father’s day from far away

He’s 10,000 miles away tonight. When I finally get him on the phone, I’m a blubbering mess. After a week apart and two more to go, I didn’t yet want to wave the white flag of defeat, but it was such a tough day – too little sleep, too many messes, two little boys with cranky tempers and only one of me, all day long.

Eloquence fails when nerves run this raw: I suck at flying solo.

But the truth was, we’d had so many good days this week: such delight at summer adventuring with my boys, discovering new parks and playgrounds, meeting up with lots of friends to fill our time as a trio. Which is why the spiral downward – from a difficult morning to a disastrous afternoon to a don’t-ever-need-to-revisit-this evening – sank even deeper after enjoying such heights.

C’est la vie, of course, these rolling ups and downs, how life with littles whiplashes from one extreme to the next in a matter of minutes. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

And yet what did surprise me was how quickly his voice calmed my anxiety. How the sound of his sympathy made my whole body relax.

In two minutes he’d talked me off the ledge and back onto the solid ground where a bad day does not make a bad mother. In another two minutes he had me laughing so hard I almost dropped the phone and we started swapping stupid stories about our days, as if he were driving home from work and not working four oceans away.

A sub-par Father’s Day? Probably in most people’s estimations. We never managed to get him a gift or a card or even post a proud photo on Facebook to boast that he (along with everyone else’s dad, according to my scrolling feed) is The Best Ever.

But the simple truth is that the man lives the calling. He is father to my boys beyond my younger days’ wildest hopes of what a partner could be. Whenever I see the way other people notice it, too, that’s when I sit back and soak up the sheer grace of what choosing to love him has brought to my life and to the lives of our children.

He’ll often quote me the line from Fr. Hesburgh that the best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. And tonight in the smallest way, with a simple (ok, admittedly international, assuredly expensive) phone call, he did precisely that all over again.

Love spreads. His gives me more for them, for a better tomorrow.

Always.

If you’ve stuck around through the sap, you can treat yourself to theological musings on the subject: I’m blogging here in honor of the holiday – asking whether fatherhood is a relation, an obligation, or a vocation?

(Bet you can’t guess what I think.)

practicing the imperfect

It’s all just practice.

None of this is performance, this work of parenting. Despite my dark moments of self-defeating thoughts to the contrary, no one is watching me with a clipboard, making sure I don’t screw up or that my kids turn out according to someone’s standard of perfect.

It’s all just practice.

And practice takes time. Years. Sweat. Tears. Those crucible moments when you’re so tired and frustrated you want to scream and give up.

But you don’t. You keep practicing. And things slowly change over time.

The instrument becomes easier to play – and becomes part of you.

The sport changes your body in powerful ways – and becomes part of you.

The play allows you to understand your own life as you act – and becomes part of you.

Every day I wake up and start practicing parenting again: caring and forgiving and teaching and serving. Over time it becomes part of me.

Practice changes us, if we stick with it.

This morning I’m guest posting over at Practicing Families. On practicing a life of faith with kids, and all the messiness and faltering and second-guessing it entails:

The old adage wags its finger at me that “practice makes perfect.” Just like the line from Matthew’s Gospel—“Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”—that makes me cringe at the ideals that fall far short of my life’s messy reality. But I know there’s deeper truth to the good of practice. It makes our muscles strong. It trains our thinking. It strengthens our resolve.

For this family, practice will always be imperfect. We will show up to church five minutes late. We will not always pay attention. We will sometimes skip out after communion when the kids are just too cranky. But next Sunday we will try all over again.

We’re practicing.

Click over to Practicing Families to read the rest…

The Christian life is about practice, not performance – and thank God for that, because we’d all come up short. But the practice that matters is receiving grace in ordinary moments and sharing love in return.

What are you practicing today? What part of parenting is finally starting to feel easier, and what part is more challenging than ever?

paying attention: take two

The second half of this new series. Following each author’s insight on How We Spend Our Time, I’ll offer another perspective on the same theme. Ginny got us thinking about paying attention. Here’s my take.

How does he already need new shoes?

Didn’t I just cut their hair?

When did his sweatshirt shrink so small?

