Swim

 "Feed a cold, starve a fever. So I'm giving notice here to all of you nagging fears. This is the plan: when the world starts feeling a bit undone, I will feed my faith. Starve my fears. Fear can be what we feel, but brave is what we do." Ann Voskamp

We began our summer with two weeks of swim lessons (with a week break in between).

Peanut has always loved being in the water. IN the water. Not UNDER the water.

Last summer we tried swimming lessons and didn't make any progress. She wasn't ready.

On the last day of swim lessons, we decided that she would jump in off the side and the teacher would catch her BUT allow her to go under water. It was discussed ahead of time (with me) and we both thought if she just did it once, she would see that she was okay. That we weren't going to let her drown. That she would come back up.

Peanut came up from under the water coughing and screaming.

At the time I thought she was upset that she had gone under water.

We damaged her comfort in the water and her enjoyment of it that week. Which was not our goal.

It wasn't until a full year later, at the end of the first swim lesson this summer that I realized that she was angry her trust had been violated.

She thought she would be "caught" and instead was tricked into doing something she most definitely did not want to do.

She trusted, and came to love her swim teacher, and she felt hurt.

She spent the entire two weeks of swim lessons this year in full panic mode. Constantly afraid that the instructor would let go of her - because in the past, she had been let go of.

Over and over again she repeated "Don't let go."

Trust is a complicated beast.

It's not easily repaired.

Peanut made incredible progress for Peanut in her two weeks of swim lessons but I think our biggest hurdle was mending what she viewed as a trust issue.

She couldn't focus on swimming because her mind and body would only allow her to focus on what she perceived to be a safety issue.

That the swim instructor would let go of her and she would not be safe.

Each afternoon as I watched her practice her swim lesson homework in the comfort of our own pool, where she can easily touch, I pondered this idea of being so consumed with control that you can't focus.

What does it say about my trust in God if I can't focus on the path He's laid out because I'm too busy saying "Don't let go" over and over?

Once Peanut accepted she was safe, she did big things.

She conquered going under water.

She learned to swim across the pool in her own way.

She remembered that swimming is fun for her.

Mama Warriors, what big things could we do if we accept that we are safe?

If we trust the Creator of the path?

What if we relaxed and remembered life is fun?

Father's Day

 "Suffering is the universal experience of all humanity. Suffering doesn't mean you're cursed, it means you are human. The question isn't " Why is there suffering in my life?" but "Why wouldn't there be suffering?" Because such is life in a broken world. The question is "But what way will you BEAR your suffering?"

This picture was taken in October of 1975. In the search for pictures of my father and I, I found very few.

I noticed in this picture that he's not even holding me. Without context, a small thing I guess. I don't remember ever being hugged, held or comfortable in his presence.

I'd wager my mother set him up to feed me just so she could take this picture.

As I have gotten older, I've learned that relationships are tricky are best.

As much as we think we love our people unconditionally, I find that human love is never really unconditional.

There are always conditions.

We get to decide what our boundaries are and what conditions we can live with. And what conditions we can not.

The lesson my father taught me by default is that I am worthy of being loved.

Not because he loved me in a way I understood, but because I learned what love doesn't look like for me.

Having grown up with both great grandparents and grandparents, I knew my father loved the way he was loved.

And I knew that wasn't how I wanted to love or be loved.

Mama Warriors, for many of us Father's Day is this tricky thing.

Maybe your father relationship is/was a tricky one too. Maybe your kids are navigating a tricky relationship with their own father.

Maybe you too struggle with the idea of unconditional love of a Father because you've never seen anything like it in action.

Gift yourself space today to grieve what wasn't/isn't.

It doesn't make you any less grateful for the positive father mentors in your life.

It just makes you real.

Bread

 "Life comes in waves, and the way to live is to find a way to ride waves."

Last Sunday we had the opportunity to visit Xman's church to pray over him, and the others, that are traveling to Puerto Rico on the mission trip.

It was uplifting to see him in HIS element. Loved. Seen. Accepted.

Okay, there was also this Mama Bear moment of needing to shake the hands of the adults I was sending him across an ocean with.

When it came time for communion, he says to me, "Mom - be careful when you open it. I've had it spill before."

Oddly I had the exact opposite problem.

I could not get to that piece of bread that is in the top layer of the little cup. The pull tab would not pull.

SD tried to help me as now it was hard to focus on the prayer because I'm trying to get to the bread.

No luck.

Not to worry as there were several extras around us and I successfully managed to partake in the body and the blood in remembrance.

I brought home that little cup that wouldn't open and have been thinking about it this week.

How sometimes what seems so easy - the route to Jesus - can be so challenging.

Everyone around me seemed to be able to open theirs. Why couldn't I?

I've been thinking about those obstacles to seeing Jesus this week, to getting to the bread.

I haven't been able to write since our community lost an amazing 17 year old in the last few weeks.

I have no words.

As I stood in the funeral home for his visitation, I remembered to be careful with what words I shared.

You see, I believe that it's in those hard moments where religion does the most damage.

