praying the particulars

I’m willing to bet that M.D. mamas secretly troll Dr. Google for quick answers to questions about mysterious rashes and childhood ailments.

So I’ll admit that one late night recently found me googling “prayer for stressed-out mother.” (Tsk, tsk – such a poor pastoral response for a mother with a MDiv!) Yet my need was great, my desire to pray was strong, and my ability to form thoughts into words was positively shot. And despite stacks of theological volumes around me, I came up empty-handed for a prayer that spoke to my heart.

I needed someone else’s words.

While I didn’t find exactly what my Google search sought, I was delighted to uncover a treasure I’d never found before – a collection of prayers for mothers from Creighton University’s Online Ministries.

The prayer for working mothers touched my heart (and made me chuckle), but I found myself pausing at prayers that didn’t speak to my life situation. The prayer for a mother with Alzheimer’s is heart-wrenching, as is the beautiful prayer for a mother whose children are no longer at home.

What I appreciate most about these prayers is their particularity. They don’t lump experiences of motherhood into one quick blessing. Instead, each one lifts up a unique aspect of mothering. Far from closing the window to those whose lives don’t match the situation described, the sharpened focus allows prayer to reflect in many directions, like a prism’s light.

Every day perfect strangers find my blog in search of prayer. I see the words that bring them here: prayers for pregnancy, prayers for anxiety and parenting, prayers for childbirth. Sometimes I see desperate words: prayers for unexpected pregnancy, prayers for depression. I wonder if they find anything here that speaks to their need; I wonder if I could do something more to help.

But all I can do is pray my own prayers. From the particular perspective of my life, my questions, my circumstances. And yet finding those prayers for mothering that spoke about Alzheimer’s and adoption and all sorts of situations that don’t reflect my own, I realized the merits of praying the particulars: even if they are not my words, someone else’s story can shed light on my own understanding of the divine.

So I’ve started scribbling down some prayers. Prayers for particular situations that are challenging for my parenting these days. Perhaps they’ll ring true to your struggles. Or perhaps they won’t, but they’ll remind you of someone else. Or another season in your life. Or they’ll simply reflect God’s light through a part of the prism you never noticed before.

What I really hope they’ll do is inspire you to pray the particulars of your own life. Because as interesting as someone else’s words may be, the Word of God inspires each of us to speak words of our own.

So if you’re wondering just why I’ve been so stressed out lately, check back tomorrow for the first in this series. (Here’s a hint: we’re eating lots of pizza for dinner and should have bought stock in Home Depot.) Maybe by the end of the week you’ll have your own particular prayer to share, too…

What part of parenting is challenging for you this week?

you will not steal his joy

You know how every child is superlative in their own way? The cutest, the smartest, the loudest.

Our second son is the happiest.

This boy brims over with grins. Every photo we snap shows bright eyes and beaming smiles. He wakes up with delight and he chortles to himself all day long. And it’s not just his biased parents who notice it. Strangers stop me in the store or cluck his chin after church, remarking that he’s just such a happy baby.

While his older brother was a fairly cheerful chap, there was still a cautious look about him. Many of his early pictures reveal a startled shock in his eyes, unsure if this whole Existence Ex-Utero thing was to be trusted.

But #2 is 100% delighted at life. Ceiling fans! The dog that licks his face! Peek-a-boo! Babies in the mirror! Everything is funny, joyful, rollicking to our young lad. And lately his giggles and grins have made me wonder if I give enough space in my day for joy.

Celebrating the joys in my life was one of my New Year’s resolutions. But I’ve slipped away from this simple daily practice of pausing in contentment. Joy seems buried under to-do lists, kitchen clutter, and loads of laundry. Once again in the spiritual cycles of my life, I’ve let the busy get in the way of the mindful.

I wonder what I can learn from my youngest son about joy. I’m not an unhappy person, but I sometimes tend towards the stance of my older son: a bit hesitant, a bit cautious. I long to borrow a bit of his baby brother’s delight at the world.

Certainly he doesn’t have the burdens of adulthood to worry about. No deadlines or bills loom over his sweet head. He doesn’t have the depth of emotional awareness that clouds my day when I hear depressing news – a loved one’s illness, a friend’s death, a news story about unbearable suffering in a far-off land. Worry is not yet a habit he’s developed. He’s wrapped in the pure joy of childhood like a warm blanket.

