I learned early on in my motherhood journey that I am not good at working with my children around. I am easily distracted, have a difficult time stepping away long enough to concentrate, and feel the general, nagging feeling of guilt contract my heart when I have to shoo them away so I can work while they play quietly in other parts of the house.
So summer is a hard time for me to be effective in my profession of creativity.
There is still inspiration to be found, though. Especially now as my children are older and I get to soak in their ability to create something from nothing. I watch them play, write stories, paint with water colors, and read good books, and I remember what it’s like to be a kid and relish the gloriously long, unscheduled days of summer.
There is a certain measure of discipline that I’m required to place on my own summer days. Given the fact that I’ve told my kids they aren’t allowed to use electronics between the hours of 7:00 and 10:00 am, I kind of feel like I need to adhere to that same principle myself. So my writing will take place in the early hours of the morning, or after 10:00.
This morning, I sipped my coffee slowly and watched them learn. We drilled multiplication tables, discussed verbs and nouns, and read books. The kids swam while I cleaned up the house, and I relished in the blissful quiet of a lazy morning.
By the time 10:00 rolled around, we all felt refreshed and ready to tackle the day, and I felt inspired.
I’m inspired by my kids imaginations. I’m inspired by the down time. I’m inspired by the forced slow down, the reading and learning, the just being together.
Will it always be this idyllic? No. They will grow bored with the morning routine at some point, and we will have to sludge through the boredom. Some mornings we will be up and out early to enjoy Florida life (hello water parks and beaches and all the things that make Florida awesome!).
We will be traveling for a few weeks, and time will go by too quickly. Before we know it, summer will end and routine will crank life up a notch again. So while we have this time, I want to relish it – even the whiney moments of boredom.
There is inspiration to find in everything, in every moment of the day. I will get less done this summer, and I’m working to adjust my expectations accordingly, but I have this feeling that if I am willing go with the flow, to embrace the slow, and to soak in the quiet, then I could find that this becomes a summer loaded with inspiration.
What about you? How do you find time to create, and to soak in inspiration in the long summer days when the kids are around all day? How do you fill your time…and theirs?
Last week I wrote of Love, and of the beautiful, mysterious pain that accompanies such a surrender of emotion. When I typed those words, I formed them in the context of watching my child graduate kindergarten. They were framed in the knowledge that Love requires separation, and in my innocent state of mind, I could only see the separation of parent and child that comes through space and time.
Then we got the phone call no one wants to receive.
There was a mass. The biopsy reveals cancer. We wait and we pray, and we hope for the best – the miracle of healing. Today the confirmation brought unwelcome news.
Stage 4. Metastatic.
Suddenly the pain of Love grew wings and took flight. Lee’s dad – our patriarch, our hero, our mentor, and a steady spiritual guide – now faces a fight that, short of a miraculous touch from God Himself, will result in his passing from this life on earth and into the gates of heaven.
“…Now it may surprise you to learn that in His (God’s) efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks;some of His special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
There is no irony in our present circumstance. We cannot point to these days with a flippant laugh and label them a coincidence. For on the very day we got news that cancer had invaded one we loved, Lee was in process to make a transition at work.
His division was cut loose from the company. We’d known this for weeks, and while the news was met with some disappointment, suddenly it seemed that he had lost his job for such a time as this.
Severance gives him a cushion to absorb the blow of his father’s illness. We have the freedom to leave, he and I, for the weekend, and fly to Arkansas where we will fold into the arms of his parents and brothers and all face this new challenge in the race together.
What a privilege it is…
When we told our kids of their grandfather’s illness, I felt a tightness pinch my heart. My sweet little ones will now taste the sting of illness. They can no longer be sheltered from the fear of grieving and, given the statistics, they may face the searing pain of death far earlier than I would have wanted them to.
And yet I cannot escape the thought that this journey we are about to walk as a family is a privilege. One thought has rumbled across my heart all day as I’ve processed this pain of a Love torn.