Who wants to hear a Jeremiah 29:11 verse when you are standing next to the casket with your baby in it?

I believe we, with the best of intentions, become the reason others can't open their communion cup. The reason they won't.

In the hard, I believe that Jesus calls us to show up.

Not to preach or offer sympathies that will never touch the pain.

But to show up and say "I see you. You are loved."

And then we stay.

In all the moments before the hard, Jesus sits in the quiet. With His Father, so He's not alone.

The best Jesus we can show folks in hard times is to make sure they do not feel alone.

We show them Love.

If we provide the cup, they'll be able to open it when they are ready.

See

 "The crowning evidence that Jesus was alive was not a vacant grave, but a spirit filled fellowship. Not a rolled away stone, but a carried away church." Clarence Jordan

A few weeks ago we took Mo Trouble for his first full grooming.

I'm going to confess when I went to pick him up, I did not recognize him. He did not look like our dog.

He immediately jumped on me and his behaviors definitely screamed "Mo."

Visually he did not look like Mo. Mo Trouble has been this scruffy mess since the day we brought him home.

He's never looked like one of those "doodle" dogs until he was groomed.

For the first few weeks, I laughed every single time I saw him. He looked ridiculous to me. Have you seen his eyelashes? Apparently he has movie star eyelashes we've never seen for all the fur on his face.

The realist in me has come to love the hair cut. Brushing him - so much easier. Bathing him - goodness how much less time. The amount of my backyard being dragged into my living room -substantially less.

However, a piece of me misses the scruffy look that made him uniquely ours.

The scruffy look was familiar.

The scruffy look sort of justified his poor behavior .

I still find it hard to recognize him sometimes.

But then, he comes out of his crate every morning and refuses to potty, eat or do anything else until he's exuberantly greeted me with a "good morning mommy" string of jumps/licks/kisses.

Then I remember - he's still Mo.

I just have to work a little harder to "see" him these days.

I was thinking this morning as my big two left for work/school, how I sometimes feel the same way about them.

They look like grown ups these days.

Different than the visual I've always known.

I don't recognize their voices, the facial hair, the dyed hair on their head, the wardrobe selections, the car keys dangling, the revolving door as they come/go so often.

It's not the visual I'm used to.

But then, my Mother's day card will read "momma" or one will say "love you too" at the end of the phone call and I remember.

I know them.

Mama Warriors, parenting young adults is a new ball game.

Maybe you, too, as we hit that "insane May" stretch are feeling like the visual doesn't match what you know.

Remember that somewhere in that changed outer appearance, you do know them.

You may just have to work a little harder to "see" them.

Enough

At nearly the last minute, Xman decided he wanted to go to DOM. He's usually invited by several but has never been sure formals were his thing.

He borrowed a suit. We dragged out his father's "prom" shoes. He just needed a white button up shirt.

We decided a white button up shirt is a useful item and one he'd likely wear again. With the busyness of May, he ran into TJ Maxx on his way to baseball. Grabbed one that fit.

In the busyness of May, I forgot to tell him that he needed to buy a shirt with a BLEND.

He came home with a 100% cotton shirt.

We all know what a 100% cotton dress shirt looks like when you wash and dry it.

The Nana normally fixes these domestic conundrums for us, but she was out of town.

I dragged out our iron.

Our iron has been used MANY times.

For ironing plastic beads.

That's it.

It's not made for ironing clothes, or at least not in this house.

About 22ish years ago, I tried to iron one of SD's shirts for work. He wore a 2XL Tall at the time and let's just say that's a lot of shirt to attempt to wrangle.

I then decided the 99 cent special at the dry cleaners was the way to go. Since then, we've cut the dry cleaning expense by buying him all shirts that are a heavy blend - so they are "wrinkle free."

I was determined on Xman's one (and likely only) formal event - he was not going to be the wrinkled kid.

3 Youtube videos later and I was armed with a plan. I cleaned our iron. I filled it with water (thus youtube says steam is the way to go). I have sprayed this shirt with water, put it in a plastic bag for an hour, and now it's laid out on my dining room table (the ironing board left here in a minimalism kick years ago).

I ran the iron over the towel on the table many times before actually letting it touch the shirt.

After ironing, I hung the shirt up across the room from me.

You know how this goes right?

The more I looked at the shirt, the more I saw new wrinkles.

I decided to give it one more go. Plugged the iron in, and ran it ONE time over the area in question.

At which point my iron betrayed me.

Little brown dots squirted out of the iron ALL over the white dress shirt. Hours before the event.

I hurriedly sent SD to Walmart for a Tide Pen (alas we don't own one of those either). The Princess used the tide pen and a hair dryer. And hours later, as a group effort, the Thrailkills had somehow managed to have one (mostly) ironed dress shirt ready.

As I've been thinking about this domestic snafu this week, I realized that I often have trouble recognizing when "enough" is enough.

Had I left said shirt alone, with the one small wrinkle, it would have been fine.

But I questioned myself.

Had I done "enough?"

Much of my parenting sleepless nights could be attributed to this elusive "enough."

