Living, Just Today

Nov 15, 2012 | The Good Word, The Parenthood

The wait has most definitely been longer than we expected. Since the ‘due date’ suggested by the doctor’s office was November 4th, towards the end of October, the expecting became very ‘expectant’ around these parts. I started slowing down on other projects and focusing on finishing things directly related to welcoming this new little one into our lives. We started making mental plans for how we would navigate different situations, who would come to be with the boys when I went into labor, what we might do if things progressed quickly and HH was at work in Greenville, and so on.

{The Bear, at about the age the Tank is now!
I miss this and wish I could relive it!}

That due date they suggested, though, I’d been questioning her all along. My records, which I was 100% confident in, gave us the due date November 12th. And since my first ultrasound happened later in the pregnancy than ‘normal’ and that can throw things off significantly, a part of me felt all along the 4th just wasn’t it. But there was of course the other side of me, which said, Wouldn’t it be nice and Well we better get prepared just in case.

So life took a right turn, and moved into a very slow lane. I started slowing down on commitments that happened anywhere besides inside our house. Slowing down on work. (I haven’t told you much about it yet, but besides all the behind-the-scenes Quiver Tree work, I’ve been building websites! Fun! Hard work! I’ll tell you more later.) I set personal goals like Get to the bottom of the laundry basket and Change the sheets for your Mom and get everything else ready in the nursery. And I managed to tick those goals off the list {my laundry basket DOES have a bottom — it DOES exist!} and then I kind of stared at the ceiling, and took extra naps and after a big long sigh at 3:30 or 4:00 pm decided I probably wasn’t going into labor and I was going to have to decide what was for dinner.

Again.

It has been such a soul-displaying challenge — this patient waiting for the arrival of this little girl. I’ve watched my frustration occasionally take its toll — bless my poor boys. I’ve been graciously blessed by a husband who has been so understanding and kind and helpful. I’ve been showered with love and time and assistance by my Mom, who has also been patiently waiting ‘on call’ knowing she is that special someone who will come and be with the boys whenever this precious girl decides to make her appearance.

The funny thing is, this reminds me a lot of a discussion we had a while back about the price of {in}convenience. One of the nurses at the doctor’s office commented on my attitude being a “refreshing” one when I came in at 40 weeks and wasn’t bursting at the seams and hoping to be induced as soon as possible. (And in their opinion it was 41 weeks!) But what I’m clinging to is the certainty that there is something better than convenience, if I’m willing to wait for it.

Isn’t a lot of life like that?

It would be really convenient for our baby girl to arrive, pretty much, now. So that it would feel like we could move on with getting adjusted to life as a family of five. So that we wouldn’t have to be concerned each weekend over whether I would go into labor while the Hubs was in the middle of a photo shoot. So that I could go back to making menu plans and buying groceries for more than a few days at the time. And just so that things would feel normal.

But isn’t the really good food we’re about to enjoy for Thanksgiving the stuff that usually takes time to prepare? And aren’t the special events in our lives the ones that we take weeks and months to prepare for — perhaps even spend years dreaming about? And aren’t we seeing the cost of leaning toward convenience take its toll on our wallets, our waistlines… our world?

More than I want the convenient, I want the God-ordained good. And even though it’s uncomfortable, and this season is stretching me and expanding my capacity, yet I’m certain these words are true:

“Indeed, none of those who wait for You will be ashamed…” {Psalm 25:3, NASB}

And there is glory for observing in the waiting.

Every day I’ve seen it, when I’ve been willing to open my eyes and take off my shoes.

Tiger Tank is at my absolute favorite age. Toddling about gloriously. Suddenly asking to pee pee in the potty and successfully doing so on a regular basis. {What? 20 months. Yes, I know. A week before we are supposed to have another baby this starts… it’s kind of wild.} His communication skills are flourishing — he is observing his big brother carefully, learning, mimicking, bringing us heaps and heaps and heaps of joy every day. He plays a mean air guitar. I would defy you to watch and not smile. I should take a video.

The Bear is a deep, deep mystery it sometimes seems — an old soul in a four-year-old frame. He has mastered some of the books he started reading aloud for us just before that fourth birthday back in August. With confidence, he points at the words and tells us what they are. The preschool teacher sends home books I’m supposed to read to him in the evening, but he points to the words and reads them to me instead.