But his joy is resilient.

Last week he cut his first tooth. The milestone was heralded by a few fussy days, a few restless nights. The cranky departure from our normal jolly gentleman came as a clear sign that a change was on the horizon. But this morning as I write, he’s all goos and giggles beside me, happily gnawing on a toy with his one wee pearl of a tooth. He’s bounced back like the pain never existed.

The persistence of his cheerful nature is teaching me that joy is not simply a reaction or a response. It’s a way of life. It’s the way this child operates – his default mode. I’ve known few people like this in my life, but every time I come across them, I’m filled with longing to borrow their joy, to see the world with their bright, loving, open eyes. Joy is contagious like that.

Certainly the joy of an adult differs from the innocent bliss of a child. But while my daily swirl of cares and concerns often shift me into a different gear, I also possess a capacity to make choices that my baby cannot. So I can make a decision to delight. To celebrate. To give thanks for goodness. Knowing the darkness of the world and its shadows, how much brighter and more meaningful is my decision to choose joy?

And if joy – in God’s goodness, in the promise of resurrection, in the triumph of love over evil – is central to the Christian life, how does my daily demeanor reflect the deep convictions underneath?

How can I refuse to let anything steal my joy?

why i’m sticking with my dumbphone

Not a week goes by that my spouse and I don’t get mocked for at least one of the following:

1. having a land line
2. not texting
3. not having a smartphone

We have plenty of reasons for each. Our house gets terrible cell phone reception, so we need a land line to phone from home. Neither of us likes to text, so we’ve never signed up for a plan. And even though we’re years (yes, years) “overdue” for upgraded cell phones according to our contract, we don’t see the need to get shiny new gadgets while ours still work.

Old-fashioned? Maybe. (Though the New York Times says we’re not alone in clinging to our retro dumbphones.)

But the deeper truth? I can’t let myself get a smartphone.

Do I think they’re slick? Certainly. Handy? Definitely. But I refuse to bring one into this house. Despite my desire for an iPhone, I have to draw the line.

Because boundaries between work and family are already blurred when I work from home.

Because I already struggle with being present to my kids, given all the distractions around me.

Because when I see something like this, it hits a little too close to home:

I spent yesterday at a Social Phonics training in social media with emergent church leaders Tony Jones and Doug Pagitt. At the end of the day, they shared a final list of tips for diving into the social media world.

Get a smartphone flashed on their slick Powerpoint. “Is there anyone we still need to convince to get one of these?” Doug asked with a bemused smile, waving his phone in the air.

My hand floated up.

Both men turned with a look of surprise to the youngest person in the room. They launched into a litany of reasons to get a smartphone: it’s the future of the Internet, it’s the way people communicate today, it’s going to replace laptops in just a few years.

I listened to their logic. I smiled graciously. But all I could think about were my two boys.

They need me to look at them more, not my phone. They need me to listen to them more closely, not my email. And while I can’t be present to them 24/7, I want to show them the power of connecting by disconnecting.

Even though I struggle, it’s a spiritual practice for parenting that I want to cultivate: presence. When my day is already full of email and work, laptop and phone calls, I don’t want to add another constant distractor to the mix. Saying no to smartphones is my act of resistance.

I’m digging in my feet as long as I can, for them. While I embrace email, blogging and social media as ways to connect with people I love, I also have little people right in front of me who need to connect with me even more. I want to be present to them as best I can when they’re still so small.

So for now, this mama is sticking with a decidedly dumbphone. Which is why I never got your text.

(But you can always try our land line!)

holy week reads, day by day

We’re on the cusp of the holiest of days.

For those who call themselves Christian, the Triduum is the most sacred time of the year. A truth often buried under piles of Easter candy, pink bunnies and plastic grass.

Each day has a distinct flavor. The earthy service of Holy Thursday: washing dirty feet and breaking bread with friends. The stark emptiness of Good Friday: lamenting death and sitting with suffering. The long stretch of Holy Saturday: wondering and waiting. And the brilliant delight of Easter Sunday: singing joy and celebrating life.

