letters

The Forty-Third Letter: I’m H-A-P-P-Y

/ Elizabeth

IMG_6268

Dear Daughters,

The baby girl has begun announcing in the morning that she’s happy.

It always sounds out of the blue: we get you out of your crib, we change your diaper, try to tame the bedhead, and then you snuggle with one of us and announce, “I’m happy.”

I think it’s because you’ve heard us say, “She woke up happy today.” But it might also be because your grandma taught you a song that goes like this: “I’m H-A-P-P-Y, I’m H-A-P-P-Y, I know I am, I’m sure I am, I’m H-A-P-P-Y.” And then it ends with a shout: “HAPPY!”

It’s sung to the tune of “The B-I-B-L-E,” and honestly, it’s kind of annoying.

But we sing it. A lot.

And now you tell us every morning that you are happy, which, I’ll confess, is really sweet.

This morning, I was writing a newsy e-mail to some friends I haven’t seen in a long time. I was listing the various things I’ve been up to, the various things we’ve been up to as a family. When it’s all typed out, you know what? It sounds pretty impressive, like I do lots of cool stuff. I’m doing this copyediting and that writing, I’ve been making art about this and that, I’ve read this book and that book, and am involved in this activity here and that activity at church, and we went on this trip and that trip, and I’ve been running a lot. Literally and figuratively. Ha. The list of All The Things We Do was so long.

And then, I’ll confess, I wanted to write this:

And yet, somehow, it feels like all I ever do is hang laundry and wash dishes.

Because that’s the truth. That’s what it feels like.

Many days, the drudgery of the days outweighs the beauty of the days.

If I let it.

But there is so much beauty here. I can’t say that enough.

I have to say it in these letters, I have to say it to you, for you to read someday, because I doubt I’ll remember it.

I have a hard time remembering it from day to day.

There is beauty here, if I look for it. And I am happy.

A friend of mine has three children, the oldest heading into kindergarten. I had you girls at about the same time she had her youngest two. We were pregnant at the same time both times. Sometimes I look at her–she takes all three children to the grocery store at the same time! she has driven all three children by herself to places in other states!–and I think, how does that woman do it? How does she ever leave her house? How does she remain sane?

And then I see friends who have children and work outside the home full time, and they appear put-together and organized–showered and everything!–and we have conversations suggesting they get a lot more accomplished than I do in a given day, and I just don’t know how they do it.

I don’t know how they do it.

Sometimes I look at my friends without children, or those who aren’t married, and think they are living the life. Such freedom! Such motivation! Such achievers! They are changing the world, making a difference I can point to.

I know, I know. You can’t ever know what it’s like to be someone else. And it’s so ridiculous to try.

Here’s another clothespin, by the way. I’m standing here in 90-degree weather, dripping with sweat, hanging up a heavy, wet T-shirt on the line.

Another mom-of-three friend of mine has a chronic illness. She inspires me every time I talk to her. But last week, she told me how amazing I was. Me! I forget why. I think maybe I told her about trying to write a poem a day for the month of June. She’s in my writing group. She told me she was amazed at everything I was able to get done.

Me. She told me this.

My college roommate once told me she thought I was “living the life.” This woman has a decidedly amazing job and lives downtown in a major city. How can I compare with that? I was making zucchini bread when we were talking on the phone, and I was telling her about my Artists Way class, and the art I was making,, and that’s when she said it.

Say what?

What I do is not amazing, I wanted to say.

I am not living the life, I wanted to say.

All I do is hang laundry and wash dishes, remember?

But GIRLS. That of course isn’t true.

Your mom is amazing.

Our life is amazing.

There is such beauty here.

I’m H-A-P-P-Y.

I get to make art and read books. I get to write and sneak your watercolors when you aren’t watching. I get to make a cup of tea (or three) and do my freelance work in my pajamas if I want to. I get to snuggle with you and get the icepack out when you fall once again and bonk your head on the little desk in the living room. I get to teach you to say, “May I please have one minute?” instead of “NO!” when I tell you it is time for quiet time. I get to answer your incredible questions–how does a giraffe sleep? what holds our bodies together?–and let you listen to my heart with your pretend stethoscope.

