Bringing Grace Home
December 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Loving your family around the Christmas table might be the hardest thing you do all year.
That weird uncle. That horribly judgmental second cousin. The grandparent who will never get you.
I’m writing about giving our families a second chance this Christmas and bringing Grace home.
Join me on People of the Second Chance today. Click here.
Do you struggle with bringing Grace home to your family?
Beyond Tolerance
December 14, 2011 by 35 Comments
It happens to us all.
We forget our spouse was ever a blonde-haired, blue-eyed adorable little boy, some mother’s son.
We can’t even think that the arrogant barista who makes our coffee might have a story of heartache and grief to tell.
We get so angry at our kids that we don’t remember the days of quiet, nursing babies and rocking chairs.
We forget and we are blind.
Naomi, my five-year-old, floated on a cloud, it seemed, around the gathering room in the retirement community. Her class had taken a Christmas field trip to sing to the seniors. After Deck the Halls and Jingle Bells, Naomi delivered Christmas cards, candy canes and hugs to white haired women she’d just met. When most of her classmates were too scared to venture into the audience, Naomi led with confidence, grace and smiles that would melt anyone’s heart.
Beauty and love bubbles up in her, yet some of her instructors see only her misbehavior.
She holds friends’ hands when they are crying, the only compassionate heart in a sea of Kindergartners. Yet there are some who only tolerate her.
She is creative and beautiful and smart, but sometimes it is hard to see.
She throws occasional tantrums. She is naughty. She doesn’t obey, talks out of turn and she interrupts.
But then again, so do I.
And so do her teachers and babysitters.
So does her father and her sister. And so do most of us.
As we all walk the road to maturity together, let us each remember and see one another’s tenderness {even if it is below the surface}, each other’s story {even if it is yet untold} and each other’s intentions {even if it is muffled by pain}.
Let us each reframe each other with the eyes of love and notice beauty.
And let us each move beyond tolerance and begin to love again.
Do you have trouble seeing the beauty in others? Do others have trouble seeing the beauty in your own children? What helps you remember the humanity of others?
On Dropping Things
November 28, 2011 by 22 Comments
“Mom! Why are all of MY ornaments broken?” My oldest whined as we sat surrounded by boxes and tissue paper. We were decorating the tree on Saturday night.
“Remember the year your baby sister broke like 10 ornaments?” I reminded her.
Oh yeah. That. Last year, my then four-year-old had become obsessed with all things tiny: Polly Pockets, Littlest Pet Shops, doll houses and any tiny little toy she could get her hands on. So when our tree went up in 2010, she had the hardest time keeping her hands off the beautiful little ornaments.
They were all just so glittery and perfect occupants for fairy gardens.
There is nothing so neat and organized in my whole house as my giant container of boxed Christmas ornaments. It represents years of my life. Some of my ornaments reach back into the 1970s, still in their original boxes, and they only see the light of day for 1/12th of the year. There are silver Wallace bells, photos of my girls and various angels, little drummer boys and polar bears.
My daughters each have their own ornaments too. They get to hang theirs up on the tree, and because of their height, the bottom half is usually where theirs end up. Last year, Naomi systematically (it seemed) picked off with the accuracy of an assassin most of the ornaments on the lower branches. Barbie’s lost their hands, teddy bears lost ears and a porcelain Breyer horse lost her leg. Most of them became limbless as they tumbled from tree to the tile in the dining room.
“My HORSE!” I pulled out Hope’s 2009 Breyer horse from it’s box, legless, and handed it to her. “Even this one? Why can’t she stop dropping things?”
I looked at my five-year-old, with her enthusiasm as she put her own half-broken ornaments on this year’s tree.
“I don’t know, sweetheart. Because she’s five. Five-year-olds drop things.” And as if her hands were coated with melted butter, she did. Even in our current tree-trimming escapade she dropped (and broke) two ornaments.
“I’m sorry Mama!” She gasped. I hugged her.
“I know baby. Just be careful,” and I put my own special ornaments behind me. I would put those up myself.
Dropping things. In my frustration I wondered why she just couldn’t hold what I gave her. Why, even though she is five, can’t she just keep it in her hand so we all wouldn’t have to bemoan another ornament casualty. She’d even broken one of my nice dishes the other day in the kitchen after Thanksgiving. Why did she keep dropping things?
Maybe for the same reasons I keep dropping things.
Sometimes she has too many things in her hands. She runs through life with a little stuffed animal under one arm which severely hinders her ability to carry things in from the car or hold other things with her hands. She drops things because her hands are too full.
She also drops things because she’s still growing up. Her little hands don’t have the same kind of motor control that mine do and her little arms don’t the same strength.
I know that I drop things all the time. I drop people, I drop emails, I drop responsibilities and relationships. These are things I SHOULDN’T drop, and I get mad at myself when I do, but I can’t help it.
Sometimes my hands are full of other things. I am learning to put things down {obligations and schedules} so that I don’t drop the very things I do have in my hands. I don’t want to drop friendships because of my unwillingness to put unimportant things down.
And then other times, I drop things because I’m being independent. Or I’m trying to be. I’m not asking for help when my arms are too weak. I’m not accepting it when my life just doesn’t work right.
I used to think that dropping things was just part of it; that those things were acceptable losses that are a part of simply living in this busy world. Friendships drop off and emails don’t get returned: that’s life. But now I wonder if “dropping things” wouldn’t happen as much if I learned to put other things down and to accept help when it is offered.
