On Family | Sarah Markley

The Summer of Eleven-and-a-Half

May 24, 2013 by Sarah Markley 4 Comments

“It’s not even a blink,” she says as we watch our daughters play in the front yard of her house.

I’ve dropped by to pick something up and she, a mother with one daughter beyond college and one who’s eleven, tells me because she’s been there herself.

“After this they’re women. You know that, right?”

I look over at them: they are already looking like women and acting like them at times too. Eleven is still child, but it is also stretching toward adolescence and adulthood at an alarming rate.

I sigh. A big one. “I know. I mean, I can guess.” I tell her.

The girls run in the yard and around the big tree that shades the front of their house. It’s almost summer and the sun is still high at 5pm.

“And then they’re off.” She’s thinking of her older daughter, I know. “And all we have are the memories of the little girls.”

She smiles. And I’m a little sad as I pack my kids back into the minivan. We have to stop at the market before we go back home so we do.

And maybe this is why I’ll write a little less this summer.

Maybe this is why I’ll hang out on Facebook and Twitter a little less this summer.

Maybe this is why I’ll say “no” to the speaking engagement and the conference this summer.

Because I want to enjoy them. I want to burn these days into my mama-memory. Because she’s right. It all changes {and I’m hoping that in the change and in the journey —- even in the struggle— it will be good} and it is quicker than a blink.

I’ll throw the ball in the yard and cuddle with a pajama-clad seven-year-old on the sofa without my phone. And I’ll jump in the pool even when I don’t want to get my hair wet — because I want to be the mom they remember swimming with and Marco-Polo-ing with rather than the mom tapping away at a keyboard while they frolic.

And hopefully we’ll remember the summer of eleven-and-a-half and seven-and-a-half with fondness.

What’s changing in your life right now? In your family?

Filed Under: on family

My Arthritic Heart

May 16, 2013 by Sarah Markley 7 Comments

My girls. It seems as if they are growing even as I look across the breakfast table at them.

Their bones stretch and they seem to get taller and taller every time they emerge from their room with rubbing-eyes and hair that’s been knotted overnight by their pillows.

They are stretching and growing and moving and sometimes I just want it to slow down. I get a panicky feeling when I think that it will all be over so soon. That in a blink it’s done.

It’s done.

Here are these children who need me less and less and who will I be when I’m not needed? Here are these children under my roof for only a few more years and they are turning into women right in front of me.

But then I wonder that as their bones stretch and hands lengthen into the hands of teenagers, will I be able to grow into the mother they need? Because at this point, I don’t even feel equipped to mother an eleven year old and a seven year old.

It’s easy for kids to grow. It’s who they are. They are born growing. But me? It’s hard for me to adapt and change and growing for me isn’t natural. Not at all. It feels like I’m cracking and arthritic as I try to stretch to meet the needs of a family who is all growing older.

And it’s not just their bodies that grow. It’s their hearts and minds and spirits. And all of a sudden when they ask the big questions, they really expect a big answer. Or at least one that makes an ounce of sense. And most of the time I really don’t know the answer.

{I’m learning to say, “I’m working through that one too.”}

So will I be able to stretch my stiff heart into the elastic heart that my children need? I hope so.

I’ll have to rely on them a bit, I think, to show me the way. I’ll take their lead: to grow when they grow, stretch when they do and move with grace as they are learning to do so beautifully.

How are you being stretched right now?

Filed Under: on family, on girls and women

I’m Your Biggest Fan

May 10, 2013 by Sarah Markley 8 Comments

There is nothing more life-giving than when someone truly believes in you.

Not the clichéd slap-on-the-back “I believe in you.”

No, not that.

It’s the I-got-your-back, you-can-do-this, I’m-amazed-by-you super-fan that only your closest people have the power to be to you.

I can sit across the out-to-breakfast table with a friend and say, “Girl, you got this.” And it goes a long way, I’m sure.

I can email my closest Internet sisters and share a prayer request and they can say, “Girl, we will pray.” And that means oh, so much.

But when my people, and by that I mean my people, tell me that they believe in me, it goes to the end of me. It moves past belief into action. And it has the power to move me past belief into action.

