The Forty-First Letter: On Getting Comfortable & Why I Love College Students

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

Your dad and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary last weekend. And by “celebrated” I mean we got take-out blue cheese and bacon burgers from a local foodie place and ate them during your quiet time on Sunday afternoon.

Twelve years is kind of a long time, considering I am a pretty young person.

And then I realize that I turn thirty-four next week. Thirty-four years young.

Most of my friends are older than I am, so I’m not really shocked by my age. What surprises me, sometimes, is how I’m settling into this life, how I still don’t feel like a “grown-up” but I’m beginning to be content not being one.

Settling-in is a good thing.

Mostly. I’ll be the first to admit it.

It is also a bad thing. Because my life has been pretty easy so far, I’ve felt myself getting pretty comfortable, not holding myself to as high of standards, letting my convictions slide as convenience (mine, as well as yours) takes center stage. Things that are more work, which I would have always thought “worth it,” don’t always seem so anymore.

It feels weird even to admit it, because that is so not me. I have always been overflowing with conviction. Not necessarily motivation, I’ll confess, but to the extent that I have not been motivated to make a change or be the change I saw necessary, I have always been aware of the way that I was not living up to my convictions. I think I’ve always favored clarity and naivety and idealism to being practical.

Because, let’s face it. The gospel is naive, girls. Jesus is pretty naive when he calls us to give up everything, isn’t he? That’s impractical, isn’t it? We don’t hear that very often from pulpits.

I don’t think others sense it yet, this tension I’m feeling as I get comfortable in my life.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m still seen as young and a little too idealistic at, say, church committee meetings. I attend an aging church, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by me that often when I make suggestions to folks who’ve been in the church for decades, I still hear the whole “Well, fourteen years ago, we had a committee that did such and such and that’s why we don’t do it that way any more.” That just warms the cockles of my heart, as you can imagine.

Or not.

But the thing is, when I’m honest with myself, I can admit that sometimes, now that I’m in my thirties, I simply want to do the easy thing, too.

Because I can, gosh darn it.

And I don’t like the hard work and I don’t really like change.

I hate that.

But here’s something I’ve been thinking about this week: this sliding toward comfort and conservatism is precisely why I love being involved in the lives of young people. College students. Seminary students. Young people who think that they can change the world–believe that the world can be changed–take seriously their role and their convictions.

They hold me to a higher standard.

They hold all of us to a higher standard.

And yet we so often discount what they have to say, without really listening. We look down on young people because their existence among us is often transient, and they seem too idealistic, and besides, what do they know about what it means to save for retirement or pay for health insurance?

Exactly.

They don’t know. And so they can be a lot less jaded than we are. We who have so much invested in our comfort, we who have worked hard for stability. Someone’s gotta pay the electric bill in our air-conditioned churches, right?

Ah, now I am getting preachy. There’s that old soapbox feeling again.

I imagine that when you read these letters, you yourself will be a young person. That’s why I wanted to write this one. I was imagining you as young women with conviction, with articulate voices, calling me to a higher standard. And I wanted to give you permission to stand firm, even when others say that you are young and naive and impractical.

I really hope you call me to a higher standard. I really hope your voices are charged with dissatisfaction with the way things are and hope at the way things could be. I hope you read scripture and see the disconnect with the way it is so often lived in this world. I hope you see a path forward, and I hope you are lights on that path for others.

For the old folks.

That is, for me.

I hope I will be able to hear you. I hope I will be challenged by you. I hope you’ll make me a little bit uncomfortable.

Because that is how it should be.

Thanks in advance, girls.

Love,

Your Momma

 

 

 

The Fortieth Letter: Intergenerational Friendship

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

When I lived in Waco, one of the first native Texans to befriend me at church was an older woman named Katy. The first Sunday she met us, she shook our hands and made us repeat our last name a few times until she realized that what we were saying was a double last name, and then she said she loved that young people were doing that these days.

As my friendship with Katy developed, I stood next to her in choir and kept her looking in the right place in the music, as we jumped around during practice, with the point of a pencil. She invited me over to her house for tea, and we ate her top secret cookie recipe off depression glasswear alongside embroidered cloth napkins. She lit a tealight candle under a stand to keep her teapot warm. I always felt at home in her house.

She recited poetry. She hung modern art paintings right next to old black-and-white photographs on her walls. She had different locations in her house for praying for different people.

She told stories. Such great stories.

We shared a birthday, only separated by 57 years.

When I moved away from Texas, Katy and I wrote letters for a few years, even as her health began to decline and she could no longer live independently. Her words became confused, but she was still so vibrant, such a character, so sweet in spirit. She always praised my penmanship.

I got news that she had passed away when I returned home from a women’s retreat just before the eldest was born.

*

My friend Gwen, a retired college professor, came to visit me after that birth. I knew Gwen from my monthly creative writing group. We didn’t go to the same church but she was an active member and deacon in her congregation, and she was very involved in our local town. Everyone knew her.

She brought you a little piano toy that, I’ll confess, sang a very annoying  and repetitive song, and she also brought you these little pink and purple socks that were patterned to look like ballet slippers. When she held you for the first time, she said, and I distinctly remember this, “I don’t remember the last time it was that I held a baby.”

Before that moment, I hadn’t thought much about the fact that my tendency toward intergenerational friendship might be an anomaly. Maybe it wasn’t a typical thing for women in their twenties or thirties to be friends, at least close friends, with women in their sixties and seventies.

