Monday’s post was the closest I’ve ever had to a viral post. It was shared hundreds of times, and had an estimated audience reach of well over 20,000. Small potatoes, perhaps, but large enough for me. You know what I noticed in all the sharing and commenting that happened on various sites?
People were so very kind and respectful.
I understand that, for the most part, people who shared my post also shared my views. And the people with whom they shared the post, also held similar views. So it is grace that a post that could have received much negative feedback was, in fact, met with hundreds of positive, encouraging comments.
There were some who disagreed, but they did so respectfully. I watched as hard dialogues took place in comment threads, and I was so proud of this community of believers on the internet. These people who stood up and boldly shared a societally unpopular opinion, and who then respectfully dialogued with their friends and peers on their differences.
This morning, I read a post from TED regarding Monica Lewinsky’s recent talk, and the hateful, vitriolic comments that she faced on social media platforms because of it. The post made me sad, because it shows that there really is still so much anger and hate out there. Not every circle provides a safe haven for hard conversations, and that’s so unfortunate, because where is grace when there is hate?
How do we discuss hard things if we don’t have grace, forgiveness, understanding, and a willingness to accept that someone may not share our opinion?
If we can continue to walk down this path of tough dialogue with respectful discourse, what could possibly happen? If we could show grace to those with whom we so desperately disagree, what could we work out?
Sometimes grace is simply knowing when there’s no point in talking. I refuse to fight online with someone I’ve never met. If it’s obvious that my worldview is completely opposite of the one providing negative feedback, I will simply statement my disagreement, then walk away.
If it appears we can have reasonable dialogue, I’m up for it, but only if it’s acknowledged that we probably won’t change one another’s minds.
Grace can go a long way. Grace in the face of disagreement is a powerful tool. Thank you to my community for showing me that Grace is alive online. We can have these hard conversations, my friends. And we should.
On Sunday night, a woman that most of us never met, but who we felt like we knew, lost her brave battle with cancer. Over the past months, we’ve watched and we’ve cried, and we’ve wished it was different. It’s not supposed to be like this, is it?
Kara Tippets left this world with her family by her side. She faced her suffering head on, and she welcomed all of us into it. We watched, and we silently wondered how we would respond if her story were our own.
Cancer sucks. There isn’t a nicer way to say it. It is a nasty, unforgiving disease. Cancer doesn’t care if you’re a 68 year old grandfather of eight, thirty-eight year old mother of four, or a twenty-nine year old newly married with the future at your fingertips. Cancer is the great equalizer. It’s ugly, and the suffering that comes from this disease is cruel and devastating.
On Sunday morning, before I learned of Kara’s death, I sat in a room at church while my husband taught on the topic of dying well. Our pastor had just eloquently covered the topic, and Lee was asking the follow up questions. When he got to 2 Corinthians 5:8 everything in my flesh screamed out.
“…we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.”
It was Lee’s statement following the reading of that verse that gave me pause. “Of course, we prefer heaven,” he said, and I shook my head.
“Do I have to?” I asked. I’m known to play devil’s advocate on occasion when he teaches. I can ask the hard questions, because I’m the one sleeping with the teacher. It gives me a little license to push.
“What do you mean?” he asked me.
“Do I have to prefer heaven? I mean, do I have to? Because I’m not sure I do. Not right now.”
The room grew silent, and I wondered if maybe I’d said too much. Maybe I’m wrong. I should prefer heaven, right? I should prefer to be absent from this broken world where pretty young women die and leave loving husbands and young children. I should prefer to be with the ones I love who’ve gone before me. And I do look forward to that. The prospect of heaven brings comfort and excitement.
But right now? In this moment, do I prefer it?
I don’t know. Because what I’ve got is pretty good. Maybe it’s too good. Perhaps this life I live is too comfortable. Maybe the suffering isn’t great enough. Maybe my surroundings are too Western, so easy that they make the prospect of heaven seem like a punishment rather than a reward.
Truthfully, if I had my choice, I’d choose to be raptured. I’d choose to enter heaven’s gates with my family by my side. I’d happily choose heaven over earth if it didn’t mean I had to leave people behind.
But I don’t get to choose.
And neither did Kara Tippetts. A few weeks ago, a short documentary was released in which Kara offered a most poignant statement. “I feel like I’m a little girl at the party whose dad’s asking her to leave early, and I’m throwing a fit. I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to go.”
What Kara understood better than I can understand is that a preference for heaven, and a desire to remain in the flesh, are not mutually exclusive. We can feel both at the same time.
