You Are Not My God

And I’m no Supermom. 

Not sitting here dressed up in a shiny tight pants suit with wings on it, hair curled and blowing behind my sparkling youthful, faithful complexion. No one is featuring me in the "Motherhood Times" today. But this morning I am refreshingly aware that although I fall short as a mom (I’m 5’4” so I’m not THAT short, but still…) Well really, although I am small, I’m still padding along on my little fat feet, doing my best and admitting that I could do better. And today, thankfully, I’m leaning into the real woman, the mom, the wife, the artist who God made me to be. She is OK. But yesterday I hated her.

I'm sharing this ugly truth because I’m gonna bet that you also feel critical of yourself or your “momhood” at times. Or perhaps you think you don’t feel critical of yourself, but you spend a lot of time criticizing other women or moms you know (that is called deflection.) You may talk about their faults, how you feel sorry for them, how you can clearly see what they need to change...Or maybe you’re completely at peace with yourself and others all the time, in which case you can stop reading now (you liar.)

So back to my point-- over the holiday I felt pretty bad about who I am. Critical. It was like I had lost my ability to see that my image isn’t created for the other mom, relative or random person who is judging me. At times, I will give almost anyone the pass to my “OK-ness”. The right to tell me if I’m good enough.  Even when I know perfectly well that the path around this kind of self-mutilating thinking and behavior, for me, is simple: I have nothing to prove.  You are not my God. (BTW my God gets really jealous and angry when I worship you instead of Him.)

BUT too often my faith is weak, and I return to giving you, the relative, other mom, or friend or reader…I give you the keys to my worthiness. (I must insert here that my God tells me that I'm living in a very messed up world where I am judged and rated according to severely backassed values. Well, he didn't use exactly those words...) I mean, if you don't "like" me after reading this, should I even keep on writing?? 

Here is how my imagination works…There is this other mom, this relative (or two), this lady at church, this (old) pastor, old friend, old coworker. All of the people who have told me or showed me, sometimes indirectly, how much I stink. (Do you know anyone like that?) Well, the whole group of them hang out in my back pocket, have linked chains, and are great friends. Traveling with me everywhere, they seep toxic crappy chatter into my soul, making me feel deeply inadequate. They all carry scoreboards with questions like this about my motherhood: 1) Is she too uptight and controlling and opinionated? 2) Is she fake or instead too raw and unfiltered? 3) Does she feed her children too much health food? 4) Is she lazy? Or perhaps too active? 5) Does she try to do too much?  6) Does she fail to do enough cleaning or is she too tidy? 7) Too outspoken?   8) Does she spend too much time looking in the mirror? 9) Is she arrogant? 10) Does she spend (or have) too much money? 11) Is she a helicopter parent? 12) Does she try to be perfect?  13) Are her expectations too high?

The answer to every single question is of course YES! Sometimes. Sometimes I am all of these awful things. I try too hard, or not hard enough, or not the right way, and so I fail.

So now that I have smeared my round freckled nose around in it... I wonder if some of the moms out there like me (and that old pastor too who is the loudest yeller of all in my head)…If we could start trying harder to LIFT each other (and ourselves) up. Up up up. Let's float around in our strengths. Let’s honestly admit to our own weaknesses so we don’t keep pointing fingers at each other and then lets have an old-fashioned bonfire and burn the checklists, the gossip, and the high-and-mighty thoughts that are all weighing us down. Maybe when we release their heavy weight, we will get a little lighter, a little closer to heaven here on this very rocky, cold earth.

I dare you to start randomly finding strengths in that mom who bugs the heck out of you. (I’m doing it right now.) Say them out loud. Could we forget the glaring inadequacies we see in ourselves, that we then pin on other moms, other people? May we squint at the light that is present and unique and REAL in every person we come into contact with, and revel at how the flaws fall away, becoming only fleeting imagery when our gazes fix on the light. God created you and her and her and her and me. We are gifts to one another. 

Moms, we have a pretty hard job. Really. I think it will get a little easier if we link arms and carry one another along. 

Now off I go to burn that list…

May We Remember One Another

“It was a hard day for me, wasn’t it Mom?” asked my 9-year-old as I lay in the dark next to him in his narrow bed, the red glow of his gecko cage illuminating his raised thoughtful eyebrows and silky pale skin.