I love Triduum. Every year I slowly slip into a lackluster Lent, but always find myself on the eve of Triduum with childlike anticipation. Because the journey from Thursday to Sunday never fails to surprise as it draws me into the stories and the rituals, the sacred and the mystery.

Triduum sums up what I love about being Catholic: ritual, liturgy, Scripture, sacrament. I wrestle with my faith and my church and my God every other day of the year. But for these four days, I enter in deeply, willingly, openly.

That said, the prospect of multiple church services with a baby and a toddler in tow is practically laughable. I’m sure we’ll end up with good story material this year as we always do. And I know much of our Holy Week will be lived out at home, which is just fine, too.

To balance the mayhem we’ll bring to Mass, I’ve collected a handful of lovely reads and reflections to help celebrate each day at home, during those rare gems of quiet moments to myself. Perhaps a few will intrigue or inspire you as well:

Palm Sunday lessons from an unlikely Pontius Pilate by James Martin, SJ. “Because, as even a six-year-old knows, everyone roses from the dead.”

Strip.ped bare: Holy Week and the art of losing by Richard Lischer for Holy Thursday

Busted Halo’s excellent Virtual Stations of the Cross for Good Friday

What did Jesus do on Holy Saturday? From the Washington Post’s On Faith blog

And lest you get overwhelmed, take this advice and let one piece of the Passion rest in your thoughts this week. The whole is too much for any of us to hold.

(Especially without a good soundtrack to accompany the highs and lows.)

Happy holy week. We’re almost there.

i am such a good mom when my babies sleep

My husband guffawed when I first proclaimed this, a few months after our second was born.

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and we had gotten a rare hour (or was it two?) to ourselves while both boys napped. I luxuriated in the quiet of the house, the projects we both got to tackle without interruption, the conversations we could share as we worked or cleaned or did sweet nothing at all.

On one hand, my comment was certainly sarcastic. While my kids were sleeping, I felt like the kind of mom I wanted to be: relaxed, peaceful, patient, kind. It was only when they woke up and I had to deal with them that I inevitably fell short.

But on the other hand, my words revealed deeper truth: I can’t parent well when my basic needs aren’t met.

Looking back over the past few months when we did not sleep, I marvel that I survived. Sleep is essential for me. Some people can slide by with a few hours a night, but I need a solid six or seven. So when sleep eludes me, my temper flares and my patience disappears. I’m a growly grizzly bear.

Maslow’s hierarchy claims that sleep is a basic human need. Without it, we can’t achieve – or even desire – any deeper psychological needs. While Maslow’s pyramid has been deconstructed by many folks who followed him, I always remember his hierarchy when parenting forces me to go without sleep for long stretches. I can’t do much else but dream of dozing. No wonder sleep deprivation amounts to torture.

Now that the baby is sleeping well again, I feel like a Human Being once more. Gone are the zombie eyes and the fuzzy brain. We’re not quite to the dreamy, 12-hours-straight that his brother does, but we’re getting closer. Hope is back on the horizon.

So when my inner critic started nagging me lately about Lent (specifically, my lack of spiritual engagement therein), I made myself go look at the calendar. It’s only been a few weeks since the baby started sleeping through the night again. Prior to that point, I had to focus on meeting basic needs to survive, work and parent. So I had to cut myself some slack in the spirituality department. Prayer just wasn’t happening after night after night of naps.

Yet I’m grateful for feeling refreshed in time for Easter. Sleep is everyday’s Sabbath: time to rest, recharge, recenter. And I’m reveling in the normal rhythm of our days and nights returning. For me this Lent was like our Winter That Wasn’t: surprisingly unseasonable, but leading into a long stretch of spring to savor.

Lately the “simul-nap” remains the Holy Grail of sleep. Snatched only once or twice a week, but when we catch it, life is glorious. Extra work gets finished, house projects get tackled, and everyone gathers refreshed at the end of the afternoon.

I do feel like a better parent, and I’m not embarrassed to admit what I need. Rest makes me ready to sing Alleluias.

life, interrupted

I didn’t write a lot this past week. Did you notice?