And, well, I get to hang laundry. A lot of laundry.

But I’m happy.

And pretty tan from all that time in the sun.

Love,

Your Momma

The Thirty-Ninth Letter: Why I Need the Quiet

/ Elizabeth

IMG_5695

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

IMG_5556

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-Fourth Letter: Where, O Death?

/ Elizabeth

IMG_8544

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 Twenty-Fifth Letter: Boom Boxes & What I Can’t Imagine

/ Elizabeth

phonto-4

Dear Daughters,

One of your lift-the-flap children’s books features a boom box hidden behind two cabinet doors. I honestly don’t know why. The book is nonsensical: under the pillow flap is a banana, for example. It’s silly.

When we lift those flaps to reveal the boom box, I’m never quite sure what to say. “There’s the boom box…radio…music-playing thing,” I trail off.

You don’t know what a boom box is. Obviously.

Though we are hipster enough to play music on a record player occasionally, we primarily stream it on our “devices.”

Back in the 90s, I had a boom box in my bedroom as a teenager. It had a double cassette player and a CD player. I used it to make mix tapes for your dad when we dated in college.

Believe it or not, our 1999 Volvo station wagon has a working cassette player in it. That feels comforting to me. We still have those mix tapes.

My point is this: I’m not very old.

This was not very long ago.

I wrote a poem once about saving a set of encyclopedias for you, despite their obsolescence. Because I loved encyclopedias growing up, loved their pictures, loved the feeling of research. I still do.

In seventh grade, we learned how to write a research paper. It involved reference books and card catalogs and hand-written notecards.

We couldn’t even imagine a world of the Internet.

This was not very long ago.

I was the first of my friends to have a cell phone in high school, and all it did was make calls. I remember my dad’s first car phone, with a huge bag of cords inside on the floor and a giant magnetic antennae outside.

We couldn’t even imagine a world of tweeting and texting, weather apps and Amazon video, Facetiming and asking Siri how to roast pumpkin seeds–all on our phones.

This was not very long ago.

My high school graduation present was a 35 mm camera.

The learn-to-type games we played as kids came on floppy disks. The actual bendy kind.

I was incredulous that wi-fi was a thing when I first heard about it, was confused when USB drives came around, and thought “Twitter” was one of the lamest words I’d ever heard.

This was not very long ago.

It’s not like I lived through the transition to automobiles from the horse-drawn carriage, girls. Nothing that drastic.

Except maybe more drastic.

Because the world has gotten so much smaller in the last thirty years. And also bigger.

Our lives are more public and we’re also more capable of keeping our real selves hidden. We’ve gotten more vulnerable and also more equipped to rally and proclaim. We’ve gotten stronger voices and also more polarizing discourse. We’ve come to expect a diversity of choices and are also more dependent on a global economy. We have so much knowledge at our fingertips and also learn about news instantaneously, errors in reporting and all.

It’s inspiring and frightening, these changes.

I can’t imagine the next thirty years. How can I?

I can’t imagine what life will be like for you. How can I?

In the 1990s, a boom box was pretty amazing.

As I type this, the two of you are watching a PBS show on the iPad about dinosaurs. (For the record, even the dinosaur names have changed since I was a child.) The toddler already knows how to turn off the iPad and begins to swipe the screen. You know which icon gets you to look at pictures, know that the little triangle in the middle of a screen means that a movie can play if you press it, know that talking to faraway grandparents means you get to see them. You even pretend to “text” with your phone toys.

What will life be like for you, girls?

I wonder about it, and I’ll be honest:

It frightens me sometimes.

It gives me hope sometimes.

Sometimes even at the same time.

But I try to focus on the hope part.

You are watching PBS, after all, not princesses. That’s hopeful.

Love,

Your Momma

 

The Twenty-Fourth Letter: Gratitude and a Full Life

/ Elizabeth

letter 24

Dear Daughters,

Life has been full.

I don’t like the word “busy.” Everyone is busy. Busy is overcommitted, flustered, multitasking, doing, and going. Busy is the struggle to find time that doesn’t seem to be there.