They’re growing all around me, my wild young weeds. I shouldn’t be surprised. Isn’t helping them grow our goal as parents? We try to stuff them full of good food, let them run around in fresh air to breathe deep, love them up fierce so their bones stay strong.

But they grow so fast, and then the time of now is gone. In the busy present I can forget to pay attention and watch them unfurling in front of me, my own time-lapse images of seeds sprouting, seedlings shooting up out of the damp soil, green leaves popping apart to stretch up towards the sun.

When my husband flips back through a photo album or I pack away another pile of clothing, we often call to each other to come witness the change we hadn’t realized in front of us: How were they ever that tiny? Didn’t we just pull out this box of clothes?

We barely recognize the babies they were a year ago. Time flew but in the moment it felt like a breeze fluttering by.

Only when I see them with the wistful eyes of yesterday or the nostalgic eyes of tomorrow do I pay attention. Only then – when the too-small shoes or the too-long hair or the too-tight shirts grab me by the shoulders and shake me awake - do I see how much the present moment holds.

There is so much for me to pay attention to here and now. Not to worry about tomorrow’s to-dos or next year’s plans, but the fullness of all I have: the right-now cupped within my hands.

What makes my boys laugh today, what they’ll gobble up at dinner tonight, what they’ll request to read before bed – all of this will have changed before I know it. But if I see it, if I celebrate it, if I give thanks for it knowing it will pass, then I will have spent my time well.

When I practice the art of paying attention, I see their beauty: the baby-boy-ness of almost-two, the curious child of almost-four.

When I practice the prayer of paying attention, I realize this grace: the sacrament of seeing God right before me.

When I practice the love of paying attention, I celebrate this truth: the joy of imperfect enoughness as a mother.

Their fingernails need clipping (again). And the toilets need scrubbing (again). And that work project needs editing (again). But in the midst of everything that clamors for my attention, there are truths that simply ask me to pay attention.

To invest the gift of my focus on what’s important.

To spend most of my hours on what matters most.

To pay attention.

. . .

Today I’m posting at Catholic Mom about seeing poetry in the communion line. On the days I do pay attention at church (and believe me, with two antsy kids, those days are few and far between), I’m astonished to see what I discover: glimpses of myself in bored teenagers, antsy kids, frazzled parents, wizened elders:

I watch them all in the communion line, a long trail of those who belong to God, who come each week to remember and receive. For a flash of an instant, I see us as God sees us: so different, so similar, all wrapped in love and forgiveness.

Here we are, I remember. We become what we receive.

Read the rest at Catholic Mom…

What do you see when you pay attention to what’s around you?

how we spend our time: paying attention

Today I’m delighted to welcome Ginny Kubitz Moyer to kick off this series with her new book Random MOMents of Grace. I love Ginny’s writing for the glimpses of God she notices in daily life. She is a perfect author to start us thinking about one important way we choose to spend our time as parents: paying attention.

Ginny’s book is all about paying attention to the grace-filled moments that spring up unexpectedly among parenting’s challenges. I love her elegant and wise writing, the everyday subjects she tackles in search of motherhood’s spiritual side, and her chapters that are short enough to read in one sitting when my kids are quiet for five whole minutes. Here are more words of wisdom from Ginny on how she spends her time:

1) What is one truth about time you have learned since becoming a parent?

They say that when you are the mother of small kids, the days crawl by, but the months pass like a shot. I couldn’t agree more. Sometimes it is so isolating to be at home all day with your kids, especially because there are periods of your life as a parent when it is simply too much of a production to get into the car and go anywhere. Those days can feel endless (except for naptime, of course, which moves at twice the speed of light.)

But now that my boys are six and four, I look at baby pictures of them, and I have to catch my breath because I realize how quickly the time has passed. We forget that when we see our kids every day. And the fact is that every phase of parenting has its challenges and its blessings. I’m not changing diapers anymore (thank you God!) but oh, I do miss that adorable baby-hair that Luke had, which stuck straight up as if he’d been playing with electricity.

So, as I write in the book, I’ve learned that I shouldn’t will the time to pass too quickly. When things are frustrating now, it helps to look at my kids and realize what I have now that I will miss in a year, or five, or ten. That’s a reminder to savor it.