I believe with all of my heart that “to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Phillipians 1:21) What waits for us is the presence of God Himself – the full Glory of our Savior revealed. It’s better there. I know that it is.
But leaving means heartache for those who remain. Is God sufficient to care for, and minister to, the loved ones left behind? Yes. He is more than able to hold them in their grief, and walk them through their own suffering. But I don’t want my children to face that fire.
So do I prefer heaven? Yes. I prefer it someday. But to just out loud claim to prefer heaven? Right now? That’s my very real struggle.
I am not a curse word kind of girl. I know that there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, some would actually laud that as a good thing, and it is. I’ve told my kids that curse words are really just lazy words. We can always find a better word to describe how we’re feeling without dropping a four letter word.
Unless we can’t.
A few nights ago, Annika woke up at 12:30. I had been asleep for about an hour and a half when she woke, and my sleep was good. It was that heavy, REM-style sleep that makes you feel kind of magical.
I was tired down to my bones, so when she woke up in a full out scream, I leapt from bed, heart racing, and the first word out of my mouth was a lazy, four-letter word. So unlike me, but in the moment I could think of nothing else to say. And after my heart stopped racing, I fed her and got her back to bed only to hear Lee chuckling beside me.
“That was funny,” he laughed in the darkness.
I was too tired to elbow him in the chin.
Knee-jerk reactions tend to bring out the worst in all of us, don’t they? When we’re surprised or frightened or quickly angered, we find ourselves reacting in a way that may be atypical to our normal operating behavior. When I put Annika to bed that night, I planned for her to sleep all night. I didn’t plan on her scooting into the corner of her bed, bumping her head, and waking herself up in a wail.
What do we do when life doesn’t go quite as planned? How do we react? My vocabulary indiscretion is a lighthearted example, but all of us can point to moments in our daily lives that leave us weary, exasperated…perhaps a little loose-tongued?
It’s exhausting being mom. It’s exhausting hearing how exhausting it is being mom, as I right? But the good news is there is Hope. There’s hope for all of us, and that Hope is alive even at one in the morning when the baby won’t stop crying.
That Hope is alive when the children threaten to tear one another’s eyes out. (Well, Hope and the belief that someday they will grow up and maybe be friends again…or at least be tolerable to one another.)
That Hope is alive when the dinner burns, the car breaks down, and the schedules require one person to accomplish the tasks of six.
Even more – Hope is alive when life doesn’t go as you planned. And this…this is the true beauty of Hope.
It’s been two and a half months since we said our final goodbyes to my father-in-law. As the days stretch into weeks, we’ve begun to really gnaw on the permanence of death, and there have been moments when we wished with everything we had that the outcome of his cancer battle had been different.
But then I think of Herb standing at the foot of his Savior, and I remember that if he were asked to return, he wouldn’t want to, and really I wouldn’t ever ask him. Because in that trust I find so much Hope.
There are so many moments in life that make us feel hopeless. The swell of our days rushes over like a tide, and we’re left out of breath, frustrated, and utterly, completely spent.
But Hope.
If you’re bogged down by the mire of your days, feeling hopeless to dig out from under the rush of routine, of anger, of disappointment, of grief, of simply feeling overwhelmed, then I encourage you to pick up the book Hope for the Weary Mom.
There is so much grace and truth sprinkled throughout this book. It’s like a breath of fresh air in a smoky room. Each page is filled with nuggets of wisdom and peace that you can tuck into your heart, saving them for the moments when life gets to be a little too much.
(And maybe these truths will spill out of your mouths my mouth in times of frustration instead of those pesky four letter words.)
We are coming down off the mountain of Spring Break this week. It’s been a truly lovely week together as a family, and I’m grateful for every moment of it.
I’m also grateful for the return of our routine.
One of the things Lee and I are working on is living life with intentionality. We have a lot of goals for our family – things we’d like to do and experience with the kids while they’re all living under our roof.
Unfortunately, neither one of us are planners, so we tend to fly by the seat of our pants more often than not, and life is screaming forward full speed ahead. I’m starting to feel like we’re going to miss it.
We have eight summer vacations left before Sloan goes to college.
E-I-G-H-T
Just typing that makes my heart nearly burst with trepidation. I don’t want to miss a single opportunity to make memories with my kids, because the time is so short, and it goes by so quickly.
So we made a plan this year for Spring Break. Rather than sit around the house and kill brain cells watching the Disney Channel, we booked a few nights away in St. Augustine.
We ate too much, laughed a lot, broke up fights (apparently vacation is not a magic formula for keeping the smaller people from tearing each other’s eyes out), and simply enjoyed being together as a family.