I take that back. I wrote a lot for work this week. Which was good. But I wrote nothing here. Which was not good. And I wrote nothing for my latest side project whose alarms, bells and whistles are all screaming DEADLINE! DEADLINE! DEADLINE! at me from across the room.

Not good.

But this was a week where life interrupted life. Less like a roller coaster and more like a freefall drop tower – we’re racing up! we’re dropping down! we’re hanging somewhere in-between!

My spouse and I shared a birthday, which was lovely. My baby and I shared a painful nursing complication, which was wretched. And in the middle of the mess, our family took the first steps towards a major life change.

I lost sleep, gained a year, and filled my head with a million new questions, wonders and plans.

The weather was just as wonky as my emotions. One day we enjoyed a spring tease of a 50-degree thaw, but the next morning brought snowflakes falling on the driveway’s glare ice. Who knows what’s coming around the corner?

I don’t know why I continue to be surprised by the persistent interruption of Life into my plans. Perhaps because I can’t seem to shake the stubborn notion that I should be able to gain control over my life. Perhaps because I can’t help trying to script the story lines all around me, even when I’m not their author.

But tonight, as the wild whirl of time around me pauses for an instant to let me catch my breath, I’m trying hard to remember that my life has never been simple. Tidy. Uncomplicated.

Life has always interrupted life.

It’s too easy to romanticize the past - before I had kids, back when I was single - and delude myself with dreams of a life that was smoother, easier to expect and control. But life always interrupts – my plans, my promises, my good intentions.

Perhaps growing wiser only means learning to let go, leaning into the unknowing. Realizing that the ups and downs of each day or week or year are precisely what makes life rich, complicated, and good. Releasing the illusion that tidy life happens in a vacuum and embracing the interruptions of messy life unfolding.

A spirituality of interruption. Parenting sounds like the perfect practice for that.

leap day and lessons from l’arche

I planned to seize the year’s extra day with all the gusto I could muster.

When the Winter-That-Wasn’t lobbed one last Hail-Mary of a storm, cancelling my meetings and leaving us with a snow day to enjoy, I envisioned curling up with the boys, a cup of tea and a pile of good books. An idyllic day of at-home mothering.

Instead I woke up to one boy who wet the bed and another who leaked all over the changing table. Two giant piles of laundry and two hungry children cried for my attention. After a long night (used in the loosest sense of the term by those who don’t sleep), a longer day loomed.

I felt as stuck as the car’s tires spinning at the end of the driveway.

How would I turn this day around? It seemed to promise nothing but cranky children and crummy chores. As I stuffed the stinking sheets in the washer and the baby wailed, my poor brain scraped together one lone theological thought: I need a spirituality for stuff I don’t want to do.

And that’s when I remembered Bernard. And Michel. And Claude. And Philippe.

When I lived in France after college, I worked in a L’Arche community. In our house four assistants lived side by side with six adults with developmental and physical disabilities. We shared the daily rhythms that mark French life – eat, work, play, rest – but with a unique spirit of acceptance and inclusivity.

I didn’t have any experience working with people with disabilities before I came to France. When I learned L’Arche would be part of my volunteer placement, I was uneasy. How would I know how to act? What to do? How to help?

And it turned out that I didn’t need to know anything about Down syndrome or schizophrenia or degenerative disorders to serve at L’Arche.  Tale as old as time, it turned out that I was the one who was taught, who was helped, who was transformed.

The way of life at L’Arche is a daily spirituality of stuff no one wants to do. Wiping drooling mouths. Cleaning up messes. Helping someone learn to eat. Or use the bathroom. Simply sitting with a person who cannot speak.

But this spirituality of stuff no one wants to do becomes a beautiful inversion of the normal way of living, in which speed and success rule the game. L’Arche taught me to slow down, to simplify, to see Christ in the beautiful brokenness around me.

I spent my time at L’Arche doing nothing glamorous. Changing Philippe’s soaked sheets each morning. Helping Claude to get dressed. Cooking with Michel every Wednesday night. Listening to Bernard tell the same incomprehensible stories.