I believe in you means nothing if we aren’t willing to take the actions needed to support someone in that.

{We so often believe but we do not act}

You have that power. Yes you do. For your husband or wife. For your daughters and your sons. For your mother. For your father. For your people, you truly have the power to help them succeed.

So today, find your closest person and tell them that you are their biggest fan. You believe in them. That you know they are amazing. That with you, love trumps all the rest.

Then step back and watch them fly.

Filed Under: on family, on love

Labor of Love

March 27, 2013 by Sarah Markley 22 Comments

We had lice in our house yesterday.

It’s really something I don’t like to talk, even here among friends. It is so much easier to keep this private because YOU don’t want to be the reason the whole school issues a “disease” warning and if you are, you don’t want anyone else to know it’s YOUR kid. But you don’t. You call the school and tell everyone you know that we-are-staying-home-today-to-pick-out-lice.

People think you are dirty or not clean or something (even though you are very clean) and they make assumptions (still) about hygiene when someone gets lice. It’s almost like you are a pariah and your home is a source of disease for even the people that love you the most.

But it’s what happens when you have school-aged girls with long untamed hair that is hard to catch for more than a few hours in a hair tie.

So we scrubbed and picked and lice-shampooed. We combed and sprayed and tore apart the house and everything soft and fluffy went into the washing machine on the hottest of waters. We swept and vacuumed and changed every linen in the entire house. I opened all the windows and doors.

Fresh air, please come in.

I sat for three hours, two different times bent over the head of a girl-child, using my fingers through long, deep hair scouring them clean.

I can only call it an intimate labor of love. There are very few people you can call to come search your scalp for insects, as very few people will even enter your house when the L-word is used.

But nonetheless my back is almost broken today because yesterday I bowed it to make sure these children’s heads were fixed and mended.

My eleven-year-old, with her thick, auburn hair sat patiently as I silently combed. I was in the middle of my second hour on her head. She said something softly. “Thank you Mama. I don’t know anyone else who would do this.”

“I love you sweetie.” I said as I adjusted the towel over her shoulders. “It’s what I do.”

And it’s familiar, this child sitting close to you, nearly an embrace, but it’s not. It’s a cleansing.

I only wonder if this is what Jesus does with us.

He pulls us close, not worrying if the dirty will rub off on himself, and gets to work on the mending.

This cleansing us is dirty work. There are parts of it that shouldn’t even be spoken of in good company. It’s the picking and scrubbing and the death and the need. The intense need! This is something that one cannot do alone. We need someone else to do this washing for us.

But it’s also intimate. It’s close and humiliating to have someone else look at the ugly, dirty parts of you. It’s embarrassing to have someone else know that you need this so deeply and to be still held close during it.

When the girls had gone to bed late last night after the last nit comb had been sterilized I pulled a chair under the light. “Chad, its my turn now.”

And I bent my head for him to look and touch my scalp, behind my ears, the top of my head. For an hour we remained like this, his body close to mine in this intimate cleansing.

It is a labor of intimacy that only love can perform.

Filed Under: on family, on God, on love, Uncategorized

On Losing a House

March 8, 2013 by Sarah Markley 79 Comments

Two years ago we lost our house. In the full sense of the word, lost. Some poor business decisions were made very long ago and the consequence of which was that nearly five years later, we weren’t able to keep the house we thought we would live in forever.

I’ve written about this a bit in the past with a different attitude. And I’ve talked about it. If you would have asked me about this a year ago or read anything I wrote about it you would hear me say things about down sizing, about our-treasures-aren’t-here-on-earth and even about its-not-the-end-of-the-world-to-lose-a-house.

All of that is still true.

But people around me were treating it like a death in the family and it just plain irritated me. It’s NOT a death, I wanted to scream. We are just short-selling our house. Frankly it made me more angry at the people I knew who worshipped the American Dream.

A house isn’t everything, you know. It’s really not a big deal.

But it was a very big deal.

Losing our house. Losing my house.

At the time people were losing their houses and careers around me in droves. Many families I knew were moving and many people had been laid off of work. We were lucky, I thought, to still have each other and to still be able to have a roof over our head. We were fortunate, I thought, that we weren’t losing our business and that we were still all healthy and whole.

