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.)

the song of francis

Even before the conclave met, it was his new favorite book.

You can’t make this stuff up.

From the messy piles of paperbacks strewn across every room of our house, a few children’s books have squirreled their way onto my own bookshelves. Now every day my oldest boy bursts through the doors of my office, demanding to read the Francis book.

So we do. He curls in my lap, and I turn the pages. We both agree our favorites are the pages bursting with birds whose colorful chorus sings with the saint:

Some say papal-mania is settling down. But I still see a steady stream of striking articles and thoughtful reflections written about the new leader. Sunday morning I sat down with a cup of tea and two rowdy boys to read this piece in praise of a “slum pope” and this subtle, surprising report of journalists being blessed by a pontiff, regardless of what beliefs they held.

Now every time I sit with my son and read a Song of Francis, I think more deeply about what it means to be a servant leader. A heart for justice, a desire for peace, a vision for those on the margins.

No matter what profession my boy chooses, no matter what callings whisper in his ear, I hope he will become this kind of man. The kind of compassionate, caring person whose life is known by humility and hope.

The power of hope lifts me up this Lent. Another Easter is almost on the horizon, and already I see signs of resurrection. For a Church who knows darkness, the Spirit reminds us of light. For a world scarred by scandal, the Spirit reminds us of life after death. For a people polarized, the Spirit reminds us to turn together towards the poor.

No man is perfect. Not a pope, not a preschooler. But what can bend us slowly towards better is love, perfect love that casts out fear. I feel that today among so many Catholics I know. The power of hope.

The gift of Easter. The song of Francis.

how i nurture my mothering spirit – roxane

The Healing Powers of the Pot Roast

In the early part of November 2012, I experienced a profound moment of healing by spoon.

It functioned like salve on my weary mother’s soul – a bowl of pot roast made by my sweet mother-in-law.

She’d prepared the roast and its accompanying vegetables in her Crockpot the night before, the overnight simmering of soup and juices from the meat producing a scrumptious gravy that would have had world-class chefs swooning.

While the rest of my family was occupied in other spaces – the youngest of them splashing in a nearby hotel pool – I’d found a moment to steal away into the quiet of our dining room to eat what was left of the roast, most of which had been nearly completely devoured earlier by hungry men.

Sitting in the dimly-lit room, breathing deeply, slowly now, I prepared to consume the first homemade meal I’d had in months.

Comfort food, they call it, and this moment made it true for me. With each delectable bite, restoration was beginning.

For nearly a year I’d been trying to do the impossible, working outside the home with five kids still needing so much more of me than I could offer with my attention elsewhere.

But now, after weeks of discernment, I’d made the difficult decision to resign from what had seemed, by all accounts, my dream job. It would mean giving up a paycheck that had lightened our financial load but brought extra responsibilities that weighed down my heart, causing my middle child to utter one day, “You’re not a being a mom anymore.”

I’d done what I could to rearrange the pieces of my life to accommodate all, but came up short. The emotional, spiritual and even physical effects were manifesting themselves, and I had to ask myself whether the job was worth risking an illness that could remove me from life altogether.

Ironically, the kitchen, which I consider the heart of the home, was a room I avoided like the plague during that year. I knew that if I entered, I wouldn’t make it out without depleting the extra energy I needed to push through my busy days.

Fast food had become normal; my oven, a neglected appliance. The dining room was a place to linger only as long as was necessary to gulp down a slice of pizza or a burger.

But sitting before that bowl of real food made with loving hands, placed gently in a warmer and transported 120 miles to our home earlier that day, had reintroduced me to the place where my heart longed most to be.

A few days after leaving the job, I prepared my own slow-cooked meal, and as I scooped out portions to each family member, a surge of love and joy took hold. I was ready now to feed my family, both in food and through my presence in ways that had not been possible for far too long.

And in the midst of it, I became aware that if not for that wonderfully nourishing meal several weeks earlier, the moment would have passed unappreciated. In that gift of warm sustenance, I’d been given a poignant reminder that we cannot offer others something we haven’t first taken in ourselves.