Did I love them enough? Did I teach them enough? Did I enforce boundaries enough? Did I support them enough? Did I hole them accountability enough? Did I offer grace enough?

Mama Warriors, we can always think of the "mores" but are we giving ourselves credit for the plentys?

Are we embracing that (in Jesus) we are ENOUGH.

We don't need to keep ironing over and over.

Our best was enough.

No Price Tag

 "The bittersweet side of appreciating life's most precious moments is the unbearable awareness that those moments are passing." Marc Parent

10 years ago I went to one of those stores where they tell you what shoes to buy. That was the last time I bought a pair of tennis shoes. Those have long since been worn out. In the meantime, various pairs of hand me down shoes have shown up here and I've tried to make them work.

Consistently my feet hurt after I walk.

This weekend I finally decided "enough" and went to a different store but same concept.

I answered questions about where I walk, how much I walk, no I do not run. Ever. I tried shoes on. I said what I liked, what I didn't. New options were brought to me.

For a full hour these kind employees made me feel like me having comfortable shoes to walk in was a priority for them to. I was worthy of having "good" shoes.

I kept coming back to this coral pair of shoes. They aren't the lightest pair I tried on. They are a lot more "shoe" than I've been wearing. But they provide good support all over my foot and have a thick sole that absorbs some of the wear and tear of walking.

I noticed that there were no price tags in this store. No prices on shoes. No prices on shoe displays. No prices on shoe boxes. In a very UNLIKE me move, I got to the register without ever asking how much these shoes were.

I assumed they would be expensive.

I had NO idea how expensive they were until that moment where she said the total and I was handing over my debit card.

There was a moment when I wanted to say "NO" and pick a shoe I liked less that cost less.

I looked at the employee and felt this understood, unsaid conversation.

"Trust me. I know shoes. These shoes are the best ones for your feet. They will be worth the cost."

I signed my receipt.

Yesterday afternoon I put these new shoes on and took them for a spin around my neighborhood.

I'm going to confess they take a bit to get used to but often feel like you are walking on clouds.

As I put one foot in front of the other, I thought of how many times I make decisions based on cost.

It seems responsible right - to know how much something is going to cost you before you say "yes."

I think this is the conundrum I consistently circle back to with God.

He wants me to buy the shoes before I know what they will cost.

He wants me to say yes to the request without knowing how it will turn out.

He wants me to trust that the request will be what's best for me regardless of the cost.

The cost will be worth the investment.

Mama Warriors, it's so easy to get caught up in the cost analysis style of living. Trying to balance some invisible spreadsheet.

Trust that what He asks will be worth it.

Buy the shoes with no price tag.

Just in Case

 "My heart is at ease knowing that what was meant for me will never miss me, and what misses me was never meant for me." Imam Al-Shafi'i

Peanut climbed in my bed at first day light this morning exclaiming "Mommy - it's Mother's Day! Today is all about you. I'm going to do all the things for you."

It seems like one would wake the daddy on Mother's day for help doing "all the things" for the mommy. But that's never how it goes.

I was up late waiting on my wild child who seems to live his best life starting at my bedtime.

SD never waits up for him to get home. "He's fine" he says to me.

It seems he always takes the stance that unless he's informed otherwise, everything is okay.

I seem to always take the stance that we should be alert waiting for car accidents, broken down cars, situations where the kids aren't comfortable, and all the other thoughts moms think at 2 AM.

He comfortably snores while I pray.

Perhaps it's that I have too much background knowledge. I spend a lot of time with our kids and I know all the things that can go wrong.

The glitter can sleep peacefully because the glue will stay up and make sure the kids get home.

She won't sleep until she has said "Good night. I love you." and knows they are back in the nest.

It seems most of motherhood falls into the glue category.

The relentless showing up that no one seems to see or appreciate.

The being available for the "just in case."

As I groggily sip the tea that was "made for me" this morning, and watch Peanut's excited face as helps with all the things, I'm thankful for all the just in case moments.

The mornings I linger in the kitchen before they go to work - just in case they need something.

The texts and memes that circle back and forth - just in case they need something.

The afternoons I stand in the kitchen to welcome them home from all the places - just in case they need something.

The late nights I wait up for them to come in - just in case they need something.

As the kids get older, those just in case moments, are the sweet spot.

The beauty of being the glue is that you are the just in case.

Mama Warriors, as you wake on this mother's day Sunday, know that the just in case moments are not wasted.

Time and time again you send your child the message that you are available.

For those waking this morning without your just in case, I'm truly sorry for your loss. I'm praying for you this morning.

For those waking this morning whose mom was never your just in case, I'm truly sorry for your loss. I'm praying for you this morning.

For those waking this morning struggling with being the sole just in case, I'm sorry that you carry the responsibility solo. I'm praying for you this morning.

For those waking this morning yearning to be someone's just in case, I'm truly sorry for your pain. I'm praying for you this morning.

For those waking this morning groggily drinking caffeine while being the just in case, Happy Mother's Day Mama Warriors. I'm praying for you this morning.