And now it’s time to go back to school.
Vacation is fun, but so is routine. The return of routine is necessary to maintaining the peace and order inside the home. In the absence of routine, the natives become restless. And in the presence of all that togetherness, restlessness leads to mutiny.
I always have these fantastical ideas of what family together time should look like. And, indeed, most of the time our togetherness truly is fantastical. This past week, despite the arguments and the little sleep, we had a grand time. But was it fantastical all the time? Well, if you follow me on Facebook, you might think it was. But the truth?
All that togetherness was actually exhausting. It was a happy, poured out sort of exhaustion.
I returned home from St. Augustine feeling tired in a way that words can’t really describe. It was a down deep in my bones sort of tired; an I’m-gonna-need-you-people-to-give-me-some-space sort of fatigue.
Here’s the thing, though. I don’t take pictures of those crazy moments when taking a family vacation seemed like a bad idea. I’m not going to take and post a picture of my children having a knock down, drag out fight. I won’t post video of the multiple times Annika woke through the night because the room was cold, and the Pack ‘n Play uncomfortable.
I don’t talk openly about the rickety pull out couch I had to sleep on so I could be near the baby, while Lee had to try to sleep with a child who flails violently when she slumbers.
And I definitely didn’t photograph the moment a glass got broken in the hotel room because people were fighting…again.
Those things happened. The few days were exhausting.But the fun outweighed the challenges. There was more laughter than there were tears. We were happy to be in one another’s presence more than we weren’t.
That’s what it’s like being part of a family. You love one another fully in the fun times. You tolerate one another in the challenging times. And you document the smiles and the laughter, so at the end of the day when those children leave the house and head to college, they can look back on the photos and remember the good times above all else.
Unless they read this blog post, the kids probably won’t remember the broken glass, the tears of fatigue, or that moment when one of them climbed on top of the wall at the top of the Castillo de San Marcos, and I yelled in horror for him to get down prompting tears of embarrassment for yelling in front of all those people.
(Sorry again, kiddo. Mom panicked when she pictured you plummeting over the side to your death. Some day you’ll understand.)
With any luck, our kids will look back on Spring Break 2015 and they will remember only the laughter. It will have been the best, greatest, most fun time we’ve had as a family. Because that’s the story that the pictures tell.
The photos document the majority, and they shape the memories. Through them all the stress of family trips will fade away, leaving the good times highlighted.
I watched her through the glass, her tiny, muscular body swinging and pushing through yet another bar routine. It’s not often that I have the opportunity to sit and just watch these days. Life is busy and the demands are high, so watching is a luxury.
She’s nine now, and for six years Lee and I have been in constant conversation about her participation in this sport. Is this the right thing? Is it too much? Is it too hard on her body?
On more than one occasion, I’ve wondered if we should pull back. Maybe it would be better if she just did it for fun. Then I laugh.
My competitive daughter would not understand the meaning of doing something for fun. If you’re not there to win, what’s the point?
As I watched her yesterday, she made eye contact with me and I knew that something was bothering her. I could tell on her face so I mouthed, “What’s wrong?”
She pointed to her head. “I have a headache,” she said.
We looked at each other for a moment, and I was immediately ready to take her out and bring her home, because I understand headaches, and the thought of her practicing for three more hours with a pounding head made my mom-heart hurt.
As if reading my thoughts, she shook her head slightly. “I’m okay,” she said. Then she wiped her eyes, took a deep breath, and jumped back up on the bars.
I am constantly amazed at my daughter’s tenacity. She’s driven by an inner force that I admire, and as I watch, I’m learning. I’m becoming a student of my child. While I know and recognize her weaknesses, and I’m constantly working to help her overcome them, I also see her strengths.
I see her willingness to push through pain in order to become better. I see her dedication, and the way she works without complaining. I see her set goals, and then not let anything get in her way as she works to accomplish them.
My daughter is a dream chaser.She sees obstacles, and she doesn’t stop to wonder if it’s possible to reach her goal. She simply believes that she can. And if it’s hard, or maybe a little scary? Well, that’s all the more reason to try as far as she’s concerned.
Dream chasing is natural to kids. I don’t know what age the belief that dreams can come true begins to darken into the more realistic approach of adulthood, but I wonder at what my influence could possibly do to my kids’ willingness to chase their dreams. Am I giving them the confidence to keep chasing, or do I hold them back, forcing them to face reality?
Of course, reality must be faced at some point. I do NOT think that point is nine years old. If Tia wants to shoot for the Olympics right now, then she has my full support. If, at 16, she still thinks she can make it and it’s apparent that the Olympics aren’t in her future, I’ll work that out with her then.
