Thanks, Mom.

Stephen celebrated a birthday last weekend. It did not go unheralded in our house, but it did get delayed online. I am determined to guard my time from internet distractions. Even on birthdays--especially on birthdays. 

There was Pioneer Woman's French Toast Casserole in bed. And there was soccer with his buddies. There were cheesy tater tots for lunch. His biggest brother took him to dinner and a movie at the Alamo. All was good. And then, of course, there was the Super Bowl. This is our Super Baby, the boy who always celebrates around the Super Bowl. Always will. And it's just so perfect for him.

It wasn't a perfect year. Fourteen never is. Fourteen is hard work for my boys. Stephen is my fourth boy so I didn't freak out very much the way I did with the first three. I just held on tight and prayed that when the storm passed we'd both be better for having lived through it. And it did. And we are.

Stephen's a great kid. He's the most studious of the bunch of them, eager to learn and disciplined enough to thrive in a relaxed environment. He's ever the philosopher, a great lover of deep conversations about literature and theology. Yet, he still insists we call him Superman, so there's little doubt that, despite his love of logic, he's got quite the imagination. 

There is something else about Stephen: he notices. And he is grateful. No matter the storm of the day, no matter how many times we butt heads, Stephen is the child who, without fail, will turn to me as we pull up in the driveway after driving to and from practice and say, "Thank you, Mom."

Every. Single. Time.

And I am so, so grateful that he is grateful, that he notices, that he knows that this soccer mom gig is not for the faint of heart, that he appreciates the sacrifice. 

I've often wondered if his godfather whispered to him one day that "thank you"was a balm to a soccer mom's heart. Or maybe the idea was prompted by the Holy Spirit. I don't know. I just know that this boy, throughout all the tumult that was early adolescence, was always deep-down grateful. And he made it a point to say so. Some days, those words were bright spots of hope on an otherwise stormy journey. 

Every four years, my Super Bowl baby sees his birthday as a segue to two glorious weeks of Olympic fun in this house. In a family of athletes, where dad goes to work every day at ESPN and  people grow up to be sports media big shots, the Olympics are a Big Deal. Not a World Cup status big deal, but a big deal nonetheless. Nick will get all up in the stats and Stephen will make a case for staying up late. The girls will all want to be figure skaters and it will be a grand celebration.

 I'll watch the moms in the stands.

I'll have a pretty good sense of the time and energy and emotion and money invested in those few moments of competition. And I will hope that at the end of their long days, all along the way, they had a kid like Stephen, who never, ever forgot to say, "Thanks, Mom."

Here's a little Olympic Mom Mush to get the party started. 

C. S. Lewis and Pajama Pants

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Good morning! I've missed this space:-). I've been thinking about it a lot, but the actual keyboard time hasn't presented itself very much. The days have been full; we're working hard as a team here in my house to right the ship and get back on course after a season of considerable turbulence. I doubt our days will ever be smooth sailing, but I'm not feeling quite so seasick this week as last.

Enough with the seafaring analogy.

Sewing is slow-going. I finished Sarah's pajama pants. I made her a Size 5, which is clearly too big. I'm trying to decide whether I want to take off the waistband and cut off an inch or so and then re-attach it. I'm definitely going to re-do the cuff and cuff it up the entire width of the contrast fabric. I don't want the pants to drag. I'm toying with the idea of making the shirt in a 4. If she were a big sister, I'd make the 4 and know I could hand them down when she outgrew them. But, she's not and I'd kind of like to see her wear them forever...

I'm on a C. S. Lewis binge these days. Actually, I've been on a C. S. Lewis binge for quite some time. I bought the C. S. Lewis Bible when we renovated the house in late 2012. It matched the living room paint and looked so pretty perched there. I did read it, however; it wasn't just for show. I kept thinking of my cousin Ellie's reference to pretty Bibles perched in family living rooms of our childhood and didn't want that. However, I didn't write in it. It's out there in open space and I encourage the kids to use it whenever they want, so I didn't really want my notes and highlighting in it. At the beginning of the year, I bought another so I'd have one to highlight. I'm using these pencils to highlight and I do kind of love them. 

Mary Beth, Michael, and I have all reading through A Grief Observed. Mary Beth and I come together occasionally to think on it together. Grief is a strange thing and I've found we are approaching it very gently with one another. At the most recent funeral (yes, our funeral-going has extended into the new year), the priest quoted from Lewis' book. I think Mary Beth was surprised to hear that; Lewis wasn't Catholic after all. This observation has led to some good conversations about truth and about the man-made divisions in communities of faith. It's also led me to pull C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church from my shelves and read it again with my current crop of teenagers.

