Bring More Mothers

This morning, my daughters walk to school holding the hands of another mother.  They want to talk to her about everything ranging from new earrings to loose teeth.

I'm walking alone behind them, watching how their little faces look up into this other mother's face. I shove my hands in my pocket. I'm tempted to run up and interfere, take my daughters back into my own hands, and direct their sharing back to me. 

But I don't.  There's something beautiful and right about my children connecting deeply with other women.  The more mothers around, the better.  The more folks who love them, listen to their stories, care about their earrings, and witness their growing, the better. 

I love being in a community of women who know we're all in this together.  The more mothers, the better.  May there be countless children who say, "She was like a mother to me." 

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Do I care for other children like a parent?  Do I let other mothers into the lives of my children? 

Your Glorious Descent

 It's time.

One Leaf Takes Flight

You lift off, send yourself into the glorious unknown, and let God carry you.

Autumn Leaf Mid-Flight

My children twirl about in this dance of falling leaves. 

We'll crunch them underfoot and crush them in our hands.  They'll go on to nourish the soil and let another generation of leaves rise up.  As I think about getting older, about surrendering, about giving my life away to others, I realize it's a glorious descent. 

I feel like that beautiful leaf against the brightest blue sky.  My daughter reaches up and grabs it in her hand, delighted.  In motherhood, you let go, die to yourself every single day, and fall into the ancient pattern.

But that's the only way to dance in the wind.  It's the only way to be free.

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Have you felt free when you die to yourself?

PS:  Taking photos of falling leaves is really hard. I just wanted to mention that!

Everything Else Can Wait

My youngest arranges all the nail polish bottles on the kitchen table and asks me to paint her toenails.

Seriously?  I can think of 20 more important and urgent things to do instead of painting her toenails.  I do not have time for this. 

But I look at that little face and those little, little toes.  

In even just a few years, she won't ask for this.  One day, she'll paint her own toes, in her own bedroom, in her own house even.  Maybe it's because another school year starts this week, or maybe it's because I can see how tall she's grown by the markings on the kitchen wall.  Whatever the reason, I suddenly can't imagine anything more important or more urgent than those little toes. 

So here I am, painting little toenails silver and neon pink.  Everything else can wait.

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Journal:  What aspects of parenting annoy most folks now that they end up missing once their children are grown? 

What a Child Needs to Hear from You

I'm visiting with my dear friend, the one who told me that the sign of a happy childhood is dirty children.  This is my same friend who raises five children without a television set or computer games.  I'm always eager for what new parenting advice she'll impart.

Today, I watch and listen.  Over and over again, I hear her tell her children, "I just love to be with you."  Her teenage daughter comes to sit next to her, and she says, "I'm so glad!  I just love to be with you."  She still walks with the teenager to school, she says, "because I just love to be with her so much."  She says it so that daughter can overhear her. 

The teenager's beaming face lights the whole kitchen.

Later, we leave to go on a walk in the neighborhood, and the oldest children want to come along.  Their mother says, "Of course!  I just love to be with you!" 

That's the phrase I hear the most coming out of this mother's mouth.

I make lunch with my daughters later, and I tell them, "I just love to be with you."  I walk outside and push them on the swing and tell them, "I just love to be with you."

Something's changed between us already.  

I wonder if children would make better choices, grow in confidence, overflow with happiness, and connect better with their parents if we practiced saying, "I just love to be with you."  I want my children to overhear me tell the neighbors this.  I want my children to know I'd choose them.  I want my children to know that those words reflect the boundless love of God who adores and delights in them.

I'm going to tell more children that I love to be with them.  

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Journal:  What child in your life needs to hear the words, "I just love to be with you"?  

How Emily Dickinson (and a Friend's Blog) Saved My Morning

I'll just begin by telling you a certain child in my family vomits seven times last night.  This is the other child (not the one with the entirely different virus). 

I don't actually wake up this morning because I never actually went to bed. 

Everyone complains.  Everyone feels miserable, and to make matters worse, it's a holiday!  We'll miss the bike parade, the hot dogs, the fireworks--everything. 

