The Passing of the Baby Years

Alex, April 2005

It crept up on me, this wistfulness. A  feeling that these days are slipping away like pearls through my fingers. The way he looks at me and the wiggles settle into stillness. The way his whole face lights up when he smiles, just because I looked at him and said hello. Moments that make my heart hiccup.

It was the end of a long, very busy and chaotic day. Both sets of grandparents in the house, and Next Littlest Brother bouncing off the walls from birthday cake (in the middle of Lent) and presents. By 7:30,  Michael vibrated like a coiled spring, his little muscles taut, his head batting from side to side.

Julianna, March 17, 2007 in the PICU

My mother, with the slow gentleness she only exhibits toward grandbabies, settled him against her chest and took him upstairs. I followed, a moth drawn to a flame. She laid him down on the carpet in

the hallway, speaking softly to him as the shrieking glee continued downstairs. “It’s time to get you settled down, little boy,” she said, and his face nearly split with joy, legs and arms kicking wildly. “Does your mama have something more comfortable to put you in?”

I retrieved his sleeper, and we continued to sit there, two grown women reduced to helpless adoration by a fourteen-pound child. And a deep pang spread outward from the center of my chest, crushing breath for a moment. Because this stage is passing away and if, as I expect, we have to call it at four, I’m experiencing it for the last time.

“I don’t remember this stage with the others,” I said softly. “I’m trying to really live in the moment…but I don’t remember it with the others. I keep hoping once it’s all past, from a distance I’ll be able to pull it out, I’ll be able to look back and remember. Really remember. But I’m afraid it’s just going to be gone.”

Nicholas, March 2009

My mother’s hand brushed over his body. “It’s going to be gone,” she said, the voice of experience. “And grandchildren are different.”

I bent down and pressed myself against the tiny body, willing my nerves to capture the sensation and hold it, knowing they aren’t capable. And I wondered: am I really ready to move on? For a moment, weakened uterine walls and early deliveries and NICU stays and the sheer chaos of daily life with four children, one of whom has special needs–all of it disappeared into petty nothingness against the emptiness of life After Babies.

Because let’s face it, I’m a baby person. Two years from now I’ll be pulling my hair out over Michael, who will be saying “no” and breaking things and wanting me to play with him (blech!). Right now, his desires and mine are in nearly perfect unison. I want to touch him and talk to him and hold him, and he wants to be touched and talked to and held. Not that there aren’t frustrations–there are–and of course, not having to wash diapers every 48 hours, and being able to sleep at night, are big pluses to the later stages. Still, Babyhood is the part I love most about small childhood. Holding someone else’s baby just isn’t the same, at least not for me. There isn’t that visceral reaction, that gut-deep connection between me and this particular child, who is mine to care for, for whom I am the center of the world.

Michael, Dec. 1, 2011

Michael is on my lap now, tired and refusing to nurse, as has been his pattern of late, and reminding me that babyhood isn’t all transcendent moments. We really are stretched to our limit now. The kids we have need us, and there already isn’t enough to go around (how long has it been since I practiced my flute, for instance?). But I understand now how a woman can enjoy a “change-of-life baby” in a way she hasn’t been able to enjoy earlier babies. The kids go off to school, and it’s just Mommy and Baby again, like it was with the first one…only then, she was too freaked out to enjoy it properly.

Will we go that route? Honestly, it’s hard to imagine. My body really is pretty beat up from surgeries, and with three rambunctious boys, Christian sees college bills and car insurance premiums barreling down on us, to say nothing of the big unknown that is Julianna’s future. We have to be responsible.

But it makes me sad.

Published in: on March 22, 2012 at 8:06 am  Comments (9)  
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Sunday Love Letters

Photo by Garrettc, via Flickr

When I was writing about Lent, an odd theme kept cropping up: relationships. It seemed off–I grew up associating Lent with repentance, sorrow and fasting. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the purpose of repentance, sorrow and fasting is to mend the broken relationship with God. I came to understand Lent as a journey, one foot in front of the other, on a path that leads to intimacy with Him.