My mind snapped to the image of him grabbing his brother’s brand new neon green remote controlled SUV and running out the door...I recalled the salty tears staining the wood floor and the low hanging bushy brown head of his 8-year-old brother who once again was unable to embrace a moment of joy with a shiny new toy without interruption.  I remembered the chase and then the 9-year-old throwing the remote and kicking the car after being cornered by me with it in his arms…I recalled his pointy fingers later poking his sister’s toes until she yelped with frustration making him jump (sensitive to sound) and whack her across the thighs. More screams radiated through my holiday memory.  I then pictured the football catapulting through the family room, the empty bag of marshmallows that he just consumed, the sound of his screeching as he maniacally ran around the house, away from my husband who was trying to wrestle away one more gift that did not belong to this boy.

“It did seem to be a hard day for you” I agreed. “Do you know why?” I pictured all of the reasons the day had dipped into mania. I could see the things I had NOT done to avoid his over-excitement. I had forgotten to structure the day, forgotten to limit the activity, I had missed my cues. I was tired.

“I have no idea, mom. But I want to thank you for all of the nice gifts you got me that you wanted me to think were from Santa, but were of course not.”

I giggled.

“Don’t laugh at me Momma! I HATE it when you laugh at me.”

“I am not laughing at you, I’m just happy because you sounded so sweet just then. Like you were thinking about me.”

“What? What do you mean, Momma?” He said so softly. Maybe a little horrified.

“Well,” I replied carefully, “You are usually too busy and a little distracted to remember me. It feels good to know that you are thinking of me and the effort I made today to make Christmas nice.”

I worried that I was telling him too much. Maybe making him feel guilty. But he had tossed me a nugget, and I needed to thank him for it. The compliment (he was thinking of ME!) felt heavier than gold. I wanted to tell him the truth.

“I don’t remember to think of you?” He sounded truly horrified. “Really?” Pause… Pause…Silence… I could almost hear the ticking neurons in his little brain…how many years he had worked to get here…to feel empathy. Then, “I can see what you mean. I’m really sorry Mom that I forget to think about you.”

It was my Christmas gift. However tiny, it was the slice of connection I needed on this day full of expectations. A star telling me I am walking in the right direction. A light allowing my child to see me as I am, even if only for a moment. And I could see him, too. We accepted each other completely. We remembered to think of each other.

For me, Christmas this year brings with it a tiny, but enormous and ridiculous hope. (Hope directly from a newborn King, born in a stable, to a poor teenager. What if everyone had been too busy to notice Him?) First, may we simply slow down enough to remember one another. A thought, a gesture, a message, a moment in time where we go beyond our busy lives. Perhaps every day, even more than once, we can see the opportunity to carry light into a dim world. What if we think of our moms, our husbands, the checkout lady, the boy who is making the annoying sound, the mom whose mouth is turned downward, the friend on Facebook posting sad feelings, the dad looking for someone to talk to. What if we stop for a moment like my 9-year-old did? Second, I hope that we will all live together this way, somewhere, someday for more than a moment— I pray for an eternity of this kind of living. United. Loved. Accepted.

Merry Christmas!

Be Merry Because of The Small Stuff

The season crashes into my kitchen like a thunderbolt. I pretend I can’t hear, didn’t notice that giant flash, but then I force a glance at the tattered family calendar on the counter next the granola box, and I see that there are just over two weeks left before winter break is here. THAT must be why I’m seeing so many Facebook posts of cute families toting around tall evergreens. I better get moving! Two weeks to finish draping the garlands, lighting everything alive down the driveway. Two weeks to finish scribbling the list of gift ideas twirling around in my head. Snap cool photos of the kids, make a better card than last year, create address lists and mail cards before Valentines Day. Craft thoughtful handmade gifts, mail cards (didn’t I just say that?) Wrap presents. Or should I let Amazon do it all? Two weeks to demonstrate my gratitude to the One who created me and saved me from my own very frantic self while I hum a jolly tune, bake gingerbread men, mop up spilled egg nog, and prance around looking as good as possible in my newest red or silver sweater and snowflake earrings that I just bought... Wait, where did I put them again? Two weeks (plus the week of Christmas) to lose a few pounds before I’m on the warm sand in Florida, sipping a lemonade in my hot pink bathing suit… Me merry? Crap!

