(I need a little encouragement.)

I had been writing on my blog weekly and it felt great. But last week I got too busy with baking millions of Xmas cookies, and this week I have all the kids home and stressing me out, so I haven't written in two weeks. I don't want to not write-- it's important to me that I stick to what I started. But- ugh.

Part of me is feeling like a big baby, like, "no one is reading, no one notices, so it doesn't matter." But then I think, "well so what-- you're supposed to write because you have something to say; not because other people have something to hear." But then I do want it to be heard-- I mean, I guess if I'm honest, that's why I began a blog and not a diary. Anyway.

But I want to get back to it, to somehow make the time because it sure as hell isn't just landing in my lap. I feel like I need a swift kick in the ass or just some nice lovey encouragement. If you have either to offer, I'd really appreciate it.

Carpe Diem

It's been a rough week. I had one hellish day where I felt so trapped in my house and by my ever-fighting kids that I literally felt like I could not breathe. How I ever parented without the use of wine and a hot tub, I have no idea. I don't know what it was, but other people must've been feeling it too because several of my friends' Facebook statuses said things like, "Can't wait for this week to be over" or "Wants to fast-forward through this week."

It may have been that the Gators lost the SEC championship game. Ugh, that hurts to even write. There was heartache in the Gator Nation this week for sure, and I swear to gawd if anyone posts anything negative about my Timmy on here, your comment will be summarily deleted and your name added to my list of persona non grata. We're not kidding when we sing, "in all kinds of weather, we all stick together."

It also really hit me this week how young we are to already be losing our parents. I have three friends who are barely thirty, and one has lost both parents, another her dad, and just this week another lost her mom. I don't imagine there's ever an age at which it's easy to lose your parents, but thirty? My God, it's just not fair. Those parents who have passed will never see my friends' dreams achieved or their children born.

And yet we want to fast forward through our week. We want to skip our own lives. It scares me to think what I could miss if I keep closing my eyes to the present, as burdensome or painful as it might be, and jumping forward in my mind to the future. How many jumps do you get to take till there's no more future to jump into?

As I was in the middle of writing this I got a call from my doctor. I had had two skin tags removed a couple weeks ago. The one under my arm came back normal. The one on my back did not. She talked incoherently for about five or ten minutes about "dermal neurofibromas" and referrals for internal medicine. She mentioned that it wasn't cancer. What she didn't mention was that there is no cure.

I only had one, and it takes five for the doctors to be concerned, so I'm going to say a little prayer, breathe, and try to move on with my day because neurofibroma or not, there are babies to change and dishes to put away. I will wait for the call to set up my internal medicine appointment, and I will try against my nature to not freak out.

And in the meantime, I will live right here, in the present. I'm not going to mind-jump into the future because this is my life, right here, right now, even if it's scary as hell. Tim Tebow wore "John 16:33" on his eyeblack during this week's championship game. Jesus has just been telling his friends about what the future will hold when he goes to die, and he finishes by saying, "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."

And that does give me some peace. Jesus doesn't promise me that life will be comfortable and easy, but he promises that it will be victorious. He promises that I will get through the stifling days in the house and the frightening days in the doctor's office because he will be right there with me. And I don't want to skip through that, not for one second.

Pigeonhole

My parents hosted a fantastic party to celebrate my thirtieth birthday this past weekend. It was filled with extended family and friends of the family, including a lovely older lady whom I hadn't met before. Rosalie is a retired nun, so it probably reflects more on her than it does on me that she gave me a sweet little wooden angel statue, even though she generously suggested it was because I was an angel to my family. (I'm fairly sure they'd disagree, but we'll get to that later.) I also got a beautiful photo arrangement my cousin hand made that spells out, "faith," and something in it immediately sprung up tears in me when I saw it. I was a little surprised by my reaction because it was so sudden, and a little self-conscious because it was so deep, and it was right there for all the party guests to see.

Later, when we had returned home and were unloading our things, my husband, Bryan, glanced at my gifts and said, "You sure got pigeonholed, didn't you?" I'm not sure if two gifts out of five count as a pigeonhole, but his words stuck. I've been pigeonholed before.