In doing whatever is necessary to create space in our days to ensure we’re nourished, we’ll have something to offer back those we love. And they, in turn, will give to others when it’s time.

A potato, a carrot, a tender chunk of meat – the healing powers of the pot roast.

A bowl full of love that wooed me back to life.

. . .

Roxane Salonen lives in Fargo, N.D., with her husband and five children, ages seven to 17. A church cantor, book reader and coffee drinker, she also works as a faith columnist and features writer for her city’s daily newspaper.

Roxane is the author of two children’s picture books – First Salmon and P is for Peace Garden: A North Dakota Alphabet. Find her pondering on “faith, family and following the muse” at Peace Garden Mama: roxanesalonen.blogspot.com/

callings and temptations

Today FaithND is running a reflection I wrote on this Sunday’s Gospel, about Jesus’ forty days in the desert and the words of Scripture that he falls back on in his hour of temptation. As I worked on this piece, I was captured by the idea that the devil preys on Jesus’ deepest callings and twists them just enough to pervert the true meaning of the Scripture he cites:

Jesus came to be bread for the world—why not zap stones into manna? Why not feed all the starving in one fell swoop, multiply the miracle by a million, transform every pebble of the earth into food for the hungry?

Jesus came to rule over the world with justice and compassion—why not become king in an instant? Why not seize the glory of all the nations, watch all the citizens of the world bow in honor to him in a single second?

Jesus came to model complete trust in God—why not hurl himself down into the arms of the angels? Why not prove exactly how it looks to fling oneself into the unfailing care of the divine?

I wonder how my own callings are confronted by temptations that look good on the surface, but deep down are distortions of the truth.

Take the calling to be a parent, for example. I find myself inundated by images and ideas and advice and assumptions about what it means to be a good mother. I’m still so new at this gig, just a few short years into a lifelong vocation, that I often find myself wrapped in doubts, worrying whether I’m doing this right, wondering if there’s another (or better or easier or righter) way.

I’ve never thought to consider these temptations as evil – I tend to reserve the term for large-scale horror, violence and destruction – but I wonder whether the weaseling of worry, the twisting of fears around my deepest loves, the perversions that prey on my keenest sense of calling, are nothing less than the power of darkness at work in my own mind.

We can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons, but can this be calling? My belief in a God of goodness, who calls us in love for love, who longs to bring about fullness of life for the world, whispers no.

Perhaps, like Jesus, I need the words of others to remind me, to strike at the heart of truth:

There is no real occasion for tumult, strain, conflict, anxiety, once we have reached the living conviction that God is All.

All takes place within God. God alone matters; God alone is.

Our spiritual life is God’s affair because whatever we may think to the contrary, it is really produced by God’s steady attraction and our humble and self-forgetful response to it.

It consists in being drawn, at God’s pace and in God’s way, to the place where God wants us to be.

- Evelyn Underhill, The Soul’s Delight

 

God at work (and the rest of us, too)

Growing up, I never imagined God sweeping.

Or baking. Or gardening. Or helping deliver a baby.

For the past few months I’ve been writing a new program on work and calling for small groups in congregations. Since we keep learning that people’s challenges with vocation often stem from a lack of understanding about how God calls, I’ve been weaving in lots of Scriptural passages that broaden our image of who God is. So lately I’ve been living and working closely with God as worker: farmer, potter, metalworker, baker and midwife, to name a few. 

These biblical images of God at work are so rich and so relevant that I’m amazed to realize how easily we skip over them, so stuck is the white-bearded Father in flowing robes in our minds and in our churches.

Had it not been for graduate studies in theology, I might have missed many of these facets of Scripture’s portrait of God, too. I grew up with loving images of God – a tender shepherd, a caring father – but no one told me till I was much older that Scripture held more pictures of the divine than what I saw in my children’s Bible or the stained glass windows at church.

I love these images now: God as artist, molding us like clay. God as blacksmith, forging us in fire. God as gardener, planting and watering and waiting to harvest.

These are images of God that fire my imagination and make me believe differently – with depth, with creativity, with fresh eyes.