And I still believe that.

But losing that house was harder on me that I ever let on to anyone. Even myself.

My heart and my marriage had been healed in that house. My life had changed in that house. My friends had met Jesus in that living room. I had seen miracles happen in that home.

My baby took her first steps on that floor and it was the place in my mind that when I closed my eyes, I saw our roots grow deep and strong. I’d poured wine and coffee and baked bread and cakes in that kitchen for people I loved. I’d played games on the living room floor with my toddlers and carried babies on hips as I made dinner.

So when we lost our house, we lost more than just a place to lock up when we left. We lost a sense of identity and I lost a sense of confidence. I lost the walls inside which I felt safe and loved. When I packed up my dishes in that home, I packed up a piece of myself as well.

I hate writing about this because I feel like I’m whining. Oh, poor Sarah, she lost her house. What about the people who don’t HAVE houses? What about people who lose parents or children or things that are far worse?

So, this is yet another thing that I’ve been scared to say, scared to even talk about and worried that I will come off wrong.

But in all honesty losing that damned piece of property made me question everything about myself: I am a stay-in-one-place-type-of-person. I’m solid. You know where to find me. I grow roots. I. live. here. where. I. belong.

But now I had no idea where I belonged.

So we found a place to live for the last two years but for the last two years I have wandered. I lived in a house with my family but I have felt untethered. I have felt not-myself.

My girls talk about it often. “I miss our old, old house” they say and they mean the one we lost. I usually put my finger to my temple and press for a moment. How do I explain to them that I left a part of myself there and if I could change the past I would? That the big adult things that have to do with banks and businesses sometimes are harder to work through than you could ever imagine. And that things don’t always turn out as we plan. How do I say this to a little girl who just misses her pale-yellow room with the stars on the ceiling?

So I say these things. That we had to move. That the bank wouldn’t let us stay. And then I feel like a bad mother, but then a normal one all the same. I remind us all of what is good in our lives and what we have to be thankful for (and I’m telling this to myself as much as I’m telling it to them).

And I finish by saying to them that trust-me-I-never-wanted-to-leave-either.

And now looking back, I know that’s when a big part of our more recent marriage issues began. I can’t explain it but places do have power I think. Even if it’s as simple as what a place symbolizes to you, I now know with experience that a place can be good for a person or very bad for a person too.

Our house loss has been both good and bad, but far more bad than I let on to people who asked. And it wasn’t because I was lying, but it was because I didn’t know how to tell myself the truth about it. I wanted to feel all the feelings I SHOULD be feeling rather than the ones that were truly rising up inside me.

The day we moved two years ago I drove away from that driveway when movers were still loading beds and dressers on to a truck. I live five miles from that house but I’ve never been back. It’s just too hard.

A few months ago, nearly two years after I drove away from that place, I finally said goodbye to it, as silly as it seems. Laying in bed one night, I forced myself to mentally walk through each room in that home, something I had refrained from doing in a very long time. I mentally walked through each room and I “looked” around, I said goodbye and I shut the door. I did that for each room until I was left at the front steps, and then I shut and locked the front door.

It hasn’t make any of this easier for me at all, but I did feel like I could move on.

We’ve moved yet again. I know. Again, it’s not what I’d ever planned for my family. Packing up my dishes almost killed me this time around. But it was different. I knew I was turning a page and it was a different kind of move. It was filled with a little bit of hope, a little bit of joy, {a whole lot of work} and a little bit of happiness.

And it’s been a very good thing.

What about you? Are places important to you? Do you move a lot? Do you stay in the same place? Can you relate to my story at all?

Filed Under: on family, on fear, on honesty, Uncategorized

Teaching Our Children About Grace

March 2, 2013 by Sarah Markley Leave a Comment

I’ve had a week full of incredible freedom for me.

Writing those two posts this week about honesty and transparency and with so many of my fears laced inside and through those words was so absolutely freeing for me. (Click here to read the first one and the second one).

Thank you for supporting me and joining me in that. You have no idea how loved and embraced I feel by this community.

Today I have a post up on (in)courage about teaching our children how to embrace grace. I wrote it several weeks ago but if you read carefully, you’ll see how some of my thoughts were percolating and then how it led up to this week.