Then I check my email, and a new friend sends me a link to her blog.  She's entitled it "Dwell in Possibility."  I think about the phrase all morning because it resonates deeply.  I've heard the phrase before--from some distant place--that recalls a beautiful hoping in me. 

Then I remember.  It's from Emily Dickinson.  I love Emily Dickinson. 

I dwell in Possibility --
A fairer House than Prose --
More numerous of Windows --
Superior -- for Doors --

Of Chambers as the Cedars --
Impregnable of Eye --
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky --

Of Visitors -- the fairest --
For Occupation -- This --
The spreading wide of narrow Hands
To gather Paradise --

I read the poem again and again.  Today, I choose to gather Paradise.

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Journal:  What are the possibilities of this day?  Who could even name them all? 

What Do You Need?

Today marks the 4th day of staying in a small apartment in a new city all day long whilst caring for a child who has a 103.5 degree fever.   I'm not even going to bother making that sentence more concise.  It's been a long few days.  

It's lonely.  It's awful. 

My husband attempts to cheer me with coffee and jokes.  Then he announces, "You need people!  That's how God made you!"  He calls several friends and invites them to take me out for ice cream.  It sounds so desperate.  Aren't I stable enough to survive any circumstance?  Haven't I been able to find the flair in even the worst of situations?

I'm learning that I really do need people.  I love community.  And living with flair means knowing this so I don't go crazy and wonder if I'm sinking back into despair when I'm alone for too long.

________________
Journal:  What are some things you need?

Why I'm Now Using Twitter

Last night, I tell my friend that I'm definitely not interested in using twitter.  "Why would anyone care where I am or what I am doing?"  Besides, I don't really know how to twitter. 

"You're thinking about twitter all wrong," he says.  "Twitter is about influence.  You don't tell people that you're eating a hamburger right now.  You tell people that you're eating the best hamburger, and you give information about where and how they can eat the best hamburger as well.  You're influencing others with good information." 

But what would I influence people about?  I blog about beautiful things--just to share them with the world--but how could I use twitter, too? 

I woke up wondering about this.  Then my youngest daughter asked me to teach her how to know whether a peach is perfectly ripe.  I had been feeling horribly inadequate as a mother all week, and then all of a sudden I didn't.  Motherhood wasn't about big moments or spectacular feats of patient nurturing.  It was, in part, about very small moments of instruction.

We felt peaches together in the kitchen.  

The peach instruction opened a new world of confidence in mothering.  What else could I impart today? 

So I twittered about the peach. In 140 characters, I hoped to influence other mothers who felt bad about themselves today. 

Living with flair means influencing others when you learn something. 

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Journal:  Can I influence others about something today? 

This Could Be Your Shell of Protection

Well, it finally happened.  I found an eastern box turtle!  She was crossing the street, and after observing her in our backyard, we delivered her to her original habitat.  She was headed for the wooded yard of a neighbor (who just installed a lovely garden pond and lots of landscaping perfect for a turtle), so we brought her there.  

We watched her for a long time.

Eastern Box Turtle © Live with Flair 2011

The eye color and shape of the shell tells us that this turtle is female.  I can't stop looking at her shell because it reminds me of something.

It looks like tiny children were finger-painting and made hand prints on her shell!

Eastern Box Turtle © Live with Flair 2011

As my own children romp and jump about me, I consider that I too have a home covered in hand prints (dirty walls, the sticky refrigerator door, the smudged table, and as art projects in frames).  I, too, am an aging woman with bumpy thighs (have you seen me in my bathing suit?).

And like the designs on her shell, I'll carry the marks of motherhood--in its broadest sense--forever.  Hard and all consuming, you wear it like a shell you cannot shed.  On the worst days, it feels like a prison. 

But that's what it means to choose adulthood, to choose to care for the next generation, to choose to nurture everyone in your path.  It's not a prison.  It's protection.  

She'll keep these markings forever.  When I look at this turtle, I see impenetrable strength and resolve.   We let her go into the neighbor's yard.  I'm not worried about her.  She has places to go, and even if it takes her a lifetime, she'll get there.  She has the protection, now, to do so. 
   