2) What is one practice of using time well that you have developed as a mother-writer?

I love this quotation from the writer James Thurber: “I never quite know when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, ‘Dammit, Thurber, stop writing.’ She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph.” I’m not quite that extreme, but I can relate.

Writers usually want large blocks of quiet time in which to sit down and write, and the reality is that when you’re a mom, you almost never have that. So a lot of what I do, writing-wise, involves letting things simmer in my mind or mentally trying out various adjectives or squirreling away bits of information to use later. This means I can write in the car on my commute to and from work, or while making dinner. If you think about writing as being more than just putting pen to paper or sitting in front of a laptop, you realize there is actually a lot of writing time during the day. Then the only challenge is to remember it all for later ….

3) What new insight about faith did you gain from writing this book?

All writers are people of faith, I think, because it takes faith to face an empty page. You need to have faith that you will be able to put your feelings or your experiences into words that other people will enjoy. I think it also takes faith to slog on through the writer’s block, those times when you feel like everything you are writing is about as exciting as a tax return, and why would anyone ever want to read it?

It was so thrilling to get the contract for this book, but at the same time, it’s a different experience to write when there is a firm deadline. Luckily, I’d been writing the book in bits and pieces for about two years prior to finding a publisher, so nearly all of it was already done. But there was still some work to do on it, and I found myself going on faith that the ideas would come.

I distinctly remember starting one chapter and writing a ways into it and thinking, “Oof. This chapter is not going anywhere. I should just abandon ship right now.” And then, about a week later, I revisited it, and guess what? I found that it was better than I’d thought, and I had some ideas about where to take it. It’s now one of my very favorite chapters in the book.  Sometimes, you just need a little distance … and faith.

4) What is your favorite way to spend time with your family?

Oh, so hard to choose!  I love the quiet weekend mornings when we’re all just hanging out in our pj’s.  I love going on trips where we are out of our normal element and we get to discover a new place or a new experience together.  It is so fun to play soccer outside, all four of us, on the front lawn (I am the least athletic woman I’ve ever met, and now I’m playing soccer?!?  Motherhood is so broadening.)

Most of all, I love hugging my boys.  There’s nothing sweeter.

Thank you, Ginny! Please visit Random Acts of Momness for the rest of Ginny’s Blog Tour over the next two weeks. And be sure to check out Random MOMents of Grace from Loyola Press, who has generously offered FIVE copies of Ginny’s book to readers of Mothering Spirit! (Full disclosure: they gave me a copy, too – but I was waiting to buy one anyway, so their generosity in no way influenced my opinion.)

To enter the giveaway for your own copy, leave a comment below. And if you’re inspired, share one way you try to practice “paying attention” in your daily life!

for the mornings we yell

For the mornings we wake up determined to make it a better day, and then we don’t -

For the times we promise to soak up the sweetness of these fleeting years, and then we wish them away -

For the days we want to fill with laughter and song, and then they’re darkened by bad moods and cross words -

For the meals we make with love and hope that they’ll be enjoyed, and then we grit our teeth as they’re gagged while chewed -

For the playdates we plan to share the long days with good friends, and then we’re annoyed that a sick child screws up our schedule -

For the glossy parenting magazines whose advice we dog-ear with good intention, and then we shove the stack in the recycling bin instead -

For the calm, cool, collected moms we envy when we wrangle our whiny bunch into the grocery cart, and then we glower over how we’re doing worse at this job than everyone else we know -

For the naptimes when we catch up on the world’s news and resolve again to treasure the rare gift of healthy, safe, sheltered children, and then we’re screaming at them by suppertime -

For the eyes that want to look with love and capture how quickly our kids will be grown and gone, and then they narrow with frustration at messes and mistakes and missing shoes -

For the hands that hope to hold and hug and help, and then they clench into angry balls that bang on the kitchen counter when no one listens to us -

For the boiling-over moments when we try to breathe and breathe and not lose it completely, and then we do -

For the nights we try to treasure bedtime instead of tick off the minutes till we’re done, and then we’re flooded with guilt when closing the bedroom door behind us feels like the best part of the day.