And then down the stairs pops my eight-year-old. “Mom! Guess what? Only two days before we go get our Christmas tree!”  I watch him patter down the hallway in his soft cotton socks, brown clumps of hair sticking in all different directions. “Oh YES, I love this thing! Can I hang the next ornament?” he asks as he peeks into the 4^thtiny pocket of the advent tree my sister made us a few years ago. His fingers pull out a miniature word ornament pronouncing “Noel.” The three dimensional word is trimmed in gold with a shiny safety pin on the end of a thin shimmery thread. Lost in my chaotic, frantic thoughts, and the smell of burning toast, I would normally miss this little moment all together. But my eight-year-old gently shows me a different world. He carefully rises onto his toes, pinning the word “Noel” to the cloth tree. Even though it is a fairly plain ornament, it shines when I peer at it through his eyes. Gently he steps back and the curve his lips create is like a giant upside down rainbow. He is very, very merry.  

As I write this I am learning that there are magical lessons to be learned from our children during the holidays.  The word “Noel” is speculated to have been derived from the French word “nouvelles” or the Latin word “natalis” meaning birth.  My eight-year-old showed me this morning that the light of birth, newness, youth, magic, unexplainable joy….this light shines in to even the most chaotic, old, distracted minds like my own. If we let it.

This holiday season I pray that we find a way to allow the Noel, like the young mind of a child, to shine its light into the madness of our days. May we stretch our minds to pierce the distracting and disappointing bubbles of busyness we live in, and to embrace, on the other side, a joyful, magical world. May we be merry because of the small stuff.

   

Listen. If you haven’t already, sit down for a minute like I just did, and take a tally of the magic you have already missed today. Maybe just a word, a smile, a song, a drawing, or a quiet question.  And then give thanks.

You will be merry-- I promise! 

Sensitive Boy, My Gift

What does it feel like to be inside of your body, my little 9-year-old man? Have these last three thousand and sum days of your life smothered your brightness already, making you older than you ought to be? Another morning is here where I try to help you rise, but you are heavy as a great cracked turtle, head aching, pulling inward and away from the pancakes and plans for the day where your sister dances with joy.

This morning I can see the chaos and confusion under your soft brow, scrunched up and tight. Offended by people moving this way and that, too fast, out of sync, making demands. Bright light everywhere, invading, complicated sounds, places to be. Fingers pointing. Hook faced frowns. Hurry up. Wait. Stop. Say your sorry. Get yourself together now. Get dressed. You feel it all, your little body overflows. Kaleidoscopes of sounds are screaming in your head, while most of us hear nothing but our own dull voices. Birds singing, brother and sister chattering downstairs, Daddy booming words, dogs barking in the echoing field, cars rumbling by, my distant voice. So often you live in the unseen and unheard, but are misunderstood as stealing the present. Sometimes they say your are distracting, annoying, inconvenient.

The cold air and open space outside of your nest of down are your enemies this morning.  But you are pulled up and out anyway, up to a life that blinds you, to face another day. You stumble across the icy surface of the floor, feet stinging from the touch of a hardness not made for your gentle body. Stiff bristles of the toothbrush invade your mouth. You turn away. No more Mama. I don't want to GO.  The icy tile surface under your heels sends steel through your veins. You stiffen. Squeal. Jump around waiting for someone to say, “Calm down!” so you can go back and hide.

I feel your body, doubling over, sagging to get back to safety. Under warmth and darkness you creep. But there is another pull. Someone (is that me?) is begging you to get dressed now, eat, gather backpack, coat, get outside, go to a place where hundreds of children cross paths, balls bounce, papers shuffle, faces make little sense, words hurt. I am here with you now, and I feel it all-- I understand.

My sensitive boy, come inside my arms for this moment to a calmer place. You are good as you are. My embrace will shield you from the thunder. Names will bounce from my hardened chest-- ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Aspergers, Challenging Child, Distraction, Anxious, Annoying. They are flying like birds into the morning sky, raining back down to feed us with forgiveness. Your light is reflecting a rainbow of a gorgeous child, in everything around you. You are my Gift, My Treat, My Lesson of Life, My Love. I feel the world so much more truly, Little Boy, because of you. 

