Obstinate

I’ve been reading a lot lately as part of my major summer writing project—namely, to get my novel submission package in order and start sending it out. This involves a lot of market research, which means reading a lot of novels.

 As enjoyable a job as this can be, it also gives me food for thought.
In two different love stories I read recently, the protagonists were manipulated into contact with each other. This was done with their knowledge, and against their wishes.

At the same time, out in the real world, I was being forced by circumstances to alter my behavior to fit someone else’s model of how life should look.

Submission, you may imagine, is not my strong suit. And it occurred to me that what happens to those characters in those two novels—falling head over heels in 50,000 words with someone they were forced into relationship with against their will—is highly unlikely. I mean, sheer bullheadedneess makes me resist being redirected to the contrary of my own wishes. It’s not that someone else’s vision of the way things ought to be is necessarily better or worse than my own—it’s just being forced to subdue my own will. It’s an exercise in humility.

Which, no doubt, is good for me.

Published in: on July 13, 2010 at 5:23 am  Comments (3)  
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Ordinary Gratitude

The problem with keeping a gratitude list is that I tend to notice the same things all the time. But gratitude is an attitude that needs cultivating…at least for me. And the times when it’s hardest to keep a positive outlook are the times I most need the spiritual exercise: when kids are sick, and life is busier than usual (like this past weekend, with its tee ball, late-night movie at the park, commencement, two weddings, recital and rehearsal).

But once in a while, a quiet appreciation for ordinary life sparks of its own accord, and needs only a gentle breath of effort to burn bright and illuminate the beauty of things I might otherwise take for granted.

And so today, I am grateful for the beauty of evening light playing on the woods behind my home…

…for the discovery of music that entrances my daughter and fills my spirit with joy…

…for the opportunity to sleep with my husband (Julianna’s spent the last few nights in my place, because when she’s sick, she won’t sleep without Daddy)…

…for the opportunity to sleep in my own bed…

…for a bowl of strawberries, grown by the labor of my own hands…

 

…for new acquaintances in the land of Holland…

…for long morning cuddles at the breast, completely irrelevant to nutrition, but holding on to the nursing bond as long as we can.

 Now it’s your turn. What ordinary beauty can you see or hear or feel right now, in this moment, right where you are—computer screen and all?

tuesdays unwrapped at cats

Published in: on May 18, 2010 at 5:26 am  Comments (8)  
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A Different Kind of Greed

It’s a different kind of greed.

It’s not about the pursuit of stuff, or hoarding things and refusing to share them. No, in my life, even my DQ Chocolate Extreme Blizzard gets split with two other little mouths.

But nonetheless, it’s greed.

When Christian sends me shopping without the kids, I hurry from place to place, gnashing my teeth because it feels rushed, and I want enough time to shop at a relaxed pace.

When the weather is absolutely gorgeous and we have a chance to go outside, I grumble because the interstate is noisy.

As we prepare to pull out the driveway for a weekend of fun and enjoyment in Chicago, I can’t suppress a pang for the irises in full bloom and my summer cheer daffodils, because I’m going to miss the greatest part of their beauty.

Never being satisfied with who you are and where you are—that is greed. A greed that says that despite the overpowering beauty of life, it’s never enough.

Tomorrow is the feast of the Ascension—the second of two mountaintop experiences recorded in the Gospels.

The first time the Heavens opened up, the Apostles got caught up in the moment. They got greedy. Not satisfied with simply being there and experiencing the moment, they wanted to memorialize it so they could come back and relive it again and again. They didn’t realize that the moment was a fleeting gift, a way to fortify them against the horrors  waiting at the bottom of the mountain.

Weeks later, after all the drama of Passion and death, when the Apostles had reveled in the joy of Resurrection, they went back up the mountain. This time, when the Heavens opened, it was to take Jesus from their sight. And once again, they got caught star gazing. But this time, they understood the big picture. This time, when they went down the mountain, they hit the ground running. And it changed the world.