At that particular time in my life–and maybe even now, I’m not sure–the majority of women I knew well in our small town were quite a bit older than I was. Through a weekly women’s group at our church, and my writing group, I’d gotten to listen to so many voices, so many stories, so much love, forgiveness, sadness, and hope. These women became part of my life without me even realizing it. They became my friends, my community.

Most were at least ten years my senior, and many of them had children my age. In fact, at my baby shower, most of the hand-me-downs I got were being offered because their grandchildren had already grown out of them. Score for me.

My older women friends are also excellent yardsalers.

I stopped in at Gwen’s house one day to drop off my chapbook, and she invited me in for tea. I guess tea is a trend in my stories. Gwen had some British ‘digestives’ to go along with the tea, and we visited for quite some time. It was the first time I’d heard her story, the life events that made her into the person others in my town knew her to be. I had the eldest with me–you were still in cloth diapers and quickly filled one, long before I was ready to leave–and we talked about her career, her family, her writing, the big wooden table in her dining room, and where you can find the authentic British biscuits.

Gwen passed away suddenly the next year, before the youngest was born.

It’s been important to me as a mom to have friends who are not treading water in the season of motherhood.

I appreciate especially those older women who don’t look back through rose-colored glasses, those who can commiserate with me–and say to me that, yes, this mothering business is the most mind-numbing thing I will ever do–but then say, with confidence, that I can survive it because they survived it.

That’s a message I’ve needed to hear at times.

I have many wonderful women in my life who have lived amazing stories. They’ve lived through traumatic life events and losses and broken marriages and straying children, but they’re also walking testimonies of faith and courage and wisdom and grace. They inspire me with their conviction.

And they shower love on me and on you.

Sometimes I feel spoiled about it all, actually, that I have these people who love me, that you have these people who love you.

But a few months ago, it became clear to me that these friendships aren’t just about what I receive, the support our family receives, but about what we give. Because that’s what true friendship is. It’s both.

At Wednesday-night dinner at church, the eldest ran over to one of my closest friends, a semi-retired science teacher who probably has the most interesting stories of anyone I know. She frequently comes over to read books to you and pass us hand-me-down toys. She’s a recent widow. You ran over to her and gave her a hug on your own, without my prompting. And you know what she said? She said, at 5:15 pm, “That’s the first hug I’ve had today!”

You offered her a hug because that is what four-year-old’s have on offer, and it was exactly what she needed.

Intergenerational friendships are important, girls. I’m pretty sure that for most people they take a lot of work, a lot of intentionality, because we naturally coast into friendships with people like us.

Even I’ve realized that it’s easiest, as a mom, to be friends with other moms. Other moms will be sympathetic to the chaos that is life with children, and other moms will have baby-proofed homes, and other moms understand the need for quiet time. That’s all true. But the easiest path isn’t typically the most rewarding path.

Being friends with women from other generations–my mother’s generation, my grandmother’s generation–and learning from them as I live life alongside them has made me a better human being.

It’s made me a better friend.

It’s made me a better mom.

Love,

Your Momma

 

 

The Thirty-Ninth Letter: Why I Need the Quiet

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

Yesterday, I was playing in my room with the littlest, who was pretending to “beep” (that is, “sleep”), and I noticed that the eldest was being very quiet in the living room.

Everything okay, Bean? I asked, from my room. “Yeah,” she hollered back.

It was still very quiet. I followed up. Whatcha doin’ out there, sweetie?

“Just looking out the window,” she said.

Just looking out the window.

When I was young, my stepmom sometimes came into my room in the morning before school and she’d find me sitting on my bed, seemingly doing nothing. When she asked what I was up to, I’d say, “Just thinking.”

Just thinking.

Just looking out the window.

When your dad and I first got married, it would drive him a little bit batty if he was sitting and reading in a room–your dad is often reading, as you know, even when flossing and brushing his teeth–and I came and sat down and didn’t pick up a book. I would just sit there, because I was thinking. He would put his book down, and wait for me to start talking, assuming there was conversation to be had. I just wanted to sit.

I told him I’d be happy to pick up a book and pretend to read if he wanted me to, but I was not going to be actually reading.

Now, eleven years later, he is in the habit of pausing in his reading to ask me whether I’m waiting to have a conversation with him, and if I say, no, then he goes back to his book and tries to not let it bother him.

I am someone who really likes to sit and be quiet.

While it has always been true, I didn’t realize just how much this is the case until I had children.

Just after the eldest was born, my friend Mary Lou confessed to me how difficult is was for her after her girls were born because of being an introvert. Once you have kids–especially when they are young and still breastfeeding–none of your life belongs to you anymore. Your body doesn’t belong to you. Your preference for sleep patterns doesn’t belong to you. You aren’t able to make space or time for any of that alone-quiet-peace introverts crave.

I’ve never really considered myself an introvert, nor would most people who see me lead small groups or read my words publicly, so the way I interact with the world–and the way the world interacts with me–has always confused me a bit.

I’m not good at multi-tasking, and prefer instead to devote all of my energy to one task, without background noise. I’m easily distracted if too much is going on because I can’t focus on anything. I don’t typically notice when a CD in the car begins to repeat because I’m not listening to it. I’m driving or I’m thinking. That’s it.

I am slow and careful and sensitive and thoughtful, but if there are distractions to be had, I get flustered easily.

Which means that as a mom, I get flustered easily.

You know what? Though I never would have admitted it before, until last year, I had this hunch that my need for quiet was a weakness. Sometimes I heard myself saying things light-heartedly to friends or family who seemed to accomplish more in a day than I ever could, who seemed to sleep less than I did and be very efficient with jobs and kids and life, things like, “My mental health requires me to get sleep” or “I’m just too too cranky if I don’t have downtime.” Or something like that.

