Three Quarter Blues

Mimi,

As you bound around the house in your flashy new Nikes, I'm reminded...

I used to race the mile. I was not an immensely gifted runner, nor did I ever win, but it was my favorite track event and I was blazing fast compared to any pace I could currently hold for the distance.

I love the simplicity and symmetry of the mile event. Four laps around an oval. I knew, by heart, what my split times should be every 200 meters along the 1600 meter course.

Now ideally, in a race like this, you’d start out conservative and quicken your pace until you are putting it all out there on the fourth and final lap. But in every mile race of my mediocre career, the same thing always happened.

The gun would go off and I’d try to not sprint, conserving my energy for the rest of the race. Sure enough, the second lap was predictably faster than the first. But regardless of the exact lap times, something inevitably happened on the third lap. I petered out. Like the old Sesame Street segment “One of these things is not like the others”, the third lap was always pitiful. And here’s why- I was too far along to give up completely but still no where near the finish. I’ve come to call it my Three Quarter Blues predicament. It’s been a long time since I’ve donned those scant racing shoes with little spikes, but this issue has scampered right off the track and into other areas of my life.

In college it would look like this: I’d be three quarters of the way through the semester when my study habits would mysteriously vanish. Even now, I could fill a bookshelf of good-reads I’d gotten about three quarters through only to drop or skim the last pages. And honestly, well, most of my cop-out mama comebacks surface right around 4:00pm, about three quarters through my day. You know, words like “because I said so!”

I have grown in patience, but sometimes I loose sight of the finish line and all heck breaks loose, and the evil twin of your mama appears.

“Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due time we shall reap a harvest.” -Gal 6:9

My harvest in parenting is raising a child who’s heart Christ can reach and work though.

Lord, help me get through each day glorifying you.  I’m in this for the long haul. As I strive after You, help me find tangible ways to point to you throughout all the days these babies live under my roof. As always, I ask for  patience, passion and perseverance as a mom.  You have done amazing things for me, as a mom, thank you!

Reflections

Mimi,

At some point when your pregnant, really really pregnant (if you have the joy), you'll walk down the street and catch a glimpse of someone in a window. No Way you'll say to yourself, in disbelief that the person in the window is a reflection of you. Way. You've become huge - ginormous- to the point that it's hard to believe that side view is yours.

I've been three months unoccupied and recently did a jaw drop in the mirror. I had been thinking and praying over you, and big beau. Praying over all the virtues I desire God to foster in you, praying about your weaknesses, praising Him for your strengths, when slowly something happened. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and the reflection startled me. See my chief goal in this journey of parenthood is to please Christ. Not you. Not the world. Just Christ. But there's a problem with that, He wants me to change, not just you. He's at least as much concerned with how I'm doing as He is with how you're doing. Rats. With that, I'm trying to change that mirror image I'm seeing, for the better. Here is a list of my goals for today, tomorrow, and the entire unforeseeable future:

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.”