As I thought about mending relationship with God, I kept thinking about other relationships that need healing and strengthening. I kept thinking about how our love for God is measured by our love for  others. And I thought of one of my sisters, with whom childhood was a perpetual battle of unkindness, and how, in young adulthood, our unresolved childhood angst piled up until we had a huge fight and didn’t speak for a year.

I realized that the relationship with God and the relationship with our loved ones run parallel. Maybe they’re even one and the same. So I came up with writing Sunday love letters to family members.

The idea is to write a letter to a different family member each week, focusing on what we love about them (not what drives us crazy–because let’s face it, that’s the part we notice most often), underscoring the ways in which we see God in them, and perhaps healing breaches.

We haven’t gotten it done every week. It’s been a crazy busy Lent so far. But we’ve done it twice now, and now I know that idea was inSpiration.

Here is what the first week looked like:

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The second time–yesterday–we wrote notes on leaves instead. The small format works well for little kids in big families. I read my note to Alex:

Do you know that Grandma said last night that every time you walk in, the whole room lights up? I am so amazed when I look at you.

You are JUST LIKE ME.

I love you so much.

Alex stood silently for a minute, then made a dash for his Spiderman game with a suspicious look on his face. “Alex,” I said, “are you crying?”

“No!” he said. (Duh, Mommy!) He returned to whacking bad guys with spiderwebs. “But my eyes are watering.”

Focusing on relationships can be uncomfortable.

But it is also beautiful.

Published in: on March 19, 2012 at 7:24 am  Comments (5)  
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7QT 166: Of Julianna, Kitchens and Proselytizing

___1___

We registered Julianna for kindergarten this week. Can you believe it? I’m having trouble. I mean, it seems like she’s been in our life forever, certainly long enough to be starting school…but there are things you tend to associate with a child entering kindergarten. Like, I don’t know…speech!

___2___

I shouldn’t make it sound like she doesn’t talk, because she does. In fact, she comes to me these days and issues a long stream of gibberish that very clearly means something…I just don’t know what. When she started it, we thought it was incredibly funny and cute. Now I’m looking at things differently. “Julianna, I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I tell her. “One word at a time.”

___3___

For two nights, I spent my after-the-kids-are-in-bed time filling out forms. You should know, also, that my handwriting (so my husband says) is illegible. Being sensitive about this, I was writing ve-ry-slow-ly. And I was ready to spit nails by the time I was done. How many times does the school district need me to fill out Julianna’s address? I filled out her address on NINE DIFFERENT FORMS. And TWO of them were about who she lives with. I mean, really, people. It was a rude awakening to the difference between private and public school procedures, let me tell you.

And she has her last shots this morning. I tried to prepare her last night, but it’s hard to know what she “gets.” Alex is off school, so we’re going to the doctor’s office with four children.

___4___

When RAnn, over at This, That, and the Other Thing, interviewed me about my Lent book, she asked what activities I had planned this year. I told her with the infant in the house, we were going to have to take it one week at a time. Well, that’s what we’re doing. Perhaps it will help everyone who thinks just because I write books about celebrating seasons with children, that our house is full of well-organized, blissful family catechesis. Um…no. My family is the perfect illustration of why we need books like mine. :/

___5___

I was going to write another Quick Take on that subject, but it occurs to me that maybe I need to write a post on that topic all its own.

___6___

Speaking of all things faith, this is evidently “Evangelization Week” in our neighborhood. Tuesday afternoon it was two young girls asking if we had a church home. Thursday just before noon an older lady rang my doorbell with literature. I groaned inwardly and tried to tell her kindly that we’re well evangelized, and quite familiar with the Bible, but she really, really wanted to give me a flier–four pages, full color. “Did you know the Bible says ‘they will beat their swords into plowshares?’ she said with an earnest smile. “Do you believe that will happen?”