But I felt it was a weakness. Really. If only I were more focused, I would think. If only I were more motivated, I would think.

I’ve felt at times like I was simply not as capable as my friends, my colleagues, the bloggers I read. These people do so much with their time and, some of them at least, really seem to enjoy Doing All The Things.

When I first came across the category “highly sensitive person” last year and read the characteristics of such a person (some studies say 15-20% of the population might be HSP), I felt like someone was describing my interior life to a T.

I’m not kidding. What I thought were my own strange neuroses, these things that made me feel wimpy and even inadequate, were on that list.

I cry easily. Caffeine affects me like crazy. I feel the weight of others’ burdens. I process slowly and take a very long time to make decisions. I don’t like loud noises, chaotic and unpredictable environments, or violent movies or television shows. I’m prone to anxiety and depression. I have a really good sense of smell. It takes me a very long time to decompress after a busy evening. I am sensitive to criticism. I worry a lot that I’ve hurt someone’s feelings. I’m detail oriented and notice when things aren’t right. I make lists, lots of lists, so that nothing gets overlooked when we’re packing. It’s important to me to be prepared, to not face unexpected things–because I expect everything. Also, aesthetics matter to me–I am moved by beautiful art and beautiful spaces and beautiful books.

What I know now is that all of these things are related to the fact that I need quiet, that I like to sit and think.

And what I also know is that this thoughtful sensitivity, this quiet-craving, is not a weakness. True, I can’t achieve what others can achieve, whatever that means.

But who cares?

Because my lack of day-to-day achievement is a blessing.

How so?

My slower pace enables me to see and appreciate beauty in otherwise overlooked minute and mundane details.

I’ve realized that it makes me better able to emphathize. I notice when people are hurting. I’m pretty good at following-up with people and keeping track of what’s going on in others’ lives.

And whatever vibe it is I give off, it’s one that strangers pick up on. They talk to me. 

All of that to say, I need the quiet to process all of these things, to process my life. And I need rest. Space to breath. Notebooks to write in, post-its to make lists on. A beautiful pen with which to write those lists.

Motherhood doesn’t allow for a lot of that, but I do what I can to make it happen. I hire a babysitter. I designated an upstairs spare room as my art room. I’m writing a poem every day this month as part of a local writers’ initiative. I set my alarm to get up early and enjoy a cup of tea before the day begins. I don’t set very high goals for the day and instead take moments as they come: Meghan Trainor dance parties while washing dishes, belting out Over the Rhine in the car when I run a salad over to the church for a funeral lunch, soaking in our time together on colorful Adirondack chairs in the yard on a beautiful afternoon.

This is not the kind of person who climbs the corporate ladder and becomes CEO, the person who makes six figures, has myriad followers on Facebook, the person who tries to squeeze more hours into a day.

This is the kind of person who repurposes an old canvas and writes a poem about it.

This is the kind of person who can call life sacramental–and believe it.

This is the kind of person who listens for the still, small voice.

This is the person who might, some days, hear it.

You know what that voice says?

Rest.

Be still.

Have peace.

And I do.

I think you do, too.

Because sometimes, when something makes me cry and the eldest sees those tears, she comes over to me and gently rubs my arm, leaning against me, without saying a word.

Love,

Your Momma

 

 

 

The Thirty-Eighth Letter: God Helps Us

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

On a warm, sunny day this week, I slathered you both with sunscreen before driving to the church’s community garden for some late-afternoon weeding. The truth is I had also discovered some sprouting onions in our cupboard that I thought I’d try burying in the ground.

You don’t have much patience for the amount of rubbing it takes to get the mineral-based sunscreen absorbed into your skin, especially around your nose and cheeks, but I’d told you that you’d be able to play on the new playground at church, which is within view of the garden plots.

You knew how the routine would go, because we’d done it before. I laid out a blanket in the shade near the playground, and set out water and snacks, so you could get out of the sun as necessary.

But the lack of shade on the playground was an issue today. Since it was late afternoon, all of the slides were too hot to slide down. And because the slides are your favorite part of the playground, your attention spans were shorter than usual.

You kept coming over to the garden, wanting to wear my gardening gloves, wanting to help pull weeds and use the small trowel, wanting to stomp all over the dirt I was trying to till by hand.

I let you. Why not?

I was sweating and pretty uncomfortable myself, but I’ve learned that getting your hands dirty in a garden, even if it means sweat is dripping off your nose, makes just about any day a good day.

I am not, in general, someone who likes being gross, and I am, in general, someone who sweats lot. I had a headband and visor on, my sunglasses, my own sunscreen, cut-off jeans, and a sweated-through T-shirt in no time.

After trying, fruitlessly, to dig a hole bigger than one of the onions, the 4 year old told me once again how hard it was to work outside and how hot she was. She’d probably mentioned it a dozen times at that point. (The toddler, if she happened to be nearby, echoed the sentiment monosyllabically: “hot.” Or, sometimes, “sweat.”)

“Momma’s hot, too,” I said, “but sometimes we have to do things, even when we’re hot and uncomfortable. Gardening is one of those things. We get hot and dirty, but it’s worth it.”

Then, patting myself silently on the back and thinking I would get a mother-of-the-year award for this, I added, “And you know what? Gardening can teach us about God. Did you know that? What do you think it can teach us?”

Without even a pause, you squeal, because you’re sure you have the right answer: “That God helps us!!”

And you are right, of course.