My tree got trimmed. No ornament was broken beyond recognition. And Naomi knows if she touches the Christmas tree this year she’ll have to do 25 jumping jacks (which she’ll turn into a dance number).
Do you “drop things?” What methods have you learned to be more present with your time or to be more efficient?
Thankful: Our Way Home
November 23, 2011 by 5 Comments
I’m thankful for little people who’d rather explore outside than spend the afternoon inside.
And for messy hair,
For cats and dogs and wooden swings in the woods.
I’m thankful for new roommates and for big and little sisters. I’m thankful for kitchens that get cluttered with pie crusts and sweet potatoes and roasted vegetables. I’m thankful for tables newly set and for little hands that help.
I’m grateful for laughter, for family and for pathways that lead home.
I hope that each of us find our way home this week.
What are your plans for Thanksgiving? What are you thankful for today?
What is True
November 16, 2011 by 25 Comments
As my two daughters bounced off the walls of their great-grandmother’s small retirement community apartment, I wondered:
Is this what we traveled from California to Indiana for? This can’t be worth all the trouble it took to get here.
“Stop it Naomi.”
“Get out from behind there.”
“Don’t touch that.”
“Can you try to smile, Hope?”
I berated them in whispers too slight for my elderly grandmother to hear or notice.
An hour later in the dining hall, my daughters flanked me at a table constructed to accommodate the accouterments of the aged: widened chairs with sturdy arm rests for the less-than-ambulatory and vast spaces for walkers and wheelchairs. Am I embarrassed of their behavior for their sake or for my own? Even at age 36 I’m still trying to impress the females of my family and I was worried at how their mischief would reflect on my abilities as a mother.
I led the girls outside after they’d finished their meal and we stretched our legs in the winterized garden.
This is far more stressful than I thought it would be, I texted Chad.
We left my grandmother to take a nap like she does every afternoon {ninety-four long years will make even the strongest sleepy} and with kisses on the cheek, told her we’d be back before dinner for another visit.
Goodbye.
Could that have been the last time?
The tunnel vision disappeared and the gravity of the day became clear. This might be it for my daughters. This might be it for me. My grandmother was doing well for a woman in her nineties, but age begins to take over even for the fiercest of us all: more naps and slower walks down the hallways.
And selfish me, I needed to stop thinking about myself and let the it-doesn’t-matter-if-they-break-it really mean something. Selfish me.
For the second visit the girls came equipped with their plane-ready backpacks full of doodle books and activities. Together we spread them out on my grandmother’s tiny table and my grandmother took a seat beside them.
As quickly as the years fly by for a mother {or great-grandmother, I imagine} the minutes zoomed away. The girls talked about school, horses, the plane. And my grandmother asked me questions about my cousins, my sister and my church. I told her I’d recently been to Pennsylvania. She perked up. She’s from Philadelphia.
Everything about it was different than our earlier visit.
Maybe I was less stressed. Maybe my daughters were more “at home” with their Grammie-Great. Maybe we all understood how important the tiny, fought-for minutes were.
Maybe we, for a brief afternoon, grabbed a ferocious hold of the present. We didn’t worry about tonight or tomorrow or even what had gone before. We spent the day IN the day.
And then we left.
So what happens when we, like the time, zip home back to our Girl Scout meetings and our carpools and boxing class? And she sits quietly, with knitting needles that might be painful to grasp for long and waits.
I imagine that today {as we are home in California and she is still in Indiana} her little space of the world seems quiet; she no longer has 5-year-old questions infusing the air, no longer has the colored pencils of a nine-year-old at her small table.
We came back the next morning, a Sunday and accompanied her to church: Her daughters, two, her grand-daughter, me, and two of her great-grand-daughters in a slow promenade down the hall of the retirement home toward the chapel. Naomi helped pushed her walker, her right hand on one side and my grandmother’s left hand on the other side for balance.
Two weeks ago I felt old because my back “went out” but this week, as we hummed to “Onward Christian Soldiers” and sang “O For a Thousand Tongues” I was the youngest woman in the room by 25 years. I guess it’s all about perspective. It’s about knowing in the moment what is true.
It is true that the small minutes are important.
It is true that today, the infinitesimal crimes of climbing behind my grandmother’s sofa and nearly toppling the lamp are not important.
It is true that my grandmother’s mind is still strong even as it begins to fade.
It is true that, despite the cost and the travel and the missed school, the time spent was worth it.
And it is true that no matter how badly I want to interject my own hangups into a situation, it is usually not about me. It is about the daughters that have needed to see my grandmother. And about my grandmother who maybe has needed their joy just as much.
What is true is that being present might be the best gift of all.
What have you found that was true lately?
Infinite Value
October 3, 2011 by 27 Comments
Sometimes I have to remind myself that the best things in life
in all of my life
are right here.
Right here in my arms, at my breakfast table, in my mini-van.
They aren’t out there somewhere where I am not.
Remembering that requires me to take my eyes off of everyone else to understand that my greatest accomplishments, the best things that I will ever “do” are sitting at here at Starbucks with me on a Sunday morning.
No thing (or person) I ever climb for or grasp towards or reach at will ever be as important as the relationships that God has placed directly in front of me. So I must care for them with gloved hands and careful touches, soft words and open ears. I must be mindful of the beauty, fragility and value of the ones who populate my life
today.
this hour.
right now.
Because they, these ones, have infinite value.
Who is most important to you? Do you, like me, have trouble treating them like they are?
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