He does things with a box of blocks that make us rush to find a camera. But when we’re not looking, he does things to hurt his little brother that make us sigh and look for the wooden spoon. He seems incredibly tender. Thoughtful and understanding.

And this slowing season has given us so much pause to consider each of the boys, deeply and carefully. To remember that these are the days that we have — so fleeting and so few — to help them learn how to navigate the world well, how to know that God is true and to love Him and to trust Him. How to love the people around them — including each other — with patience and kindness.

Every day, by the end of it, a part of me is a little sorry that it wasn’t the arrival day for our third child, but another part of me sees the glory, the goodness, the redemptive purposes of that day, happening exactly as it happened. And suddenly, every day is a good day for chocolate milk with dinner. Every day is a good day to drop everything and go on a quick adventure, even if it might mean getting home a little past bedtime.

Every day is really a good day to just be willing to live the day, knowing everything could absolutely be completely different tomorrow. Because, yes, a menu plan helps me get through the week. A cleaning schedule will help me get through the month. A to-do list does help me accomplish goals and get things done.

But there’s a balance in there somewhere — and I wholeheartedly want to keep looking for it. It’s a balance where accomplishing does not outweigh acknowledging. Where spelling love T-I-M-E is never overshadowed by ticking off tasks. Where serving dinner is not as important as teaching a servant’s heart.

I am thankful for you, friends. Your prayers and encouragement have helped me to possess my soul in this season that has required a lot from me. If for gratitude’s sake I could share one thing with you, wrap it up inside a pretty box and tie it with a big bow, I would share with you the encouragement to open your eyes to today. To focus a little bit more on living, just today.

Although it can sometimes seem incredibly inconvenient, even taxing, trying to stay present right here in this moment, yet somehow it makes it so much easier to receive each of the moments we’re given as gifts. The breath you just took. The smile you just gave. The meal you just enjoyed. The song you just heard. One by one, we can take hold of these gifts — the challenge is finding the presence to untie the bow, open them, and truly receive them.

Have you seen a good reason to take off your shoes today? Could you sit still for a moment and find one?

xCC

Other thoughts for focusing on facing today well: It’s Who You Are When Nobody’s Looking

The Uncomfortable Stretch of an Expanding Capacity

Oct 31, 2012 | The Good Word, The Parenthood

In certain circles, talk of an “Expanded Capacity” seems like a vague but popular Christianese phrase — one that I am loosely acquainted with, but not sure I completely understand. Someone might pray, or have a word of encouragement like: I’m trusting God to give you an expanded capacity to do His work or God is expanding your capacity, and your ability to handle your circumstances. I get it and at the same time, I’m not always totally sure I get it.

What does that actually look like… feel like… ??

{Did I ever tell you about how when I was pregnant with the Bear I didn’t like my belly button sticking out so I used the Royal Mail’s Air Mail stickers to flatten it out sometimes? Yes, really.}

I recently realized that pregnancy is one incredible life opportunity for the very literal experience of what it’s like for your capacity to be expanded. In the most literal sense, for the past nine months, my capacity has been expanding. Not all at once, but slowly, over time, I’ve been watching my “capacity” {READ: middle section} as it has very literally expanded to hold this entire other person inside.

Stopping for a moment to ponder that thought is really huge for me: This whole other life that will live and breathe and move and laugh and cry and so on — it has its very beginnings happening, and I am the space where it’s currently contained. Wow.

Along with the literal capacity-expanding that has been going on around here, I’ve sensed some ‘stretching’ in areas that won’t really be helped with a good bottle of lotion, or even one of those expensive anti-stretch-mark creams.

Some capacity-expanding has been happening in my soul.

I’ve experienced some of those moments that I hoped didn’t actually exist: the days I’ve heard other mothers talk about, where it seems like all of your kids are against you. I was in the middle of one of the moments when… well it’s better just to tell you the whole tale, isn’t it?

It all started with an early-rise from Tiger Tank. He was up way earlier than usual, so I decided to let him watch a video on Disney Jr in his highchair, with his breakfast in a little bowl in front of him. He happily ate and I got to go back to bed for another twenty minutes or something which, these days, is better than gold. When his brother woke up and asked if he could eat his breakfast and watch something too, I thought it was fair enough to oblige, on the condition that he sit in the high chair — which I know seems kind of weird because he’s four, but it is the only way to elevate his bowl of cereal and milk to the point that his toddling younger brother won’t reach up, grab it and dump it out on the carpet.

