Please don’t ask me for advice.

I really don’t have any to give. Unless it’s about something I’ve walked through myself.

Everything else is preaching.

But I can listen. And I can weep with you. If you tell me about your parent dying or your miscarriage, I can’t help. I can pray with you and I can listen and learn about your pain. If you tell me about your inability to conceive, I can tell you that I don’t exactly know what it feels like, but I can try to imagine. I can say that it must be astoundingly difficult for you. I can try to love you in your suffering.

I can listen.

If I sit across the Starbucks table with you and we talk about parenting teenagers, I can laugh with you and worry with you and I can take notes about my future, but I have no advice. I can’t tell you what I’ve tried and worked or tried and failed.

If we talk about cancer or menopause or the death of a child, I have nothing. I must not, I dare not say that I know how it feels. But I want to know because it’s part of you. It’s part of who we are as women, as humans, as children of God.

But I’m sure I will know some of these things intimately before long. And then I will tell you what I’ve learned.

But ask me about my marriage and I will tell you how I broke it in half and God stitched it back together. Ask me about walking away from God, leaving every gift I’d been given and wanting to trade my beauty for ashes. I can talk about that. I can also talk about giving all that I had, which amounted to a pile of rags and dirt, back to God, stepping back and watching him create something amazing.

I can talk about God giving me my words back.

I can tell you about losing friends, and I can weep with you about hurt inside a family. I can tell you stories about a strong-willed child with the wildest of emotional swings. I can share in the frustrations of living with a husband with ADD and we can talk about childbirth.

But I don’t want to preach. And I won’t. Not about things I don’t know about.

So for now, let me learn from you from all of your pain and grief. And you can learn from me, from the smallish things I’ve been honored with.

I’ve been staying up way too late, waking up way too late and not setting the alarm.

I’ve been eating way too much (light) ice cream and skipping too many workouts to fit (well) into my favorite jeans. But it’s summer and I’m wearing dresses anyway.

I have been letting the kids sleep in to whenever they want, find their way into my room in the morning after my husband has already gone to work, and poke me and ask me for breakfast. I tell them, “In a minute…” which is really more like ten.

We’ve been going to the beach too much, jumping into borrowed pools, and walking to the park before bedtime.

I’ve been letting them play outside after they are fresh from the bath, watch movies in my bedroom late at night and have lunch picnics on the carpet.

I’ve been long on returning phone calls and emails and I’ve been paying bills during the grace period and not early (like usual). And I’m weeks behind on reading blogs.

Summer, in all it’s July glory, has completely obliterated the discipline in this household.

One of my friends, Brad, made a comment in response to my post from yesterday:

True words, well spoken. God has been speaking that word to me lately: Engage.

Take your son for lunch and dip netting in a pond afterwards.

Buy a rainbow’s worth of plasticine and spend hours with your daughter making blue hippos, princesses and space aliens.

Lie next to your wife and look into her eyes until she knows you love her desperately.

Fall asleep content and do it again tomorrow. Engage!

Very well said, Brad.

Put it down.

Put down your phone. Or your book. Put down the TV remote or the magazine.

Just drop it.

Pay attention to the three-year-old who has been asking for the past 2 days for you to read the same Curious George book. Sit down and read it to her. Then linger and play Cooking with her in her bedroom. Lay on the floor next to her and see what she wants to do next.

Clear your schedule for the seven-year-old who has been asking for the last month to have a Mom-and-Me day. Take her to get her nails painted in the morning and swimming in the afternoon. Focus on her without having to run around after her little sister. Get your hair wet in the pool and play made-up games with a volleyball and water guns.

Let the sweeping wait until after they’ve gone to bed. Leave the clean laundry unfolded for another day.

Stop doing the dishes and make time for him when he asks you to listen to the song he’s figured out on the guitar. That is more important than having a conversation about the mortgage.

You don’t need to be doing something keep you engaged. Instead, engage yourself with the physical presence of those around you.

Be with your husband.
Watch your children.
Let them have you, and not the sum of what you do.

The house is quietest in the morning.

In the summer mornings.

When my older daughter is still in her bed, turning toward the light coming through her shutters and then turning back over again.

