10 Years

I had a very insightful friend ask me yesterday, how did your mom disciple you? My mind immediately went to the formalities, kind of a tick-the-box formulation: Were there daily devotionals, Q + A in which some rich spiritual wisdom was passed down to me? Did she fail me? Will I fail? Am I supposed to have a master plan?

I stalled.

Then I started talking.

I told of how she was a skilled homemaker, how she decorated and filled her home with beauty order, cleanliness, and peace. She gardened and made food for her family, every night, without grumbling. “She looks well to the ways of her household”.

She also opened her home constantly. I never saw her dash around in a fit to accommodate, as in she was totally unprepared and unhappy with a regiment of guests and/or small children coming through. “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the times to come”.

She served others, those who weren’t very important from a worldly viewpoint. She was merciful and gracious. “She opens her hand to the poor, and reaches out her hands to the needy.”

Her life was an outpouring of discipleship to her Lord. My mom couldn’t hide what motivated her, what brought her joy, what she was obedient to. Children have a birds eye view to all of this, as I did.

Today, as I mark 10 years since her passing, motherhood confronts me with the reality of discipleship lived out and seen by those closest to me. Jane Brdlik did disciple her family well because was loved so well by her Lord. If I am to mirror her life in the smallest of ways, I will not fail.  "Let her works praise her in the city gates.”

An Open Letter to Kindness

This letter is written to my 2nd grade elementary school teacher. I have been intending to write her for years but have convinced myself to first attend to far less meaningful pursuits that have neither praised nor thanked the soul work of many wonderful people.

Let me preface by saying that I was perhaps a difficult child, full of vim and vigor. But I was lovable, dadgumit. Mom used to recount stories of teachers who after going over my academic performance for parent/teacher conferences would clear their throats and shift uncomfortably in their seat...

"Amanda, while being sweet and loving, tends to be a bit disruptive and... busy."

Translation:  "I've wanted to wail on your child but the law won't let me."

Paying attention to instructions or following directions were merely suggestions as I absorbed and dialoged with the world around me. This meant that at times, in my busy, confused little mind, I felt misunderstood by teachers.

But not by all, thankfully. 

To Kindness,

I have chided myself for not openly thanking others for the big and small ways they have enriched my life. It has been my intention for some time to recount for you a few memories from my early years in elementary school. Admittedly, some were spent in a corner and occasionally outside on the line but most of them were very fond memories of which you were most certainly a part of.

What I recall most vividly about you was your intangible kindness. We somehow believe that children are unable to fully understand the world around them in the way adults do, but speaking as a former child, I know that is not true. They just gather information differently. While critical thinking and a ready vocabulary in which to express themselves are years away, we absorb and thus process our environment by observation and by feeling. 

I knew that you loved me (us) in my core and sometimes in spite of it. You were patient. You allowed us to believe that you enjoyed us, even the naughty ones. 

As a 7 year old girl, "older" women (or ladies with pierced ears) were worthy of honor and deference in my book. You were one of them with your hair curled and smelling of baby powder. Top that off with the fact that you had swirly handwriting that I tried to imitate at home, my hand clutching a Husky pencil, tongue poking out the corner of my mouth in rapt concentration. And when you sang, you had a distinct vibrato which I also immitaed at home. In my closet. With my tape recorder unmercifully recording. 

At the end of the day, you were simply open to use your god-given gifts. We all have gifts, some more immediately consequential than others. The difference being that (little) people were being affirmed and approved of in such enriching ways. So much of life communicates the opposite: we are too much, too little, too insignificant to handle. That's why it's been nearly 30 years and I can still recall your influence in ways not shared with many others.

So, I thank you for this narrative, a loving narrative, a better narrative. 

With gratitude,

Amanda 

Hard

Motherhood is so many wonderful, soul-fulfilling things but sometimes it’s just hard.

I read over my two prior posts that showcased the wonder of it all, which all still exist. He is still doughy and spicy.

I adore him.

Still, I ask myself at least a few times a day, “Just why is this so hard”?

I’ve told my husband a few times, I think some women are born better mothers. It is baked into who they are as humans: patient, empathetic, selfless, and engaged. We’re honest if we admit not everyone has those qualities in equal measure. It is when you are squeezed of these so often day in and day out that you are confronted either by a wellspring or rung ragged and dry. Of course there are many more qualities that a good mother makes but those stand out as clear winners.

So there’s the personal component of it. But, I think there’s much more.

Loneliness. I rarely, if ever, have felt lonely. A qualified introvert, I find time to myself to be pleasurable and necessary. But the day in and day out of living life at home with a small soul with no vocabulary or hobbies makes conversing a one-sided affair and depleting. Conversely, having a pleasant conversation with a neighbor takes serious thought, much like I’m on a first date: look interested but not desperate.

I can remember watching my husband leave for work just two weeks after birthing a human into existence. I felt desperate, tired, alone. For the modern day mom, the message is clear from the start, “You’re on your own, Lady”.

Intellectually, it is much harder to keep up with the woman you once were when you were meeting deadlines, asking big questions and being asked big questions. A clear part of my mind has atrophied to be replaced by other homespun skills, whether they are touted as skills or not. This leads me into more subjective waters, waters in which I’m still trying to wade through and make sense of. That is a post for another day or another year as often as I update this blog.

What the culture, the church, and the Bible have to say about motherhood have been most recently at odds and sometimes it feels as if we (I) am the collateral damage, trying to find my way through what is real and true. Because truth is all I’m ever called to live for, in any and every season of life.

Dough Boy

He is doughy, made of gluten-esque first fruits. I want to sink my teeth into him. He’s always been a lean fellow but as luck would have it, he still sports one single Michelin band on his thighs.