Simple tasks like preparing meals and setting the table took twice as long. Getting out the door was an epic event: struggling with coats, shoes, last-minute bathroom needs. People didn’t sit down when they were supposed to, and they hit others out of anger or frustration, and they broke into loud laughter whenever you were trying to have a serious conversation about something important.

In short, L’Arche might have been the best preparation for my life as a mother of little ones.

Life behind closed doors with those whom society dismisses as dirty or demeaning or a drag can sometimes be stifling. But it can also surprise with pure, rich joy.

Living as a family, living as community – these are schools of humanity. Where we learn that simply being made in the image of God is worth enough for our dignity. Where we set aside success and embrace faithfulness. Where we recognize each other’s brokenness but celebrate the fullness of sharing life together.

No matter how much food gets spilled in the process. No matter how many times the bed gets soaked. No matter how many times we struggle to stay patient.

It’s a spirituality of stuff no one wants to do. But it also opens a way to encounter the God we long to love.

how to not prepare for lent

Yes, you read that right.

(And yes, I’m even aware that I split the infinitive. I broke my own grammatical pet peeve and did it on purpose.)

Lent starts tomorrow, and I could not be less prepared. No resolution carved in stone, no discipline established, no good intentions for prayer or fasting or almsgiving.

Sure, I’ve got a zillion ideas. Sugar purge. Facebook fast. Daily writing with Scripture. Creative donations to important causes.

But I can’t commit to anything. Why?

BECAUSE I CAN’T SLEEP.

My darling, beautiful, bouncing baby boy decided a few months ago to regress from his long-sleeping ways. Since Christmas, we’ve been up every three hours. Four if we’re lucky. Two if we’re not.

And everyone in this house is losing their minds.

Some days we can laugh about it. Some days I can drink enough caffeine to overcome it. But some dark days I do nothing but wallow in the exhaustion.

We’ve tried it all. And then we tried it again. And - parenting epiphany! – this child refuses to submit to our schedule, our demands, our desires.

Lack of sleep has affected every part of our lives: our work, our home, our relationships. After too many breaking points, we’ve finally come up with a new plan that we hope will work. (So please send prayers for this weekend’s launch of Finally Getting the Baby to Break Bad Habits and Stop Nursing All Night Without Crying So Loud He Wakes Up His Brother Next Door And Then We All Go Insane.)

But in the meantime, Lent has crept up to the doorstep and is gently knocking to come in. And I can do nothing but laugh and shake my head. This house? This family? You seriously want to come in here?

I have no time or energy to prepare for Lent this year. I don’t even have time to feel guilty about it.

So for the next forty days, all I can do is invite Lent into the chaos of our lives. And pray that God’s grace forgives my stumblings. And remember that God’s invitation – and my response – was present there all along.

Going about my daily work even when I’m dragging? That’s prayer.

Giving up the glorious sleep I love to feed a hungry baby? That’s fasting.

Investing my last bit of energy in my needy children? That’s almsgiving.

So come on in, Lent. Pull up a chair (you’ll have to kick the toys aside) and a cup of tea (you’ll need to wash that dirty mug).

We’re completely unprepared. But you’re always welcome.

enlighten your spirit: louise erdrich

“But of all passing notions, that of a human being for a child is perhaps the purest in the abstract, and the most complicated in reality. Growing, bearing, mothering or fathering, supporting, and at last letting go of an infant is a powerful and mundane creative act that rapturously sucks up whole chunks of life.”

Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year

I knew from the moment I saw the book’s cover that I would lose my heart to it.

Drawn from the back, a dark-haired woman nuzzles a dark-haired baby in the curve of her neck, both gazing together at a blue jay outside the window. A newer edition has replaced the duo with the lone bird’s unflinching stare. But at the beginning of my own birth year with baby #2, it was this quiet, anonymous madonna-and-child that drew me in.

Erdrich describes her book as “a set of thoughts from one self to the other – writer to parent, artist to mother.” (So of course I tore through it cover to cover.)

And her treatment of a well-worn feminist theme – the dilemma of mother torn between child and work – is tender and tough at all once.