A great-aunt at the party pulled me aside and whispered with a congratulatory tone that it was so wonderful to see me as I am now, this "giving mother of five," that it was in such contrast to the little girl I'd once been who used to throw tantrums. And it's true, I was a champion tantrum thrower. In fact, I was evidently such a brat that another great-aunt felt it bore announcing to my mother after I'd just sung at my grandfather's funeral, "Tamara has redeemed herself." I mean, I must've really been god-awful-- losing your beloved Grandpa and then singing your ten-year-old heart out to honor him is some serious freaking penance.

I realize that I may still be the slightest bit defensive about that. But I think part of it is that I see that little girl with new eyes now. My mother told me that her angered thought had been, "Tamara had nothing to redeem (you bitch)!" I see that there was plenty to be redeemed, and I see that I wasn't the one who was doing the redeeming. But what I also see is that that little girl was no worse than anyone else-- I was just living it out in the open for everyone to see.

If nothing else, I'm pretty transparent. I don't know why, I can't really help it. I don't keep my heart tucked away to myself-- it's right there on my sleeve, where all the bloody mess can ooze the whole way down to the cuff. So yes, you see a lot of the ugliness when you look at me, if you're paying any attention at all, and I guess that makes it easy to pigeonhole me as a brat or any number of other names. But what I loved about those gifts-- the angel and the photos-- was that they pointed to something else running out of my heart. If people look at me and see any goodness, any faith, any beauty, it's not because I've done a bang-up job of redeeming myself. Lord knows I'm still a mess. It's because little by little, God has been working in that exposed, messy little heart of mine, replacing the tainted blood with pure stock.

I've been pigeonholed as a brat and I've been pigeonholed as a Christian, and both are true of me. I still throw the grownup (and not so grownup) versions of temper tantrums-- it may just be that I've gotten better about concealing them. But when people think of me as being Christian or religious or whatever it is they think that causes them to gift me with angels and faith collages, I hope-- and I believe-- it's because God has been actually, noticeably working in me and changing me, giving me a life-saving blood transfusion.

And I think that's it-- I think that's what made me react so primordially to that photo arrangement. My heart recognized God and His work, and it pulsed with healed blood.

Greater Love

My new friend David suggested that I might work on loving myself a bit more-- "unconditionally" was his word. He has this lovely idea that God wants me to give myself the same kind of love that He gives me and that He flows through me to my children, a "just as you are"-type love. And this really got me thinking.

Now to be honest, the first thing it made me think was of the Divinyls' song "I Touch Myself." You know the lyrics-- "I love myself, I want you to love me." And of course then I had the damn song stuck in my head all afternoon. But it also made me think of how maybe I do think of loving myself as something secretive, something that I'm probably not really supposed to do. And I started to have this icky little feeling, one that's usually better just shoved down, that whispered to me in a little serpent voice, "Maybe that's because you don't deserve to be loved."

But I've hung around Jesus long enough to know that that little voice was full of shit. Jesus once told his friends, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." And so I had to tell that little voice where it could go, because if the God of the universe thinks I'm worth dying for-- if He thinks I deserve that kind of love-- then that's about all the evidence I need.

As David pointed out, I am aware of myself. And this typically leads me in one of two equally damaging directions: either toward thinking too little of myself or thinking too highly of myself (but either way, thinking too much of myself). And when I catch myself going down either road, I have to pivot and focus on God instead because when I manage to remember to do that, I shrink in comparison.

And I can just see sweet David sitting there, reading this now and shaking his head, thinking, "See what I mean? You aren't loving yourself unconditionally!" And I don't want to put words in his mouth, but what I think he may mean-- what I think most people mean when they talk about loving yourself unconditionally-- is not finding fault with yourself.

But here's the thing: I know myself too well to not find fault. And really, I don't think it would be loving to ignore it. I love my kids more than the very breath of life, but when they start running around acting like assholes, I call them on it. And it's not because I don't love them; it's because I so desperately do. It's like that old saying, "God loves you the way you are, but He loves you too much to leave you that way."