He smells better than a thousand lavender fields bathed in Dreft. Sometimes I pretend his feet stink (Ooooo, stiiiiiiinky feet!) but both he and I know that isn’t true.

He hums to himself in his crib. He hums.

He has a crooked smile (that’s my 50% working there). It's the one you’ll see in his little boy and adult face. You’ll need pictures to remember, though. You have already forgotten so much.

At 7 months old, he already finds things silly: loud, one-syllable words, being catapulted anywhere, bending his legs up and under and then face planting.

That belly laugh reinforced by all that gummy goodness in his mouth.

The face he makes when you’ve come to rescue him from his crib… the sleepy bags under his eyes, and an occasional handprint from sleeping on his doughy face.

He’s showing you that your worth is not and cannot be attached to the completion of the noblest of tasks. Sometimes you feel like crying because you don’t believe this yet.

He is showing you what it means to say, everyday, my life for yours.

Motherhood

Twelve weeks in and I'm not sure how to process what exactly happened in becoming a mom. As a writer, you anticipate the upheavals of life to begin writing, to express what you actually think about what just upheaved. I need the story to feel, and to feel gives birth to writing.

The story is that I birthed a baby.

And he's precious. Delicious.

Blurry eyed, I bump into his room at 2am and I scoop up that little swaddled thing all warm and smelling of the best stuff on earth. And he has this blonde fluffy nonsense growing in patches on the back of his head that will break your heart in a million pieces if you stare at it too long.

I have not forgotten about my old life. I loved my old life. That's why I cried hardest the first night home with my baby. The gestalt shift was settling in and I could feel my old self crumble. It's purely selfish, but that's what gives parenting its angst--- you're dying in all the right ways.

My life has become in many ways very small. Small baby, short must-do list, simple sentences, shrinking walls. Intellectually, you know this time of life will require you to slow down and lean into the simplicities. Only until you are in the thin of it does it take you by surprise.

I find myself needing more. I feel this way often.

After the fall of mankind, God told Eve that her primary glory (that of birthing and nurturing) would come at a considerably higher cost to her. But He knew that in these pursuits, and in all the ways they were now to fail her, she would become more desperate for Him. What was meant to enrich her, give her purpose and place in creation would come with limits. But she would test these limits and get lost in them.

There is much more to unpack about that but for now, I have to close. Baby bird is awake and I need a small, delicious fix.

And Yet

For a split second tonight, I could not envision her face.  I was sitting at the dining room table as she came to mind like she often does when I'm sitting alone.  It created enough of a reaction that my chest began to pound and my breath quickened, frustrated at having to take so long to upload an exact image of her in her chair, clinking her fork through her front teeth and driving me crazy in the process.  It was like my mind was feverishly scrolling through a Rolodex of 26 years with her in order to bring back to life one still portrait in the hope that a single memory could, once again, temper my sadness.

Today makes for five years since she's passed away. In some ways, it seems longer and in some ways, it seems very fresh. I don't know what is the accepted or normal way of perceiving time related to someone's passing.  Is it supposed to be that time has flown by or slowed down? I'm not sure that there is a right answer.

In an email written to a friend years ago, I explained the feeling of coming into her bedroom once all of her personal belongings were gone:

"...He [dad] bagged and boxed up most all of mom's belongings, cleaned out her clothes in her closet, leaving only a sparse picture frame resting on her dresser.  Mom had all but been physically erased from my eyes.  At that moment, there was complete silence, a void that nothing this side of heaven could fill. Walking around the room and hearing the stark sound of my footsteps, I opened her closet door with just enough force to gently swing a metal hanger, resting naked on the pole.  Everything was gone.  Up until then, she had been there.. a still snapshot of how things were, as if she could just come in and pick up where she left off."

But that's the beef I have with death. She won't be back. That is the most unnatural feeling, by the way. Man was not created to die. That wasn't in the original set of cards which is why it is foreign, confusing, dastardly.

Regardless, I have a hope that extends beyond these circumstances. Hope that says there are reunions and restorations to come.  And yet, I have to be honest and accepting of the undercurrent of sadness that still sweeps over me and calls to me, you'll miss her all your life.

Bloom

We're hard wired for the bloom. We expect that things should be intensely seen, felt, tasted and explosive. Immediate. No where else in life it seems do we make these assumptions than in the search for love. Walking into a new job, we dare not assume we'll have the corner office in a day or in a week.  Likewise, a new acquaintance will only become a great friend after weathering a storm or two. What is it about the promise of great, intoxicating love do we cast aside all measure of reality and shake our fist at the heavens while we wait for everything to come together. just. as. it. should. be.

A bloom is obvious, blaring. Its raw power and intensity justifies our inclination to believe that because something feels like goodness that it is actually good. Reality reports back that the bloom has little to do with outcomes or whether we will be enriched or destroyed in the process. But we demand that it be so. 

So we search.

Our attraction to the bloom is centered around the idea of expectations. Expectations are a scary, insidious thing especially when they are not tempered with reality. They hold us back from experiencing life differently simply because we cannot see past our own version of what should be. So we revert back to what we know and what feels the most like smoldering fire. However, this insistence could strip us of the very thing that we are fighting tooth and nail for to begin with: to know and be known. 

It takes great faith to believe what we have been told by those far wiser than ourselves. Wisdom that says that love, great love, the kind we all search for can be grown and cultivated by seed through sweat, selflessness, understanding and patience towards other and self. In a word, work. As unsexy as that was to write, it is far less enchanting to envision for one's own life. I still prefer to be transfixed.

My hope is, of course, that I'm not asking too much.  My hope is that it is entirely possible that I could have goodness with fire, real love and bloom.  The kind that will not render my soul ember and ash.