What a privilege it is for my children to know the sting of illness and the reality of heaven at a tender age.
We’re gearing up for a road filled with hope and unknowns. We cry out for a miracle, with full belief that God, in His mighty power, is capable of banishing the cancer from Herb’s body with a simple touch of His Hand. We pray for this, that we may show our children the power of God, and proclaim Him to the world.
And yet…
We accept the reality that God may have a different path planned. One in which we must say goodbye far sooner than we ever hoped or imagined or desired. And if this is the path we must follow, we will show our children the power of God, and we will proclaim Him to the world.
Cancer is an ugly word. It sucks the marrow of joy right out of a soul. But we have been given the grace of time. We pray it will be longer than the statistics predict. We pray it will be sweeter than the treatment’s effects. We rejoice in our current state of jobless unknowns, for it gives us the sweet freedom of time to process.
What a privilege it is to walk this road of grief and hope, for in this trough I feel God so near. He is real, a balm to the sting.
My ten year old and I took a walk today. Hand in hand we made our way down the sidewalk, and his sweet innocence blessed me.
“I’m excited to see heaven now,” he said to me, a smile spread across his face. “I can just imagine it, and what I’m imagining is awesome.”
What a privilege it is to walk this pain. We covet your prayers in the days, weeks, and months to come. They will be hard, and they will be sweet. They will mirror the mystery of Love.
Join us in praying for a miracle – no matter what shape it may take.
We still have a week of school left, but already I’m gearing the kids up for summer expectations. More and more, Lee and I have felt pressed to teach our kids how to fill their time wisely. This is a difficult task as it requires us to fill our time wisely. That whole “leading by example” mentality that’s supposed to be so effective in parenting, you know?
As we head into the summer months, my goal is to have plenty of fun activities planned, with a fair amount of downtime built in. So, without further ado, I give you…
The Stuart Family Summertime Agenda of Awesome
I doubt this will drastically curb the desperate pleas for help entertaining themselves, but hopefully it will give them a reference to look to instead of tugging on me day in and day out with all their woes of boredom.
This sign hangs proudly on the laundry room door, right outside the kitchen. It is our agenda of all the awesomeness that’s about to go down this summer.
See how exciting I’m making it sound?! Think they’ll buy it?
So sprinkled in between visits to Adventure Island and the beach, my hope is that all of us will enjoy a little more downtime this summer. Time spent reading, relishing the silence, electronic free mornings and maybe…juuuuuuust maaaayyybeeeee, my children who love to hop out of bed before the sun even peeks over the horizon will sleep in just a teeny, tiny bit.
All I’m asking for is 7:00 WHICH SEEMS ENTIRELY REASONABLE TO ME!
I’m not holding my breath…feel free to send coffee and Peppermint Mocha Creamer my way.
So tell me – how do you keep your kids active, engaged, and free from the summertime boredom blues? Do share!
He proudly stood on the third riser, second from the end, and scanned the audience. Our eyes met and he grinned, his tiny mouth splitting his freckled face with pure joy and great pride. I pulled out the video camera, flicked open the screen, and as he waved proudly, I recorded the moment for posterity.
And to remind myself that these fleeting moments are worthy to be treasured.
The graduating kindergarten class regaled us with song, clapping and singing their way through the alphabet, the vowels, and the numbers. They proudly showed off all they learned in their first year of school, and I glanced around at the parents surrounding me. We wore matching expressions of pride, of joy, of deep love, and of the pain that comes with knowing a season has come to an end.
Between each song, his little fingers went to his mouth, wiggling furiously at a loose tooth – the first loose tooth. Soon it will fall out, followed by several more, and those tiny baby teeth will be replaced by the bigger teeth that will stay with him (hopefully!) the rest of his life.
Stages passing by as I try not to blink my eyes.
I lay in bed last night, long after the house grew silent, and I thought on this gloriously painful beautiful thing called parenthood. I remembered a few years ago talking to a neighbor whose dog passed away unexpectedly. She loved that dog dearly, and she sobbed as she discussed the final moments with her precious pooch.