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Journal:  When I see myself imprisoned by my circumstances, can I instead see them as my shell of protection?  

Mothers are Beanstalks

This afternoon, the children run outside and design a bean garden for themselves.  They want a beanstalk.  

I discover that we need a structure in that bean garden around which the bean plants can twine.

I love that verb, first of all.  To twine means to interlock tightly, twisting up and coiling about.

Beans are twining plants, and this means they cannot support their own weight.  For vertical growth, they circle around a support in order to grow.  They exert continuous pressure against this support so they can rise tall and strong.

They will not survive without interlocking tightly, twisting up and coiling about a supporting structure.   

I needed that truth today as I think about motherhood and this life of faith.  I cannot do this on my own.  I lean hard against the Lord as that internal structure around which I cling.  I interlock.  Every tendril of thought and action encircles one singular support. 

If I'm exhausted, shriveled on the vine, and incapable of doing this alone, I remember I wasn't meant to.  I'm supposed to twine. 

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Journal:  What does interlocking with God mean when I'm exhausted?

What My Daughter Brought to Show and Tell

This morning, my daughter puts a copy of How to Write with Flair in her backpack.  It's her show-and-tell day. 

I want to cry.  

I think that motherhood is all about celebrating children, but sometimes, they celebrate us.  

"I'm proud of you, Mom."   

I'm going to go cry now.  



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Journal:  I want to do things that make my children proud.  I haven't thought of it this way before.  Am I living a life that my children will continue to celebrate?

Love is a Tornado

This morning, my daughter hands me a little card that says her love for me is like a tornado.  She drew a picture of a tornado and wrote, "It's like this." 

I turn to her and say, "You mean it's powerful and destructive?"

She smiles and pretends she's punching me.  She tries to explain the comparison:  "It gets stronger each day like a tornado gets stronger with each spin." 

Her tornado is a giant mess of scribble that looks terrifying.  

Love is a tornado? 

That can't be right.   

My husband adds at breakfast that a tornado is like love because you "never know where it's coming from." It can take you by surprise (like how I met him when I least expected it).  

I look at this little family.  I think of the kind of love that breaks the heart and repairs it simultaneously.  I think of the terrifying surrender of it, the giant mess of living lives intertwined. I think of the powerful destruction that love's wake leaves on the landscape of a heart.  It's a tornado that rips you apart.

But it's the kind of devastation you endure because there's no other way to have it.  It's the most beautiful storm you'll ever experience. 

I hug my children--these little tornadoes in my heart--and think about the kind of love I want in my life.  Let it be giant and powerful.  Let it get stronger each day. 

Let it destroy what in me needs to be leveled and remake a pure landscape.  


(Photo:  Public Domain. Credit: OAR/ERL/National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) via [pingnews])

Why I'm Making a Rite of Passage Ceremony Today

Today, we celebrate my daughter by a rite of passage ceremony that we've been thinking about for a long time. 

We are getting her ears pierced. 

As I think about rites of passage, I realize that precious few exist in our culture to celebrate girlhood--not adolescence or graduation or marriage--but just being a young girl.  I wanted the ear piercing to have ceremonial, symbolic importance that she might remember for her whole life.

We will have friends and family there to witness the event.  

I wrote a letter to my daughter for her to read about what her ear piercing symbolizes.  I wrote that whenever she sees her earrings, she will remember God's love for her, her family's love for her, and her realization of her own worth--far more precious than any jewel.   We are making a rite of passage to initiate her into the next stage of her growth.  These next few years will mean so much in terms of identity formation, and I realize the role that ritual, symbol, and community will play in that secure sense of self.

I turn 35 years old this week.  I wanted my daughter's ear piercing to coincide with my own rite of passage.  She has five years until high school, and I have 5 years until I turn 40.  What will we make, together, of these next years?  When I look at my daughter's earrings, it will symbolize my own journey as a woman and a wife and a mother. 

And I need friends and family to witness this.  

Symbols and rituals help build a meaningful life.  We can pass them on, weave together a beautiful history, and mark our lives by them.  When I look at my daughter's earrings, I will remember what they mean. 