I’d be honored if you joined me over there this weekend.

Teaching Our Kids to Embrace Grace

I grew up without a clear understanding of the grace of God.

I knew God saved and that he forgave, but grace, this undeserved thing? It was like liquid through my hands.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I believe I began my journey to understand this vast part of God and I’m still learning every day. However as a mother, I want to raise a family who embraces a grace-filled lifestyle. I’ve been thinking about how we can actually do this in a church that still shoots it’s wounded.

Here are five real world ways that we can begin to raise kids who embrace the idea of a grace-filled God…

Click here to read five of my ideas about how we can model (and teach) grace to our children.

And if you haven’t taken the time to subscribe to to this blog, I’d love to have you on board. I promise, I won’t inundate your inbox. My Facebook community is also a great place to see one another. Click here to subscribe and click here to join my community.

How do you teach your kids about grace?

Filed Under: on family, on grace

Building Cushions and Writing in Margins

February 6, 2013 by Sarah Markley 25 Comments

As school was beginning last autumn I started to listen to myself: I was actually screaming at my kids. The transition from summer to school year in our house was not an easy one.

“Get dressed!!” “Why aren’t you ready yet?” “Your shoes aren’t on!” “This van is driving to school. Will you be on it?”

And it wasn’t just the wild time between 6:50 and 7:25 in the morning. It was during every other time of the day when there was a place to be and we weren’t anywhere near ready to be there.

I was stressed. My husband was stressed. The kids were out of their minds, and rightly so. All the negativity in the house was funneling down directly to them and when I began to actually hear myself as I yelled I understood that a lot of the stress was directly tied back to me and my attitude.

I made a decision: If my family’s “crazy” was in some part due to my inability to function well, I needed to make some changes. So I did. I fixed a lot of things about my life that needed some major overhaul, but one of the things I did was I began to get up at 5. Now I know that a lot of you already greet the world during the early hours to get a head start on the day, but I had been sleeping until I had just enough time to get up, get dressed and then wake up my kids.

It just wasn’t working.

I began to build a cushion into my {our} mornings so that the mood in the house would be more relaxed. This margin for error changed things almost immediately.

I was more calm because I was getting things done before the sun and the children woke up. The children were more calm because Mama was more calm and life had the chance to move naturally along as it needed to.

Since then I’ve begun to build more cushions and write more margins into the story of my life. Not just time ones: but emotional ones, spiritual ones, and physical ones.

I’m getting into bed before I’m tired because I want to be there to fall asleep when I should. I’m spending time in prayer before I “feel the need” or before I get desperate. I’m emailing close friends when I need extra prayer or emotional support when things get tough in my life. And I’m trying to be more transparent and open with friends about how I’m “really doing.”

Cushions are so important because it takes the irrational and the crazy and gives it a soft place to land. Margins help us because it gives us “white space” in a sea of wall to wall words.

Not only is it okay to create these margin spaces in our lives, but I think it’s necessary.

Cushions are the short naps I schedule during the day, even when I’m too busy to blink. Cushions are the easy coffee hours with friends who love without judgment and just need love in return. Cushions are the early bedtimes and early risings because a new day sometimes is better than the last one. Maybe at their core, cushions are grace embodied in daily life.

What do you think? What cushions or margins can you create today? What have you done that you find works to keep your feet on the ground?

Filed Under: on family, on grace, Uncategorized

The Summer We Didn’t Take Swim Lessons

August 15, 2012 by Sarah Markley 25 Comments

My kids have been in summer swimming lessons since age three. We don’t do swim team year round, but I have made sure that for at least the last seven summers, we’ve been at the city pool for lessons.

Except for this year.

In May {or maybe it was June — The end of school is a haze now} I got online and searched for available classes. Nothing was available until the second session which didn’t open for registration until July 1.

I put the date on my calendar and wondered if we really, sincerely needed lessons this year. They just make the summer so busy.

I have what I like to call Activity Guilt. Maybe it’s the sports culture in my geographic area, maybe it’s the media or maybe it’s my own personal hang-ups, but in the last decade plus six months of parenting, I have had to fight the growing monster of giving my children every possible experience, class and lesson at our fingertips.

