Monday, May 27, 2013
Friday, May 24, 2013
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
It's Mother's Day again.
And this year is so much better. Last year, with postpartum depression weighing me down, I felt so bitterly undeserving of the day and all of the thanks and love that came with it. I just wasn't myself and it was one of the hardest days of the year.
But this year brings a contentment so deep and reassuring that I feel like a firm rock in a riverbed. Last year it was a dry bed, but this year the river is full and overflowing.
I've been given homemade flowers from each of my little ones, five cards, a flat of dusty rose petunias, and a gift from sweet Patrick still to come. And this year our new ward gave all of us mothers a tall potted geranium, and I was so happy. It's what I've always wanted. I remember seeing my sweet mother receive a potted flower every Mother's Day and I loved passing them out when I was a young woman. As a girl, I couldn't wait for the day when I would be a mother and receive the treasured plant. But this is the first year of my 6 years being a mother that I have received one, and I'm happy as a lark. I beamed the whole way home. It doesn't matter that my little red Geranium was one of the only plants not blooming yet; I finally have my flower. And I hope I can help it bloom--as a great symbol of the children-flowers I'm helping to grow....
And this poignant video clip is enough to warm the weary...
And a Mother's Day excerpt from Ann to bolster every mother:
So, sure, there was this talk of The Giving Tree –but there wasn’t one of us who didn’t know all along it was you, The Giving Mother.
I never get over the shade of you, the grace of you, the limbs of you, the God-made Giving Tree —
Because God needed someone to love the least and the little into real whole people, and He knew that to love is to suffer so God made a mother.
God had said –
I need someone to get up at midnight and scoop the most fragile of humanity close to her warmth and rock though she can hardly stand and nourish though she’s mostly sleep-starved and change the diaper and the sheets and the leaked on, leaked through, and leaked down clothes though she’ll have to change them in the morning and next week and that won’t change for years.
So God made a Mother.
God said I need somebody who can shape a soul and find shoes on Sunday mornings and get grass stains out of Levis.
And make dinner out of nothing and do it again 79, 678 times, and keep kids off the road and out of the toilet and in clean underwear and mainly alive though she’s mainly losing her mind and will put in an 80 hour week by Wednesday night and just do one more load of laundry.
And one more sink of crusted burnt pots.
And keep on going another eighty hours because raising generations matters and weaving families matters and tying heart strings matters and these people here in hidden places matter.
So God made a mother…
It had to be somebody who could comb back pigtails and tie up skates just-right tight.
Who could pretend she remembered algebra and how to get home from here and that really, she was just fine, that it must just be the silly onions.
Somebody who would run for the catch, jump on a trampoline and play one fierce game of soccer and not give a thought to all those labors and her weak pelvic floor. Somebody who’d stay up late with a science project that never ends, who’d get up early for the game in the rain, somebody who’d wave at the door until the taillights were out of sight and still be smiling brave.
So God made a mother.
It had to be somebody willing to keep loving when it made no sense because that’s what love does.
Somebody who knew that life is not an emergency but a gift — so just. slow. down. There are children at play here and we don’t want anyone to get hurt and the hurry makes us hurt.
Somebody willing to feed and lead, lay down her life and pick up her cross, give of her time because they have her heart. Someone who knows that we all blow it — and what matters is what we then do after.
Someone who could humble herself into the tender sorry that covers a multitude of sins.
Someone who would live like a Giving Tree — who would would give grace, give life, and give thanks — eucharisteo: the giving thanks for every grace that gives back always joy.
Someone who would stand in the mess and the midst and give thanks anyways — because eucharisteo always, always, precedes the miracle of discovering that the Giver Himself is always, always more than enough.
Someone who would live it a thousand times: Give thanks — and discover that the Giver Himself is the Gift and He alone is always, always enough.
Someone who would pour out and bend down and surrender not only to the physical pain of childbirth but the far deeper, unending heart pain of letting go, letting go, letting go – from the womb, from the arms, from the front door. Someone who would know that umbilical cords can be cut — but heart strings never can.
Someone who’d bow her head at night over the girl sleeping with the doll in the crook of her arm — and give thanks to her Father for this hidden life that’s turning a gear for the whole spinning world.
So God made a mother.
You.
The Giving Mother, made by God to be a safe shelter….
with your roots dipping like lines into aquifers to siphon love up out of the caving cup of His hands.
His hands …. and those always underneath, everlasting arms holding us all.
And lastly, what I wrote in my journal this morning:
On July 26, 2007, a mother was born.
And again on December 29, 2008.
And again on November 29, 2011.
Each time this mother was born, she was a little more bruised, and a little more broken, and yet a little more whole. Because each time she was a little closer to the One who makes you strong when you are weak.
And each time she was a little weaker, but also a little stronger, because He had filled her heart with a little more grace, a little more wisdom, a little more love.
Her heart had opened wider and made room for 3 little angels at 3 different times and she wondered how her heart had ever lived without them.
But maybe they'd been there all along--the essence of dreams to come and songs not yet written. Somehow they were always there, but on 3 separate and special days, these little ones came to life as realities.
And though she would fall again and again, They (all 7 of them--including her Father in Heaven, her Savior, the Holy Ghost, her Patrick, and her Easton, Tate, and Maylie) would be there to pick her up.
And they do not know it, but these 3 precious children are making a mother....
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Friday, May 10, 2013
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Saturday, May 4, 2013
A Saturday Morning.
Filled with books.
Tate,
even with all of your mischeviousness and teasings, I can't get enough of you.
I love you.
I love your fascination with books. I find you reading all the time. For hours on end.
You're a bookworm, just like your mother.
And I couldn't be prouder.
Way to go bud!
You're perfect. Just the way you are!
Love,
your mother
Friday, May 3, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Poem for you.
Little lips,
all puckered up,
strawberry blonde,
in curly curls,
and pretty pig tails,
eye sparkle,
precious profile,
catchlight.
Maylie, you are my catchlight.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Mustache.
On a whim one lazy Sunday afternoon, I decided to draw a mustache on Patrick...
...and he actually agreed.
But, I still think Patrick would make one rugged looking bull fighter!
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