But what I love above all is that her treatment of maternal love is the most true and least sugary-sentimental I’ve yet read:

We live and work with a divided consciousness. It is a beautiful enough shock to fall in love with another adult, to feel the possibility of unbearable sorrow at the loss of that other, essential personality, expressed just so, that particular touch. But love of an infant is of a different order. It is twinned love, all absorbing, a blur of boundaries and messages. It is uncomfortably close to self-erasure, and in the face of it one’s fat ambitions, desperations, private icons, and urges fall away into a dreamlike before that haunts and forces itself into the present with tough persistence. The self will not be forced under, nor will the baby’s needs gracefully retreat. The world tips away when we look into our children’s faces.

You have to love nature to truly love this book, or at least be willing to stay the course through Erdrich’s wanderings through the wild that eventually wind back to mothering.

(You also have to forgive her several sections of randomly-placed recipes and homages to her husband’s cooking. Though pregnant and nursing mothers can’t help but fall in love with food as they nourish themselves and their babies at a staggering pace. Writes the woman who just helped herself to second dinner.)

But anyone who has lived through the seasons of a child’s early years will find themselves in her changing landscapes, both of the natural world and the interior life.

She weaves the stories of three of her babies into one narrative of a nameless daughter, reminiscent of the way any mother of multiple children looks back and wonders, “Was that with the first baby? Or the second? Or was it the third?”

A blur of babyhoods, but the powerful love and the raw frustrations and the deep conflicts meld into one story of woman becoming mother over time.

I love this memoir of early motherhood because it is poetic in its imagery and powerful in its honesty.

She writes of walking in winter at the end of a pregnancy and letting her swollen body sink to rest in a deep snowbank, wishing she could just birth the baby right then and there.

She describes her fraying nerves while rocking a colicky newborn for the umpteenth night in a row that finally resort to whispering (amidst the baby’s screams) words that parents never admit in the light of day: I love you, but you’re driving me completely nuts. You’re such a g****** crank.

I still laugh out loud when I think about that scene.

So if you long to write in the middle of life with littles, or if you gaze out windows to mark seasons passing through the maddening monotony, or if you simply love to dig in the dirt with children, your mothering spirit can find yourself in Erdrich’s words.

Perhaps we all can:

 Mothering is a subtle art whose rhythm we collect and learn, as much from one another as by instinct. Taking shape, we shape each other, with subtle pressures and sudden knocks. The challenges shape us, approvals refine, the wear and tear of small abrasions transform until we’re slowly made up of one another and yet wholly ourselves.

the trinity of family life

Give and take. Sacrifice and compromise. The exchanges we make in love.

Our December has turned into a microcosm of our marriage, a portrait of our partnership. First I was gone for five days of meetings, and F had to scramble to stay home with the boys when the babysitter was sick. Now he leaves for a week-long business trip, and I’m the one scrambling to rearrange my schedule.

This month we’re both juggling child care and work responsibilities and housework and errands. We’re sharing dinner duty and diaper duty and sending a zillion emails a day between home and office to coordinate the caring, cooking, cleaning.

One feeds the baby and the other washes the bottles. One makes dinner and the other scrubs the dishes. One does the laundry and the other buys the groceries. One stays up late with the baby and the other gets up early with the toddler.

The next day – or week or month – we switch. And the cycle of sharing starts over again.

Sometimes we’re tempted to keep track or keep score. We’ve sacrificed more, we think. We’ve done too much lately, we brood. But that is the temptation away from agape, from mutuality, from self-giving love. Marriage and parenting are never 50/50, but the allure of the equal makes us constantly renegotiate what’s working, what’s not, and how we can change.

This is the dynamic we’re daily carving out for our family. This is the model of marriage we want to give to our boys. This is the way of life that makes the most sense for us – even when it doesn’t make sense. This is the Trinity of family that teaches me daily what it means to love, to give and to receive.

The nature of our God as Trinity is no dry doctrine. Sometimes it seem mysterious or esoteric, but sometimes it is as close as the people in our own home: those with whom we share a table or a bed.

The Trinity is a dance of love among a family. It is the gifts we give and receive as we help each other become the people we were created to be. It can be messy and demanding but also beautiful and divine.

And in the midst of this busy week in a busy month, I’m humbled and delighted to share the glimpse of God that our family life gives to me. Check it out at Picturing God: Faces and Traces of the Divine.