What do these stories tell me? They tell me that I have to walk a narrow path in my life. I need to live in the moment and appreciate it for what it’s worth, not what it could be if only. But it’s only one moment. I must take every moment as it comes, draw from it what I can, and journey onward.

Published in: on May 12, 2010 at 6:55 am  Comments (4)  
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Joy, Joy, Joy

5:30 a.m. The day begins bleary-eyed after wakeup calls at 11, 1:30, 3 and 4.

6:45 a.m. Julianna runs (it looks more like a stagger) into the bathroom, hurtles to a stop beside me at the sink, and grabs the hem of my towel. Looking up at me, she says clearly, “Ma!” and I melt.

9:30a.m. The sitter calls in sick, which means I have no one to get Julianna off the bus at the same time I’m supposed to be at the other end of town picking Alex up from school. I call everyone I can think of but no one is home.

11:45 a.m. I drive twenty miles from one school to the other, and pick up both kids myself. In transit, we spend twelve dollars on lunch (wince).

12:30p.m. The little ones and I sit under the shade of a redbud on the lawn at Alex’s school and have a picnic while we wait.

2:50p.m. While nursing, Nicholas decides to see what happens if he uses his ONE TOOTH on Mommy’s sensitive skin. My shriek rattles the windows, which scares Nicholas, who wails. I don’t have the heart to yell at him. Nonetheless, he goes to bed without any more milk.

7:45p.m. Trying to keep Julianna from freaking out about having her teeth brushed, I start singing Carey Landrey’s “Joy Joy Joy.” It sounds something like this: I’ve got that joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart.—ALEX! GET OUT OF THE TUB! Down in my heart, down in my heart, I’ve got that joy, joy joy joy down in my heart.—NICHOLAS! YOU DO NOT PLAY WITH THE TOILET BOWL BRUSH! Down in my heart to say! And I’m so happy, so very happy, I’ve got the love of Jesus in my heart—JULIANNA, YOU SIT STILL OR SO HELP ME, I’LL…I’LL…I’LL STOP SINGING! And I’m so happy, so very happy, I’ve got the love of Jesus in my heart!

7:55p.m. Two children whose combined weight is less than fifty pounds synchronize an attack, and down I go. Julianna crawls on top of me to play horsey. I put Nicholas on and she wraps her arms around him.

8:05 p.m. Nursing beside the open window, one soft chewy little body cuddles against me. Another chewy little body, clad in fluffy purple hearts, steps up onto the nursing stool, and proceeds to give me kisses (which, to her, means the flats of her teeth flush against my cheek…not as good as the real thing, but considering how non-cuddly she usually is, I melt.  Nicholas, annoyed that she’s encroaching on his mommy time, takes his left hand and tries to push her away, all without letting go of the breast. Alex tears into the room, dives onto the bed and joins the fun. Julianna giggles so loudly that she doesn’t even hear Daddy coming up the stairs after lessons, calling, “I hear giggling! Is this a party in Mommy and Daddy’s room?”

And it occurs to me that despite insufficient sleep, a bleary, blurry brain, feeling overwhelmed and not equal to the tasks I have set before myself, and frequently irritability…I DO have the joy, the peace, the love in my heart. It’s easy to lose sight of in all the craziness—but  when I have a moment to sit still, and I don’t fill it with some writing-related task…miraculously, there it is. Joy. Right down in my heart, to stay.

Published in: on April 22, 2010 at 6:32 am  Comments (1)  
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High Fidelity

She wrote her story anonymously for O Magazine—the story of a couple trying to put their marriage back together after the worst kind of betrayal.

Sandwiched among a series of pieces on alternative relationships, I nearly skipped over it, especially when it began by talking about the days when she was “the other woman” to a married man. But for some reason, I kept skimming. And then slowed down. And then began drinking it in, word by word by word. The raw honesty. The fact that despite the hit to the core of her being, she was sticking with it for the long haul.

But the real eye-opener came three-fourths of the way through the article. “I had to admit I was partly to blame,” she said, “not for Sam’s affair…but for the cloud of disappointment and annoyance that had become a permanent feature of our marriage. I had grown to resent him when our kids were babies—a time when his needs, even his love, felt to me like just one more tiresome burden.”