There’s method to the madness, friends.

But the Bear — to put it mildly — did not fancy the idea of sitting in the highchair. You’d’ve thought it was an electric high chair. And this was no opportunity for a calm discussion, oh no — he was going to have an all-out cry and holler session at the fact that his options were breakfast at the table or breakfast in the high chair.

Meanwhile, Tiger Tank desperately wanted to climb the bar stool in the kitchen to play in the sink — with the dirty dishes, sharp knives and whatnot — and while I was trying to make him happy with alternative solutions, he decided he, too, needed to lose it in order to let me know exactly how he felt about his obviously over-protective mother trying to avoid him slicing a finger off. I eventually had to carry him gently to his crib and let him cry it out for a few minutes, because tantrums cannot result in positive outcomes around here. Meanwhile his four-year-old brother cried it out in the high chair, like a baby. Seems appropriate, I guess.

And I, the Mama who had been trying to do everything right to make it a special and happy morning, promptly walked to the kitchen in the midst of the hollering coming from each end of the house, sat down on a bar stool, glanced at the ceiling, sighed, and took a few sips of the coffee I’d just reheated in the microwave.

And getting real honest, I probably shed a tear or three out of frustration that I wanted things to be nice and everyone else wanted to freak out.

This is the discipline — I sensed it in my soul right there on the bar stool in the kitchen. This is the stretching. These are the moments that are absolutely God-ordained to expand my capacity to parent. Because I have often looked at the ceiling and asked, “How am I going to do this with three?” Here is the answer. You started with one. And then there were two. And gradually, over time, you gained the discipline necessary to handle two without freaking out.

And the cray cray you are experiencing now? This is preparation for what’s next.

Here’s the beautiful, challenging, soul-stretching truth:

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. {Hebrews 12:11}

It has been itchy and uncomfortable, feeling my belly expand again — but here at 39 weeks and nearing the end of the journey, I am absolutely confident about the harvest ahead. The journey hasn’t been completely pleasant, with nausea and heartburn and mood swings and cravings and incredibly painful attempts at just turning over in bed at night.

But the thing that all of this leads up to?

Do I even have to say, knowing what I know already, living what I’ve lived already — can’t it go without saying? — the harvest is worth the work.

So. If your soul starts getting itchy and uncomfortable, if your heart feels stretched beyond what you think you are capable of handling — know that the unpleasantness of the stretching will bring about good fruit if you will endure it. You can trust your amazing Creator to know when your capacity needs expanding — He knows and sees tomorrow long before we do.

And how beautiful it is when we get to those moments where we’ve endured a hardship and we are enjoying the peace and good fruits on the other side — to look back and say “I made it. And it was because I {stuck it out for a year at the Pawn Shop… pressed on when I wanted to quit school… made myself keep going to the gym when I felt like giving up… chose to believe I could do something better with my kids…} that I had the capacity to endure this.”

That is sweet victory.

If you know what I mean and can relate to what I’m saying, then hang in there, my friend. You’ve got a sweet harvest ahead of you, so don’t lose heart!

xCC

When Not To Wait for Perfect Timing

Sep 22, 2012 | The Good Word, The Parenthood

He had just delivered a baby in the room next door when he came in to speak to me. A couple of nurses had scurried in and out of my waiting room, me sitting on that rolled-out white paper on the examination table, legs and flip flops dangling, engrossed in a book and enjoying the quiet. They hadn’t said a word as they gathered supplies with a hustle and a bustle — one nurse went so far as to tell me she couldn’t tell me what was going on when I asked.

Finally another nurse came in to explain that the doctor would still be a few more minutes because the woman in the room next door just delivered her baby. I was at 32 weeks — she was perhaps at 38 or 39, arrived for her routine appointment although she had been “feeling some pressure” and in the room next to mine, she’d gone into labour so quickly the doctor knew he couldn’t send her away in an ambulance or she’d give birth on the way to the hospital.

When curiosity got the better of me and I joined the team of staff members in the hallway, I heard the first cry that baby would ever cry. It blessed my soul. She arrived in her own perfect timing.