When my youngest, who has been parked between us in our bed since 4:30 this morning shifts slightly and hits me with her tiny elbow. The loudest sound in the house is the pain in my own head from her unintentional “attack.”

The toys that have been left downstairs last night are still in their various piles: dolls without clothes, baskets of dress-up clothes, open boxes of board games. They are unmoved overnight, unlike the rest of us.

The ceiling fan whirs almost silently, the cat jumps up on the end of the bed to sleep finally, a corner of the house creaks and settles with the warmth of the morning.

It’s like a lake, glassy and clear with the first sunshine: It’s ready for a rock to be skipped.

It is soft.
Gentle.
Peaceful.

Everything is quiet and ready to start over. Before little voices begin to chatter, or scream or laugh. Before music, movies or toys have begun to make any noise. Before I’ve begun to teach and discipline. Before I’ve put the key into the ignition of the car.

We can all start over fresh today.

What we add to this, the peace that we’ve begun with, is all our own doing.

This is the first time I’ve sat down all day.

Actually the second time.

I’ve been cleaning and clearing and dusting. Mopping, sweeping and scrubbing. I’ve been filing and filling, wiping and brushing. I’m exhausted. It’s the kind of cleaning where I don’t have to workout today – my core is sore and my shoulder muscles ache. I worked up a no-shower-yet, still-in-my-pajamas sweat.

And then someone came over unexpectedly. And I wasn’t finished. But I was on a roll. I had three cups of coffee in swirling around in my bloodstream and I was pumped up to finish the house.

She came over and we started talking. And she cried in my living room.

I came down from my high, and wept with her, and somehow I didn’t feel the need to finish the house right away. The vacuum cleaner stayed parked in the middle of the floor, the dishes remained and the extra clutter I intended to put away didn’t move. We prayed together and I listened to her, discovering we were more similar than either of us had thought.

I sat with her while the kids dropped crumbs all over the mopped floor. I stayed downstairs while the little girls pulled all of the dress-up dresses out of the closet on the newly vacuumed floor.

It all could wait.

People are always more important. She was more important. And it was equally as important for me to learn the art of stopping.

I know now that there isn’t any expiration date on grace.

Not like eggs in the icebox that I buy getting ready for omelets and pancakes on the weekend. I buy too many and they sit with a USE BY date stamped on the side.

I never use all the eggs by their date.

But they are still good. Refrigerated eggs can be used for about a month after their expiration.

That purple 21JUL09 is just so intimidating, though. I have to resist the urge to toss them out just because it’s the 24th. I fight it remembering I will use them up tomorrow in fresh blueberry pancakes or vegetable omelets.

Grace is the same.

It’s always there. Cartons and cartons filling up and getting in the way of the other food. Ready for me to crack open and sink into whenever I want.

And sometimes it seems like it’s too late. That grace, somehow, has gone bad.

The story of the woman in the streets at the feet of Jesus always makes me weep. She thought any grace that might have been extended to her had run dry. It was over. There is something about her, nameless, that will always resonate inside me.

She is me.

But Jesus stooped down to her, gave her all of Heaven’s grace and told her to live her life in a different way. Because His grace never expires. It’s always good and fresh and gives life.

Crack it open. Spread it out. Use it. Grace is abundant and doesn’t grow old.

My three-year-old got kicked out of gymnastics last week.

I got that call that sent me straight to tears. She told me that the instructor who taught Naomi’s class was “unable to discipline her” and “teach the other children at the same time.” That we needed to “figure something else out” because the current situation just “wasn’t working.”

She wanted to make sure that I was aware my daughter was misbehaving.

Aware? I LIVE life with a three-year-old 24 hours a day, and not for just 60 minutes on Tuesday mornings. Of course I was aware because I watched the class. And I removed her from class three different times to discipline her myself that week.

I was painfully aware.

After I cried on the phone to the gymnastics class coordinator and blubbered about how I really wasn’t a bad mom, that I didn’t really care about gymnastics, and that I just wanted my daughter to have an experience in a group setting. We talked and we were able to work something else out.

Class on a different day with a stricter teacher.

So today, on the way down to her new structured class, I prayed the raw and bold prayer that often belongs to mothers.

Please help her obey. Please give her the desire to obey. Let me just have ONE EASY DAY.