I didn’t know what answer I was expecting, but it wasn’t that. I had thought more along the lines of patience and provision and lack of control. More gardening-like metaphors of sowing and reaping, and needing both rain and sunshine.

But, as usual, you cut right to the chase.

God does help us.

It’s not a “God’s on our side” kind of help, not a “God won’t let anything bad happen to me” kind of help, not a me-and-God-we’re-buddies kind of help, and certainly not a “put in the work, and you’ll be blessed” kind of help.

No, what I’m thinking is the fact that seeds sprout at all, girls, is a miracle.

A miracle.

That the thyme my mom transplanted five years ago from her garden in Pennsylvania, put in her trunk, and then drove to Kentucky is still taking over my herb garden is a miracle.

That we save all that compost–tea bags, egg shells, banana peels–and it breaks down into something that can nourish the soil is a miracle.

That God has actually given us an opportunity to participate in the act of creation is a miracle.

It’s all kind of crazy.

But, and this is the annoying part, we have to get dirty and sweaty first. And we have to keep those weeds under control or they choke out the good stuff.

There are so many gardening, farming, seed-laden, dirt-encrusted metaphors in Scripture, girls. It’s a powerful thing to kneel down in the dirt and feel that moist soil underneath the cracking, dried-out dirt on the surface.

You know, there’s probably a metaphor in that act of kneeling, too, because if you try to weed just bending at the waist, you’ll run out of back strength long before you run out of weeds.

God helps us.

And, here’s a side note: If you just can’t keep up with the garden, if you let those tomatoes rot on the vine or fall on the ground and get so gross you don’t want to even pick them up to throw them into the compost, you know what happens?

You get volunteers next year.

Love,

Your Momma

The Thirty-Seventh Letter: Generations of Women

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

Yesterday, as I picked up a frowning, teary, and inexplicably needy just-turned-two year old, I heard myself asking her, What’s the problem? The way I said it was comforting, not accusing, a question more along the lines of, How can I help?

As baby girl leaned her face into my neck, pulling herself tight against me, I asked again without thinking about it: What’s the problem?

Then something surprising happened.

In my head, I heard the question repeat in my maternal grandmother’s voice. Clear as day. As if I’d heard it a million times before, though I don’t have any distinct memories of her saying it.

And then, as I listened to the reverberations of her imagined voice, I heard my mom’s voice saying it, too. What’s the problem?

I listened more, still holding baby girl, who had wrapped her legs around my waist, and the two voices–my grandmother’s, my mom’s–became indistinguishable.

Because they’re nearly the same voice.

Sometimes when I’m on the phone with my mom, I hear in my mom’s voice the distinct intonation that was my grandmother’s. Actually, I hear it most clearly when I listen to her speaking to you, probably because what I’m remembering is the way my grandmother spoke to me.

I remember once as a teenager listening to my mom and her three sisters visit during a holiday gathering. They all had the exact same laugh, it seemed to me, and even twenty years ago, I recognized in it my grandmother’s laughter. Grandma was still alive then.

Sometimes, when I answer the phone, your dad says to me, “You sounded just like your mom.”

Sometimes, when I answer the phone, I myself can hear her voice come out of my mouth.

We named the eldest’s first babydoll “Elsie” because my mom’s first dolly was “Elsie” when she was a little girl. We have a photograph of my mom and her Elsie back in the 1950s. It’s amazing to me that Mom’s bright eyes and round cheeks foreshadow yours so strikingly, girls.

So much of what I think of as “me” as a child, I see in you. And the older I get, the more I realize much of the me part of me is really my mom. And that part of her has a lot to do with her mom.

Mother’s Day was Sunday. Yesterday was my mom’s birthday.

A few years ago, one of my dad’s sisters came to visit, a woman who of course had known my mother well when Mom was my age. They’d sat in many a church pew next to one another. While in town, Aunt Diana went to church with us, and later she told me that sitting next to me in the pew was like sitting next to a young Bonnie. She said my mannerisms were the same, the way I sat, the way I crossed my legs. Those details were just like my mom.

Nobody had ever mentioned those likenesses to me before.

Last weekend, I put a new pair of stretchy jeans on and stood before our full-length mirror, something I don’t do very often. I saw my mom looking back at me. I’m a lot taller than Mom, but it was uncanny. In fact, I came down the stairs and told your dad, “I look just like my mom.”

Girls, you and I come from strong women. Women of courage.

My grandma died before you were born, and because it was important to me that the eldest carry her name, I hear myself saying Grandma’s name all day long, day in and day out. And Grandma’s voice echoes to me each time I see you print those five letters on your artwork. You are so proud of being able to write your name.

In those early, hazy days of being a mom, when I felt like I was sinking rather than treading water in the ocean of parenthood, one of the few things that brought me comfort when rocking you or nursing you or bouncing you on the yoga ball was doing a very non-Protestant thing.

I talked to my grandmother about being a mom. My grandmother who was deceased.

I asked her to pray for me.

She had six kids, and the first three were really close together. I thought she must have known a thing or two about how I felt, exhausted, hormonal, focusing on getting through the minutes because the day as a whole was too overwhelming.

My mom was her firstborn. My first name is Grandma’s middle name.

I figured if Grandma could get through this thing called motherhood and end up the sane woman I knew her to be when I was a child, she could help me get through it, too.

And she did.

My mom tells me that the first time I crawled, it was because she was catering a meal at a church and was busy in the church’s kitchen. Mom had left me down the hall in the nursery, and she could hear that I was crying, but she couldn’t stop what she was doing and come to me. In a little while, here I came, still crying, but crawling out to find her.