{18 Months Ago, in Perfect TigerTank Timing}

Maybe his eagerness to deliver babies got the better of him, but on this, our first conversation, he immediately mentioned the idea of inducing me when the time came. I decided since this was our first meeting that I didn’t want to start an argument, but my heart was whispering “over my dead body!” Unless there seems to be danger to the baby or me, I would much rather let nature take its course.

Perhaps I couldn’t write a book about prenatal care, but I know a thing or two about Perfect Timing.

I’m confident of this: there are times in life when the right thing to do is to wait for that perfect timing. The Hubs talks about it in photography — not being too eager to shoot shoot shoot every second, but watching with expectancy so that when that moment comes, you don’t miss it.

I’m also confident of this: there are times in life when the wrong thing to do is to wait for that perfect timing. Waiting for the perfect timing to make amends in a relationship, for example, is a bad idea. Waiting until it seems like the timing is just right to jump into something that has been burning in your heart for years — that thing in your soul that you just know you have to do — is wrong.

And when it comes to making sure you are living your life in community, welcoming the people around you and engaging in meaningful relationships — loving the people on your path who are waiting for love — there will never be perfect timing. You cannot afford to wait.

It happened twice in the last couple of weeks, that we had friends over for a meal and things didn’t feel perfect. In one case I was hoping to do an exciting and special meal but I couldn’t find one key ingredient. As we scooped chili into our bowls and just enjoyed each other’s company, I was reminded that it was never about the meal to begin with. It is always only ever about the relationships, really. Loving and blessing and building each other up — aren’t these the right reasons for coming together?

Then again a few days later — I extended an invitation at the last minute, it was just on my heart to do it. And when our guest commented on how beautiful the salad was, I smiled on the outside and on the inside. I didn’t feel like I’d taken the time to go to special efforts I would’ve liked for a new guest — but we ate together and by the end of the evening our hearts were full, and I pray that she left knowing how very welcome she is in our lives, already so present and welcome in my heart.

And this is the thing about all relationships — it’s not real if it’s not messy.

When another friend of mine joined me for coffee the other morning, her little ones and my little one played together while the Bear was at preschool. She brought along a coffee cake and my only goal for the morning was accomplished — I deeply wanted to ask the question How are you doing? in a way that would give her an opportunity to share her heart, tell the truth, and know how much I care. To me, that was what mattered most.

A few hours (maybe a day) after she left, I spotted some crumbs around the table from where her girls had enjoyed coffee cake and I smiled, inside and out again. Those, I thought, are beautiful, wonderful crumbs — the results of choosing to live life together, knowing it will always be more messy if we try to live together, but it will always be better to take the risk of messy, for the sake of the together part.

There are some times in life when it’s good to wait for the right timing. My Mom likes to say “When the apple is ripe, it’ll drop.” But we need the wisdom and discernment to recognize those times in life where we are leaning on the illusion that there will be perfect timing as an excuse to put off doing something that needs doing.

My house is not in a particularly tidy state, and it doesn’t really look how I want it to. My kitchen is small and messy and some of my favorite bowls have big chips. But the thing that is really making this place a home, a place I want to be, and a place I want others to be, is the decision that relationships are more important than holding out for the illusion of perfection. Making sure the people around you know they are loved and welcomed and important is a much more valuable use of your time than scouring Pinterest for ideas that you’d like to implement when that perfect timing finally arrives.

The Bible puts it this way:

Where no oxen are, the trough is clean, but much increase comes by the strength of an ox. {Prov. 14:4}

So, if you want to keep your stables clean, you don’t want an ox in your barn — but if you want an abundant harvest, you’re going to need that ox to pull for you. Translation: The messiness? It’s worth it.

It’s good to let people see the real you, and not just the you that you’ve had the perfect amount of time to put together and get ready for them to see. From the life-changing decision some women face when they’re pregnant and don’t want to be yet, to the simple question of whether to have some folks over for dinner, the principle is the same: Life is messy and always will be. Don’t be fooled into thinking you ought to wait for perfect timing.

And don’t let the opportunity to love those around you pass you by because you were busy waiting for conditions to be just right. Like when Jesus stopped on His way to a sick Lazarus, because other ministry was tugging at his coattails, sometimes, when things absolutely don’t look like the right timing to us, they are absolutely perfect timing in the will of God.

xCC

Remember: Don’t confuse the urgent and the important!