It was a shot in the gut, but it got worse. “How could I (look at him adoringly) when he neglected to call and tell me he’d be home late from work again? Or left his underwear in a wad behind the bathroom door again?…A habitual mild bitterness, a casual scorn, became my default attitude…”

That was me talking. Not the actual incidents—Christian’s very good about calling when he’s going to be late, and he’s a far tidier person than I am—but the resentment, the “habitual mild bitterness.”

And I realized how easy it is to filter out all the good and zero in on petty annoyances—stuff that isn’t even important. The only thing I worry about in marriage is how easy it is to grow apart, not because either of us is doing anything wrong, but because we don’t have time to focus on each other. It’s so easy to view my husband as a parenting partner, to resent it when I feel (rightly or wrongly) that I’m taking a disproportionate amount of the work. It’s so easy to stop paying attention to that which drew me to him in the first place.

“It is very hard to fall back in love with someone you know as well as you know a spouse after 12 years,” the anonymous writer says. Which serves as a reminder I need: Don’t wait till the spark is gone to decide that the marriage is the primary relationship in the family. Fidelity is bigger than not cheating on each other. It involves standing together, supporting each other’s endeavors. Fidelity means growing together—not parallel, but together. It means looking for and drawing out the best in each other. And just like everything else in life—like attitude, like habitual anger, like love—fidelity is a choice.

I choose love. Love of this man, and all the beautiful things he is:

 Forever.

Published in: on March 24, 2010 at 9:31 am  Comments (16)  
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Floundering into Gratitude

It is 5:55 a.m. and a thin sliver of creamy moon reclines just over the bare trees. For the seventh night in a row, I’ve been up with kids multiple times during the night, and it is very hard to get out of bed. I suffer from lack of motivation, too, because along with finishing my Advent book and sending it to the editor comes a sense of floundering. I have a million writing projects I want to work on, but no clear path to navigate them. And alongside it, for the first time in months, I’m coming up blank on blog topics.

 But I pride myself on being a writer mom who doesn’t have time for writer’s block, so I throw on my robe and go downstairs. While the computer fires up I stand at the window and look out at the woods, the street lamps marching away beyond them, the new, untouched snow mounded on the deck rail, and I know what to write about today. I need to take time to be grateful, in black and white, not just in a hurried, whispered prayer in my mind.

 Grateful for the feel of Julianna’s hand in mine…

…for her sudden shift into a (sort of, sometimes) cuddle bug (even if it’s only when she’s hungry and she wants to see what I’m making for dinner)…

…for her enthusiasm for putting on and taking off her coat, which indicates that she loves everything she’s learning at school…

…for her adorable enthusiasm for “talking” on the phone…

…for the way she wants to help me around the house…

…for the wisdom to direct her desire to get into EVERYTHING and use it to teach her to follow directions, and along the way teach her concepts like in, out, up, down, on, get it out, put it away…

…for finally running out of clothes, which means I get to shop for her!…

…for Alex giggling at having his cheeks chewed instead of getting angry…

…for his willingness to ride his bike almost a mile with his daddy the other day…

…for the improvement in his writing…

…for his dogged determination to earn money for a new toy…

…for the stolen cuddle early this morning when he climbed into bed with me because he was scared…

…for Nicholas’s mischievous eyes and his adorable laugh…

…for the way he loves to snuggle against me…

…for the inspiration to pull out all the frozen breast milk and start feeding it to him…

…for nice moments cuddling with Christian…

…for the anticipation of a Valentine’s Day date…

…for opportunities to advocate…

Now that I am in the mode, the things to be grateful for keep on coming. But it’s enough to share a few, and keep my attitude one of gratitude today. What about you? Are you stuck in a grumbly rut? Are you floundering? What are you grateful for today?

(For more, visit  Tuesdays Unwrapped at chattingatthesky.com.)

