coming to terms

In the last year I've come to see and accept that I have a problem. A problem that never surfaced prior to having children, one that I never thought I would struggle with. But I'm in the trenches of it, it suffocates me and I'm on a quest to dig myself out of this horrid pit.

It may seem like nothing, but this plague in my heart, it's yelling. As we've added more children and more responsibilities and more more more of life, I've found that I am spinning out of control at times, and it is in those times that the anger comes out. It spills out in rage-face, finger shaking, counter pounding raised voice, and it is so ugly. It has made Shiloh cry more than once, she has said through her tears ,"I don't like you right now." It has caused Asher (who is the unfortunate target of most of this uncivil behavior) to cower if I walk briskly toward him. I hate it, oh I hate it so much and I know that the best way to overcome a weakness is to face it, to confess it and put it on display and ask for prayer and accountability. I am done with it, I am done with living every day with this tension bubbling beneath the surface, waiting for one of my children to make a bad choice or make a mess or treat each other cruelly so that I can return their cruelty with explosive voice.

So here it is. I've put it out there in confession, in humility I bow low and ask for prayers, for advice, but also that if you struggle as I do, that you confront it with me, that we over come together. I have been reading and applying new lessons I've learned from The Orange Rhino, committing to memory verses that speak gentleness into my heart. I tried challenging myself not to yell, I got to 31 days before something trivial opened the flood gates again and since then I have been back sliding farther and thus I am here, opening myself up to your judgments, your empathy, perhaps your condescension. I'm okay with that. In the end, I want to look back and know that I let my real self be known, that I wasn't trying to create a mask, a series of perfectly cropped IG photos or carefully written status updates to make others feel inferior or even just to build myself up.
,br> My hope is that in exposing the struggles, I will have more triumph to celebrate, and that I can erase the memory of an angry mommy from the hearts of my dear children. They are sweet people, I hope to help them stay that way.

poured out

I write often about motherhood. Sometimes I fear that I obsess, that I wallow in its intricacies. But something new is paving its way, adding to the noise, silencing some of it even as I come to a new conclusion. I find myself ever asking where the course of my life is headed. What will I be remembered for? What do I WANT to be remembered for?

So many books and clips and conversations, messages and photos are leading me down a path that I think intentional motherhood has paved. See when you make it your life's work to pour yourself out for you spouse, your kids, to WANT to do it, to find in it great joy, you start to see the beauty of living life empty. The more I move my selfish impulses and ambitions out of the way, the more of my real self I am finding. I like this self, I am happiest when I am allowing her to take control instead of that self whom always wants more.

I have always questioned why Christian culture as a whole sometimes hasn't seemed much different than the good people of the world who don't care for God. I know some humble, serving people who spend their lives helping others for no other reason than that it feels right. For a long time I struggled with this idea that the goal of the faith is, yes, to know God, but really it's to reel others in. Well guess what? People don't want our God. They don't want a club where we tell them they have to believe in something intangible or they're burning for eternity. And if they do find that glimmer of truth of God, choosing to believe, then they better behave or out they go. No more "Mr. Nice Guy" from us, get it together or get berated until you change or leave. And THEN, then if they stay and manage to conform? Then they BELONG. I heard these words from Jen Hatmaker recently and OH how they struck a chord. Believe...Behave...Belong.

But wait. Was this the way, the way of Jesus? When he called the sons of Zebedee did he ask for their belief? NO! My heart leapt as I realized the great truth about Jesus. People believed because in him they found a place where they belonged. They were loved, accepted and gently taught as they were...flawed, uneducated, selfish. People like them believed because Jesus gave them a safe place to learn how to. They belonged first.

I am certain my thoughts are mixed, jumbled, hardly discernible at this point, but thank you for reading this far. What I'm getting at here is the true mission we might just be called to do, is to really, actually be like Jesus. Leave a comfortable life to have nowhere to lay our heads, be so different that even our skeptics praise us for our works of mercy. Pour out. Pour out. BE the least of these. Maybe it starts in small ways. Maybe we say yes when asked to serve some one. Maybe we jump at the chance to bring meals to a family in need. Maybe in each tiny step He will open our hearts to pour more and more and more. He will prepare us to move ourselves aside for his works. He will show us who we really are as we strip bare the selfishness and learn to truly think of others more.