For remembering we’re humans raising humans,

for knowing if we teach our children nothing else, we’ll teach them how to bend down and open arms and say I’m sorry because we have to do it daily ourselves,

for the chance to keep screwing up because it means we keep going,

for forgiving ourselves,

and learning slowly how forgiveness takes the shape of a cross – pulled down in love, stretched out in embrace.

For trying again.

For today. For you.

. . .

Today was supposed to be the last in the series, my part to add to the wise women who shared their stories of how they nurture their mothering spirits, how they find peace in the midst of parenting.

But inspired by this dad’s truth spoken here, and a morning that called for this instead of that, I’m waiting till tomorrow to write about calm. Because today I needed to write about chaos.

Because I thought I might not be the only one who needs to hear it.

And maybe you can share it with another mom who needs it, too.

an (un)surprising end to an (un)surprising year

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

We were supposed to spend the weekend at the cabin with the family: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins – all of us under one roof, celebrating Christmas and New Year’s together into one giggly gathering of generations. We went to bed with the bags packed, the car filled, the fridge stocked with food to bring.

But our plans were interrupted when midnight brought a sudden awakening, the unmistakable bark of croup. He heaved with sobs and jagged wheezing whether we whisked him outside in the frigid night air or wrapped him up warm in the steamy bathroom fog. A frantic call to the doctor confirmed that we were staying put. No road trip, no cabin, no party.

Just the four of us at home to end the year.

So we sighed and pulled clothes back out of suitcases, stretched Saturday laziness into Sunday pajamas-till-noon, tried to cover up colds and coughs (now shared by both brothers) with snuggles, songs and stories. And somewhere along the way, between the heaps of laundry and the piles of presents strewn across the floor, I realized that maybe there was no more fitting end to the year than one last upended expectation.

Our weekend wasn’t perfect. There were tantrums and squabbles and interrupted sleep and heaps of housework - the usual ups and downs of life with littles. But there were also quiet moments full of God: doing nothing and resting after, slowing down and listening, living and forgiving each other. I watched us each relax into the rhythm of hours together in the heart of our home, a microcosm of our lives, everything I write about in this space condensed into the final hours of a full year.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. But it was. And the way our weekend ended was exactly the way the last 12 months rumbled along: unexpectedly, a little rocky, but full of grace.

This morning, the last of the long year, we feasted on a rich breakfast, eggnog French toast dripping with cinnamon and sugar, sweet and sticky on our fingers. The sick boy perched on his tiptoes in front of the stereo, spinning his favorite CDs while he wiped his runny nose on his sleeve. I was grateful he chose a quiet one for the morning, a favorite calming album, and I listened as the lilting voice sang:

Oh, you’re growing up so fast. Right before our eyes. You don’t have to figure everything out; you just take your time. You just take your time.

It’s my prayer for them, and God’s prayer for me, too, I think. To realize the growth, to take the long view, but also to stay grateful in the moment, to breathe in the present.

The unexpected gift of time on the cusp of another year.

the impossibility of advent

Ready for the least surprising summary of spiritual good intentions?

I was going to have an amazing Advent. It’s my favorite season of the church calendar, and I was going to live it. I had plans, I had prayers, I had promises. I would reflect deeply and write profusely and enter mindfully into the mystery of Christmas.

And then. (Always and-then.)

Life interrupted. Everyone got sick.

Work interrupted. I got busy.

Evil interrupted. Joy got sucked straight out of the season.

By the end of this weekend, when we were supposed to be lighting the pink candle and singing of joy, I felt drained and discouraged. Grumpy and Grinch-like, I stomped downstairs with a bucket and a rag to scrub the basement floor in preparation for our Christmas guests.

Kneeling down and washing dirty to clean felt like the only halfway holy thing I could do.

And as I scrubbed, I tried to pray. I tried to pray for peace. For patience. For forgiveness. I tried to pray for mindfulness. For generosity. For simplicity.

But every prayer felt impossible. I was too selfish or stubborn, or the world was too broken and evil. Nothing could budge, no matter how hard I scrubbed, how much soapy water I slopped on the dingy tile.

Until I realized: it’s supposed to feel impossible. Advent is nothing but.