What a question! Caught between a desire to get rid of her and the inability to lie, even by omission, I swallowed a whole lot of thoughts and stuttered something that made no sense but made it perfectly clear that I was a heathen, just as she thought. “Well,” she said, “the Bible said it will happen, so we know it will.”

Yes, I thought. In Heaven.

___7___

No matter how much time passes, I cannot get over the fact that in a house with nearly 3000 square feet, everybody has to inhabit the same room. A few days ago, Christian and I prepared dinner in a twelve-foot-square kitchen with one child pushing the empty bouncy seat in front of the refrigerator door, one child building a marble run in front of the pantry door, and one child trying to drop marbles down it before it was finished. Just imagine that traffic jam.

Have a good weekend!

7 quick takes sm1 7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 166)

Published in: on March 16, 2012 at 5:23 am  Comments (8)  
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A Welcome Detour

Photo by Fuyoh!, via Flickr

Call me dense, but I just realized the other night that the ability to multitask has a downside. Namely, a person who can split hands into one task and brain to another is never fully engaged in either…which means she (read that: “I”) cannot block out distractions.

In the last few weeks, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to concentrate on my work, when it’s time to work. (Yeah, right.) Everything came to a head on Thursday, when I was trying to knock out a rough draft of an assignment that’s been causing me trouble. I don’t want to spend my life repeating I HATE age three, so Friday I resolved to take a day off work and just focus on family and home.

I probably started in the wrong place: two hours in the grocery store and several dozen variations on the words “Julianna, STAY HERE.” Then it was lunch and a conference call about our new local Down syndrome parent network, and up to school to go to Stations of the Cross with Alex. Lo and behold, the day was over, and not one lick of housework had been done. Suddenly I realized why it’s been so hard for me to make headway lately.

And then, of course, there was the swing.

Our wind-up swing is a hand-me-down that looks like this, only with a vinyl seat cover. I love it because it does NOT require batteries, and the wind-up status prevents you from going off and ignoring your child for long periods of time. It’s a tool to be used when Baby really needs movement and Mommy really needs her hands.

I love this swing. So, unfortunately, do the kids. Unfortunately, because a swing that old is not replaceable. The mechanism jammed once before when we over-wound the spring, and Christian spent almost an hour working on it before he got it fixed. So ever since I pulled it out a week ago, I’ve been trying without success to keep little hands off it. We had several battles on Friday, two more at dinnertime–during which Nicholas pushed it higher than it ever swings with a baby in it–and when I went to put Michael in it while I did dishes, it was jammed. Christian tried to fix it, but the old plastic parts inside snapped. Bye-bye, swing.

My frustration reached epic levels. I sometimes call Nicholas a “Destructicon”–rip books, turn off computers, get things out, throw them on the floor, break baby gear. I just want him to STOP IT. But I also know me choking on rage isn’t going to make it happen. I want to enjoy parenthood, not stew over what cannot be changed. And I remember that when Alex was going through this stage, I was the one who had to change first. Only…how? How do you take perfectly justifiable frustration and simply turn it off?

“Tell you what,” Christian said that night, as I vented about the project I couldn’t finish and the kids who break everything and the desire to simply bury myself in a hole where nobody could demand my attention. “Tomorrow I’ll take them to the park for a couple of hours so you can get this writing project done.”

Saturday morning, we tore into housework while we waited for it to get warm outside. And at 10:00, they left. Michael fell asleep, and without two little screaming children in the house, he stayed that way. I sat down at the computer with one final prayer for divine help…and I got the darned thing drafted.

When my family returned home shortly before noon, I felt like a new woman. I hadn’t realized how heavily that particular project was weighing on my stress level. For the rest of the day, I didn’t fret over deadlines or the length of my to-do list. I actually felt like I was taking a day off. I cooked up a table full of unhealthy appetizer goodies to accompany a family movie. I gave baths and got kids ready for bed without once raising my voice. I enjoyed a nice evening with my husband, and at bedtime I felt only lightness and gratitude, where for so long there had been murky, bilious ick.