Daddies Who Climb Mountains

The damned ding ding dingaling on my phone is waking me again. Shit, not another crisis beaming here like Count Tinkerbell all the way from the office, chomping down her frigging gold-knifed teeth through the ceiling to devour my morning. I grasp the phone and press its glow to my face. Panic over. That noise was just that God damn phone alarm. She orders me around, telling me to get my aching ass out of bed, beating my stiff swollen knees with her reminders and calendar events.  I keep setting her annoying beeping voice earlier. Early enough to get on my superpower bike with a screen that tricks my 45-year-old achy bod into believing it’s in the French Countryside spinning free. Maybe I’ll stop at a vineyard before breakfast. Get in a glass of vino before all hell breaks loose.

I ought to be a bear. They get to sleep all winter, don’t they? Or a frog.  My kids would like that better. They could carry me around and pat my lumpy slimy back, and they’d still think I’m cute. But I’m just a grown-up, bald 45-year-old boy called Husband, Daddy, Director. Sounds important, but it’s never enough.

At work, I’ve got a cascade of jobs the size of Everest to climb, and its blinding edges block my way with silvery jagged problems. Feels like I’m always reaching for the next crevice to clutch. I’m panting, and my sweaty Brooks Brothers shirt is flapping in the wind as my shiny black Farragamo leather shoes slip. And then, the laces get caught on the details and I look down. Careful, those distractions below can cause you vertigo…the egos, red tape, senseless errors, antiquated systems… if you stare at them too long, you forget where you’re going, and the mountain just gets higher. Sometimes I dangle there from my bitten, bleeding nails wondering if someone could just hand me a promotion, a beer, and retirement package all on the same day. I’ll open an organic dairy farm and sell milk. Or maybe become a college professor who spends all day talking about ideas over his reading glasses, in an old colonial schoolroom while sipping a hot latte.

Can’t be with the kids enough. They say, “Daddy where ARE you? Daddy you missed my parade, missed my story last night, missed cuddles.”  They have no idea how much I miss THEM. Knowing everything about them. But I've been out climbing mountains that nobody sees. I've got no pictures to show or breathtaking stories to tell, no harrowing adventures to brag about. My dream of home cooked, nightly meals by a crackling red brick hearth, listening to stories from the kids’ days as my wife rubs my shoulders…Hah. Young fellas, don’t even bother with that figment. I’m lucky if I get home for dinner twice a week, after it’s already been served. And if I do get there, my kids are so strung out and surprised to see me that they act like fang-toothed nymphs that you see in old story books. You know, banging the table with their forks, shrieking over each other, demanding to sit by me or refusing to look at me. Their emotions have run amuck. I can’t hear my thoughts, much less make a sound to share them. Sometimes I yell just to be heard, and then I realize that they hear so little from me… Let it not be my angry loud bellow their little heads hear when they think, “Daddy.”   

After they have pounded my wife and me to pieces with their zesty energy, for a short time, I get to feel what has been missing. Feel what keeps me climbing upward. They wrestle with me, lead me by the hand to their quiet bedrooms where they sound out stories from their favorite books or listen to mine. I lay back and work to keep my tired eyeballs open and focused, sinking into their joy, their magic, their being in the world. We are finally in a place free of all the beeps, buzzes, calls, trades, lists, charts, dollars, demands. They chatter on about a world of other things-- friends, disappointments, dreams, mistakes. They have no sense of time. Finally I am home. Home for my family. Home for love. 

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I’ve been writing fiction lately, sharing new perspectives on some of the challenges I observe facing so many families, including mine. I hope this narrative does at least a bit of justice to the struggle fathers experience as they are pulled, like moms, in far too many directions.  The love of my life has taught me that being a wonderful dad is possible, but it is painful, and it is hard work.

I Was Born Sick

I was born sick. My mom didn't know just how sick. I heard her voice for all those months talking talking talking, thinking she could control me before I entered the other side where people suck in air. Sometimes she would sing to me, trying to practice her lullabies, not knowing that she could make up any sounds and I would feel her intentions, her longing to fill me with something good, not sick like I feel.