Prepare for the inbreaking of the divine? Good luck with that one. Wrap your head around the mystery of incarnation and virgin birth and angelic messengers? Inconceivable. Wrestle your sinful soul into a place of readiness to meet your Creator? Laughable prospect.

Advent is supposed to feel impossible. It’s the humility of our humanness when brought to our knees before the gift of grace. It’s the overwhelming weight of our darkness when faced with the brilliance of true light. It’s the lifting up of lowly and the bending down of divine and the upending of all our expectations. It’s the constant, humming, throbbing beat of love’s heart pulsing out life into the cold universe.

All of which feels impossible. And when faced with impossibility, all I can do is lift up my arms to the God of Advent, a tired shrug as much as a prayerful plea, and say Come, please, come. 

Come, Child of Peace. Come, Emmanuel. Come, God-With-Us.

Keep coming. We’ll keep trying.

Impossible as it all seems.

four days without fail

There are four days in every month that find me, without fail.

Day One: in which compassion runs dry and I just don’t care.

For crying out loud, is washing your face every the morning really the cruelest, most horrible, scream-worthy request a mother could ever make? Could you finally figure out how to walk and stop whining every single stinking time I’m more than two feet away from you? Why does everyone demand something from me every single moment of the day? My kids are little and needy; I am overwhelmed and tired; everything’s an annoyance, not an opportunity. I spend much of Day One envying people who live in monasteries and eyeing the calendar to calculate how many years are left till they’re all in school.

Day Two: in which the whole endeavor is a sham and it’s all pointless.

What’s the purpose of parenting another generation when we’ve already destroyed the earth, scrambled society’s morals, crushed the church’s soul? Newspaper headlines set me off; TV makes me insane; Facebook affirms that we’ve all lost our minds. I read the latest study about how children are screwed up by this or that, and I conclude the whole affair damned to hell in a handbasket. I eat a lot of chocolate on Day Two.

Day Three: in which the problem isn’t parenting; it’s me.

I conclude that other people must be, despite the screwed-up state of society and the inherent whininess of toddlers, finding utter fulfillment as they raise superstar children while making it to the gym five times a week, excelling at their careers, and happily crafting Martha Stewart-worthy homes with bright smiles on their freshly made-up faces. My problem must be my own personal failing. After barely squeaking through Day Three, I collapse on the couch to host my own pity party, trolling the interwebs, glass of wine in hand, convincing myself that if I were meant to be a mother, I would be a maternal Zen Master, a patient primary teacher of my children, a happy homemaker bursting with infinite ideas to engage my kids’ creativity and decorate our well-kept, eco-friendly, simple-living home, and a professional photographer Instagramming Pin-worthy shots of my delightful kids grinning adorably in a grassy field. Day Three often finds me fantasizing about hiring live-in help while I hide under the covers.

Day Four: in which the other three days seem impossible; it’s all grace.

I can laugh at the mess, breathe in the sweetness of their small years, glimpse God in their bright eyes. Dance in the kitchen, sing goofy songs, tickle till they squeal, love them up while they’re fresh and young. The spin slows, for a second even, and I see the goodness of the work I’m doing, the love I’m giving. The glimmer of parenting becoming prayer. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude. I realize my kids are learning, from me. I see how they are slowly becoming caring, curious, hilarious people in their own right. I notice how I’m growing as a person and a parent, too. I remember I wouldn’t give up a second of this for the freedom of kidless days.

And the funny thing is, the more I notice Day Four, the more I stop to breathe and give thanks and notice beauty unfolding before my eyes, in the messy midst of heaps of laundry and towers of Legos and stacks of dishes and piles of clutter, the more regularly it rolls around, knocking Days One through Three to the corner with a saucy shake of its mama hips. Stay back, Day Four warns, wryly. I got this, girls.

And I do.

. . .

Inspired by my brilliant friend Love-It-Or-Leave-It, whose four days of ministry smacked me in the head about mothering, too. Go figure.

on bad moods and breaking bread

It started off as a lovely morning. Until.

Isn’t that the way it always goes?

Until the baby smeared yogurt all over his third outfit of the morning. Until the preschooler dawdled away all our free minutes pushing strawberries around his plate. Until one child cried for help getting shoes on the right feet while the other tipped over my tumbler of tea and the dog howled for help and suddenly everyone was wailing and white-hot anger surged through my body, tight and hard and shaking and ugly, and I found myself screaming at the top of my lungs I cannot DO this, God I cannot DO THIS!