All the good dancers/pianists/swimmers start at age 3 right? And I’ve missed it somehow. If they haven’t begun it by now, they will never have a fighting chance.

Sometimes thoughts like this gnaw at me.

There is a growing tension in this culture to turn our children into these titans of sport or art and that they must choose their forever path by age nine or ten. And I am fully aware that my “activity guilt” is a result of this culture.

I was the mom who took her 18 month old to music-play time at the city activity center and who signed her 2 ½ year old up for dance {way too early, I might add. She ran laps around the ballet studio and yelled like a banshee}. I’m sure that those early classes did not come from a place of guilt, but from a sincere desire for my tiny person to learn and for us to learn together.

But as they’ve grown and more and more of their friends are in soccer/volleyball/cheer and girls scouts, youth theater and fine arts classes, the pressure to push them into more things is tangible. For the most part as a family we have not succumbed to dozens of activities or weekend-long tournaments of any kind, but many families around us do.

On one hand, I believe there isn’t anything wrong with giving a child the tools she needs to get better in an activity. The life lessons that can be learned from participating in teams and the personal discipline that is learned from working hard in an individual sport can be priceless.

If she’s a natural ballet dancer and we can afford it? Take her to class.

If he loves soccer? Sign him up for AYSO.

If she comes alive when she’s on a horse? Do what we can to help that grow.

But IF we can’t afford it, IF there isn’t a internal love and desire for the sport or art, if the children aren’t getting any down time or IF it’s just too much for our family’s schedule and we’re missing out on family dinners, I believe we should stop and think. We should make choices and it shouldn’t be from a place of guilt.

My older daughter is built like a softball player. She’s got great upper body strength and the few times she’s hit a ball with a bat, she’s connected and it’s gone far. But we had to make a choice. At age ten, believe it or not, there are very few recreational softball teams. Most teams are at some level travel teams that require 3-4 (or more) days a week of commitment.

After a brief conversation, my husband and I decided that kind of life wasn’t worth it for her or for us.

But in our area that decision means she will probably never play high school sports. And we all, even the most guilty feeling of us, need to be okay with that.

July 1 came. I thought about it. I thought about our August and about how much summer should be about trips to the park and the pool and lazy pancake mornings and I simply let the deadline slide by me. Instead, we’ve had time for hikes and trips to the beach with the grandparents and afternoons at home surrounded by books.

And you know what? We’re all just fine.

** On a personal note, my daughters have one year round and one seasonal activity each. That is what has seemed to work for them individually and our family as a whole. I recognize that some children are capable of more and I also recognize that some families may even see our family as doing too much {especially larger families where more children equal more activities}. All in all, choices like this vary family to family and I believe each one of us should make the right choices for our families as we see fit.

How does your family fight against over-scheduling? What have you found that works for you and your family?

Filed Under: on adventure, on family, on parenting, Uncategorized

On Walking Out of an Amusement Park at the End of the Day

July 30, 2012 by Sarah Markley 16 Comments

Invisible nets of parental weariness gather wayward children as they leave the amusements. Fighting bouts of guilt and exhaustion equally, we adults wish we were seven or ten with the structure and dependence and energy of a child.

Oh to be able to fall asleep in the car on the way home and not to be the one who must drive! To not be the one who must work, even now, when we’d rather rest. To not be the one who must wrangle dusty children into bathtubs or kiss little I-don’t-want-to-go-to-bed cheeks for the seventy-second time.

To not have to be in charge.

Sometimes I look at my van keys and wonder, “Who trusted me with these?”

“When did I grow up and stop wanting to go down the water slides?”

“Who gave me the credit cards?”

We are a tired herd of people, stumbling at the end of the day to the parking lot. As soon as they realize their cries of But I Don’t Want To Leave Yet won’t be answered with their fantasies, children ask to be carried on shoulders or on hips the last bit of the way.

For now at least, I think, they want to be directed. They want to be given rules and boundaries. They want the border named TOO MUCH and they want to rest safely behind it. Even if they protest.