Full is in making time.

Making time for a full life is staying in bed to cuddle with a sweaty child who arrived in the wee hours of the morning instead of rising early to write my morning pages.

A full life is playing pingpong while a preschooler circumnavigates the table. It’s cinnamon sugar cookies for a trivia night fundraiser, campfires and s’mores on Saturday night, Sunday morning bran muffins, and a Mary Kay open house.

A full life is hot black tea with milk and sugar every morning, children who take ages to finish dinner, dealing with congestion at 4 am…getting another cup of water, dosing Benadryl, falling asleep on the couch with a no-longer-lap-sized baby breathing heavily through the timer light kicking on at 5 am. It is a de-scaled humidifier, abhorring Wal-Mart but going there anyway, and eating lunch at Chick-fil-A so often the three-year-old says “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome.”

A full life is a child who sings “Through many dangers, toils, and snares…” as well as “The doc is in, and she’ll fix you up…,” who asks beautiful questions about Jesus being in her belly, and says spontaneously, “All of the days I love you, Mom.” A full life is a baby who shrieks “Yay!” when I tell her that Daddy is on the way home, who “counts” for Hide-and-Seek like this: “Nine…Nine…Nine…Nine…”

A full life is leading a women’s Bible study, meat-heavy Wednesday night dinners at church though we’re primarily vegetarian at home, looking forward to Advent, gifting spray-painted mason jars.

A full life is a preschooler who says her mom’s job is “artist.”

A full life is a 12-week Artists Way class winding down, writing an Advent devotional, a poem about cardamom, getting inspired at the Peddlers Mall.

A full life is signing up to bring Crockpot macaroni and cheese to the preschool Thanksgiving feast, a child who remembers her Sunday school lesson about the Ten Commandments, who out of the blue said “Saul was good at being good” (quoting her children’s Bible), who continues to think that Goliath is the best Bible story, who can write her name and spell her sister’s name.

A full life is taking the time to go to the library, to spell out words and practice letters, to collect leaves until every window and arch is covered with construction paper leaf flags. A full life is a monthly reading group at Panera, buying fundraiser items from the neighbor kids, loving on Lulu-the-Cat, our neighbors’ pet who lives in our yard and prefers our porch to hers. A full life is scarves and gloves and snotty noses outside but going outside anyway. A full life is too dark at 6 pm to go running on uneven sidewalks covered with leaves.

A full life is the large tupperware on the toddler’s head, a homemade grape costume and comments about Fruit of the Loom, and a list of gratitude for November.

A full life is being grateful for the simple things that make up a full life.

A full life is a grateful life, girls.

A full life is gratitude.

A full life is grace.

Love,

Your Momma

The Twenty-Second Letter: Labor Day & Marking Time

/ Elizabeth

phonto

Dear Daughters,

I shared a story in church a few months ago that I hadn’t shared widely prior to that morning. It was kind of a big deal, standing at the pulpit, telling my story.

We’d decided as a church to “mark time” together during the liturgical season of Ordinary Time–that long, uneventful season from Pentecost to Advent–by sharing stories of the ways we individually keep track of time, the significant events in our lives that have shaped the way we see the world. These can be beautiful moments, but usually, if we’re honest, it’s the painful ones that we remember most vividly. The painful ones that keep coming back to us.

After I shared my story, a friend of mine, someone who is also a writer, asked me if I was planning to write the story out to share it more publicly. I said no, probably not, because while I’m pretty comfortable with strangers reading things that I write, I’m aware that much of what I write for public consumption has been tweaked and edited in such a way as to distance myself from the message. Most of what I write isn’t personal, even when it may seem personal.

There is something about being vulnerable I just don’t like. But my friend thinks that it’s important for us as writers to be as vulnerable and honest as we can because that is what offers hope to the world. Hope to the world.

She really thinks that voicing our pain and our trials and our struggles–being honest when life is hard–and saying me, too, is the way we offer hope.

So.

Maybe there is hope here.

This is the story I told our church:

On Labor Day 2013, I was six weeks pregnant and I had a miscarriage.