And finger-snap fast, the bright sunny morning is brooding and dark. We’re sulking in the car and I’m racing through stop lights and both boys are sad-quiet in the back and all I can think is this is not how I want to live. Yelling at my kids and running late and stress pounding in my temples.

I take a deep breath, two, three. I ask for forgiveness. I promise I love them. I sing a song to cheer the mood.

But all morning long the memory lingers.

I pray as I stroll the baby down sun-dappled streets. I plot ways to ease the morning crunch. I plunk down five dollars at the bakery for the big boy’s favorite loaf of fresh bread.

And then we’re driving home, and he’s full of school day chatter and the baby is babbling smiles and I am overwhelmed with the rush of love and joy and guilt and fear that sweeps over every day of mothering. God, I love them so much and they’re such sweet, small things and I hate my rotten temper and I hope I’m not ruining them.

Rare is the day that comes easy, but how I wrestle with the days that come hard.

At lunch’s end, I pull the loaf of still-warm bread from the paper bag. Something feels sacramental. I tear off a hunk and offer it to the boy I screamed at hours earlier. He grins and accepts. I do, too.

We both chew, quiet and content. I think about Eucharist. Does it help us forgive? Liturgy and sacrament classes swirl in my head; I can’t remember a single connection. But it feels good to slow down and break bread. That much I know.

Before nap time we’re snuggling over a pile of books. As he dives under the covers, he asks if we’re going to do prayers next. I start to say no, that prayers are for bedtime, and then I hear my own words. Of course, I reply. Let’s pray.

He launches into “Our Father…”and I hum along, half paying attention. Until.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses. As we forgive those who trespass against us.

Bread and forgiveness, I realize. There it is. I swallow back the lump in my throat, kiss his mop of hair as he turns away on the pillow.

What we need daily: bread and forgiveness. That much I know.

a real labor day

Today I’m doing laundry.

I’m shuttling to preschool. I’m catching up on email. I’m nursing the baby. I’m picking tomatoes. I’m prepping for a meeting. I’m paying bills. I’m writing.

I’m changing wet sheets, scrubbing oatmeal-smeared faces, washing grubby hands, loading the dishwasher, cleaning up after the dog. Reading and sweeping and meal planning and filing and cooking and researching and driving and washing.

I’m working.

Yesterday was a sweet goodbye to summer. All of us home together all day, morning lazy in our pajamas, then romping round the playground, up and down and around the Big Slides. Lunch and laughter and long naps. Afternoon projects we never get time to tackle, cooking fresh from the garden, homegrown soup and tomato sauce in big pots to freeze, everyone stealing green beans from the biggest bowl, snapping as we snack.

After the babes were asleep, the humid night air curling their newly-cut hair into sweaty ringlets, I cranked open all the windows and let the evening breeze slip inside. The scent of a neighbor’s bonfire filled the house with the savory smoke of smoldering wood.

Yesterday was no work at all.

Labor Day is easy, when we’re lucky to have work that lets us play. Family cookouts and dripping watermelon and melting ice cream sandwiches and sweaty feet dipped in the cool water and lazy fishing in the lake shade and the only pesky fly those traffic lines snaking home from the cabin. But it’s not a day of labor; it’s a day of rest. Even diapers and dishes feel different on a day off.

It’s the next day – the alarm clock and the baby up before and the endless to-do list and the unwashed dishes and the extra load of laundry and the heap of emails and the errands all over town – that’s the labor.

But even with all its demands and annoyances and stresses and dirty work, that’s the gift. The work itself. The children to raise and the job to do well and the home to make and the garden to tend.

Today, tomorrow, endless stretching out in front of me – it’s all labor days. I want to live them mindfully, with some trace of sweet summer saying goodbye: grateful, hopeful, present. To see God’s fingerprints smudged all over, not just the days-off that delight, but the days-on that demand. The leisure and the labor.

The gift to have work, in all corners, from all directions, on all days, that pulls my energy forth. And pulls my love towards others.