I love that story.

Maybe the ending goes something like this:

Mom sees me crawling and crying, my face red and frustrated, my bottom lip sticking out the way both of you do when you’re sad. She washes her hands and walks over to me, and I pull myself up on her legs to stand. She picks me up. I lean my head on her shoulder, pull my body in tight, and wrap my legs around her waist. She rubs my back and asks me, her baby girl, “What’s the problem?“

And maybe she hears her mother’s voice.

Love,

Your Momma

 

The Thirty-Sixth Letter: Hope, Accomplishments, Extravagance

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

I read a novel recently about a woman with a head injury who suddenly had no memory of the last ten years. She thought she was 30, but she was actually 40. She thought she was newly married, but she was in the process of getting divorced. She had no knowledge of her three children’s existence.

But the poignancy of the novel, for me, was her realizing the person she was discovering herself to be at 40, whom she was seeing with fresh eyes since she didn’t have any memory of turning into that person, well, she didn’t like her 40-year-old self. She had become the exact kind of woman she always kind of resented.

It sounds pretty contrived, now that I’ve tried to summarize it in a few sentences, but it really got me thinking. Would the me I was 10 years ago recognize the me I’ve become? What would my 23-year-old self think of my 33-year-old self? (She’d probably be surprised to find I had birthed two babies, for example, which was not on my to-do list.)

My first full-time job out of college was being the assistant to the director of recruitment and academic technology at Baylor’s Graduate School. On my annual self-evaluation that first year, I put as a 5-year goal “Write the next great American novel.”

I was kidding, of course, and my boss told me I should probably change my answer, but the truth was that I knew that job wasn’t my forever job, and it seemed ridiculous to pretend my five-year-plan had much to do with that position.

You’ll notice I haven’t yet written a novel. But I do have a chapbook of poems, so that’s something.

I got an email this week from a high school acquaintance. Since I’m not on Facebook, this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen this woman since we graduated 16 years ago, and even in high school we weren’t really close friends. We had Phys. Ed. together one year, I do remember that.

She sent me a message through my website, a brief note to say simply that she’d had a conversation recently about faith and hope with one of her friends, and it reminded her of the speech I gave at our graduation in 2000. She wanted to encourage me that my words had stayed with her this decade-and-a-half.

The speech I gave at graduation. Whew. That feels like a long time ago.

I was a really outspoken Christian in a large public high school, and so my speech–I was valedictorian–offered the gospel message, to no one’s surprise. It offered hope. It was a little cheesy, of course, quoting Mother Teresa and Emily Dickinson and others, but it offered hope. And it got a standing ovation.

Because hope is always a good message.

Some days it makes me grimace a little to think about my high school self, because let’s face it, I’m not so preachy these days. I have a quiet faith, a thoughtful faith, a compassionate faith.

But, the truth is, I’m still proud of the young woman I was. At my ten-year high school reunion, people I barely knew came up and and told me how meaningful my friendships with them had been. Because I was sincere at 18. I cared about people. I was compassionate and confident, kind and smart. I was tall without slouching. I was voted “Most Likely to Win the Nobel Peace Prize” of my graduating class.

Sometimes I think about what I’ve accomplished in the 16 years since I’ve graduated, and it doesn’t seem like very much. Not compared to friends from high school who, for example, work for NASA. And unless there are Nobel prizes for being able to push a double jogging stroller with 75 pounds of child in it, I’m pretty far from that sort of achievement.

Most days, I’m okay with that.

Most days, I look around our house of IKEA furniture and hand-me-downs, decorated quirkily with my paintings and your paintings, and I’m okay with this life your dad and I have built together. I’m okay with the physical world of it–our modest house and yard, our cars, our neighborhood, our church–and also the intangible parts of it–our friends and loved ones, our community in which we’re invested, the people who cross our lives unexpectedly but deserve our time, our attention, our eye contact. (It’s those intangibles that really matter. It was those intangibles that mattered when I was 18, when I was 23, still matter at 33, and will when I’m 43.)

Most days, when I think about raising two human beings in this world, two little human beings who are such mini-me’s already, I know that if you ended up turning out like me, I’d be proud of you. And even if I do nothing else with my life except raise you to be compassionate and courageous, I’ll be proud of myself.

Most days, when I sit in the swing outside and watch you play in the yard, creating impossible and nonsensical games together, I’m okay with the peace that comes from late-morning sunshine and a flexible season of life that allows me to enjoy it.

Many days, I’m even embarrassed by the extravagance of it.

Because my life is extravagant, here in the sunshine, great American novel or not.

I don’t know that my 23-year-old self would be able to recognize that sort of extravagance.

But I do, at 33. And I hope someday you do, too.

Love,

Your Momma

 

 

The Thirty-Fifth Letter: Metaphors & Daily Life

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

We purchased a vintage Sears Kenmore sewing machine at a yardsale before the eldest was born. It was missing a piece, a screw, something minor that enabled it to fold down into its sewing table. It had a needle though, and it seemed to work when we plugged it in, and yet until this week I had never threaded the bobbin. This might be a metaphor.

Our memorial Easter lilies and tulips brought home from church have been knocked over repeatedly, sometimes multiple times a day, petals blown off during high wind warnings, leaving bald stamens full of pathos. We’ve brought them inside for the myriad freezes since that exceptionally warm Easter morning a few weeks ago. Then they go back out onto the porch steps, looking forlorn. Everything feels like a metaphor.