In all the swirling of my thoughts and the achings of my heart one thing is loud and certain:

"We don't get to opt out of living on mission because we might not be appreciated. We're not allowed to neglect the oppressed because we have reservations about their discernment. We cannot deny love because it might be despised or misunderstood...doing nothing is a blatant sin of omission. Turning a blind eye to the bottom on the grounds of 'unworthiness' is the antithesis to Jesus' entire mission." (Jen Hatmaker, "Interrupted")

So this is my new goal, my new direction. How can I make God tangible, how can live so that others see his reality IN me? How can my one small, seemingly insignificant life, have significance? How i live so that people know they already belong? I have only a small handful of ideas and promptings and leadings for how to change and scrape out my fear and selfish bits. I know it will take time. I know that it is what is being asked of my one wild and precious life.

Inside

This voice behind action,
Cold, critical, harsh and self imposed.
Ever speaking, listening not
To truth and caring, wise words
Of those giving of the heart.
This voice bent on the tear down,
Hell bent on making a mockery
Of self, of worth, of accomplishment.
Whispering line of lie, shout of shame.
"You do too little, never enough."
This voice active in criticism,
Putting words in mouths not open
Thoughts in minds unthinking falsehood.
Insecurity a rampant hatchet
Marriage the bed of its hacking rage.
This voice speaking always, loudly,
Yet I have ears to never hear.
Truth words like tornadic wind surround
And set free a heart long jailed.
Eschet chayil, even the imperfection.

fierce

As I sit here writing, an empty glass once holding the contents of a modestly sized coke float keeps me company. A coke float makes me think of my mom. It's funny how so many of my happiest memories about her are connected to food and I'm not sure what to think about that. But I digress.

I've had this post on my heart, in my mind, for weeks now. As usual it is about my own motherhood journey, because that's who I am right now. My life energy is used up every day for them, so little left for me, and that's okay. It's who I am meant to be in this season of life. I have a short time to do this well.

I came to a painful realization while enjoying our month away in Bethesda, MD. I realized that in some ways, this season for me could be characterized by a terrible flaw. My children were starting to expect it of me at every turn, it was creeping into everything, showing up more and more and more until it slipped out without forethought or remorse.

Anger. Rage.

In and of itself it may not be a sin or such a terrible thing. It has it's place. I used these foggy perceptions of it as justification for myself. Now let me put this straight for you, this post is not about beating myself up. It is not about pointing the finger or self hate, it's about self realization. It's about a lightbulb, it's about filling a dark space with something bright and whole and healing.

So to start I want to get real. I want to put out in the open the things we are afraid, as mothers, to reveal. We confess snippets of our struggles in guarded phrases, "I spanked out of anger." " I yelled at the kids." Our confessions are heart felt, but I dare say they don't carry with them the true healing He wants to give. In my time away my sin became so glaring, I had no choice but to voice it. See it for what it is. In my anger I had sinned, often, against my children. Here is the part no one wants to say, because we're afraid no one else has struggled this way...

I had sinned by yelling at my children, screaming so loud my first thought was of whether the neighbors could hear through walls and closed windows and fences and yards. I had spanked in the moment, hot and fierce, angry hand slapping bare bottom, or tops of precious heads or backs of hands in moments of ugly and raging frustration. I have pushed little bodies in the direction I wanted them to go (at times causing them pain), I have yanked them quickly into car seats out disgust at how slow they moved (because I was running late). I have told my sensitive little boy that his tears were annoying, that friends would not like him if he carried on so much. I have crushed spirits.

But here is the light. I am made new. I write this and my eyes and my heart and my hands, they have been made new by the changing of my mind set. In the original Greek, Jesus uses the word metanoia when referring to repentance. More directly translated it refers to a mind change. Now this is not the same as a simple "change of mind" that might be considered when picking out shoes or ordering a drink at Starbucks. It's not an "in the moment" decision of rushed unimportance. This is an over haul of one's thoughts and the behaviors that follow. God did this for me, and sweet mothers reading this who have struggled, He will show you too.

On this fateful date in August I had a terrible, screaming, lashing out day with my children over petty things. Arguing about watching TV, dragging their feet when I was in a rush. Who knows all the justifications I may have fabricated, but instead of shrugging it off or telling myself I needed to stop this "bad habit" I felt a powerful conviction that I haven't felt in nearly a decade. I knew God was telling me, right where I sat, to "confess and be healed." I jumped on my phone and sent a mass text to ten other women whom I trust to guide me straight, confessing my struggles, asking for prayer. By noon that day the Lord was at work in me in a way I haven't felt since entering this world of motherhood. I felt physically and emotionally lifted, a sense that the spirit was truly moving within me, guiding me and empowering me toward what was true. A metanoia was happening.