Sometimes, you just can’t do it by yourself. Thank God I have such a wonderful man to share my life (and my frustrations!) with.

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Sharing my gratitude with Ann’s community at A Holy Experience

Published in: on March 12, 2012 at 8:19 am  Comments (7)  
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What Luke Skywalker Taught Me About Motherhood

The three lead protagonists of Star Wars, from...

Image via Wikipedia

It was one of those days.To wit:

Michael would not consent to be laid down…all day. Imagine. Every time I tried to make lunch, use the bathroom, or aid another child in a self-care task, I had to endure heartbreaking wails.

Nicholas kept whimpering pathetically, “I want you, Mommy!” (translated: I want to sit on your lap.) Refer to my last.

Nicholas and Julianna bickered, took toys from and pushed each other, causing periodic eruptions of screaming.

I returned to the computer after, I don’t know, changing a diaper, to find a screen display completely rearranged and a mouse on its maximum sensitivity. The screen was just tiled like a triptych–not a big deal–the point was that Nicholas has been handling, moving and breaking everything in sight lately, and he had no reason to be messing with the computer at all. I yelled at him to JUST STOP TOUCHING THINGS, and he stuck his lower lip out and pouted (this kid’s got the guilt routine down, I’m telling you) and whimpered, “I get my twuck.”

“Yes, play with your truck,” I said, clutching the shredded remains of my composure around me like a too-small robe. He got down on all fours under the computer desk…and turned off the computer power strip.

I don’t exactly remember what came out of my mouth before I clamped my lips shut on it, but you might imagine it wasn’t pretty. Not…pretty…at…all. (Stop laughing! I need several months before I can laugh at this story!)

Deep breath, missy. In…..out….in…out.

At the end of this long, hard day, I wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Alex sat down to finish Return of the Jedi. This is a new thing for him, and he’s pursuing it with his usual enthusiasm, running headlong through all three of the oldies in the span of a week. But there are some pretty intense scenes in Jedi–you know, lightning bolt torture–and I needed to tell him when to hide his eyes. So I breezed back and forth from kitchen to office to living room, narrating to Alex what was happening (because let’s be honest, a lot of it’s still over his head).

And as I watched Luke battle his darker nature, as the twin Darths pushed his buttons and dismantled his hope one block at a time, maneuvering him into an emotional corner, I suddenly recognized myself: trying–trying so hard–not to lose it. Knowing the stakes: “Once you start, forever will it dominate your destiny” (what did we ever do for wisdom before Yoda?) Trying to be serene in the face of a repeated bombardment of frustration and desperation. To focus on the choice to love, instead of giving in to my own Dark Side.

Luke finally had enough; the lightsabers came out, and he began his journey toward Ultimate Bad Guy status. But then…then he recognized what was happening. He put the brakes on, threw the weapon away, decided he’d rather die the man he wanted to be than live as everything he’d fought against.

There’s a lesson in there for me. I haven’t worked it all out yet, but I think it has something to do with choosing, time and time again, to get up after I face plant along the Mommy Road.

Like I couldn’t have worked that out for myself. Right?

(Speaking of Star Wars…we just really need some Cello Wars today.)

Published in: on March 8, 2012 at 7:20 am  Comments (10)  
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Fiction Friday: A Lesson in Schnecken

write on edge, creative writing prompt, rainy night in DusseldorfIt was a rainy night in Dusseldorf, but not nearly as stormy as the hotel room Tomas left behind. He pushed past the doorman, ignoring his friendly and unintelligible warning, and stepped out into the darkened streets.

The rain beat mercilessly against the pavement. Every passing car splashed miniature tidal waves over the sidewalks. The deafening hiss drowned out the echo of Tia’s voice: Especially considering why we’re here!