This Isn't Normal

I'm standing in my clothes, waist high in water.  I'm baptizing, with my husband, a great friend.  I'm invited to join in this ancient ritual, this sacred symbol of the old person buried and rising to new life.  I suddenly realize how average I am, how mortal, as I participate in this divine act.  This isn't normal. 

All morning, my concept of normal gets pushed aside, flicked far away.  First of all, I'm at a worship service in somebody's front yard, overlooking the mountains.  I'm slapping my thighs to the beat of the Bluegrass band.  I'm drinking root beer.  There's a banjo, even.  Can this be worship?  If not, then why am I overcome with the sense of God's presence? How is this normal?

Then, the woman sharing a picnic blanket with me starts talking about her children.  A teenage girl lounges against her, and little girls play with her purse and makeup.    She tells me that she always wanted a big family. But these aren't her biological children.  These girls have other mothers.  But ask her about the sleepover parties she hosts, the children she loves, and her dreams of running an orphanage and providing foster care.

"Right now, I have so many children, it's ridiculous.  And I'll have so many more," she tells me. 

She's a mother in the fullest sense of the word.  She has a divine calling to mother.  I look around the worship gathering.  I can't even find my children.  Then, I see they are with another mother doing a craft.  And then, another mother's daughter lies back into my lap and touches my face.  She gazes up at me, and I stroke her hair. 

My definitions are so narrow in scope.  When I broaden them, let out the hem, loosen the strings, and release the word, I find that what I think is divine, what I think constitutes worship, and what I believe motherhood means changes considerably.

What other words need broader definitions?  Living with flair means I don't limit the meaning of the words that define my life.

What We've Known For a Long Time

I read an article on the bus yesterday that recounts the results of a number of happiness studies.  Researchers want to know if happiness is something we experience or something we think. 

I love reading articles like this.  Once again, research proves that when we think about our experiences we can put the day in a certain framework to create meaning and joy.   Not surprisingly, this meaning and joy rarely depend on circumstances.  

I'm thinking about that article, and I run into one of the most vibrant and enthusiastic moms in my town.  She's waving at me as I make my way through the self check-out line in the grocery store.  Within 30 seconds, she's inviting me to her "Alphabet Summer" where everyday at her home celebrates a different letter of the alphabet.

It's "J" day, so there's jam, jello, and jumping in the pool.  I'm imagining jugglers and jellyfish and jackals.  I smell jasmine.

Her two little boys smile, and one of them says to me, "I just loved 'F' day.  'F' day was the coolest!"

I'm living in the same town as this woman.  I'm raising my children on the same streets and we are going to the same grocery stores.  I'm making breakfast, doing laundry, cleaning and cooking, and yes, even going to the pool.  We both probably worked-out, had coffee, and will feel tired after lunch. 

But it's "J" day at her house.

They will jump into the pool instead of easing in.  With this alphabet framework, her whole summer radiates with hidden meaning and wonder.

"Do we have a special letter today, Mom?"

Quickly, I think about the curry chicken I've planned for dinner.

"It's 'I' day," I say.  "For India."

They are quiet and thinking of exotic lands.  

Same old day.  Same old dinner.  But now, we've got ourselves a happiness framework.

3 Questions that Set Me Straight

This time last year, I was mad about everything.  I was jealous of other mothers and their resplendent brunches, their new jewelry, and their country club life.  Why couldn't I just have more money?

I was jealous that Rob Reiner was filming a movie, "Flipped," in my old backyard (the one I left to move here).  I should have been there, serving coffee to Hollywood celebrities and awaiting my invitation to star in the movie.

I was jealous of other women (friends from college) who had political and academic power.  That was supposed to be me there on Capitol Hill or at that podium.  It was weird how jealous I was.  It was the kind of jealous that ate my insides and made me stomp my feet in the kitchen as I told my husband how wrong everything was.  I was supposed to be a different person by now.  Why was I here, in this town, with this life?

The rhetoric of my life was "if only." 

