Here or There

We don’t watch much TV in our home, so I love that the tube is always on at the salon. Like whip cream on summer berries, it’s a treat on top of getting my roots covered. Last Thursday I sat in foils in front of Rachel Ray. I don't know who Miss Ray was interviewing but the topic was mamas in the workforce, which seems to be in my face quite a bit lately. With nothing short of glee, the woman being interviewed reported that now days it isn't about being a stay-at-home-mother or a working mother. This caught my attention. She explained that it's not about that, because you can have both now. I chuckled. Out loud. You didn't...

Who are you?
Where am I?
Did you really just say that?
You can have both now? You can be home and away? Present and absent? Here and there?

Oh honey, something must be said. Your mama made a deliberate choice to be here, not there. I won't let them minimize that. I have a degree that's collecting dust. I still have a big ole I-owe-you out to Miss Sally May. I'm smart, savvy, and stubborn enough to know I could be rocking the work-force ladder. But I'm not, I'm here. Every waking moment, I'm here for you instead of there for them. It infuriates me to have people soften one of the hardest choices I've made. I chose this. I love it. Being nothing more than a stay-at-home mom is insanely more challenging and rewarding than any other employment I could pursue. I have the financial luxury of doing so, but even when your daddy’s salary was less than minimum wage (when you considered the 80+hr weeks) I still chose to be present. Not absent.

When you get here you’ll be faced with this choice too. Pray over it. Remember that way that Christ loved was sacrificial. Love is doing what’s best for the other person, despite the cost (consider 1John 3:16).

I must tell you, there are two polar reactions to the stay-at-home decision.  First there’s the envious. I have no idea why I’m so blessed to comfortably be here, but I’m sincerely grateful and understand that at any moment, it could change.

On the other side, there are folks who see a well-educated women going weeks reading only Dr. Seuss and Mother Goose. What a waste. They clamor to superficially justify and validate me because they know I’m strong and smart and they must assume neither trait is fortified at home. They feel sorry for me.

Sometimes sacrifice means leaving your career for a while. Other times, it means leaving your babies. Two of the women I admire most have made the choice to work, nearly full time. What Rachel Ray’s friends said minimizes their choice too. When they look at their family they see that they need to work and they make a wise sacrificial decision to be away, not home. And what a blessing it is that God gifted them with ability to do so. It's worth adding that when they clock out, they are one hundred and ten percent devoted to their families, more than I am, because they realize the basic fact - when mama is there, she is not here.

Either way, this decision is one of the hardest you’ll make. So hard that apparently Miss Ray’s friends don’t want to make women choose. They want you to have both. You can’t. You are either here or there. It is a monumental crux because, as Jacqueline Kennedy said, “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”

Take Five

Mimi,

Take a break.

Motherhood is not a full time job. Nursing a newborn is a forty hour- a-week venture, subsequently making every other mama-duty overtime. So really, take a break. There are several indicators that might clue you in to this need. Recently, for example, I started "shooshing" the oven timer. It had been alarming for longer than I'll admit before I realized I was subconsciously trying to sooth the thing as if it were your six week old sister.

Here are some other classic symptoms of being an over-worked-mama,

• You try to load dirty dishes into the oven.
• You attempt to make coffee by filling the blender with water.
• You find yourself alone in the pantry eating M&Ms- before 10am.
• Instead of cracking the eggs into a bowl, you crack them onto your recipe card.
• Once in the bowl, you attempt to beat the eggs by getting out the iron.
• A diaper explodes in the clothes washer, again
• And my favorite: You’re out running errands. You need to make a phone call. You reach into your purse and pull out the cordless land-line from home, where your cell phone usually lives.

Yes, even Mama needs a break sometimes. And why not? God himself rested when he created our world- it's called the Sabbath. He then commanded His people to do the same, to rest on the Sabbath. And Jesus took naps (on a boat in a storm).  Don't run yourself ragged, or pridefully think you have to do it all because no one does it like you. If God needed a break, odds are we do too.

Motherhood is hard. I learned this quickly with you, as labor was labor. After giving birth, the nurse put you in my arms and pushed me in a wheelchair from the Delivery Room to the Mother/Baby unit. Drugged, dehydrated, and otherwise tanked from childbirth, I was so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open. I've finished ultra-marathons on dirt trails, but keeping my arms bent enough so you wouldn't roll off my lap was even  more grueling. As my eyes drooped and body sank into the chair, I was too ashamed to admit I needed help. I kept telling myself that I would not become the first mama to drop her infant in the hospital elevator. As soon as we made it to our room I handed you off, vomited, then fell asleep. Yes, this parenting thing is hard.

Don't let anything, even pride, get in the way of a well deserved break. Hide in the pantry and eat your kids' candy if you have to.

At Arms Length

Mimi,

This was recently published in an e-newsletter, but I thought I’d blog it because what the Lord taught me is worth repeating. The big idea, as James Taylor has sung: shower the people you love with love…

     I climbed up the fence, and with my stomach impaled on the chain-link and hands cupped around my mouth, I screamed as loud as I could. My jugular was bulging, my brow was furrowed, and my saliva was flying. I was watching a track meet under the lights, my sister was running- she blazed the mile. I had walked around to the back stretch before the race, where I knew my cheering would be heard. I watched her run the way some men watch football, I was insane about it.

     Twenty years later, my prayer life became a bit like a spectator sport. My quite time with the Lord mostly occurs in darkness, under the lights, before anyone wakes, because I can hear my own voice. And that image, of yelling my heart out, came to mind as I screamed at God. Mind you, this was all in silent prayer, I was as quiet as my son in mischief, lest I have two little prayer warriors at my side.