So now that I’m nearing the end of this writing project, I want to explore in a new way what I’ve learned and loved about these images of God at work. Especially as we begin bustling around the house, hurrying into the holidays, preparing for guests and feasts, I want to slow down and ponder images of God we often overlook.

The domestic ones. The feminine ones. The everyday ones.  

(And because I’m mentally preparing for Advent, my favorite season of the year for soaking in poems and psalms, I’m inching out on a limb and playing with poetry in this space, too.)

So till tomorrow, I’ll borrow a line from Lake Wobegon country:

Be well and do good work.

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.

the gentle voice of God

Slow down. Slow way down.

Washing dishes in the sink. Running errands in the car. Rushing around the house in the morning madness before work.

A dozen times in the past few weeks, I’ve heard the voice, simple and steady, speaking somewhere between mind and heart.

Slow down. Slow way down.

I ignored it for a while. Bothersome, distracting.

Then during one frenzied moment of both kids crying, telephone ringing, pot on the stove bubbling over, to-do list for the night glaring at me undone, I finally stopped and listened.

As in, white-knuckled hands gripping the sink, head bent down to hear, blood pounding in my ears, really listened.

Slow down. Slow WAY down.

I turned off the bubbling pot. I silenced the phone. I scooped up two crying boys. I cleared a spot on the toy-strewn floor for us to sit down together. I pulled an armful of books off the shelf. I started to read.

I ignored dinner and computer and phone and to-do list. I slowed down. Slowed way down.

And the rest of our night did, too.

. . .

I’m writing a new curriculum for small groups to reflect on God’s call and work. Over the past few weeks I’ve been returning to feedback from facilitators who piloted earlier versions of the program. One particular section of participants’ responses keeps haunting me.

When people were asked to imagine what response they would get if they asked God, “What am I supposed to do with my life?”, God’s responses were consistently kind and full of compassion:

Keep doing what you are doing.

Trust me. I will take care of you. It will be okay.

Live into the commitments you made. Look for love and light.

See me in the unfolding of every day.

Your life is worth something. You are valuable.

You’ve been too hard on yourself.

You don’t have to please others anymore. Follow your heart.

Take care of my people. Feed my sheep.

Real responses from people who did our program. The first time I read their words, I felt the hair prickle on the back of my neck. Because no matter how cynical I sometimes get, when I read words as simple and loving and compassionate and gentle as those that people heard from God, they resonate as deepest truth.

Slow down. Slow way down.

When I look back over my life, a few moments crystallize when I can remember hearing – in that strange, silent interior-but-not-self echo – what I would call God’s voice. I came to recognize it as God’s voice slowly, over time, with lots of testing and skepticism and doubt. And I started to learn that the truth of the voice being God’s – and not my own, or someone else’s, or society’s – was because the voice was not booming or profound or powerful, but because it was quite the opposite: soft, simple, gentle.

Always loving, forgiving, compassionate.

Wanting wholeness, seeking peace, offering hope.

Slow down. Slow way down.

. . .

The refrain keeps nagging at me.

I know I do too much, pack every day full to bursting, stress too much and sleep not enough. I realize the wake-up call is, in fact, a sit-down call.

More than that, I know that the voice will not relent unless I respond. God is persistent in calling, especially where change is concerned.

So I’m trying to slow down, slow way down.

Turning off the noise and listening to the quiet. Clearing space for what matters and letting the rest fall away. Breathing into the prayer of the present moment.

But it’s hard, really hard. God’s voice is so often challenging, too. Why slow down? Why not rush to fill every precious second of this life with something worth living?

Yet the call persists, darn it.

My slow response must, too.

they’re going to read this someday

My children.

Whether I show this to them proudly or they stumble across it secretly, they’ll be able to find all the words and thoughts and fears and questions I squirreled away in this small place, my secret hideout, my safe breathing space during the chaos of early parenthood.

(Because we all know the interwebs, even surer than elephants, never forget.)

I wonder what they’ll think when they read this. Will they roll their eyes at my drama? (Probably.) Will they laugh at my sentimentality? (Likely.) Will they wonder why I made such a fuss out of every worry that flitted across my new mama mind? (Undoubtedly.)