I called my doctor, and we decided that it was a textbook case and as long as nothing out of the ordinary seemed to happen, I didn’t need to go to the hospital or even make an appointment for his office–which was good, because I didn’t feel like sitting in a doctor’s office, crying my eyes out. I could barely talk to my mom on the phone to relay the news.

This was the week of our revival at our church. I went to every service but I didn’t tell anyone who superficially asked how I was doing.

I had never experienced loss like that before, though many of my friends had. It was a difficult and dark time, to put it in the most generous terms possible, and I decided, within days, that I never wanted to be pregnant again. My eldest daughter, my sweet girl, would be enough. I couldn’t risk this kind of heartbreak again. I wasn’t strong enough. I cried a lot.

A week later, I was dry heaving on runs and throwing up, and so I did go to the doctor. I found out that there were two embryos in my uterus. A nonviable embryo, which had caused the miscarriage symptoms, and an embryo with a heartbeat. It was good news, shocking news, and also nerve-wracking news. There was reasonable concern about this pregnancy, and it was considered high risk.

You might not know this about me, but I am a worrier. And not just a little bit. A lot. So this whole “high risk” business was excruciating. It weighed me down. Every day. I came to terms with every worst case scenario I could think of. And I still worried.

I worried in Advent as I began to share the news that we were pregnant. As friends and family expressed excitement, I worried inside. I couldn’t be excited because I was afraid.

I worried through the season of Christmas when we had our ultrasound and found out the baby would be a girl. Even her on-screen health didn’t reassure me very much.

I kept worrying through Epiphany and then Lent began. Would she come early, like her sister, and be a Lent baby, or during Easter? I wasn’t the only one wondering. My OB didn’t think I’d make it past Palm Sunday.

She arrived April 25, the Friday after Easter.

Our baby girl’s first name means “light.”

Her middle name means “pearl.”

Two of Jesus’s images for the Kingdom—a light in the darkness, the pearl of great price.

All of that—the darkness and light, the worry and the pearl of great price—is wrapped up in Labor Day for me.

Love,

Your Momma

The Nineteenth Letter: Water Guns, Goliath, & Peacemaking

/ Elizabeth

photo-2

Dear Daughters,

We’ve got friends who managed to call water guns “water squirters” for years in order to avoid using gun language at their home. We’ve got other friends who insist that if you ban gun toys, kids will manage to just “shoot” with other things–wooden sticks, bread sticks, you name it.

I didn’t really imagine having to deal with this issue any time soon, and mostly avoided weighing in on either side.

Despite having grown up using guns safely and being from a hunting family, my inclination these days is towards pacifism. We don’t own guns, but we do live in Kentucky. So they are everywhere.

We were out drawing with chalk on the deck a few weeks ago, and the Bean wanted me to draw a snow person. After I did, she began scribbling right on top of it. Since we try to discourage blatant vandalism of someone else’s artwork, I asked her if she was drawing clothes for the snow person. She said no.

She was drawing it a sword.

A sword.

Now, I’m not the kind of mom who typically jumps to gendered stereotypes, but the first thing that crossed my mind was, “What little boys have my daughters been playing with?”

We don’t have toys in our house that have swords. We don’t have really anything that is fighting related. I wouldn’t say that it’s intentional at this point, but if given the option between a sword-bearing knight or, say, a book, I’d choose the book, even an annoying one. (I might, however, pick a sword-carrying toy over a princess. Your dad really doesn’t like the princess industry, and you don’t yet know what they are. Of course, I’m sure as we enter the world of preschool next week, the gendered world will begin to make itself known to you.)

I wanted to know where you learned the word “sword,” so asked you. Your answer?

“From the Bible.”

True story.

Sigh.

I guess if I want to raise up little pacifists, we better stop reading you a nightly Bible story.

I’m confident that if guns had existed in Pharoah’s Egypt or Jesus’ Garden of Gethsemane, we’d have them in the Bible. Somewhere. Somehow. Guns into plowshares, maybe.