A week later, she came home with a new dog – a puppy that looked exactly like his predecessor. I watched as she fawned over the new animal who had clearly become a balm to her wounded heart, and I shook my head in wonder.
“Why would she get another one?” I thought. “Why would she open herself up to that heartache again?”
Dogs get old fast and they die, and it’s sad. Why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we open ourselves up to heartache and grief?
As my mind drifted over that memory, I found myself weaving the narrative back to my children. Love is so mysterious and strange. We allow our hearts to be tangled and enmeshed, because the pure, deep joy that comes from love far outweighs the knowledge that love also leads to loss.
My neighbor’s dogs brought her deep joy. She loved them fiercely. She could have chosen, after the first dog died, to not get another. She certainly would have saved her heart from future grief.
She also would have denied herself the mystery of loving in the present.
We love because of the mysterious connection that comes with that love. When I married my husband, I chose to give him my heart, and I did so without fully understanding the ramifications. We’ve chosen to fight for our love, which means we choose, even in the tough times, not to tear away from one another.
But even if we fight to the very end, and we continue to walk this path as one flesh, someday we are guaranteed to be separated on this earth. We will face the heartache of loss.
We give birth to children, and we discover a love so deep and so profound that we cannot wrap our minds around it all, and yet we know that with each passing year, each milestone reached, we are walking toward the grief of separation. We will leave them in a college dorm. We will give their hands in marriage. We will say goodbye to the moment that is right now, and we’ll trade it in for a new normal.
A different kind of love – the kind that comes with separation and distance, and of a life filled with more silence than bustle, with more memories than present experiences.
The hope of any parent is that we won’t be separated by the death of a child, but for some that is a devastating grief that must be faced. And it hurts so badly because the love was so real.
So why do we love? Why do we set ourselves up for this known heartache?
My faith must dictate how I answer this question.
We love because we were created by the One who Loves. We love knowing that love brings both joy and heartache, because the One who created us, His most glorious of creations, faced the same joy and heartache. He faced the beauty and loss of Love first. He designed the mystery of it all. He faced the beauty, the separation, the pain, and the horror of death on our behalf.
But that’s not the end of the story, and this is why I keep opening myself to love. I know, and believe, that this life isn’t all that is promised. I know that the heartache and the grief of separation are necessary, but only for a time.
Last Sunday, our oldest conquered a fear. He stood up on a stage with his guitar in hand, and he sang into a microphone. His voice was pure, if a little shaky. He was obviously nervous as he never cracked a smile in the three minutes he stood in front, but he did it. He sang his first solo.
I couldn’t have been more proud if I tried.
After he finished singing his song (a song that he wrote himself), he received a lot of praise, and he deserved the praise. He did a great job! Of course, as any good parents would do, we captured the momentous occasion on video…from two different angles. Later that day, I posted a photo of my handsome boy on stage on Facebook, and I shared our joy in his bravery. Naturally, friends and family wanted to see video.
I asked Sloan if he would mind me sharing the video with a few people. He immediately agreed, and I went about downloading the video, but deep in my heart, I had a nagging feeling that this was not a video that needed to be shared with the online world. I tried to ignore the feeling, because the proud Mama in me wanted everyone to see my boy’s amazing accomplishment.
But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that this video needed to remain more private, shared only with grandparents and a couple of close friends who’ve known Sloan since he was a baby.
Our kids are growing up in the social media age. More than any other generation before them, these children have to navigate the constant pressure and need for attention. With reality shows, the Disney Channel, and the internet all pulling for their attention, today’s children are under a constant quest for fame.
They’re told that fame is right there within grasp. All they have to do is put themselves out there…all the time…and theycould be the next internet sensation.
I don’t want this for my children. I don’t want fame for them, because I don’t think we were designed for fame. Certainly children in their formative years do not need to be worried about garnering more attention for themselves.