I very much believe you can love the sinner without loving the sin. And so if the suggestion is to love all the dark and ugly things about myself, then I will politely decline. Because I love myself too much for that-- I want to get well, not to coddle the illness.

I like the idea that loving ourselves unconditionally means giving ourselves the same kind of love that God gives to us. But when I think back to what Jesus said about love being a laying down of life, I realize just how hard this proposition will be. Yes, God's love is free, unearned, and unshakeable. But it also comes with penalty of death. Jesus didn't just get to float around earth, gently bopping people on the head with love like fairy dust sprinkling from His magic wand. To give us His love, He had to die a gruesome, excruciating death, and His soul, which had been woven together with His Father's since eternity past, was rent, searing, apart.

So I realize that if I'm going to love myself as God loves me, I'm going to have to die a little each day. I'm going to have to lay down my self-centeredness, my temper, my ugly thoughts. And I know I will never get there, not in this life, and that's okay. It's enough that I will be working on it, giving myself this greater love, because one look at the cross tells me I've already got it.

Mommy in the Mirror

People will tell you all sorts of things that are hard about having kids, and they're probably all true. I can tell you from firsthand experience that they weren't kidding when they said being a parent is the hardest job in the world (granted, I haven't tried coal mining or astrophysics, but I stand by my point). But here's one thing that they don't talk about a lot, one that really gets me: kids are such good little mirrors. Yes, grace will show up from time to time and let me see that my kids have somehow caught a bit of compassion, or generosity, or some talent that I might also be able to claim. But almost daily, my beloved little sinners show me just what a monumental screw-up their mommy is.

I go to put away pajamas in my 7-year-old Natalie's drawer, and the thing is just utter chaos. Nevermind that I will have just taken the time two days ago to carefully fold each item and place it with like items in neat little stacks-- it is now an inside-out, crumpled jumble of pajamas and whatever non-like items that have made their way in. I will curse the disorderly child under my breath, or if she's around, I will yell dramatically about what a shitty job she's done of keeping together my perfect drawer. But then I go to my own pajama drawer. And wouldn't you know, it barely shuts because on top of neat little stacks of like items is a jumbled mess of inside-out pajamas. And Bad Mommy sees that Natalie is a tiny, slovenly version of herself. I hate that I have this crazy messiness gene, which clearly I have passed on, because it's not just a pajama drawer. It's life. I try to organize and stack, to arrange and make neat, but the truth is that my life is messy because my heart is messy, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Natalie's will be too.

Now, my 5-year-old Mia-- her drawers are neat, her p.j.'s are folded; I have to hand it to her, the child is organized. But I catch her being mean, really just ugly-mean, not caring at all whether her words tear down and her actions lash out, going for the kill. I'll try to talk to her about kindness and loving her neighbor, but she's far more interested in her own agenda and self-righteousness. And I look at her and marvel that such a sweet child can turn so rotten so quickly. But I have this idea that there are no bad kids, only bad parents. And when I'm in the middle of a fight with the man I've promised to love and honor for my whole life, when I'm screaming at him that he's such an asshole, I see it. I see Bad Mommy wrapped up in herself and stuck on her own point of view without a care for her opponent. I hate that I have this ability to wound and that I use it so well on the ones I love most, and I hate that my daughter has learned hate from me.

Then there's my 10-year-old Luke. This boy seriously, seriously loves his online wizard game. He will use all his spending money to buy "crowns" to advance his characters, and if we didn't impose strict time limits, I have no doubt he'd stay on the computer all day and night, neglecting homework, friends, and food. I'll try to talk to him while he's playing, and he won't hear me the first four or five times. When I finally break through the computer screen eye-lock, I will invariably be met with an extremely put-out growl. He is quite happily obsessed and I truly don't think he'd miss an outside life if we'd let him stay in his computer world. And of course, this horrifies me because it's one thing to have a computer geek for a son, but it's another thing entirely to have an addict. But when he's on there and his time is almost up and I start reminding him to hurry up and get to a saving spot, Bad Mommy starts to get frantic inside my head, rivaling the most desperate coke addict, screaming, "Come on! You need to starve your addiction so I can feed mine!" Because I need my addictions too. I need them to make me feel happy, comfortable, or important. And I will all but knock my child off the desk chair to feed them.