But here’s my deeper hope. I hope that if they become parents someday, they might dip their toes down into this swirling mess of my words and touch solid bottom.

That they can find camaraderie and companionship in knowing that I had no clue what I was doing either, but I loved them something fierce.

That they will remember that the long arc of the relationship of mother and child, despite its daily dips and difficulties, the tempers and the trying stages, bends towards a deep, lasting bond.

That they might seek solace in their own words-as-prayer, no matter what calling their path finds.

A wise friend once wrote to me that she saw my efforts at trying to raise children in faith as putting little invisible slips of paper with God’s phone number on it in the pockets of the pants and jackets they will wear out in the world someday, helping to make sure that when they need it, they’ll have it. Because that’s all we can do.

I’ve never forgotten her words. And while the songs and prayers I teach them now, the books we read and the churches we visit, the stories we wonder at together and the questions we can’t explain – while all of that is part of the scribbling I do, tucking love notes from God inside the corners of their hearts, the musing and mumbling I do here in this space is part of it as well.

Maybe someday they’ll stumble upon something I wrote, about struggling with faith or struggling with the world’s brokenness, and they’ll pause and think, too. I’m not so naive as to believe they’ll share my questions or so audacious as to assume my thoughts will shed wisdom on their lives. But if they can find a moment’s companionship here, an affirmation that faith can run deep while questions run deeper, a stubborn declaration that even when it wasn’t popular or sexy or clear or easy, I tried my hardest to understand and love the God who is Love, then I will consider these stumblings worth the cost.

And maybe, just maybe, if they become parents themselves, and the transition or the transformation isn’t easy, but by God it’s the most humbling school of humanity they could ever find, then I’ll happily meet them there. Because the journey of becoming their mother, of learning from them every day how flawed I am but how wide my heart can stretch, has been the gift of my life.

And that is a story I’m happy to tell them over and over again.

how to forget you’re a mother

Book a girls’ weekend. Forty-eight hours of kidless wonder to reprieve your college days and give a last hurrah for the final bachelorette. Only casually consult with your husband; remain utterly oblivious to necessity of his solo parenting after an arduous week at the office. Count down t-months, weeks, days with your girls instead.

Stubbornly ignore the acrobatical logistics required to absent a nursing mother and primary caregiver from her two young children for two nights and two days. Cram all necessary packing into 45 minutes.

Marvel at one small suitcase to carry on. Deliberately forget Cheerios, sippy cups, board books, and back-up outfits for plane. Chortle with delight at the airy weightlessness of your purse.

Kiss babies and husband goodbye in a flurry. Ignore heart’s momentary flutter as two adorable boys bounce up and down in one crib giggling as you go. Fly out the door, roll down the windows, crank up the music, squeal out of the driveway. Audibly whoop as you sail towards the interstate with nary a car seat in sight.

Thrill at the ease of security without a stroller. Slip off only one pair of shoes. Happily raise your arms in the new x-ray screening machine that must be avoided while pregnant or dragging small children in tow.

Rediscover the freedom of choosing anything you want for dinner. Choose junk food. Grab only one napkin instead of the usual just-in-case-they-spill-everything stack. Silently apologize to acres of forests your offspring must have clear-cut over the years.

Go to the restroom unaccompanied. Deliberately ignore the availability and location of changing tables. Flush the toilet without coaching anyone about the potential loudness of the potty.

Easily locate a single open chair at the crowded terminal gate. Discover with amazement that human race has become even more addicted to gadgets since the last time you had five free minutes to notice. Cease all judgment with realization that you have your own gadget and can now read any of the 17 novels you’re been meaning to catch up on. Settle into uncomfortable plastic chair with large grin.

Ignore presence of small children at the gate. PARTICULARLY CRYING CHILDREN. ESPECIALLY CUTE CRYING CHILDREN. Steal page from stereotypical male response by thinking about baseball instead. Baseball baseball baseball baseball.

Watch formerly-adorable crying children dissolve into tantruming terrors while exasperated father wrestles them into a stroller. Shudder. Forget baseball.

Pick a window seat. Share view with no one. Enjoy ease of take-off without nursing a screaming, sweaty baby. Close eyes. Pretend to sleep. Love life.

