Everyday Life: When Empty Needs to Stay Empty

My day begins with blue eyes starting me in the face.

I'm startled from the rest of sleep into the fullness of day, and I'm pretty sure this is what being born must feel like.

One moment, safely nestled in the peaceful bliss of warm and safe and cozy and full and then not long after emerging into a world where there is cold and hunger and need and empty.

I am born every morning into a life full of need.

Mommy, I need you to hold me.
Honey, I need you to fill his book bag.
Mommy, I need you to sign this line.

There's the needs that don't cry out in voice but still sing out just as strong.

Load the dish washer.
Fill their bellies.
Fold the laundry.

And then there's the needs that are rapid-fire shot into my email inbox, dinging at each round emptied.

The website isn't working.
There's a mistake on page four.
We could really use your article a few days early.

I am born into the neediness of everyday.

And here I am needy myself.

After days, weeks, months and years, I'm finally coming to realize that it's impossible to fulfill all of the need when I myself need so much.

I'm hungry (in more ways than one).
I'm not working well.
I'm a hot mess.
I'm empty.

Empty. Every morning I am born into neediness and empty that needs to be filled.

In more than one way.

And in realizing that I can't fill all of the empty, I realize Who can. And how He fills me with what I need right now.

Right now.

In this season.

And right now, in this season, I'm reminded that there's empty that needs to remain just that  -- empty.

Right now the inside of my life is much like my garden -- there is harvest happening. And harvest requires tending. Some things that are empty right now -- the dresser drawers and the dish cabinet and the blog posts -- they have to wait when the fruit is ripe and needs to tending.

Right now -- in this season of mothering a preschooler and kindergartener -- there is a high need to be present, to tend to them as they mature and ripen.

Maybe the dishes go from table to dishwasher and bypass the empty cabinet.
Maybe the laundry goes from bodies to washer and dryer and back to bodies instead of inside dresser drawers.
Maybe the article only exists as an empty white screen void of black type.

Maybe in this season of harvest all of those things remain empty amidst the need while the hearts slowly learn what it means to be

full

fuller

fullest.

Five-Minute Friday: Expectations

Sun beats onto my bare shoulders.

And I live. 

I watch my boys run through the sprinkler, drops of water beading on their dark hair, in the same tones of my own, before each one spills onto their faces. 

They are everything bright and alive and beautiful.

And they remind me to live in the now. 

Not in the five minutes from now.

Not in the ringing of a telephone. 

Not in the to-come test results from yesterday's MRI. 

Not in gathered up expectations, diagnosis before they are delivered.

But in the truth spread out before me:

these are my good gifts from the very Good Giver 

to enjoy 

as I live right now. 

Everyday Life: Patience {In January}

I'd envisioned rest and relaxation, time spent in the company of silence and of others to be the major components of healing.

There is some of that here.

But, too, and maybe more, there is sacrifice.

Sacrifice of time spent with my husband in favor of listening to a body that desperately aches for sleep.

Sacrifice of the places I want to go, time I want to spend, conversations I want to have, ideas I want to explore, people I want to help, words for the book I must write.

I keep wishing in some ways that this body of mine

this heart

this mind

would heal faster.

{Lord, don't you know I have boys who are growing -- growing so fast and so furious that they wake up needing the next size clothing some days? And a husband who needs an awake wife? And a business and a blog ... and and     and ....}

But deep healing requires patience. And patience requires some amount of sacrifice.

Mostly, the sacrifice of expectations

enough to allow for permeable grace

to soak into the soil of busy

enough to allow for guilt-free days

as whole living slowly, steadily emerges like the sun rising in the horizon each morning.

A reminder

that it rises

one morning at a time.

{Even for a mom, a wife, a business owner, a blogger ...}


My word for 2012 is patience. Each month, I'm chronicling how patience is being woven into my life this year.

Everyday Life: Driving the speed limit

I've long mumbled under my breath {or even aloud} that there are not enough hours in the day.

To write.

To clean.

To mother.

To read.

To cook.

To shower.

To talk.

To wife {?}.

To love.

To breathe.

To live.

And, tonight, when I got to that part -- to live -- I had to stop and pause and take note.

There aren't enough hours in the day to live?

Or to live how I think I should live?

And like headlights sneak up on your car, startle you while you're driving down a lonesome street rocking out to your favorite song, singing your heart out, I'm staring at the lights, realizing they are right on my bumper, and I'm now keenly aware that I've not been paying attention to what I'm doing or thinking.

The design isn't flawed, nor is the Designer.

But, rather, what's flawed is my take on both.

Suddenly, I'm aware of my speed and the road and the white dividing lines marking the lanes again.

And I realize that I need to drive within the perimeters.

They exist for a reason.

Everyday Life: A Mommy Cocktail

He cries for me.

I can hear my 3 year old's small voice drifting down the hallway, seeping through a shut door.

"Mummmmeeeee," he calls.

My heart thumps in my chest at the sound of my name, leaps into my throat; I can see clearly in my mind's eye his red, tear-stained cheeks.

But I don't move from the bed.

My brain cannot handle one more minute of trying to respond to my children's needs and wants.

Neither can my body.

They are safe, I know, snuggled in the crevices of my husband's arms, one boy on each side of his strong, slender, solid body.

And they are loved.

He can love them better right now.

By day's end, I have nothing left to give other than reactions. My responding mechanism -- the part of my brain that filters my thoughts and catches the untruthful or unproductive ones before they spew out of my lips -- is too tired to do it's job of trapping the lies I often think or feel when my boys do or say something I don't like.

No. Actually, it's exhausted.

A few more moments of over-tired tears escape their room and wander into my ears.

Guilt, gratitude, relief, love, forgiveness mix into a cocktail I drink every night at bedtime.

Faint mumblings of "muummmmeee" echo in my mind long after both boys fall into a quiet slumber.

But when the well's dry, there's no water left to give.

My husband emerges from the shadows of bedtime, a rescue hero dressed as a strong, gentle father.

He reassures me that they know love from both my hand and his.

And that it's OK for me to tumble into our bedsheets and wrap myself up in blankets or words or prayer or whatever helps to fill me back up.

Because I'm not just raising two boys.

I'm raising myself into a mother.

And I'm not sure which requires more energy, more patience, more love or more forgiveness anymore.

{I'm reading Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves by Naomi Aldort, a book intended to take the struggle out of parenting. And I find myself pleased with the mothering road by day's end but exhausted. It's a worthwhile read.}