The thing is, the dailiness of daily life often feels hard, even knowing that others have it harder. Friends with chronic illness. Friends mourning spouses. Friends with crumbling marriages. Friends with infertility.

Meanwhile, my daily life is sunshine and seeds explained to a preschooler. Death and heaven and Jesus and God in a 3-year-old’s terms; a toddler alongside me in the pew at a funeral.

Daily life is sunshine transforming the smell your scalps from baby shampoo into wood chips. I don’t know why, but it’s true for both of you. You smell like wood chips, like bark mulch, deep in your hair, when you’ve been outside. We don’t have wood chips in our yard.

Daily life is novels read with a 30-pound toddler on my lap drinking milk, playing with my phone, using a wet wipe to swab the book down.

It’s reading and painting rather than writing, most of the time, but when I do write, it’s laying in the grass alongside both of you, half of my note pages covered in preliterate scribbles. I always bring two extra pens outside. My writing these days is jotted notes and ideas rather than poems or stories, reserving brilliance for some other day, some other season, some other unimaginable-for-now life.

Daily life is hot jeans in the sunshine, and barefeet sensing the cold mud through the warm, early-spring grass. Also perhaps a metaphor.

Daily life is squeezing freelance work, which is kind of drudgery, and creative work, which is not, into two mornings a week and an hour in the afternoon. The schedule doesn’t work well, dissatisfies and exhausts me, without pointing to a better solution for today. For this week. This month, this year.

I can sing the theme songs for Dinosaur Train, Doc McStuffins, Daniel Tiger, and Dora the Explorer. This is not a metaphor.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are. When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, ‘Here, I guess, since this is where I am‘” (An Altar in the World, 56).

Looking down at my feet, I see chipping toenail polish, and I see, well, I guess I see hope. I see hope in the daily, when I’m not too exhausted and worn down by it.

You sometimes play together these days, for example, sometimes keep out of my office while I’m trying to squeeze a little more work in the day, sometimes keep out of the kitchen, off my legs, sometimes don’t tug on my clothing or put items in my back pockets for safe keeping.

There is hope in these small victories, these small glimpses of independence.

There is also hope when you do crawl up onto my lap again, require a nose-wipe or new ponytail or snack, ask another question that cannot be answered, want me to read another book, or even the same book, again and again.

Yes, most days, there is hope and beauty. Most days I love something, even if it is simply that the day has ended and you are asleep.

I do love this whole sunshine, hot jeans, and mud-cold toes combination, which I would experience less, without you itching to be in the yard.

I love the wood-chip smelling hair, the goofy songs the preschooler sings while she swings, that the toddler asks for “Swing Low” to be sung before bed.

I love that you eat lentils and tofu as well as chicken nuggets, that the preschooler’s face is sprinkled with freckles, like mine.

I love that the toddler wants to cuddle even when I’m drenched in sweat, that you both cheer me on–“Go, Momma, Go! Go, Momma, Go!”–when I run with the stroller.

And I love that there is still a me here, beneath this mom-ness. A lover of a good story, a hot cup of tea. I still love new pens and fresh, college-ruled paper, and the art aisle at Walmart, though I still despise Walmart. I love big, blank canvases, country music in the car, toe-nail polish, and big earrings. I love eye-liner, Post-It notes, to-do lists, and flip-flops. I love cutting things out of magazines and unbaked cookie dough. I like singing and laughing and flannel sheets under down comforters. I myself love a good snuggle.

The daily life is this, all of this.

And most days, I love its dailiness.

Love,

Your Momma

The Thirty-Fourth Letter: Where, O Death?

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

We live a few blocks away from a funeral home, so I’m reminded every other day or so of the reality of death and suffering. On long walks, we pass by cars full of mourners, with you two happily in the stroller eating your snack, oblivious to what’s going on. On our way to head out to eat for dinner, on the way to Lowe’s for a quick construction run, on my way to reading group, heading to a playdate, picking up your dad from work when it’s raining: those who have experienced recent loss are nearly always present. I drove by black-clad mourners on my way to get a soy latte this morning.

I have always found this reminder of death in the midst of life helpful. It’s a proverbial wake-up call each time, that whatever is on my mind or burdening me at the moment is fleeting and that there is real suffering all around me.

I love our church’s Easter tradition of carrying lilies down the center aisle in memory of loved ones who have passed away the previous year. The preschooler carried one this year, in memory of my grandfather who died on Christmas Eve. The plant swayed as she walked, but she made it safely to the altar.

As the lilies pile up in the front, filling up the absence left when the altar is stripped at the end of the Good Friday service, our congregation stands and sings “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” I can never sing the song, of course, because as I watch my friends carrying down lilies–or those years I’ve carried them down myself–I think of all the loss we’ve experienced as a community. I think of all the meals we’ve delivered. All the prayers we’ve prayed.

My throat catches, and I don’t sing. Our loved ones die, and we feel so much pain.

The lyrics to many of the great Easter hymns, including “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” have a line or two echoing the sentiment of 1 Corinthians 15:55: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” (sometimes the King James Version just says it best).

I counted at least three references to that verse in the songs we sang Sunday morning. And, I’ll confess, it kind of annoyed me each time.

A friend of mine who lives many states away texted me an update about her dad, who is having significant health problems and was in ICU. She was travelling back from visiting with him, and she concluded with, “I’m exhausted and sad. But He is risen, so there’s that.”

So there’s that.

Where, O Death, is now thy sting?

One of my strong and beautiful friends lost her husband suddenly last year. She carried a lily down the aisle at church.

Where, O Death, is now thy sting?