Wind-driven rain stung his skin. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and hunkered into the depths of his coat. After today’s failure, the last in a long string, this whole trip seemed an expensive lesson in futility. He mocked himself for thinking he could find any information about the father who’d disappeared when he was four years old.  He had only fragmented memories of the man–narrow, hooked nose, booming voice, and the scent of Old Spice.

Tomas didn’t see the lump of rags until the impact knocked his legs out from under him. He sprawled in a puddle. “What are you doing, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk?” he demanded furiously, swiping uselessly at his clothes.

Dull eyes stared back, nearly lost in a tangle of grizzled gray. Here was a man who’d given up hope.  Tomas sighed; at least he had a warm room to retreat from the early spring chill. An unexpected swell of compassion bubbled into words: “Come on, old man,” he said. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”

Did those lifeless eyes flicker? Impossible to be sure. The man muttered incoherently. Tomas put a hand beneath the ragged elbow and raised him upright.

The gleaming cafe felt simultaneously welcoming and foreign. Tomas ordered schnecken and coffees. They ate in silence, Tomas slowly, the old man greedily, the corners of his mouth growing sticky with half-chewed bread. It rather stole Tomas’s meager appetite. “Where you from?” he asked, but the response, garbled by schnecken fragments, revealed nothing. At length, Tomas shoved his plate across the table. The vagrant paused, eyed him suspiciously, then tore into the second pastry.

Tomas studied him as he had studied every face on this trip, looking for remembered features that grew muddier with every new visage he encountered. Hooked nose, but bulbous. Definitely not a booming voice.

“It’s just that I don’t know how to be a father,” he burst out. “I never had one. How can Tia expect me to start a family of my own?”

The vagrant paused, stared shrewdly at him, then returned to chewing. Suddenly, Tomas felt petty. This man had nothing. At least he had Tia. Tia, who’d gone without birthday and Christmas gifts to make this trip possible.

Who really knew how to be a father, anyway? All his friends insisted parenthood was learned on the job. What would it be like to study the face of another human being, one with his ears and her eyes?

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. “I’ve got to go.” He dropped a few Euros on the table and dashed out the door to stop for champagne and roses on the way back to the hotel.

Write On Edge: Red-Writing-Hood

Today’s assignment at Write On Edge was 500 words, to begin with “It was a rainy night in Dusseldorf.” Okay, so I’m over by 18 words. I tried. Concrits welcome–rip ‘er up, folks! :)

Published in: on March 2, 2012 at 8:33 am  Comments (13)  
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Twenty-Seven Days

If you knew you only had twenty-seven days, how would you live life differently?

I spoke recently to a friend whose daughter gave birth to a child they knew was not going to live. Indeed, it was a miracle that the child was not stillborn. “People tiptoe around us,” she said. “They’re afraid to ask. But every day of her life was a blessing. She made a bigger impact on the world in twenty-seven days than a lot of people do in ninety years.”

What would you do differently if you knew you only had twenty-seven days?

I would order out every meal. Shower only occasionally. Sleep with the baby, and “safety” be hanged. I would touch her face and breathe in her scent and try hard not to blink. I would take a thousand pictures and not bother to check if they were in focus. I would drink deep of the holiness of the moment, and let joy and grief coexist, mingling and melding until the tears that spilled over couldn’t be classified as one or the other.

And when it was over, I’d worry about everything else.

You can’t live ordinary life with that kind of intensity. Other children need their parents; there are deadlines to be met, commitments to be honored, paychecks to be earned and bills to be paid.

But as I sit and type, the three-month-old on my lap looks up at me with bright charcoal eyes and gurgles and coos at the woman who is the center of his universe, his first experience of God, of perfect, unconditional love. And his nose crinkles, and his mouth opens into a huge smile I never can quite capture. And the world has to stop for this moment, because this moment–this one–will never come again. There will be others, but this one is passing away forever and I want to hold the beauty of it, not just in my memory, but in my very skin and bones and heart.