I spent my time that day digging into the scriptures, hunched and hungry over my Bible, wearing out my iphone concordance app. I found verse after verse that showed me how deep my anger was. That it is sin. It is NOT a bad habit to break but a poison swallowing my heart, clouding my children from seeing the me I want them to so desperately remember. My anger was a slow trickle of toxin, dripping like slow, steady torture into their little hearts, manifesting itself already in acts of deliberate violence against one another. That day, the Lord paved a way for it to stop.

And friends, family, I feel healed. I realized so often that my anger was brought on by my own poor planning. Not being ready in time because I was distracted by something else (iPhone!). I saw that my harsh words came readily when I allowed disobedience to creep into their hearts because I wasn't tackling it at the first signs of waywardness. And just as I would never allow even a tiny drop of poison to cross their lips, so it must be with my anger. When I see it in this light, it is so much simpler. Cut out that which draws the anger near. No iPhone when I have a place to be, stop the arguing with immediate consequence, don't allow myself to get caught up in a back and forth with them.

Now have I slipped in the last two weeks? YES. But it is different, it's not to the extent it once was. I ask for forgiveness from them, I confess it as it is, I take a breath before I speak. Every time. Because isn't that very breath the sounds of Yaweh? The source of life itself? This is the difference between breaking a habit and holding fast to a conviction and I am here to tell you, it is possible for you. If you have struggled, if you have cried over your darkness of heart, confess these things. Confess them fully, let every dark space empty out in full revelation of where you're been, hold NOTHING back. Ask for prayer, immerse yourself in truth. We come from dust, our lives are but a breath. Don't waste it by trying to hold onto pretense. We've all walked there. We all want out. Take the first...sacred...step.




A few verses (NLT) that continue to steady my path:

Control your temper,
for anger labels you a fool. (Ecclesiastes 7.9)

Sensible people control their temper;
they earn respect by overlooking wrongs. (Proverbs 19.11)

Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other,
making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. (Ephesians 4.2)

Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. (James 1.20)

more, then less

My husband is a doctor, I find myself skirting this fact with people. Typically an encounter with some one just learning this fact comes back to words of, "It will really pay off BIG some day!" or "What a bright future you guys will have!" These things are meant, no doubt, as encouragement but it nonetheless some how draws a sadness. Our today, the future that will be tomorrow and the end of the week, those days pay off, those days are bright. Money isn't going to change it. If our marriage, our life together as parents and spouses and friends wasn't tight now, money would simply mask it. Money allows people to gloss over the true iniquity in their life, allowing them to buy an illusion of happiness. Retail therapy. That phrase puts a pit in me, I've used it myself.

I've been reading and reading and praying and pondering and the Spirit, it is turning me. There was a time when I allowed day dreams of future purchases to dwell in the recesses, my mind swirling with the wants. After finishing "7:A Mutiny Against Excess" and now diving into "A Divine Commodity" and "Affluenza" I'm starting to see that this obsession with want as a true illness. It's an epidemic in this land of the free where we use our freedom to puff up self rather than to spread about equality. I'm not talking a communist, Marxist type equality, just a desire in the God people to share and give away instead of obtain and hoard. I look at my house and wonder, would God walk in and see himself there?

So I write on this some what insignificant, rare read screen, that when we find our selves in a place of abundance even more so than the blessings of today, we will live the same. We will budget for needs, save for the occasional want and spread the rest. I dream of a day when the expenditures tell a story of hope for others.

Ann Voskamp recently wrote, "What will keep you from doing much good-is caring too much what others think...What would the world look like if Christians didn't care about keeping up with the Joneses but about keeping company with Christ? Maybe we'd keep our souls from insecurity and our minds from insanity?"

And isn't it such, that the things that worry us often have the minds of others at the center? We feel a need to have another shirt, different shoes, not because what we have is worn or used up, but because we desire to be seen. We desire the trend. A debt of different car for convenience of inches instead of stretching ourselves toward contentment. Is this who God meant for us to be. The Jesus I'm reading doesn't seem to approve.

I want to be esteemed more than envied.

I've thought about that lately. How I have this materialism brewing all the time, how I want to make nice, to redecorate, to buy new and have and how that feeling of some one complimenting the style of my home or wardrobe can fill me up. And now this growing, this pledge internal to be happy with less, to wear until worn and to find the needs we can meet where we're at by living a life free from want. Because really, aren't I already living this life? Free from want, with my full cupboards and bulging closet, stuff stored and usued?

Yes, I am free. And what will I do as I live in it?