When I was pregnant the first time around, I frequently used the song of Zechariah, recorded in Luke 1, as a prayer. Something about the last few lines of that passage continually came back to me when I prayed over this first baby growing inside of me. We didn’t know if you were a boy or a girl, didn’t have a name picked out, hadn’t even seen you on the ultrasound monitor yet, but this is what I kept praying:

And you, child, will be called prophet of the most high, for you have come to prepare the pathway for the Lord by teaching the people salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.

Out of God’s deepest mercy, a dawn will come from on high, a light for those shadowed by death, a guide for our feet on the way to peace.

And then when I was pregnant the second time around with baby girl number two, it was a different passage of Scripture that guided my prayers–the beatitudes from Matthew. Again, I can’t really say why, but it was these two verses that rang true:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Until last week, when we were discussing the beatitudes in church, I hadn’t thought about the similarities between the passages that I prayed for both of you, with both of you, during those nine months in utero. Both passages are about peacemaking, aren’t they?

For me, it was simply that when I would pray for you, these were the verses that came to mind.

I prayed that you would be compassionate, that you would have courage, that you would love people, that you would be a light in a dark world. I prayed for you to be peacemakers.

Oh, and now Goliath is the Bean’s favorite Bible character.

I kid you not.

The absolute favorite.

Granted, it’s because your dad does such a great HAR HAR HAR laugh when he reads the voice of Goliath, because he encourages the impressively loud THUD THUD THUD of Goliath’s footsteps. It doesn’t seem to matter that Goliath dies at the end of the story. Doesn’t matter that little David with his five smooth stones is really the hero who gets the best lines: “It isn’t how strong you are or how many swords and spears you have that will save you–it is God who saves you! This is God’s battle. And God always wins his battles!” Doesn’t matter that the picture of Goliath makes him ridiculously unappealing, gaps in his teeth and all.

Goliath is your favorite. And Goliath has a sword.

Last weekend, arriving home from an out of town wedding, we found two small bags of goodies for you on our porch, dropped off by our neighbors. Each bag had a little bottle of bubbles and a bouncy ball that lights up. And each bag also had a water, ahem, gun in it.

They look like something out of the space age and bear very little resemblance to the pistols in holsters I’ve seen around town. But later, when we were filling them and squirting them and talking about them, it still felt really weird for me to use the word “gun” and talk about one of our toys. Guns? Really? My girls? Carrying around guns?

But yes.

You’ve got water guns.

And yes, Goliath is your favorite.

And yes, you will be peacemakers.

This doesn’t seem discordant to me.

In fact, I have a hunch that you will be teaching me what it means to be a peacemaker someday. What it means to be compassionate. What it means to be a child of God.

With a water gun in your holster.

Love,

Your Momma

 

The Eighteenth Letter: St. Francis Didn’t Have Toddlers

/ Elizabeth

photo

Dear Daughters,

I recently heard an apocryphal story about St. Francis of Assisi:

One day, while working in his garden, Francis was approached by someone and asked what he would do if he found out that he would die before sunset. Francis replied, “I would finish hoeing my garden.”

I love this story.

I really do.

There’s beauty in understanding that the task at hand, however small or trivial, is what you are called to be doing in that moment.

There is beauty in attention to good work, complete work.

There is beauty in feeling the dirt under your fingernails, piling up a basket of peppers and tomatoes, seeing the freshly turned-over ground when you’ve pulled out a row of weeds, smelling the basil you’ve pinched off, the cilantro that’s gone to seed. This is God’s creation.

But let’s be real.

I would totally not finish hoeing my garden.

I would not clean a toilet, not wash dishes, not run the vacuum, not if I knew I were dying. I would not pick up toys or fold laundry. And I certainly wouldn’t go out and weed my garden.

I wouldn’t take time to cook food. And I probably wouldn’t exercise. Because then I would need to get a shower and that would be using up valuable time.

I wouldn’t sit around on my rear and watch TV either; don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I would be a lazy bum, but I wouldn’t do menial and mindless things.

It’s hard for me to see those day-to-day practical and necessary things of life as important enough to do if I knew my time was limited. Because right now, in this season, I have a hard time not seeing those things as ultimately life-sucking.