Contemplate ordering wine with beverage service. Refrain with sigh when you remember you still have to pump before going to bed. Baseball baseball baseball.

Dive into new book to celebrate sheer quietness of airplane cabin. Discover 15 pages into story that plot line suggests tearful transformation of main character from angst-ridden new mother to wise sage weathered by tragedy that befalls her child. Baseball baseball.

Read heart-wrenching line about realization that mothering love is the fiercest, deepest love. BASEBALL.

Instantly recall cherubic, chubby grins on bouncing brothers. BASEBALL.

Unsuccessfully ignore overactive imagination’s flash of sentimental snapshots of adorable boys enjoying weekend at home with daddy, undoubtedly achieving adorable and significant milestones that their absentee mother will never get to revisit. BASEBALL!

Curse overactive imagination. Set down book, stare out window. Miss them. Gnawingly.

(Damn baseball.)

Remember, once again, for the umpteenth time.

That a vocation isn’t something you can leave behind.

That a calling isn’t as easy to set aside as the contents of a diaper bag.

That mothering is a way of being in the world, no matter where in the world you go.

That you can still enjoy a perfectly wonderful weekend with your girls, though all the while your heart will keep reaching back to the pieces of itself you left behind.

That even when you’re back with the ones who knew you before, it’s impossible to forget who you’ve become.

to the woman i was three years ago tonight

Dear you,

All 28 years of you, fresh-faced from grad school, ready to take on the world. All 35 extra pounds of you, waddling around with an aching back and a bulging belly. All 37 weeks of you, still counting down days till the due date, still full of wonder and waiting and expectation.

You have no idea how life’s about to change.

Oh sure, you think you know. You’ve read the books, taken the classes, scoured the websites, questioned friends and family and frankly any unsuspecting stranger in the Target baby aisle who even looks like she might be a mother. You want to know exactly what it’s going to be like – labor, birth, nursing, newborns – because you’re sure it’s a life-altering change, this leap you’re about to take, this transition nature’s about to induce.

But the depth of this transformation? You’re clueless, kiddo.

As a microcosm of how mothering will continually defy your expectations, the big birth day you’re anticipating? It’ll look nothing like you expect.

Your water’s going to break in an hour, but you’ll have no idea what’s going on. You’ll spend an hour googling “how to tell if your water broke” before your wise husband (who, coincidently, NEVER consults Dr. Google) advises you to call the hospital already.

You’ll spend another hour hemming and hawing on the phone with one nurse, then another, then a doctor – who all agree that your water probably didn’t break since you’re weeks away from your due date but you better come in and check, just to be sure.

So you’ll grab the (mostly unpacked) hospital bag, give one glance at the (still unfinished) nursery, and laugh to your husband that we may as well leave the porch light on, since we’ll be back in three hours after our first-time-parents-foolish-trip-to-the-hospital.

But as you’ll turn to go, something inside you – not the kicking baby, something deeper – will tell you to waddle back upstairs and give the dog a last, fierce hug around his warm neck. Because even though all the experts are sure it’s a false alarm, you’ll sense suddenly that your pre-parent world, as a couple of crazy lovebirds with a crazier beagle, is about to end as you know it.

And you’re right.

Dear mama-to-be, lots of people would argue you’re already a mother. That you have been since day one of baby one, the first instant the spark became life inside your own. And you believe that, too.

But the truth you’re about to discover, from the second you hear the sharp shriek of little lungs gulping in air for the first time, is that it takes much longer than nine months to become a mother.

That becoming is a journey that will take you years, maybe a whole lifetime, to understand.

That parenting is a calling you live into, day by day, as you fling yourself into the unknown of loving another wild, mysterious, beautiful, maddening creature closer to you than your own bones.

So enjoy that giddy ride to the hospital tonight, the one you’re sure is just for practice. The last ride of just-us-two.

Let the night air whip through your hair as the car zips through the dark of a hazy August night, humming with promise. Laugh together and wonder aloud and puzzle and scoff and gulp back your fear and pretend you’re ready.

Because you’ll never be ready.

But you’re already becoming.