{Secretly I want the same thing.}

Maybe I gave myself the van keys. I grew up somewhere between twenty-two and now and entered the collective named Responsible or Dependable or Adult. I entered the place where my actions create a real life consequence. I walked right in and set down my things.

In my heart, I don’t know when I became an adult. The switch was never tangible. All of a sudden here I am. And I drive children all around the county all day long. Every day. And I have deadlines and due dates for bills and a dent in my hood because I ten-miled-an-hour someone at a stoplight.

But sometimes I don’t want to be in charge. I don’t necessarily want to eat Sees on the sofa all day and watch the Olympics. But sometimes I don’t want to be the One Who Knows Where Everything Is in the house. I get tired of being the one who is utterly responsible for walking the dog/doing the laundry/making sure the school supplies are purchased for September.

I want to be the one who falls asleep in the car on the way home.

Someday my own kids will be among the herd of spent parents as they steer their own littles out to the car on a summer night.

But until then I will still drive my kids around town all day every day, I’ll live with the dent in my hood and I will stay awake as the van makes it’s way up Interstate 5 on it’s way home with the most precious of cargo.

I will accept the responsibility of parenting and adulthood with awe and I will remind myself that all of life, even the exhausted, tired days of it are sprinkled with as much joy as pain and as much laughter as weeping.

And I will never cease to be amazed that Somebody, somewhere trusted me with the van keys.

Filed Under: on family, on parenting

For the Times We Don’t Have Any Idea What We Are Doing

June 27, 2012 by Sarah Markley 23 Comments

She got frustrated and I got frustrated yesterday morning. So I threw down the hairbrush and it bounced on the kitchen floor.

Not my best moment, I know.

My oldest daughter is ten-and-a-half and quickly heading toward preteen-ish-ness and I’m quickly heading toward being the mother of a preteen-ish girl.

I have no idea what I’m doing. In fact, I think neither neither she nor I know what we are doing.

There are manuals for getting babies to sleep through the night and books about getting toddlers to eat green veges. There are myriads of parenting seminars and classes one can take about how to be a better disciplinarian but there is no manual for this. Not for this: For the on-the-ground, we-are-both-crying, leave-me-alone times. For the times when we look at each other as mother and daughter and we don’t know how this is supposed to work.

Hair brushing is small compared to the issues we will be dealing with in short years but regardless the issue, it’s all new territory. But there are a few things that aren’t new:

It’s about love {it’s always been about love} and it’s about reconciliation. It’s about grace and it’s about forgiving the major and minor parts of our personalities that will never be easy.

It’s about me gathering her sixty seconds later and apologizing for my unpredictable behavior and telling her she didn’t deserve that.

It’s about her obeying me and then asking for forgiveness with sincerity.

It’s about both of us recognizing that we were wrong.

And it’s about reconciliation.

My hope for my daughters is that they would grow up to be responsible individuals who love God and others and are good stewards of their resources. But they may, no will, have a few hiccups along the way.

They might leave the Church or fall in love with the wrong guy, they might screw everything up, but if in the end of it, we are reconciled to one another the journey to that redemption is of lesser importance than the redemption itself.

We took our girls to see Brave the other day and, unlike other Princess movies {even Tangled}, Brave is not about a prince falling in love with a girl. And it’s not about finding your “true” self or following your heart. Brave is about redemption. It’s about reconciliation. It’s about the broken relationship between a mother and a daughter and how the courage to forgive and be forgiven heals it.

As silly as it sounds, as I held my daughter in the kitchen yesterday morning I thought about that movie and I thought about us and about our willingness as parents to be molded and shaped by our own children. I thought about my own failings as a person and a parent and how we must be brave enough to forgive one another.

That’s right.

When we don’t know what to do, forgive. When we don’t know how to move forward, love. When we don’t know how to fix it, seek to reconcile and redeem.

Lord, help us to have the courage to forgive today and help us to have the bravery to admit our own faults. Give us an appropriate understanding of our own failings but help us to reconcile and redeem the broken things of this world. Continue to bring reconciliation into our families and lives in ways only You can dream up.

Do you ever feel like you need a “manual” for this stage of life? Do you ever feel like you don’t know what you are doing? Does it take a lot of courage to forgive?