It’s no secret that I enjoy the perks that social media has to offer. I love Facebook and blogs, Instagram and Twitter. I love the connection these tools offer with people around the world. I love the good that is coming from these social sharing sites.
But I was 30 years old before I ever had a Facebook account. I navigated my teenage and college years in relative obscurity, and thank heavens for it because I can only imagine the number of ridiculous images I could have posted of myself as a youth.
I don’t want my children to live their lives according to the number of “Likes” they get on a post. I don’t want them beholden to statistics, and I don’t want them to measure their gifts and talents by the amount of praise they receive online. Even I have to monitor my heart, and my reasons behind posting online. I’ve pulled back a lot in the last few years, mostly because I knew we were approaching the age when the kids would take notice.
I don’t want my boys to think that every major accomplishment can only be celebrated if they receive cyber high fives from a bunch of strangers and acquaintances.
I don’t want my daughter to post duck face selfies online every time she feels cute, then measure her physical appearance by the attention she did, or did not, receive.
So I chose not to post the video, for no other reason than I wanted Sloan to know that his accomplishment was momentous because he chose to offer a gift up to the Lord for His glory, not because his musical accomplishment would give him five minutes of internet fame.
Navigating the online world of social media is difficult enough as an adult. It will still be some time before my children are allowed to tiptoe into these waters. My job as a mother in the internet age is to prepare my children not only to face the world around them, but also the world behind the screen.
This is serious work, indeed.
How do you as parents handle the world of social media with your children? This question is aimed particularly at you parents who are a step ahead of me in this process. How are you helping your child navigate these waters of the online world? I’m open to tips and encouragement!
I’m writing at both Extraordinary Mommy and Mercy Found Ministries this week. I’d love to have you read along!
When my oldest was two years old, my husband and I planned a road trip to see family. I packed the car full of all measure of educational toys, books, crayons and paper, and other fun activities for the road. A friend had given me a portable DVD player, which I packed, but I scoffed at the idea of letting my child wile the hours away watching Elmo.
“I grew up reading and sitting quietly in a car!” I boldly proclaimed. “I didn’t need to be entertained by a mini-TV, and neither will my children!”
About five hours into our exciting family road trip, I was completely and totally exhausted. As our little angel kicked his legs and cried in frustration, my husband looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“You know,” he said. “You don’t have to be a matyr for motherhood. Technology isgood.“
I sighed, popped Elmo into the DVD player, and watched in amazement as my son grew mesmerized by the sights and sounds, then fell asleep for the remainder of the trip.
We’ve since added two more children to our brood, which means that road trips are a necessity if we want to see our family who all live sixteen hours away. I’ve even made the long trek home on my own with the kids in tow, and I’ve picked up a few tricks and tips along the way.
Two years ago, I sat at a table in a hotel in Tanzania with a small group of bloggers. It was our final night before departing to head home, back to our homes, our country, our lives that would all now feel a little too comfortable.
We were there on behalf of Compassion International, a team of writers meant to help raise awareness of the great work that Compassion does worldwide for children and families living in extreme poverty.
Our leader, Shaun Groves, told us the story of Everett Swanson, founder of Compassion Interntaional. Upon seeing the desperate orphan crisis in Korea during the Korean war, a missionary friend of Swanson’s asked him the simple, but poignant question – “Now that you know about it, what will you do?”
Compassion International is the living, thriving testimony of a man who could not go on as he had before.
Adoption is a unique ministry. You will see statistics floating around from time to time informing us of the fact that if every family inside the church were to adopt one child, there would, effectively, be no more orphan crisis around the world.
While it’s a nice, utopian idea, the fact is this is a useless argument. There will always be an orphan crisis, because we live in a broken world, comprised of broken people. While adoption is a beautiful ministry, it is one that is birthed out of brokenness.
Add to that the very real fact that not every family is called to adopt and raise a child in their home. This does not, however, excuse us from the responsibility to care for the fatherless.