I grow, and she does too. She sighs at pictures of me in sterile hospital offices as the gooey pushy stick rubs and squishes my warm home. I wish they would stop that. She needs to feel hope, to know who I am. She thinks I'm OK because everyone tells her so, but I'm sick. She sings again on the way home, something about "hushabye, don't you cry," and I wonder if she knows how much crying is coming.

A rounded lump of warm flesh pushes my elbow. I feel a jolt. She wants something from me. To believe I'm beautiful and whole like the pictures of all the others who have come before me. To know that the signs of trouble she saw four months ago were insignificant. To believe that I'll eat, sleep, smile, breath, crawl, walk on time. To know that my miniscule heart won't require the silicone covered hand of a giant to hold it and change its entire design while the rest of me lies in the frigid silver room, just above the cold temperature of death.

When I arrive, will she pour out loving, nourishing motherhood that supports the beautiful, ugly, smelly, soft, pain, and pleasure of who I am? When my screams penetrate her head, and I can't stop them, will she cover the sound with her own needs, running back to her dream, or will she embrace my heart with her warmth, make me know I'm not alone. Sickness hurts.  When I grow and show her the truth about me, that my design is not like her dream, will she still have that touch, that voice that rains enough love to make me want to swim in this womb forever?

She wants to see beauty everywhere, even in the broken places where most of us are afraid to ever look. Soon she will see me. She'll find out that I'm sick. I'll break her heart, and then she will heal along side of me. We will be together in this journey-- she will never look away.

This entry a fictional perspective from a child, like my child, who was born with a congenital heart defect and then went on to discover, as he grew, that he is "different" in many more ways... He blesses me every day with lessons about honoring and loving the individual. I am so thankful for him.

"You Do Not Have To Be Good"

"Mama, can I ask you something?”

“Yes… what?” I answered my oldest son. His question begged for a spot in my mind that was unraveling the complex schedule of the day as I drove down the winding country road to school, late again.

 “Why did that orchid have to break on my birthday? Why did it have to happen and make me feel so sad…on my birthday?” repeated my now nine-year-old boy.

The question felt like a valuable nugget, just tossed to me, about how my child perceives life. Little things that break, like orchids—they matter a lot. ‘And how is it that he cares so much?’ I wondered.

On his birthday, he cried quietly, but hard, sinking down into a little ball in his room because a tiny piece of his orchid broke off. He said it was his fault. He said he had been careless.

If he feels this bad, all on his own, over the fracture of an orchid stem, then imagine how he feels when an adult tells him that he IS careless. ‘Must remember this, and must remember to share this with husband,’ I thought.

So often it seems like it doesn’t bother him one bit that he leaves messes everywhere he goes.  Breaks, loses, or forgets things. Spills food in the car, crushes books, homework, video cases under his feet. Leaves paths of chaos and dirt in every room he travels across. We remind him to be more careful over and over and over again. The messes keep coming. It dawns on me that he really is trying hard and that he knows he is careless. He doesn’t want to be that way.

After all, he was crying over an orchid breaking.

“I don’t know why the orchid had to break.” I answered.

“But Mama, God is in charge of everything, right? So then he wanted it to break?” He stretched his voice for a truth, an answer.

“I don’t know for sure if God wanted it to break, but I know everything good comes from God.” I replied, thinking it through myself…” maybe he wants you to learn something,” I wondered out loud.

“He wants me to learn that things I love die? It is awful that things have to hurt and then die,” he sighs.

We are traveling over a bridge now and I see a golden glow over the water on the pond with two elegant swans cuddling in their wings. Life appears to be overflowing at this moment.

“Maybe God wants you to think about life, just the way you are doing. He wants you to care…” I pause.

I recall the first line of a Mary Oliver poem called Dream Work that I am writing about for my class…
”You do not have to be good,” I say out loud. I feel relief.

Then I finished the idea for him and for me, and maybe Mary would agree with me…

“You (and that orchid and every living thing) have all that you need inside of you. You have God. Even when you break, you have Him. You do not have to be good...God is good for you.”

I pulled in to the school parking lot and turned around to catch his smile, to love him even more than ever, as he ran off, backpack crooked, hair rumpled, ready for another day of life.