And that is one more lesson taught by a child I never met. A child who lived only twenty-seven days.

Shared with

Just Write

Published in: on March 1, 2012 at 7:01 am  Comments (8)  
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In The Moment

When your voice rouses me from deep sleep, a hair shy of 4:30 in the morning, I can tell from the intensity of your anger that you’ve been trying to get my attention for several minutes. I went to bed worried about your cough and your lack of appetite, so your energy in protesting my absence is reassuring.

I stretch you out on the table and whisper soothing words while we do the necessary work, and we retreat to the chair in the corner. For all your outrage over being made to wait, you settle into an unhurried pattern of suck-swallow-breathe, your fingers playing with the satin ribbons on my pajamas, their smoothness the first toy you’ve shown interest in.

You fall asleep quickly, and no amount of persuading can convince you to eat on the second side. I pad softly back to your room and swaddle you, but I can tell from the outset that it’s a hopeless cause. You’re already ramping back up into red-faced outrage at the idea. We return to the nursing chair, but you fall asleep without even latching. You just want to be held.

I settle in bed with you against my chest. The ghostly roar of the interstate is muted by the walls. Your father breathes deep of sleep beside us; your siblings’ sighs and low groans punctuate the velvet darkness. But this five a.m. is for us, for you with me. The weight of your tiny body spreads outward and inward and fuses with me, filling up spaces in my soul I didn’t even know were there. It turns out there’s always more room for love.

I pull the blankets up around us in a U, conscious always of your need to breathe. I pat the warm curve of your back until your body stops resisting, and you sleep at last. I drift sleepily on the wave of Spirit that comes when I am living fully in the moment. My baby boy, how I love you.

For a visit home…overnight
the soul-filling silence of a winter afternoon in the country
and a glorious night of stargazing with my oldest
two brief shooting stars
deep darkness outside the windows
and a gentle sunrise that wraps the world around, uninterrupted by other houses

For the smell of my home church wafting out to greet me upon entering the familiar space
and the chance to worship with four generations of my family

For unnamed reconciliations

For morning snuggles with a preschooler in the crook of each arm

For conversations that illuminate yet again how blessed I am in my life
and the conversations that remind me that I can never stop wrestling with the hard questions

Counting to a thousand with Ann, for the first time in quite a while

On In Around button

Published in: on February 27, 2012 at 7:47 am  Comments (10)  
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Massaging the fine line between “keeping it real” and “perilously close to whining”

I feel bad. All personal writing is cyclical: it reflects the overall temperature of your life. There are good days, there are bad days, but a bad day amid a string of good ones projects a different feel than a good day amid a string of difficult ones.

Life with a newborn is indeed life with a tyrant–a sweet and cuddly tyrant, but a tyrant nonetheless, with whims and no schedule, virtually no predictability and thus, no way to do anything but react. And it is this that makes the six month mark such a relief. For some reason, the six month mark is when everyone hits their stride again–or, in Baby’s case, for the first time. During those first six months, there are lots of lovey moments, lots of joy and laughs and moments of amazement–but none of that changes the fact that those first six months are freaking hard, no matter how many times you do it.

We’re not quite halfway through those first six months. And I know that is the nature of my recent doldrums in attitude. I am trying to blog positively, or at least as positively as I can, but I also want to be real about things. The problem is, I can feel the drag from below in every post lately, until I feel like I’m massaging the fine line between being real and just plain old whining.

And although I know it will turn around in its own time, I hate the frustration and desperation I’ve been feeling lately. Because every time I post about unending sickness or lack of spirit-fill time, every time I feel the drag from below in my public reflections, I think of those who aren’t parents yet, who’ll get scared off parenthood by my posts. And I think of those whose hearts bleed with every complaint from those of us blessed with children–those who, like me not so long ago, long for the very chaos that’s kicking my butt.

