Hurry kills love.*

I read that this morning and I stopped. Literally. Mid-stride on the elliptical.

I wrote about a busy day earlier this week, and now this. It seems like I’ve been going and going and isn’t summer supposed to be slower? It isn’t.

I tell the kids to hurry up or “we’ll be late,” hurry up “and put away your toys,” hurry up “so that your ice cream won’t melt.” I’m telling them to hurry even when they’re eating ice cream?!

I sometimes amaze myself. Why can’t I just let my girls eat ice cream in peace? Isn’t that supposed to be a luxury, a time of leisure? I even told them to eat their toast quickly so that they wouldn’t drop it off of their laps (yes, we are watching cartoons while eating breakfast lately).

I get so focused on the goal, like getting somewhere on time, that I forget why I’m going. Who cares if we are 10 minutes late to VBS, it’s for THEM anyway. And when I hurry, prod, poke and rush them into the van, I am not loving them.

Rushing them makes love impossible.

Hurrying them makes me unable to see them for who they are, to watch their quirks and their beauties and love them more for it.

And most of the time, I’m rushing them because I’m running late myself. I’ve tried to cram too many things into one hour of the morning. And so I shoo them out the door with one arm in a cardigan, “Just button it in the car!”

I want to slow down today. And I want to love my girls by not hurrying them.

*(from “The Practice of Solitude” by John Ortberg in Growth: Training Vs. Trying)

“We have to thank all the ladies here for helping to make us fathers.”

My father-in-law says this yesterday afternoon outside on the patio after enchiladas, rice and beans for a Father’s Day lunch.

Its true. Without us they’d just be men.

And without them, we’d just be women. Not mothers. Not wives. Without our kids, we’d all just be people trying to make it work alone. We wouldn’t be families.

We need each other. All of us. Grandparents. Children. Aunts. Cousins. Daughters.

Even if they are hard to live with and don’t know what we want for our birthdays and never bother to ask. Even if they hate the TV shows that are favorites and act like they are never hurt by anything. We all need each other even if we don’t think the same way, and even if we disagree. We need each other to show us how narrow we can be when we are alone.

We need each other to help make us into people we wouldn’t be if we were by ourselves. We need each other to grow.

So, stop complaining.
Stop getting angry at someone because they are who they are.
Stop trying to understand what you never will.

Instead, allow yourself to be changed because of the relationships that you’ve been blessed with. And be grateful you have a family.

I’m glad I’m a daughter, a wife, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a niece, a daughter-in-law, a mother.

I’m glad that I’m different because of it.

I don’t have many words this morning.

I’ve talked them all out this week and I don’t have a lot left to write.

This has been a week of ultra long emails to new friends, early morning discussions with my husband about finances, lengthy talks with my seven-year-old about responsibility and growing up. I’ve used up my words disciplining my three-year-old, used words explaining the origins of the universe to question-asking kids in my backseat, and spent hours at a field trip using my voice to make sure 50 first graders behaved.

I’m kinda done talking.

And in just a few minutes, we are heading out to the desert for the weekend. We’ll put on a movie in the back for the girls and then I’ll have 90 minutes to talk to my husband.

But right now, I just feel like being quiet.

I don’t have a lot to twitter today. I don’t have a lot to blog. I just want to be inside myself and think. But even thinking takes too many words sometimes.

I want my kids to obey without me asking. I want my husband to understand me without a long diatribe on why I feel what I feel. I want to be quiet.

So I am going to try to find the quiet. In the middle of a family. In the middle of a weekend of new things. I am going to try to find the silence in the middle of my own thoughts that seem to be quicker and quicker lately.

I’ve spent the last couple days with friends.

Which is different for me. Because my normal days are spent driving kids to gymnastics, bribing first graders to finish homework without whining and fixing dinner for a husband who comes home too late eat it. And even though I live with my favorite people, somehow I miss the friendship in the midst of the chaos.

So Friday I spent all day with with my best friends: My mom and dad, my girls and my husband. We spent all day in Yosemite Valley, hiking through the Mariposa Grove of Sequoias, walking up to the bases of the waterfalls, and taking the kids on the free tram around the valley. We walked through the Native American Village behind the visitor center, had ice cream at the lodge and got really bad coffee in Curry Village.

I watched my three-year-old dance on the top of a tree stump to the music in her head and my seven-year-old skip laughing down a forest path after she claimed she hated hiking. I held hands with my husband and talked with him about all the things I’ve been saving up for a few weeks.

I guess this is what vacation is. Spending time with the same people you normally spend time with, but seeing them in a different light. And sitting next to each other and not having to say anything at all.

Its learning how to become friends again.

I check on my littlest one before I go to sleep.

Her hand is steady. She’s been in bed for three hours now – enough time for her little body to settle into its sleep rhythms and breath patterns, into its own warmth it will keep during the night.

Her hand is warm – not the sweaty fidgeting of falling into sleep, or the cool skin in the early hours of the morning when the light seeps through her shutters. But the comfortable, safe warmth her body lives in in the middle of the night as she sleeps.