A vibrant 26-year-old mother in our town was diagnosed with two forms of terminal cancer this week. She was given three to six months to live.

Where, O Death, is now thy sting?

I can tell you where. It’s right here.

Right.

Here.

People are hurting all around us, girls. It is hard to live in this world and know pain and love people who know pain. And we get numb to these words of Scripture–O death, where is thy sting?–and it kind of makes us, okay, me, mad. Or sad. Or frustrated. Or helpless.

All of it.

Sometimes I think we sing Where, O Death, is now thy sting? followed by Alleluia (adding a little salt in the wound) without remembering that many among us don’t feel encouraged by the creeds. And I’m talking about those of us who do have faith in eternal life, who do sincerely believe that eternal life brings relief from suffering. We know it intellectually, and we might even know it on a deeper level, but it doesn’t always ring true to experience.

What we feel is the very real sting of death.

The very real sting of our loved ones being diagnosed with cancer. Of babies dying. Of marriages crumbling.

I have faith, girls. Most days, I have it in spades. But I have faith alongside a healthy dose of reality, which is that life in this world hurts a lot of the time, and I don’t want to pretend that’s not the case.

I am careful when I write condolence cards because it’s too easy to be trite.

Of course, Easter reminds us that death does not get the last word. I appreciate that message. But I think we need to be careful where we go from there.

Easter does not tell us that we won’t feel the very real pain of losing loved ones in this life.

We can believe and have hope in eternal life and in the good God whose own creation sings praises, while we also say, no, I’m sorry, there is a sting of death.

Part of me hopes that you feel the sting of death a lot, girls. Because that means you’re really living in the world and loving people.

And I hope when you see full parking lots at funeral homes, you are able to pause and reflect on the death and suffering that coexist with your own lives, that trump your own annoyances and frustrations and pride and self-centeredness.

But I also hope that when you see Easter lilies, you remember why we carry them down the aisle on Easter morning. I hope you remember this little nugget of the truth of Easter that sometimes gets buried: even when we’re sad and exhausted, He is risen.

Because there’s that.

Love,

Your Momma

 

The Thirty-Third Letter: On Being (Not) Afraid

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

The truth is, it is easy to be afraid.

A little over a year ago, a talented, vibrant young woman who graduated from our local college was brutally murdered while serving overseas. It was an absolute tragedy that shook the community. An incident like that is like a weight on your chest that you can’t shake off.

In the wake of that tragedy, I tried to write a letter to you about how fear feels different as a parent. I thought about your futures, all the things I can’t control, and wanting to keep you safe. But I couldn’t write it. I couldn’t get beyond the notes I’d jotted down quickly, a list of things that seemed worthy of parental fear: diseases, child predators, kidnapping. Social media, bullying, pornography. Rape, domestic violence, rampant drug use in our community. The list went on and on. There were too many what-ifs, too many potential tragedies, too many sadnesses and risks.

It’s so easy to be afraid.

The other day, I couldn’t see the toddler in the yard and the preschooler didn’t know where she was, so I began to search frantically. The driveway. The front of the house. The side of the house. Looking down the street. Hollering her name. Within a minute or two, I found her, happily in the corner, behind a bush. She was fine. I was sobbing. Why, oh why, was my first instinct that she had been kidnapped?

It doesn’t make sense, except that I was operating out of worst-case-scenario, TV-drama fear.

Listen to me. Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s a smart instinct, this fear, that it’s protective, that those gut reactions to distrust others or suspect the worst in others are good because they keep us safe.

I’m sorry, but no. I do not believe that.

I stopped watching crime drama many years ago because I found that it was making me see every stranger as a potential predator. That is not hospitality, girls. That is not “welcoming the stranger.”

We have become too afraid.

I hear it in my friends’ voices. I hear it in news reports. I hear it, perhaps especially, tossed about by our political leaders.

Fear people who are different than you.

Be afraid.  

There is not enough. Save your money. Stock the pantry. 

Protect your own. Build walls. Close your blinds.

“Stranger danger.”

I’m so tired of these messages. So tired of the politicians’ preying on our fears. So tired of hearing people I know acting as if these fears are natural and good and help to keep us safe.

No.

Sigh.

I guess what is prompting all of this is just how frustrated I’m feeling about the underlying message of political conversation these days. Normally, I ignore politics as much as possible and, because we don’t watch television, I never even see campaign ads. But the primaries of 2016 have been over-the-top attention-worthy–I can only imagine what your history books will say someday–and I’ve felt compelled to read about what is happening, what is being said, what is being believed.

The bad news is that much of what I hear and read is based on fear. Ill-informed, selfishly motivated, circle-the-wagons fear.

The good news is that this fear is so over-the-top, so exaggerated and obvious, that it has helped me to put my own fears in perspective. I’m serious. When I inwardly accuse politicians (or would-be politicians) of fear-mongering, I feel compelled to consider whether I myself operate out of fear.

And I’m afraid I do.

Sunday is Palm Sunday. Next week is Holy Week.

Do you know what the message of our faith is, girls?

It’s so different from the message of the politicians. It is so different from the message of the 24-hour news cycle. So different from a message of fear.

It’s this:

Love.

Do not be afraid.

There is enough.

Give your lives away. Be vulnerable. Welcome the exile, the widow, the orphan.

The stranger might be Christ.

I’ll confess, these truths don’t typically guide my days. My days are, more often than not, too full of anxiety and discontent and worry. More than I’d like to admit.

But, still, I want my instinct to be fear not.

I want my instinct to be yes, there is enough.

I want my instinct to be the stranger is Christ.

I want my instinct to be love.