Published in: on February 9, 2010 at 6:26 am  Comments (7)  
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Listening…

Saturday afternoon, we arrived home to a relatively clean house, a stack of mail, and seven voice mails. The very first one was from Sr. Mary Ann, my grandfather’s sister and the woman who taught me to play checkers on that same vacation in 1980 that I shared pictures of a few days ago. She is an avid “reader” of this blog, and her Christmas message was heartfelt, and to the point: Kate, I hope you take time to find the quiet this year.

It got me thinking about my expectations: what I need, and what I only think I need. Last night, for instance, Julianna was sitting beside me at the piano as I talked to a voice student, whining for me to play music; so I began hitting random chords…and discovered something beautiful that I wanted to write down. So do I really need quiet to hear the music–or do I just need to go sit down and start playing?

I’ve all but given up on quiet for the moment. I have hopes for four weeks from now, when Julianna starts school…but they are hopes tempered by reality. It’s reality that there isn’t enough time for everything; every day I have to choose between quiet time and work time; exercise and writing; scrapbooking and house cleaning.  That is the reality of life with three small children, and that is my blessing. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that I begged God every night for three years, in tears and raw suffering, to give us one child.

And therein, I believe, lies my answer. I may want to listen to God in the stillness, in the quiet—but in this season of my life, God speaks to me through my children: through Alex, playing dress-up doll with his sister; through Julianna’s sweet hugs and infectious giggles; through Nicholas’s sparkling eyes and Mamama’s. My task is to learn to listen in a new way.

***

Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart. Join Ann at Holy Experience.

Published in: on January 6, 2010 at 8:22 am  Comments (10)  
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Staring Down the Season

It was the first Sunday of Advent—a time, if there ever was one, to make my whirling brain shut up and listen to the readings at church. Unfortunately, I also had a four-year-old asking me to read The Clown of God. So I was running through the words in a whisper, trying to listen, when the words pierced my fuzzy brain like a laser beam:

Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy
from carousing and drunkenness
and the anxieties of daily life,
and that day catch you by surprise.
(Luke 21:34)

Um…ouch.

Carousing and drunkenness are not a problem for me…but anxieties? That word was written with me in mind! (And many of you, too, I’m sure.)

This was the day I wrote that broken prayer—the day when I felt that although no circumstance lasts forever, my own attitude would keep me rounding the same queasy merry-go-round of exhaustion and spreading myself too thin.

And then, you all spoke to me, offering words of encouragement, being the Body of Christ to me, lifting prayers on my behalf, and reminding me that we live to love each other in action and kindness and charity. Maybe it was nothing but coincidence, but that was the night that Nicholas went back to sleep.

We have begun our second year of the Advent Reclamation Project. We read our Jesse Tree scriptures every night, lighting our purple candles, opening the doors on the Advent Calendar to see what magic it offers for the day. Every night, Alex goes outside and turns on the lights, sending them blazing across time and space to reflect back to us and remind us that we are waiting for a VIP’s arrival—not in a manger (that happened millennia ago), but here and now.

Here at the start of this Advent, I am realistic. I know that the anxieties of life will always be around. I know that sometimes, I will handle them with inSpired grace, and other times I will face-plant in the muck. I know that I will not always succeed in keeping a positive attitude and a grateful heart. And this is a good lesson for me. It reminds me that as I have been lifted up by others, so I must lift up others in turn.

For more Advent reflections, visit A Holy Experience:

Published in: on December 1, 2009 at 11:16 am  Comments (7)  
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Thanksgiving Day: A Gratitude List

For the last two weeks, I’ve kept waiting for things to turn around, scrabbling at the roots of positive attitude as I try to keep from tumbling over the cliff into negativity. It’s been a rough two weeks, no doubt about it, but I realize that the lesson to be learned now is gratitude despite “everything” going wrong.

I’ve been keeping a mental list of things to be thankful for, but I haven’t been good about getting them onto my gratitude list. And I’m beginning to think that the act of committing words to “paper” is where they take root and begin to grow. So this morning, along with everyone else on the blogosphere, I will write my list of things to be thankful for, and I will choose not to focus on the annoyances, irritants, and stresses of the past couple of weeks.