     Why all the passion? It was my mother-in-law’s cancer I wailed about.

     It took me eleven months to arrive at that crazy-prayer stage. At first, the news was doom-and-gloom followed by out of this world peace and strength. Then, there were the good months of angst reprieve, amazing vacations, and quality family time. But even while basking in the sun, there was a rather gloomy side of my heart. There was an inclination to buffer myself and to guard my kids, to hold Grammy at arms length.  

     The relationship I have had with my husband’s mom for the past twelve years has been one to be envied. She’s a hall-of-faither. My dark side wanted to consider, just for a moment, backing off. Maybe call less, avoid the C-word, send fewer happy texts, all with the justification that somehow being less involved in her life would prevent me from becoming more smitten with her. That, said the Eeyore in me, would make the thought of loosing her somehow bearable. And as for my kids, this delusional plan would protect them by not exposing them. It’s brutal, but real.

     Fortunately, the cruelty of Plan A nixed it. But it makes me wonder who else I am holding out there. Who are you holding at arms length? Perhaps because they are high-maintenance, because they want to talk for twenty minutes when you have one, because their problems quite frankly annoy you? Plan B is certainly not easy; to pour your heart into those you are called to love. But at least I won’t be living in the fear that God himself can’t handle me should I get swallowed up in the sorrow that surrounds death.  Plus, I won’t be teaching my babies to live in a cage rather than trust and all-powerful God.

     See God could have healed her. He’s done it before, I’ve heard of His great deeds. Nothing is impossible. He has healed others, He could have healed her. I believed it as much as I believed my sister would win just about any race she entered.

     But He didn’t. Instead, He took her home. To His credit, God miraculously kept her alive and vibrant far, far longer than any medical estimation. Even so, when she entered the Promise land weeks ago, it was too soon. She’s there and we are here, longing for every aspect of her beautiful self. But there is something else here. After allowing my sensitive heart to love her socks off, God has rewarded me with strength.  I still cry my heart out in prayer, but as I cry out, I fully sense He’s got me covered. The resonating lesson in all of this has been to let my guard down. Let it down in prayer, and let it down when I love others. Letting it down gives God the chance to pick me up. 

Originally published in On The Side, an e-publication of the Christian Medical and Dental Association http://www.cmda.org

Smitten

Dear Mimi,

We just welcomed your little sister into the world. You’re amazing. She will be forever blessed because she has you for a sister. Exactly one week after we became a family of five, you turned five. FIVE. It blows me away.

Being a third-time mama in the mother/baby unit was reminiscent of being a senior in high school in that it felt like I owned the place. Unlike with your birth, no one peered down my gown assessing my ability to breastfeed. Yes, this time you’d taught me enough about baby-hood that I could relax and simply fall in love with this fearfully and wonderfully made babe. Thank you.

There’s a pinch of advice I’ll need to give you, should you ever enter this motherhood journey. Strive to be smitten, for you will find that within 24 hours of birthing your child, the world will start to pull you away from building a relationship with your little miracle. 

Here’s my case…

The morning after your sister arrived, the chaos began. Define chaos? No problem, here’s what it may look like:

A well-meaning nurse will enter your room every two hours throughout the night leading up to the chaos, to ensure you’re alive by taking your blood pressure and temperature. These are called Vitals, but a better name might be Pesters because the clicking noise, plus the tourniquet on your right upper arm will wake you up. Satisfied with you, she’ll turn to your sleeping baby and get her Pesters too.

The baby, with high chaos tolerance, will sleep through this when…

The anesthesia staff will appear to make sure you haven’t become a paraplegic from that blessed epidural.

Again, she’ll sleep through that until the respiratory therapist comes to make sure she’s breathing. Now, there’s nothing more precious than watching an infant’s chest rise and fall as they sleep, but just so they can wake her up, they’ll unwrap your well-crafted swaddle and tape her hand, then her foot. Their machine will make at least a dozen high-pitched error alarms, causing you to question your prior assessment that she was actually breathing. To reassure you, she’ll cry then fall back to sleep.

Just as you get the swaddle re-made, a stranger in a lab coat will appear to poke her heel and milk blood from it. I’d wake up and cry too.

You’ll once again re-assemble the swaddle when the auditory gal comes, and you’ll be thankful she isn’t unfolding your work of blanket-art. She’s only messing with her head. This entails putting cold gel on the baby’s precious neck and forehead and applying space-alien probes to ensure your baby’s ears are working. She will insist that the baby only hears a pleasant clicking sound. You’ll wonder what kind of clicking could possibly be pleasant.

Next, more Vitals, for both you and baby. You’re husband, asleep on a miserable make-shift bed, will shoot up from under the thin sheet like someone is stealing the baby. No honey, it’s just a pleasant clicking sound.

The phone will ring, proving that indeed the baby can hear. It’s the business office wanting your money. 

The nurse will then appear to give Pumpkin a Hepatitis B shot. At least she knows how to swaddle.

Another round of Pesters.

The business office will call back to check hearing again, and tell you the good news that they will bill you later and you can leave with your money, but not your sanity.

I kid not. All of the said events occurred before 10am the day after Lil’ Sis arrived. Welcome to our world girlfriend.

All this to say, on that morning, you will forget to enjoy your baby.  You won’t have time to place her on your chest, skin to skin, and bask in the work God created in you. The doctors, nurses, technicians, and staff all mean well, and are there to ensure your bundle is healthy. Praise God for modern medicine. But at the same time, it will pull you away from the relationship with your child. And that pull, that chaos, whether from western medicine, the phone, or Facebook, will persist for the rest of this motherhood journey.  But more on that later… For now, I’ve got to get back to my smitten time. The baby is waking and I can't wait to see those precious blue eyes.