I want to raise these children to know and love and understand the gift of the Church. I also want them to grow to be the kind of genuine Christians who meet people of all denominations in the place where Jesus is and to both share their own heart stories of His goodness and hear the stories others bring. Pearce's book is an excellent one for understanding how pride and prejudice of the denominational divide can affect the sense and sensibility of even the most brilliant and holy thinkers.

Homeschoolers have a reputation for hunkering down, for raising children in a bunker and not exposing them to either the secular world or to other religions, even other Christian religions. I think this is a mistake, especially in the high school years. Instead of avoiding anything that contradicts or challenges a family's belief system, it's important to come alongside them as they discover those things. They will discover them! If we leave that discovery to a time when they are supposedly more mature (and so, away from home), we might be surprised to learn that they have neither the wisdom nor the tools to navigate the confusion. It's far better, I think, to explore together and open a dialogue that will hopefully continue as they grow.

I'm also reading Lewis' The Problem of Pain with a friend. It's good to have a grown-up theological discussion right now. I'm in a place where I really want to dig deep and think some things through. And not just theological things. As I've pulled away from social media, I'm reading longer pieces--whole books, long articles, the slow, thoughtful pursuit of Scripture. I'm spending a lot of time with my Bible open and I'm journaling pages and pages on paper. I'm kind of obsessed with paper and pens these days. I think after years of tapping at keyboards, I've missed the feel of paper and the sense of order and satsifaction that comes with seeing my thoughts in front of me in my own handwriting. To be sure, those are the scribblings of pondering in my heart. I write them knowing that they are mine alone. Perhaps it's the assurance that I will protect them from exposure that has opened the floodgates. Or maybe it's just I really, really like using these pens;-).

What have you been sewing lately? Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo and a brief description of what you're up to? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much. Tell me about it in the comments or leave a link to your blog. I'll be happy to come by and visit!

You can get your own needle & thREAD button here in your choice of several happy colors.

This Moment

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And off they go! But your job isn't finished, Mom:-)

The sun sinks into the mountains behind us as we drive away.Goodbyes are said. The van heads home a whole lot lighter. One seat is empty where just a few hours ago it was full. Clearly, we are well entrenched in this new season of life—the season of goodbyes. We first sent a child to college six years ago. He returned home a graduate and then lived with us a couple of years while he worked to save money. We said goodbye unexpectedly three years ago when a child left at fifteen to take up residency in Florida with the U.S. National Team. We had four days to prepare for that leavetaking. He, too, returned.

For awhile, all nine children lived under one roof.

 

Late last December, the eldest left home again. Hard-earned money invested in a home of his own, he took a wife and left our home to create a family of his own. Two weeks later, his brother left for college. Yesterday, another brother followed. “The big boys,” as they’ve been called collectively since the youngest was two, have all gone. It’s eerily quiet in my house this morning, though six children remain.

I think it a happy liturgical blessing that the Church prepares for the feasts of St. Monica and St. Augustine in the last weeks of summer. Just as we send our children out into the world—whether to kindergarten or college—we have the reassurance that comes with praying novenas for the intercession of a mother-son pair whose faith is breathtaking.

St. Monica is the mother of St. Augustine. Her story is so worth the time of every mother. The brief version is that Monica was the wife of a pagan, who had a violent temper and a problem with alcohol. His mother was a difficult, irritable woman, who lived with the couple. Monica bore them patiently and with kindness. She prayed for their conversions and ultimately, they both died Christians.

Monica was also the mother of least three children who survived infancy. Augustine, her eldest, was a bit of a handful. He was a wild child who sorely tested her limits with immoral living and heretical philosophies. Monica stayed close to him and prayed mightily for his conversion. In the end, St. Augustine, under the direction of St. Ambrose, was baptized and grew into his vocation as one the greatest saints ever and a Doctor of the Church.

As I’ve witnessed the grief of mothers as they send their children off to school, I’ve noticed several things. The first is that every woman comes to this time a little differently. For some women, the grief is wide and deep and raw. I’ve seen that this is not the case for everyone. Unfortunately, a woman who aches cannot assume she will be supported and consoled. There is the real possibility that someone will scoff. This is unfortunate, because mothers do need community. The experience of launching a child into the world is not unlike the experience of childbirth. Birthing became a much happier, more humane experience when women began to share collective experiences and to advocate for measures that would bring comfort and support. So, too, we need to empathize with one another in the transition and the sending forth of our children from homes.