That’s Holy Week, girls.

Love,

Your Momma

The Thirty-Second Letter: Where I’m From

/ Elizabeth

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Dear Daughters,

Even before you were born, I wondered what it would be like to raise children in Kentucky.

And by in Kentucky, I mean anywhere that isn’t Pennsylvania.

What would it be like to have children with a slight twang in their speech, who pay attention to Kentucky basketball, who drink Ale8, don’t drive in the snow, say “put up” for “put away” and  “I don’t care to” for “I really am okay with doing that”?

I’m only partially joking.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means to be “from” a place.

A few weeks ago, I drove you to Pennsylvania to be with family for a week, and I was reminded (a) how much I myself hate to drive in the snow and (b) how much I love central Pennsylvania.

I love the tunnels on the Turnpike that take you through mountains, especially the REMOVE SUNGLASSES sign at the mouth of the tunnels. I love the roads carved out of rock, and how the waterfalls freeze as they pour down from the mountains above. I love the width of the Susquehanna River, the old house on Front Street where I used to babysit for a wealthy family, the quirky miniature Statue of Liberty on her own proud platform in the middle of the river. I love the old dying rural towns, the 3-story row homes along tight curvy roads, the metal bridges, the piles of dirty snow that take forever to melt.

Driving on those skinny roads, through those dying towns, I was surprised just how much it felt like “home” to me.

And, at the same time, how much I felt like a stranger.

Because that’s the way it works, girls, when you move away from somewhere. There is both a beauty in going back and a sadness in going back.

I don’t know what it’s like to live as an adult in Pennsylvania, to be married and raising a family there. I’ve owned two homes, but neither of them in a blue state. Though still pretty young, I’m quickly approaching the point at which I will have spent more years away from Pennsylvania than the number I lived there before heading north to college. It was four years in New York, four years in Texas, and now, gulp, eight years here in Kentucky.

That’s just craziness.

Inspired by Kentucky Poet Laureate George Ella Lyon’s poem, “Where I’m From,” my writing group helped organize an event at our local arts and cultural center this week. We encouraged members of our local community to write their own meditations about where they’re from and then gather together Monday night for a time of sharing and reflection. And eating, of course. Always eating.

Among the small group who came out to listen and share, it turned out that the majority were transplants–if not from out of state, at least from a different part of the state, and that means a lot in Kentucky. But here we all were, reflecting on our roots, sharing stories that resonated across generations, across families, across hometowns. There were so many similarities in the reminiscences, and not just in the serenading song of the poems, but in their substance. So many strong women. So many shared cultural references. So much community influence, cultivation of the land, hope and religion and faith, watering the deep roots that get us through suffering. These were the themes that I heard over and over again, no matter where the speaker “was from.”

It was a powerful evening because these are powerful stories.

Here’s the poem I wrote for the occasion:

I’m from right-leaning, Jesus-loving, question-asking people.

I’m from silos on barns, blue gills and

sunnies in the pond, choose your own adventures.

I’m from “Can He, Could He, Would He?” and

“My Mommy Told Me Something,”

DC Talk and Trisha Yearwood,

praise music on a stage and turned-my-nob-to-BOB94.9.

I’m from a coach bus paid for by love offerings, gospel music

sung to cassette tracks on feedback-heavy church sound systems.

I’m from dippy eggs and pancakes, Heinz ketchup

on scrambled eggs, on macaroni and cheese, on everything,

cider vinegar on French fries, sauerkraut at New Years.

I’m from functional dysfunction, four good parents, in the land of

Hershey’s Chocolate, Gettysburg Battlefields, Sheetz gas stations, Amish country.

I’m from crayfish at the base of Stony Creek Dam, cracks in a sidewalk

instead of a front yard, swimming in Grandma’s above-ground pool.

I’m from through-the-night drives to Florida for Christmas,

New Hampshire for fourth of July,

singing the alto line with Mom, saying “PA” instead of Pennsylvania.

I’m from after-school specials, Saved By the Bell, and TGIF,

cut-up magazines and hand-markered poetry posterboard, stapled

to the horsehair-plaster walls above my waterbed.

I’m from learning how to type in elementary school,

post-Columbine security, the first generation

of cell phones that did nothing but make calls.

I’m from prayers when I was sick but three-times-a-day

penicillin for recurring UTIs, a grandma who quilted

the United States of America, a daddy who could cook.

I’m from Psalm 23, John 3:16, Caesar Augustus’s decree that all the world should be taxed, recited in kindergarten.

I’m from dinner around a table, memorized commercial jingles and sitcom theme songs, wanting to be a paleontologist but preferring to read than to get dirty.

I’m from people who love me, kiss hello and goodbye, sometimes three smooches and nibbles on ears; women with perms, men going gray, cousins aging so quickly my breath catches when I see them, once a year, if I’m lucky.

I’m from people whose faith I envy, who believe even now, when it’s hard to believe, who love me even now, though they can’t quite remember

if I live in Tennessee

or Kentucky.

***

Yes, that last bit was a joke. But it’s true. For some reason, Pennsylvanians seem to get Kentucky and Tennessee perpetually confused.

It amuses me.

Anyway, I still don’t know what makes you “from” a place. I’ve got a much simpler life trajectory than some of my friends who were raised on the mission field, for example, who have lived in many places across the globe, across the country, without a centralized location for extended family. But even so, I feel the push and pull of living somewhere I love that still doesn’t feel like “home.”

I do love Kentucky. It is your home. It is my home.

But it doesn’t feel like home.

Not yet.

Love,

Your Momma