Bigger Picture Moments: On Being Noticed

There is tired written across my newly sunned cheeks and wild, wind-stricken hair swept back into a sweaty ponytail when I decide to take the leap. 

I flip open the computer, see my image reflected onto the screen from the webcam and think again -- maybe I'll record my audition for the show a different time when ...

But the kids are asleep. 

The nights are short.

And time is of the essence.

I take a deep breath, open the typed piece a friend and I had just hours before co-written and talk myself into hitting record.

As I self-argue again about perhaps freshening up a bit and putting my powdered face forward, I disregard the thought and remember why I'm doing this audition in the first place:

****

It's lonely sometimes, motherhood. 

I recall days, mostly after each of my babes were born, where I felt isolated, weary, invisible to all but little pairs of needy eyes. 

Days where loneliness stretched out across the never-ending hours until my husband would appear in the door frame, me longing for cohesive conversation after feeling enslaved in a house where sickness was bounding us to couch or naptimes were holding us hostage both morning and afternoon. 

Days where I desperately needed someone, a friend to come alongside me and remind me that babies outgrow naps and winter colds dwindle and mothers again find their voices to use for something other than reading the same story a billion times or shouting in frustration for everyone to stop whatever atrocity was being committed. 

There were days where I longed and cried and yearned for a village.

I felt so alone. My friends lived far away and schedules seemed to always conflict and there were weeks when I'd see hide nor hair of anyone outside of attending Bible study or running to the grocery store. 

So I wrote it all out -- the heartache, the pain, the loneliness that wiggles itself into the cracks of motherhood amid the beautiful and lovely and wonderful. 

Someone noticed. Actually, a lot of someones in this here blog space as well as my geographical area noticed. And they felt the same way. 

This voice of mine that spent so much time coming out as solely that of a mother began to emerge into the voice of a woman who also happened to be a mother, the me I'd not really known until a community came around me and helped me muddle through all of the life that had been thumping around inside my heart and head.

I grew and a community grew around me and I grew into community and friendship and I found my freakin' village all because someone noticed, all because someone, lots of someones heard me and said, oh yes, yes, yes, I feel that, too..

But I've never forgotten the lonely that stung my heart, left me weeping and heart sick for traveling companions, left me aching to be seen, to be noticed. 

****

I blink a few times, exhale and press record as I accept the tired eyes looking back at me, the messed hair. 

Because this -- plain and simple little old me recording my half of the audition for Listen to Your Mother in a dishelved state, not perfectly coiffed, while the children slumber and I steal moments from my evening to give space for my authentic voice to rise --  this is real motherhood. And it deserves real voice.

This production that pays tribute to mothers, gives voice to all the parts of  motherhood -- the hilarious, the messy, the lonely, the beautiful, the weary, the lovely,  the completely disheveled, the imperfect -- this show isn't just for the perfectly groomed or only professional writers or only actresses who can deliver flawless monologues; it's for real mothers with real voices and real messy hair and real tired eyes who have something very real, very important to share.

The popularity of Listen to Your Mother, as evidenced by multiple-city productions now running only three years since the inaugural Madison show, demonstrates that real motherhood not only deserves a real voice but that we mothers need a space to have real voice, hear a real voice.

Because we're all just waiting to have a voice given to the parts of our lives -- especially the complicated, messy, beautiful, impossible arena of motherhood -- that aren't often shared let alone celebrated.

We're all just waiting to be noticed, to be a little better known, to be heard. 

As my voice finds the courage and strength to speak into a microphone on a Chicago stage come May 6, giving life to the other half of a duet about the weariness and loneliness and hilarity of motherhood, I hope that another mother, somewhere, anywhere, will feel just a little more noticed, a little better known, a little more heard from her time spent in a space where motherhood is shared and celebrated. 

{Also, I promise to shower before the actual show and perhaps put on my powdered face because mothers don't just deserve to be given a real voice, they deserve {and need!} showers, too.}

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Thinking, That's All: Presence

I never liked the silence of me alone in a room without at least the presence of another to make it less still.

And then I discovered a Presence in which I wanted to bask, with whom I wanted to rest in the timelessness of quiet, in the quietness of slow-passing time.

I forget so easily, though, as easily as I forget the one thing for which I went to the store when I'm walking to the checkout, cart full of things we only half-need --

I forget amid the constant foghorn of busyness sounding through the thick air that my heart is filled not by the workings of my hands, but rather its filled by His handiwork within my heart during these times of stillness, during these times when my mind switches off the constant drumming of a make-it-or-break-it beat and instead beats in the rhythm of grace and rest.

I forget that His rhythm beats in my heart best.

We spend two days, John and I, in retreat of everyday life, filling small pockets of time with silence in His presence, keeping company with others who seeking to live in the intersection of where their deep joy meets the world's deep need.

We come around the table, seeking the very spoken Words Jesus shared in the upper room with his disciples.

We break bread together, trying to make sense of those Words, apply them to the here and now of our lives.

Together, we share life in solid community, bound by an appetite to know Him and make Him better known in our own hearts and in the hearts of those who crave more than what culture says life is in the here, in the now.

We share what has left us tired and aching -- the loneliness of being alone in a crowd and the noise of brains that won't enter into the rest to which He invites us.

It is an extreme paradox, this place and time in which we live, where we feel most alone when we are together and when we seek to come into His presence we feel alone because we are taken captive by the thoughts, the fears, the busyness of the day.

We break in retreat these two days to keep company with God.

Together.

Alone.

TogetherAlone.

And the quiet isn't so quiet.

Together

Or alone

when we keep company in His presence.