I am thankful for the first quiet day in weeks, in my own back yard.

I am thankful for the enthusiasm with which my kids greet their grandparents’ arrival.

I am thankful for getting to go ice skating for the first time in four or five years.

I am thankful for the reminder that sometimes, trial and error is the best teacher.

I am thankful for Central Dairy ice cream.

I am thankful for sleeping through the night. I never thought that was going to happen again!

I am thankful for the opportunity to write my Advent book.

I am thankful for the rush in my blood that accompanies inspiration, and especially writing music.

I am thankful for the friends, neighbors, and parish community who wrap us up in love we don’t deserve and can never live up to.

I am thankful for scrapbooking.

I am thankful for my jade plant, given to me by Angeleita, which is the only plant I’ve never managed to kill, and which is a constant memento to me of a very special mentor.

I am thankful for the end of the spit-up era (for this baby, anyway).

I am thankful for generous input for my next article.

I am thankful for Christmas lights.

I am thankful for beauty in all its various forms.

I am thankful for the luxury of recreation.

I am thankful for the opportunity to advocate for my daughter and others like her.

I am thankful for the people that I have met through this advocacy.

I am thankful for the way parenthood (and marriage) stretches my soul.

I am thankful for the end of the nursing strike.

I am thankful for good food.

I am thankful for the cute and tender and funny moments that my children give me.

I am thankful for the beautiful autumn.

I am thankful that the harvest is finally moving well, late though it is.

I am thankful for the chance to see family, immediate and extended.

I am thankful for my family, who now calls me upstairs to nurse and teach and dress.

Published in: on November 26, 2009 at 6:55 am  Comments (3)  
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Works for Me Wednesday–Confessions of a Recovering Gripe-r

It is so easy to get into a negative funk. Sometimes it’s justified…more often it’s not. That’s why I signed on to Ann Voskamp’s “One Thousand Gifts”—to give me a reason to turn around my natural tendency to gripe. I know I’m not the only one who has this problem. (I’ll start. Hello, my name is Kate, and I’m a recovering gripe-r!)

Corrie Ten Boom tells a story from the concentration camp at Ravensbruck where she and her sister Betsie were imprisoned for hiding Jews in Holland. As they land in a barracks too horrible to mention—rotten straw, severe overcrowding, and fleas—Betsie reminds her that I Thessalonians says “Give thanks in all circumstances,” and promptly thanks God for the fleas.

Right there, Corrie howls, Now wait just one minute! I am NOT thanking God for fleas! But her sister prevails—after all, the Bible passage says thank God for all things. As time goes by, they can’t figure out why the guards never come in their barracks.  It gives them incredible freedom to hold Bible studies with the contraband Bible they smuggled into the camp. And then, they discover that it is the fleas that keep the guards away.

Now, doesn’t that just get under your skin and make you squirm?

This is not the first time I’ve chronicled my struggles to turn around a bad attitude, but a couple days ago, staring down the barrel of another bad night with sick kids, it occurred to me that sometimes the positive is in the negative. We just have to look at it that way.

For instance:

Thank you, God, that on the night I stuck the bread in the oven and forgot to turn the oven on, I remembered it at 10p.m., and NOT at 3a.m.

Thank you, God, that because I’ve felt so queasy from my metformin reaction, I have NOT been pigging out on Halloween candy.

Thank you, God, that when Nicholas got the croup, he did NOT have to go to the hospital.

Thank you, God, that when Julianna went to the hospital with the croup, she did NOT have to go to the PICU.

Thank you, God, that despite my bad attitude, the kids did NOT wake up the last two nights…at all! (Holy cow! Is that sleeping through the night????)

….Got the idea? Let’s hear some of yours, fellow gripe-rs!

P.S., This post is linked to “Works For Me Wednesday,” hosted by “WeareTHATfamily.com.

Published in: on November 11, 2009 at 3:15 pm  Comments (5)  
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