 

I’ve listened intently to other women this time around. Eyes wide open and ears alert, I’ve noticed a trend. Mothers worry that they haven’t done enough. As her daughter leaves for college, you give a mom a hug and assure her that she’s done a good job and all will be well and she returns your well-intentioned words of encouragement with wild-eyed panic. She worries. She worries about all the conversations they never got around to having. She worries about all the lessons in faith she never taught. She worries about all the moments of instruction and guidance and reassurance that slipped through her fingers. Was it enough? Did she do enough? Now that her job is over, will everything be ok? Sometimes, the grief upon leaving is commensurate with a mother’s fear that she has somehow failed to adequately prepare her child for the day of departure.

We are certain—because we know our child so well and we love her so fiercely—that it is not enough. We are certain that we’ve forgotten something. There’s more to do, more to say, more to love. And there is.

Here’s a hint, mom. It’s not over.

We don’t stop mothering when they leave home. God’s not finished and neither are you. St. Monica prayed for her son for seventeen years after she kicked him out of her house. She stuck close. He left Tagaste for Rome and she followed him there. She stay tuned into him, engaged in his life, and was prayerfully incessant. She wasn’t a nagging mother (or nagging wife, for that matter). Instead, she was a faith-filled servant of God who never stopped loving and was relentless in her firm resolve to live the Gospel. She was a teacher, a role model, and an agent of change in the conversion of people she loved well past their childhoods.

It’s not over.

It’s not too late. You aren’t finished mothering. Indeed, in many ways, it’s just begun. One of the saddest stories I’ve ever known is the story told by a grown woman whose parents were “finished” when they left her at college. They considered their “jobs” done. It’s not a job. It’s a vocation. Parenting is for a lifetime. In this age of entitlement, one thing is certain. If there is anything—anything—to which a grown child is entitled, it is the ongoing prayers of his parents and the sweet assurance that they will forever hold him tightly in their hearts. Whatever lies ahead, no matter where he goes and what he does, no matter the challenges, we will dedicate ourselves with confidence to the gentle kindness and firmness of conviction that St. Monica brought to mothering adult children.

Healthy Ways to Give and Get Love

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I've resolved to finish both the book studies begun here. I noticed that both of them petered out in the fall, one last year and one the year before. I figure if I start now, I can finish them both before whatever happens in the fall that makes me not able to finish things.

We were on Habit # 7 of The 10 Habits of Healthy Mothers.

Meg Meeker writes:

"We start to dream about her future because we want more. Maybe we want more than we had, whatever that was or wasn't. We want her to be polite because we weren't. We want her to come home during her summers in college because we never wanted to. She'll have a perfect mom. Our daughter will be the lucky one. We'll give her everything we missed.

"Can't you see? Early in our son's life, we lay out our hopes and dreams, not based on who he is, but on who we are. While we say that we will let him be who he wants to be and that we will love him unconditionally, the reality is, none of us mothers can actually do that. When we go to give him our love, our own needs become kneaded into that love and pretty soon, love can feel messy. But it doesn't have to be."

Ah. That collision of hopes and dreams with the reality that pains mothers so much, particularly as their children move through their teens and early twenties. We have talked about that before and you had plenty to say. It's interesting to me that I think I read this chapter differently than I did two years ago, when I first began this study and first read this book. I think that's because I'm more practiced in collision care. Happens all the time: they don't act according to my perfectly scripted daydreams. It doesn't always go as I'd hoped. Actually, it frequently doesn't go as I'd hoped.

"We fear that if we admit that it's going any way other than what we'd hoped, we'll also have to admit that something is broken in our children, or that something is off in our mothering. Neither of these is a fun thing to accept and so when it comes to feeling humbled or hanging on to a slow burn, we opt for the latter. Being angry is safe. It is easier to swallow than admitting that something is cracked. And it protects us from further hurt."

So let's just get that admission  out of the way right now. Let's say it aloud to one another: My kids are broken and so am I. If we can tear down the illusions of perfection and even the expectations of perfection, we can be genuine support to one another. Think about it: how approachable is the perfect woman in the PTO? How eager are you to share a cup of coffee and a heart-to-heart with the lady who has it all together? Let's struggle together. One point that several people spoke to when we listened to the Pat Gohn podcast was the pain caused by competition in friendships. I think we compete with each other and I think we compete with the ideal version of ourselves and our children. Chances are, we learned to do that from our mothers, who had their own ideal versions of themselves and of us, carefully guarded and perpetuated. Depending on how unhealthy this was, those lessons in accepting nothing less than the ideal can be very well ingrained.

It's not too late. We can learn this lesson. Our survival depends on it. If we can give and get love in a healthy manner, we will age beautifully. If we cling to the old paradigm, we will become lonely, embittered shriveled-up old women. I mean that. Nothing will age a woman faster than trying to make her children into something God never inteneded them to be. I promise you that your vision--no matter how lovely--is not God's vision. His is better. It might be really messy getting there. Nothing will make you uglier and more miserable than tightening your controlling grip when love goes awry.