And there are plenty more. I could make a twenty-three-page list of all the ways I have managed to weave my ugliness into my beautiful children, but I don't know that I could bear it. Because as painful as it is to see my own sin, it is all the more painful to see it in them. But that grace that I mentioned, the one that sometimes lets me see some goodness that has rubbed off, it also lets me see something beautiful amidst the ugly reflection-- it lets me see God.

A friend once said through tears that she liked to watch her children sleep and think that God looked on her with the same tender love she felt for them. And I do think that is one of the greatest blessings of being a parent-- we get the tiniest clue about how God feels about us.

When Luke was about two or three I took him to the mall playground. He had climbed up onto the head of a foam alligator, about three feet off the ground. He was playing sweetly, and then this kid started to sort of mess with him a little. I watched carefully from the bench several feet away, to see what Luke would do. He kept on trying to play, but he was obviously bothered by this other kid and unsure how to handle him. I normally like kids a lot, but this one was an honest-to-goodness little shit. He climbed up the alligator's back, and I saw the shove coming-- he was about to knock my little boy off. I bolted from the bench and hurdled a foam turtle, yelling, "Do not touch my son!" I got to Luke just in time.

And I feel like God does this with me all the time. He lets all my sin poke at me and make me uncomfortable and He watches to see what I'll do. I try to ignore it, or I try to deal with it or make it go away, but I'm never very successful. And when it's about to knock me on my ass, when I just don't feel like there's any way I'll be able to go on or overcome, God dashes over just in time. He catches me with hope and with love.

So when I see my kids mirroring my sin, yes, I can try to change myself and I can try to help them change, but I think the biggest thing, the best thing I can do for us is to just point away from the mirror and over to the bench.

Making Room

So, I turned 30 yesterday. It really wasn't terribly eventful, but it did lead me to a few resolutions:

1.) I will quit pulling out my gray hairs. It will be better to face my 30s with some sparkle in my hair than no hair at all.

2.) I will not hide my cooky faith from my unbelieving friends, and neither will I hide my screwy life from my believing friends. They're equal parts of who I am-- take it or leave it.

3.) I will write. I spent my 20s giving birth to babies; now I have something else to give birth to. I won't write novels, and I probably won't even get published. But by God, I will write.

I spend most of my day carting my three big kids around, refereeing their fights, and trying to spend a few happy minutes with them when I can steal them; feeding, changing, chasing, and playing with my twin babies, then repeating the pattern throughout the day until they're wiped out, long after I am; and when I can manage, I clean up our new, big, gorgeous house that I have no idea how we've been so blessed to land, and I throw together a dinner for the bunch of us; then my husband and I plop down in front of the TV to relax, and on a good night, we get to talk a little. And I love this madness, this mundaneness, because it's my life.

But ever since I was a little girl, I have needed to write. We would have writing time in first grade, and I would turn out a story that my teacher loved, so she'd send me with it to the principal to share it with him. I'd come back from my visit and report to my teacher that the principal had requested another story (and this may have been true the first time). So back to the writing center I'd go, churning out another great work of first-grade fiction. Back to the principal, and then back to the teacher, again and again, telling each that the other had requested more writing. I don't know how long I got away with it, but did it ever get me high. I was getting to tell my stories and share them.

I try not to bullshit people too much anymore because I discovered that when I did, I often forgot what was the truth and what was the lie, and that's a pretty confusing way to go about life. (Plus I think God really disapproves when I lie, and after all He's done for me, I really hate to disappoint Him when I can help it.) But there is still that little girl inside me, the one who needs to tell her stories and share them. Virgina Woolf said in A Room of One's Own that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." She needs her space, even if it's not enclosed by four walls. So now that I'm all grown up and 30, have my family made if not fully raised, I'm going to make a little room for myself.