And I left it at that. Half-believing He would answer and half-sure that she would continue to be herself and drive her teacher to hit happy hour later in the afternoon.

I warned her new teacher. I warned Naomi. Actually I threatened her. And then I watched. I stayed close and eagle-eyed her the entire hour, making sure she was obedient and ready to pull her out to discipline her if I needed to.

She amazed me. She listened and obeyed and did exactly what she was asked. Once, at the very end, she ignored her teacher’s “Don’t climb that.” The instructor calmly pulled her aside and asked her again. Naomi obeyed.

Victory, at least for today. And on the way home I thanked God for answering my prayer. I thanked Him for giving my little three-year-old the discipline to listen and be obedient. I thanked Him for the brief interlude of success.

But then I wondered, would I have thanked Him if she HADN’T obeyed? He answered me regardless of my absent faith. I probably wouldn’t have said, Thank you Lord for giving me one more difficult circumstance to help shape me. Thank you for caring about me and her enough to continue to teach us how to live.

Because we just don’t work that way. I rarely work that way. And that embarrasses me.

I need to learn to obey and thank Him both for the good and the bad.

Some people get up and read the paper. Or jog. Some people pray, or take a shower first thing in the morning. Some people check their email.

This summer, when days are lazier, I’ve been doing something different.

When she is still bleary-eyed, and stumbles into my room to wish me good morning, I ask her what she dreamt.

There is a sliver of perfect time before breakfast and summer cartoons have taken over when she’ll let me hold her on my lap still smelling like sleep. No new thoughts have entered her mind yet, she hasn’t thought forward to the promise of the rest of the day. She is still held half-way between the night and the morning and her memory is sharpest now.

I ask her. At first she doesn’t remember. But then, like unconventional words put to music that was never intended to be sung, dreams never sound the right way when they are explained. There is always something missing, something to be reached that never can with the daylight.

She was on a roller coaster, with a unicorn and a Pegasus. But I know in her mind, in her dream, it was much more than this. Her dream had all the dimensional colors possible in the wide world of her bed, but here in the morning, she can only barely touch them.

Barely. They never sound the same when you speak them.

But I try to understand. I try to put myself into her thoughts, I try to see the world she’s created. Its so hard. I’m so old.

I will continue to ask them, in that perfect five minutes when they are fresh from rest, what they dream. Maybe they will still tell me when they are grown, long after sleep has become a necessity rather than a chore.

You should have seen me right before our mini-getaway last weekend: I was haggard, bloated, teary-eyed and greasy-haired. I was a mother.

But then we took a four day break, and I felt better immediately.

Not because I wanted to get away from my children. Not at all. I was just tired of disciplining.

I was exhausted from constantly being the firm hand, the solid wall, the immovable fortress of behavior in this home. I didn’t want to send anyone else to their room or put anyone else on the “naughty” step. I was tired of making my seven-year-old earn her video game time and enforce reluctant apologies from my three-year-old. I didn’t feel like bringing my want-to-yell voice carefully down to a calm and patient request for obedience.

Tired of staying sharp to the emotional ups and downs of my oldest.
Tired of grasping defiant wrists to hoist my youngest away from the playground when it’s time to go.
Tired of walking away from tantrums.
Tired of watching any and all forms of discipline fall into the oubliette of childhood.

I wasn’t weary of my children. I was weary of disciplining.

And when I realized that, then I cried.

[And most women will agree with me that a good cry fixes a lot of things.]

Does God ever get tired of being the firm fortress like I do? And I’m not even that solid; I jiggle and waver at the slightest change in plans. Does He ever lie down exhausted because He’s just had too much of me? I’ve ignored Him and spat on his attention for the last time. Does He burst into tears because I never seem to get it right? Are my emotional sweeps too great for Him to be comfortable with me?

Does He just need a break?

No.

Never.

Even when I choose to walk away from His gentleness or His good plans for me He still pursues me. He doesn’t need a break, He doesn’t melt into tears of frustration, He doesn’t need a nap. He just is. His love never wanes for me or needs a boost of adrenaline. He never needs a shot or four of espresso to make it through the afternoon.

And He disciplines me in firm kindness like the perfect mother I am not.