Dr. Meeker suggests four ways to give and get love in a healthy manner.

#1 Take Calculated Risks

This means mom goes first. We tell them first how we feel, we apologize first, and we express our needs aloud. It's a good thing to be vulnerable and to take risks with our love. It's not a good thing to lock our hearts up in a chamber of anger in the hopes we won't be hurt again. With this vocation, comes ample strength and grace to do what we need to do. "If you lay your heart on the table and the person doesn't respond, you handle that. In reality, you can handle far more disappointment than you think you can." What you can't handle--really, truly--is to walk away with your lips pursed and your fist clenched inside your pockets. What you can't handle is anger. It will kill you.

#2 Don't Take Loved Ones So Personally

I think this one is my biggest change since I first started this study. Every time one of my children rejected a component of my Perfect Picture, I took it personally. What was wrong with my ideal? Why deviate from that plan? As they grow, there is great joy in seeing who they are unfold, in seeing the Creator's fingerprints on them. It is somewhat startling, I think, when we begin to recognize that the road to becoming who they truly are is strewn not with rose petals but with all matter of debris. The idyllic path is actually not often trod. Most kids take one of the messier routes and frequently they don't want us along for the ride (or at least they think they don't). They tell us so rather bluntly. Sometimes, "they have temper tantrums directed towards us and try to pull us into their private tornadic whirl."  This can be quite startling, to say the least. Tornados suck mothers in. We believe the anger in the vortex. 

"We can't afford to do this. When we are hurt by loved ones, we must stand back and assess their words as if we were mothers of toddlers. No, they aren't toddlers, but this helps us be more objective about the problem. When a loved one hurts us...review the words as thogh they were driected at a friend, not us. By removing ourselves from the moment [even if the moment is a season long], we can objectify the words [or actions] and try to see if they are reasonable of not."

#3 Learn to Read Loved Ones and Let Them Read You

The best resources on reading a loved on and letting them read you are Gary Chapman's books. I cannot recommend them highly enough:

The 5 Love Languages

The 5 Love Languages of Children

The 5 Love Languages of Teenagers

"Many mothers show love to their kids by cooking their favorite meals, driving them everywhere, or buying them gifts. While our intentions are good, these gestures don't ensure kids feel loved. Certainly kids learn to appreciate the work we do for them as they mature, but in the meantime, it is important to find the small things we can do to let them know that they really are loved by us. While they are growing up in our homes, much of our interaction with our kids is negative because we are correcting them or disciplining them. So find out what makes each child feel loved. When you do this and express it, it will come back to you tenfold.

#4 Express Love Even When You don't Feel Like It

Just be a big girl, already. Quit whining and complaining. Don't stay stuck as an adolescent. Do the hard things. Do them well. And do them gratefully. 

"Let's not be foolish The best love relationships require rolling up our sleeves again and again and saying a lot of things we really would rather not. Love requires that we take a deep breath and ask loved ones to forgive us for acting like jerks. It requires saying "no" to our kids and then being willing to reinforce the "no" for hours afterward. It means telling daughters that they can't wear teeny tops and skirts to school even when they wail and cry that kids won't like them. And it demands that we have the "talk" with our sons and daughters over and over about sex too soon with too many partners because hurt always follows. We do these things because we love our kids, but nothing is easy about doing any of them. "

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And it's not just about the kids. One of the greatest predictors of happy mothers is happy marriages. That doesn't mean it's impossible to be a happy single mother with happy kids. It does mean that the path is smoother for women in happy marriages. And by golly, ladies, we have to work at making marriage happy.

"So when a spouse drives us crazy, we must draw on the same internal gift that we use with our kids. Instead of complaining, we need to focus on appreciating him." When we live this model of appreciating over complaining, counting blessings instead of itemizing annoyances, we create a climate of love. Children learn from watching us. Let them learn genuine love in action.

{{This post is the 11th in a series discussing The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity.}}

The rest of our discussions of  The 10 Habits of Happy Mothers: Reclaiming our Passion, Purpose, and Sanity can be found here. 

Part 1(discussing Habit 1)

Part 2 (still discussing Habit 1)

Part 3 (still more on Habit 1)

Part 4 (Habit 2: key friendships)

Part 5 (Habit 2: your thoughts on friendship_

Part 6 (Habit 3: Value and Practice Faith)

Part 7(Habit 4: Say No to Competition)

Part 8 (Habit 4: Say No to Competition)

Part 9 (Habit 5: Create a Healthier Relationship with Money)

Part 10 (Habit 6: Make Time for Solitude)