So exactly one year ago today, I sat in church, jealous and ridiculous.  I had just finished writing something about how if you ask yourself a good question, the right question, you could get yourself out of any bad mood.  I knew I need to ask spiritual questions.  That seemed right (after all, I was in church).  So I wrote:

1.  Is knowing God better than anything? (as J.I. Packer asks: "For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?")

2.  Will I live the life God asks me to? (Here, in this town, with no retail, no glitz?)

3.  Will I pursue wealth or godliness? (Seriously?  I need a whole new summer wardrobe with sparkly flip flops.)

These questions mattered so much to me because in a split second, like lightening forking through the roof and straight into my heart, they reoriented me.  They set me straight.  They reminded me that my happiness comes from surrender to the spiritual truth that governs my life.  

The first recorded question that Jesus asks in the Gospel of John is, "What do you want?"  I love this question.  I love the disciples' answer even more.  They essentially ask him where he is staying.  They want to be where Jesus is.  They would leave everything to be in his presence.  So Jesus says (strangely), "Come and see."

When God says, "What do you want," the answer from my heart is: "To be in your presence."

God, always the pursuer, always setting up a way to delight us, just says, "Come and see."

That morning, a year ago today, I imagined God asking my jealous heart: "What do you want?"  And I wrote in my journal: To be in your presence.  But is it really enough?  It is really worth it to pursue spiritual instead of material wealth?

And God said: "Come and see."

It's been a year.  What a year of enjoying the life God has given me.  Nothing more, nothing less.  When I open my eyes to see the wonder and mystery of God, the jealousy dissolves.  Living with flair today means I continue to "come and see" what God wants to prove to me about the sufficiency of Himself.

A Gift for Every Mother You Know

Today was chilly, windy (hair in my face no matter which way I pushed it around), and gloomy. We drove out into the country to a far-off nursery to buy some berry bushes for my latest gardening adventure. And when I say country, I mean country. The roads were unmarked, narrow, and tumbling over the landscape like an afterthought. A creek skipped by on the right, and cows fed in fields on the left.  They were so close to my window I thought I might reach out and pat a nose.

Eventually, we arrived at huge nursery.  We left the car, met the wind and cold, and, hunching down and running, we slipped into the first greenhouse. 

Immediately, warmth.  My daughters sighed with pleasure and stretched their arms.  Everything here seemed abundant: the moist air, the fragrance of blooming things, the tangle of vines and hanging plants overhead. I looked at all the gorgeous flowers and thought of the ripping winds outside. They'd have never made it without this greenhouse.

Standing there, seeing that little Eden of beauty set against the gloom and fierce wind, I thought of—not flowers—but people. More specifically, I thought of mothers.

I think of the moms I see that remind me of myself back then. I see the vacant stare, the lifeless smile, the numb conversation of a mom who is just trying to get a warm shower and go to the bathroom without somebody crying. Beneath the exhaustion, the stained t-shirt, and the post-pregnancy figure, there's a woman in there--vibrant, sassy, powerful.  There's something in her that wants to bloom. 

If only she had a greenhouse--a little paradise to keep her safe and warm so she could grow too.  If only we could create the conditions that help her put down strong roots, stretch high out, and bloom, bloom, bloom. 

What does a mom need?  She needs to be protected and nourished so she can fully develop into the woman she's supposed to be.  She needs friends who ask her about her ideas and her dreams; she needs a community who will spur her on and enable her to take risks in any direction she chooses.  A mom needs people who don't limit her scope, who don't assume anything about her, and who recognize that she is a growing thing--like a tender vine in a greenhouse.  Our children aren't the only people that need to grow in our homes.  Babies aren't the only people that need swaddling. 

If a mom doesn't grow and ripen, she shrivels.  Moms need communities that value her spiritual, physical, social, emotional, and (if she wishes) her professional growth. 
  

As I stood in the greenhouse today, I thought of how much I want moms everywhere to live with flair.   A great Mother's Day gift (that we might give all year to every mom we know) is the mindset that the mother you see wants to grow too.  The roads are unmarked for her; she's out in a far country.  Motherhood can be her time to shrivel or bloom.  Get her to the greenhouse!