My heart, it didn't use to be this way and in fact, it's still a work in progress. I want to be free from the bondage of guilt when I DO buy something that isn't need absolute, but what's more, I want to draw my heart to a place where the want isn't always there, isn't repressed. A place where I have a genuine want for others that imposes a want for self.

Little by little.

It will come.

create

I believe there is an innate desire in all women to make things beautiful. We find a satisfaction in sewing curtains to brighten a room, to write something lovely, to repurpose what was old and worn. We like to see our children clean and dressed well, we like clean kitchens and men of style and fresh cut flowers in vases. We were MEANT to make this world beautiful, to create.


I have never considered myself a creative person. I don't sew well, I don't "craft" and anything arranged attractively in our home is thanks to my husband's keen eye. Oh but I WANT to. I want to put together strange items that come together in a gloriously eclectic, Bohemian beautiful chic. I don't because the inevitable end is that I will spend hours on something that I don't like and feel like a failure. I'm so good at making myself feel that way. I never ever measure up in my own eyes. If you have ever thought that I think that anything about myself is better than you...you're wrong. I've never thought that. I can fake a good confidence, but it's a sham. I feel like I am mediocre at many things, moderate at best.


Through my children I'm realizing something. I may never be an expert at anything, but I certainly won't if I don't step out and try. In teaching my son to persevere I am learning that I must listen to my own advice. If I want to sew well, I need to get off my sad tuckus and sew the mess out of some stuff. I need to make a cock-eyed skirt with backwards pleats, a dress that's four inches too short, just SOMETHING. If I never start I'll never finish and finishing could prove to be really really good.


So, a pledge. This month, I am going to make this.



If it kills me.

I am also pursuing the decor of both a newly moved bedroom/playroom for all of the kids upstairs, inspired by this, as well as a homeschool room of our very own. My goal is to spend under $50 on each room. $100 max. It's time to get my thrift on!

a mess

I am on chapter four of this book and it's messing me up.


I've cried at least three times.  I'm not often moved by literacy, people.


My husband has, from the day we moved to Peoria and even some time before, desired for us to not be confined by our "stuff."  With the spirit prompting him, we sold nearly everything we owned to start our residency journey here in Peoria bare bones.  In so many ways this was a rebirth for us, a chance to start a chapter of living that took all the learning of the previous four years and applied it whole heartedly.  We moved into an empty house with a pledge to buy nothing new except a mattress for our bed (back issues *ugh*).  We found a dining table for $10 at Salvation Army, painted it and made it perfect.  A very new friend GAVE us her sofa.  God provided and for that first year we bought used.  We were even given a CAR for Corey to drive to work by our sweet neighbor.  It was an amazing year.


Then desire crept in.  I started wishing my kids could "dress better", wishing for a more "put together" home and I felt my heart creeping away from this desire to live intentionally, to give away and forget about getting.  I forgot.


And now here enter 7.  This book, ironically enough written by a woman leading a new church in Austin, TX, my home of homes, is a "mutiny against excess."  It makes me feel ashamed for all the things I've wanted.  For all the ways I've dreamed of a "better" future when Corey is done with his training.  I mean, when is it enough?  When I've exchanged my stained, hand-me-down couch for something pretty, will I be done?  Will I be happy?  There is ALWAYS one more thing to change, to better, to want. The best is NOW, how easy it is to let that slip away.  Jen Hatmaker writes, "Money is the most frequent theme in Scripture; perhaps the secret to happiness is right under our noses.  Maybe we don't recognize satisfaction because it is disguised as radical generosity, a strange misnomer in a consumer culture."  I read it and all at once I wonder, if my life was looked upon with the volume off, what would be seen?  Would it be evident that I live to please God, imitate Jesus?  So many of us talk a good Christ talk, but without the sound, would it be known where our hearts lie?  It matters little what other people see when they look in on me, but God sees it too.  Clearly.


So.  A recommitment.  My children will know that I am a passionate Christ follower not because I go to church and read the Bible in addition to a slew of other religious material.  They will know it because we live it together.  I will stop making them an excuse for not having my heart wrapped up in the poor, the marginalized, the hurting and hungry.  There are little things we can do together.  Little things I haven't done out of fear.


Now it starts.  This summer, I will invite the lost children of our neighborhood, the ones who wonder around aimlessly outside, I will invite them into our world.  We will have neighborhood slip'n'slide parties, show movies at dusk on our garage, feed popcorn to kids who may eat little now that school is not in session.  Oh spirit, help me know how to begin.