy on my perfectionist soul; she normally assigned an F for that type of mistake.

Well, enough about me -- how are YOU! What's new? Have I missed a post close to your heart? Will you link it with your comment? Or just tell me what you're thinking about today? Or how about curbing the sass?

<

Chicago Moms Blog: He's just that into me

At first, it's just a whisper.
"You're meant to be together."
But as time goes on, it becomes louder.
"You're not meant to lead separate lives right now."
And louder.
"This just isn't the time to be apart."
Until there's an overwhelming volume of voice ringing inside.
"You may have two bodies, but you're still attached! Attached at the hip, the breast, the heart. Now's not the time to be apart for such long spans. He wants to be with you. That will come soon enough."

It doesn't feel right to be gone from baby E for more than a few hours at a time, so I simply try not to do it. But that's easier said than done in a culture that often doesn't see mothering as a priority. Or when surrounded by friends who expect babysitters to effortlessly take your place. Or when turning down invitations for adult-only functions in a time where career and opportunities and money often come before family.

I remember feeling the need for togetherness ever so strongly with my first-born son, too; though then I tried to shove those feelings under the cradle. Perhaps, I wanted to ignore it because I was a full-time, stay-at-home mom who felt like she'd lost all identity except for that of mommy, and I desperately wanted to be me again. Nonetheless, I never could really ignore it, though sometimes I strongly resented it. Invitations to get togethers and events that spanned hours were always considered but were usually declined because I couldn't leave my nurslings for that long. But as I have grown into my mommy skin, I've come to embrace and enjoy that babies and their mothers should be together [when they can]. Because they belong together.[I'm not talking about career mothers who need to work, so let's be clear. This is not, I repeat, not about working moms! So, for the love of God, please put down the torch; my thin skin cannot take much more burn after the breastfeeding post.]

The more I've thought about separation of baby and mom, the more it's become evident that I've turned into the mom who doesn't leave her baby often if she doesn't need to for work or a few hours of sanity.
When I do leave, after two hours pass, my breasts swell with milk, and I'm reminded that we're supposed to be together. The weight of the separation is too heavy for my shoulders; I hurry home.

When I was invited to the Sillicon Valley Moms Chevy brands and bloggers round table discussion and event at the Hard Rock Hotel in Chicago, my overflowing mommy heart began battling with my socialite brain. I wanted to meet my fellow bloggers and learn about how brands and bloggers work together. But I didn't want to leave baby E.
Do I go? Can I leave baby E for eight hours?
Sure, I can, but do I want to leave him for that long? This isn't like going to work, having to provide for my family. This is something that's fun. Yes, I should have fun, but eight hours worth? Without him? Oh, yes, I'm sure he'll survive, but will I survive? I'm a nursing mom; those bad boys overflow with milk every two hours. I don't want to be chained to a breastpump. I'd much rather be attached to my baby.
And thus the argument raged for days within my mind before I exploded in a direct message via Twitter asking Melissa if she thought baby E would be welcomed.
Her response [I love it -- so simple]: just ask!
So I did. Now you know you are working with a clearly intelligent and sincere group of ladies when the answer you recieve is sent only a half hour after the inquiry and it warmly states, "Of course, you can bring your baby. We're all moms after all."
Huge exhale. So it was settled. I didn't have to choose between being a mommy and an event-attending blogger. And that's good because I'm both. The other SV Moms bloggers and brand representatives at the SV Moms Chevy event understood and embraced that at this point I couldn't separate mommy from blogger; I didn't feel any scrutiny or awkwardness even when E. bellowed during the round table discussion, and I had to excuse us several times. Not from the brands or the bloggers or the SV Moms coordinators.
And I realized there, these are the kinds of companies with whom I want to be involved. And the SV Moms group is the kind of group with which I can be proud to partner. Because as Melissa said on our way home, in a totally unrelated conversation, "You cannot be a mommy blogger without being a mommy first." Amen, sister.
Yesterday, after the event, I left feeling like there are people who do understand the importance of mommying. There are people get that mommying isn't something that can be neatly packaged into specific times and spaces, rather it overflows into ever aspect of life at certain periods of the motherhood journey.
While I'm overwhelmingly grateful for those who embrace our temporary togetherness,I've finally come to the point where I'm all right with no one accepting and welcoming it -- with no one being just that into the package deal of "us." Because this little fellow? Well, he's just that into me.

And me? The feelings are reciprocal.