Today being Valentine’s Day, I think I should at least acknowledge that the reason I do all this self-emptying is because I love them so much. I love Alex’s creativity and fierce love for his siblings, Julianna’s dusky giggle and ability to elevate the ordinary, Nicholas’s impossible cuteness and the way Michael looks at me like he can’t get enough. I love the fact that even though yesterday’s snow day was a really rough, unproductive and sedentary day, it began with all four of them snuggled in bed with me (“mommy, I want to nuggle,” Nicholas said), and it ended with sledding in the dark. And I know that someday it’s those things I will remember, not the difficult. It doesn’t make the current difficult any less so, but it helps keep things in perspective.

Julianna, age 5

 Michael, 10 weeks

Alex, 6 3/4

Nicholas, 2 11/12 and obsessed with his birthday cake already

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Shared at “Just Write”

Published in: on February 14, 2012 at 4:06 am  Comments (6)  
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When What You Need, You Can’t Have

English: Sierra Nevada

Image via Wikipedia

This weekend, I read the most beautiful description of a place, a description that picked up my heart and plopped it down in the Sierra Nevada, and my whole body ached to hop a plane and follow it there.

There hasn’t been much time for solitude and communing with God through creation in the last…I don’t know, year.  There was a time in my life when I took those opportunities weekly at least. But the proverbial stars hardly ever align anymore: child care, favorable weather, and no pressing errands or deadlines. I think the last time I went out was in September. Five months ago. My insides are crying out for that place of rest.

A few weeks ago at Mass the Gospel was from Mark. The point of the reading was that Jesus healed everyone they brought to him at Simon’s mother-in-law’s house. But that wasn’t the part that clung to my soul. This was:

Rising very early before dawn, he left
and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.
(Mark 1:35)

The mommy pundits are all, to the last one, in complete agreement: You must care for yourself and your own needs. But what do you do when the thing you need, the thing you’re sure God is placing upon your soul, is not possible? Jesus had the self-autonomy to recognize his need and attend to it. He could say, “Whoa! I’m worn out from healing people; my soul needs recharging.” He might have to get up early to avoid getting caught, but he could go.

I can’t.

As long as I have a nursing baby, solitude is not in the cards. But I’ve taken each of my babies out to creek bottoms and clifftops in turn. Last week, when the mercury topped 50 degrees, I had babysitting lined up for the other two, and I had set aside all other vital-feeling commitments in the interest of a trek as far away from the city as I could possibly go in two and a half hours. And that morning the sitter called in sick…and that afternoon, I was in the hospital with Michael.

So when I say it is not possible, I actually mean not possible…not “I’m not prioritizing it.” It’s not possible.

And here, in the bleak midwinter, as snow falls outside my window and all my children, liberated from school, crowd around shouting into my sensitive, still-blocked and painful ear, I realize that I stopped listening to that Scripture passage too soon.

Simon and those who were with him pursued him
and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.”
(Mark 1:36-37)

Jesus didn’t get away, either.

This is the point where another truism becomes clear: motherhood is a ministry. And ministry means you don’t always have the luxury of attending to your own needs. You certainly must do so when it is possible, but those of us who have been gifted with parenthood have inherited a ministry in which we must empty ourselves and give of ourselves, whether we choose to do it willingly or not. It reminds me of something shared on a list serve for pastoral musicians a few years ago, when I felt that the demands of full-time parish work were the most brutal I’d ever face:

Ministry is giving when you feel like keeping,
praying for others when you need to be prayed for,
feeding others when your own soul is hungry,
living truth before people even when you can’t see results,
hurting with other people even when your own hurt can’t be spoken,
keeping your word even when it is not convenient.
It is being faithful when your flesh wants to run away.

 

Published in: on February 13, 2012 at 9:32 am  Comments (16)  
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