(I thank God that I can keep my children warm at night. Under familiar blankets. In smooth beds. With fresh scents and clean sheets. I thank God I can bathe them in the evening and place them on their pillows with damp hair.)

I check on them. Before I can sleep, long after they’ve closed their eyes, I need to check.

Maybe it is that promise I need to keep. To them. Or too myself. I’ll check on you…

Or maybe it’s seeing that she is safe before I can give my own mind over to rest.

Maybe it is simply checking that her hand has reached its warmth – that she is under her blanket (the fuzzy side, not the silky side) – and that her dreams seem peaceful to me looking in. Her blondish curl is stuck to her forehead and she turns and lets out a sleep sigh. It is long and drawn as if she is too caught in sleep to stop her little voice. I put my two fingers in her palm and she immediately, slowly, curls around me. She grabs my hand and loves me, even in her sleep.

Maybe this is why I check on her. Selfishly so, to feel her love for me before I go to my own bed.

(Originally publishes on May 23, 2008 as “Checking“)

For me, Monday will start at 3:45 am.

But 3:45 am here in the UK. We’ll be taken to the coach stop at 4:30 to catch the 5:00 am bus to Heathrow. That’s a three and a half hour drive.

Then we’ll board the plane at 10:15 in the morning, take off by 11 (if we’re lucky) and then spend 11 hours on board. Somewhere aroud 10 pm our time (3 pm local time) we’ll land in Los Angeles.

And then we’ll try to keep everyone up as late as possible to get a head start on returning to the Pacific time zone.

Don’t call me on Tuesday. I will be in a constant dream state.

But for Sunday, we’ll take one last excursion to Granchester near Cambridge with the group of nine that has been our constant family for the last 11 days:

• Tiffany: sister-in-law and mother extraordinaire. homeschooler, children’s ministry coodinator, and maker of an amazing cup of Yorkshire tea.
• Joey: brother-in-law and pastor. teller of stories, friend of everyone and purchaser of convienience store flapjacks (like brownies, sort-of)
• Madelyn: age 8, beautiful, quiet, and lover of all things related to ballet, princess gowns, and gardens of flowers. can switch in and out of an English accent depending on who she’s talking to.
• Josiah: age 5, loud with laughter and the image of my own husband at the same age in appearance and action. can also switch accents without thinking.
• Jordan: 22 months, happy, hungry and the one who can’t stand to be left out of anyone’s playtime. Love’s to touch everyone’s ears. I know. Cute, huh?
• Chad: my husband and consumer of his new find, salt and pepper bread. needs more sleep and alone time after this week.
• Hope: age 7, mine, admirer of her older cousin, sensitive and would sleep on the floor of her cousin’s room for the rest of her life if I’d let her.
• Naomi: age 3, also mine. mixes in well with both the older and younger, until her younger cousin antagonizes her for no reason at all. was enthralled with the “castle church”.
• And me: I’m known here but you may not know that I’m currently a driver on the left side of the road and don’t know how I’m going to switch back. I am addicted to sleeved biscuits here called “Digestives” by McVities. Believe me, they aren’t as wholesome as they sound. And I never did get down to London. But I’m alright with that. I did span 4000 years of artifacts in 12 hours on Thursday.

So, think of me Monday when I take two spent children and one exhausted husband on the longest day of their lives. We’ll be home soon. And I’m very glad.

I am still in love with my daughters.

The honeymoon euphoria hasn’t worn off. I still want to hug them and hold their hands with my every spare second and I look for their approval after I’ve made dinner or I’ve told a joke.

I am infatuated, enamoured, besotted and possessed by them.

But it has changed since each of them were born.

Like love changes with a man — separates then weaves back together again, stronger and more seasoned. It dances together and changes with the other and then settles together in a safe spot.

Love for my girls is like this. When Hope was a baby, she was all squishy, screaming, breathe-in-her-baby-breath love. I just watched her heart beat at the top of her baby-head and I was forever smitten.

Now she is seven and screams at the top of her lungs when the roller coaster takes off. She squeezes my hand and I’m in love with her still. Her laughter, her wild joy, her dubbing the howling take-off, “the moment of my life, Mom!!”

My littlest one was the baby who slept through the night the 5th day of her life. I was captivated. I was more relaxed with her and she’d rest in the evening, instead of cry like her sister, on my lap playing with my fingers.

This morning she walked up to me with her own version of a belated Valentine’s Day card: an index card scribbled with purple and pink highlighter pen. “Happy Bawentine’s Day, Mama!” She waltzes through her morning on princess high heels and curtsies whenever necessary (or just for fun). I’ve never been more in love than today.

I’m enchanted and claimed by each of them. They have a hold on my heart unlike any other two mini humans on earth.

My love has graduated from sticky, squishy new-mother love to something different: a love laced around the intricacies of their unique personalities. And I know I’m nowhere near done loving them yet.