So, what would I do? Snuggle. Laugh. Take lots of pictures. Definitely order Thai food for dinner. Go outside and not put on sunscreen. Maybe eat cookie dough right out of the frig.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

What I’ve been thinking about recently is how to balance being a good steward of my time, that is, keeping the Most Important Things at the top of my priority list, with remaining attentive to the everyday, boring things I need to get done.

Because, to me at least, those aren’t the same things.

But I have this hunch, this sort of feeling deep in my chest, that there’s more connecting the Most Important Things to the Everyday Boring Things than I’m usually willing to recognize.

Because that’s what this story of Francis suggests, girls. That dirty, annoying, frustrating, or just plain old boring tasks can actually give our lives meaning. We can find God there. We can find purpose and vocation there.

I believe that. I do.

Or think I do.

But I’m not really in that place right now.

Love,

Your Momma

The Seventeenth Letter: My 33rd Birthday

/ Elizabeth

photo (9)

Dear Daughters,

Today is my 33rd birthday.

When I was pregnant the first time around, I attended a (very) brief set of classes for expectant moms at our local hospital. Of the three other young women in the class, all of them looked about twelve to me. They were probably more like 18 or so, but I was nearly 30. That’s a pretty big difference. I was the only attendee who came with questions about hospital protocol and expectations, and I’m guessing the only one with pretty strong feelings about her birth plan. I might have been the only one who was married.

At my next doctor’s appointment, I asked my OB if I was old to be having a baby. He said no—he had lots of patients much older than I was. But when I told him about how young the other women seemed in the hospital class, he qualified his earlier statement: “I guess you are relatively old to be having your first baby.”

My mom was in her late twenties when my brother was born; she’d just turned thirty a few months before I came along.

So this age feels about right to me, though I admit that it would have been easier to bounce back physically after your births if I’d been ten years younger. (After the first unmedicated labor and delivery, I felt like I’d run a marathon without any training.)

Yes, there are reasons for having babies young that I can only appreciate now, now that I’m not young. If I hadn’t lived a childless, adult, happily married life for 8 years before you were born, for example, I’d probably mourn that life of freedom a little less than I do.

But I wouldn’t change it if I could. I like my thirties. I like raising you in my thirties.

I’m more reflective and laid back as a parent than I would have been in my early twenties; young people fresh out of college have such fervent convictions and clarity. Granted, I still have conviction—and I probably voice that conviction more than the average person—but I’m gentler than I was ten years ago. And I hope more patient.

I hope.

I’m probably as stubborn as I ever was, and I still worry a lot, but I have a lot better grasp on the things that really matter.

And the things that don’t.

I’m still easily distracted and can’t multi-task, but I know that relationships with people are more important than finishing the book before my weekly reading group.

I’m better at appreciating beauty in normal, everyday life, but I’m still a far cry from thinking that motherhood cultivates grace. I don’t see grace here, and I’m fine with saying so. That’s probably something an older parent is better at, too. In my thirties, having lived my last decade in a different season, I’m comfortable with knowing that this season, like that earlier one, won’t last forever. It makes me grateful, but still exhausted.

I’ve enjoyed growing older and getting grayer alongside your dad, who continues to inspire me, and I will enjoy growing older with you. You’re transforming into little independent people already.

The summer I turned thirty, just after the Bean was born, I remember telling my mom that I couldn’t believe I was in my thirties now. She told me that she couldn’t believe her baby girl was 30 either! We laughed together at the time, but I realize more each day just how honest that feeling is.

That day—when my own baby is 30—will be here for me before I know it. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that at some point every day, every slow and boring and life-sucking day, I am paradoxically astounded just how quickly the overall time is soaring by.

I had no idea that watching children grow and learn and develop and change would be such a reminder of how much time is sifting through my fingers.

I’ve never felt angsty about aging—not about going gray, not about the freckles and age spots, not about the creases around my eyes.

But it still catches me by surprise when I glance in the mirror.

I am 33.

Young.

Not young.

Just right.

Love,

Your Momma