I refuse to be a dream crusher, but I also don’t want to be a false encourager.
Because let’s face it – we’ve all seen American Idol, and we’ve wondered why someone didn’t have the guts to tell some of those kids that they couldn’t sing before they went on TV and made fools of themselves.
It’s a tricky business, navigating the waters of dream chasing with our kids. We want their success, and yet we also want to protect them from disappointment. And we must always make sure that we are not projecting our own dreams for our children onto them unfairly.
And so, as my daughter chases her dreams, and her brother’s each chase dreams of their own, I sit back and I watch. I admire their courage, and I applaud their hard work. Then I sit down and look at the goals I have written out for myself. The more realistic, grown up dreams of the present that are entirely possible with a little hard work and dedication.
Dream chasing, you see, isn’t just child’s play.
In light of this topic, I’m excited to announce that I’m joining the writing team over at God-Sized Dreams. It’s time to stop talking about what we want to do with our lives, and start doing something about it. So if you’re a dream chaser, or if you’re looking to rekindle the magic of an old dream you’d long since given up, please join me and the other ladies as we chase the dreams that are placed on our hearts.
His voice reached through the phone pressed to my ear and I took a breath to give the expected response, then stopped. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes, and I felt the wind sort of escape in a small sigh.
“I don’t know,” I said, voice trembling slightly.
A month ago, I signed my first contract with a literary agent. For over a decade, I have been trying, without success, to secure a literary agent. It is a very big step toward my dream of publication – this is what I’ve been waiting for, what I’ve wanted to do since I was a teenager.
I should be excited.
I am excited.
But I’ve lost momentum.
When I began blogging seven years ago, I had no idea where that journey would take me. Very early on I came across one of the Compassion Blogging trips, and as I read through those posts I felt a deep longing for my words to matter. As much as I loved chronicling the humorous moments of mom-life, I knew I wanted my site to become more.
I would walk through a year of grieving and heartache, and I couldn’t find my footing in the blogosphere anymore. I had accomplished my goal, and while writing has always been an outlet, at that point in time I found more solace in working on my novel, because blogging began to feel too painful. I was so very raw in those days, and I felt exposed online.
It’s been such a journey these last two and a half years. And now here I am, on the cusp of seeing another dream realized, and I find myself wildly overwhelmed.
If it weren’t for my husband, I think I would have given up a long time ago, because this process of doing what I love hasn’t been easy. Success, however you may measure it, hasn’t fallen in my lap. I’ve worked for it – I’ve worked really hard, and I have a stack of rejection letters to prove that what I do isn’t for the faint of heart.
Maybe I shouldn’t have kept the rejection letters. Maybe the folder full of “No” is a little bit of a downer, but it does make the “Yes” a little sweeter. And inside that folder full of “No” are little glimmers of hope. Editors who took the time to write me a personal note on their typical form letter response.
“Love the concept, and the writing is beautiful, but it’s not a good fit for us.”
“Keep working on this. You have the beginnings of something really special, but it’s not there yet.”
When I got those notes, I placed them on top of the stack of rejections to remind myself that I really can do this writing thing. Because the truth is, when you fight for something for so long, and you are constantly pushed backward, you start to question whether or not you’re cut out for this gig.
But now, there is someone else out there who believes in me. An agent who believes me capable of telling the stories I long to tell. I have a writing partner who, like my husband, has always been my cheerleader, and she’s right beside me in this new journey. She’s helping shape a message that the Lord placed on both of our hearts so many years ago.
I’m overwhelmed by it all. This is where the real work starts, and there’s a small part of me that is just scared. I’m afraid to get too excited. I’m intimidated by the need to gain blogging momentum again – to rebuild a platform in an already saturated market.
And that ever present nag that tells me I might not be good enough to pull this off likes to prick at my ears in the quiet moments when I’m most vulnerable.
Dream chasing is hard. It will always involve rejection. There are so many “No’s” that make up a “Yes.” And we’re all prone to look to our left and our right, and to see the people who are doing the things we want to do and assume that the success just fell in their laps. But 9 times out of 10, that’s not the case.
They worked hard for it, too.
If you’re chasing a dream right now, and you feel overwhelmed by it all, can I urge you not to give up? Don’t look at the “No’s” as a finality, but as the stacking point for the great big “Yes” waiting in the wings.
Maybe it won’t look like you thought it would, and maybe it will be more work than you assumed, but at the end of the day your dream matters, and the tenacity with which you’re willing to run after it will be the tipping point between excellence and mediocrity.
