room for a soul–leaving space for our kids to fill up

(I wrote this mid-Christmas season, but never published it.  So here are these thoughts, for the record).
Christmas is coming, too fast.
We watched Charlie Brown Christmas and I could totally relate with Charlie.  It’s supposed to be such a happy time of year, but as a mom it’s hard for me to stop all the craziness and just slow down and enjoy the magic of it all.  I’m trying hard to, but find myself in kind of a bad mood a lot of the time. 
I am finding that we are all much happier when I let go and just let things happen, let the holidays unfold. Yes, do my work, make my way through the never ending to do list, but stop and just let things unfold.  Even unravel sometimes. 
Hazel taught me this lesson.  She started teaching it to me last year at Christmas by pushing hard against the plans I had made.  It irked me to no end.   I kept feeling so mad that this daughter of mine was getting in the way of me raising her how I always dreamed I’d raise a child!  I had so many great ideas, so many memories to create, so many concepts teach, so many things to experience together all stored up in a mothering file I started as a kid.   And darn this pre-pubescent girl who kept getting in my way, resisting my direction, derailing my plans, storming off.  It’s kind of been a war with her all year.  But slowly I’m seeing why she is fighting.  She has a lot of her own plans and they’re really remarkably good. She’s transitioning from being a small person who follows her mom around to having her own brain and heart and ideas and will (well, she’s kind of always had that).  
The point is, Hazel has fight inside of her and if I keep squelching it with my own ideas and plans one of two things could happen.  Her fight could go out.  Extinguished by my unrelenting desire to make things go according to my plans.  She could acquiesce so much that that drive inside to assert and create and become slowly wither way, buried deep beneath feelings of self doubt and insecurities.  But, lets be real here, anyone who knows Hazel knows that’s not going to happen.  She’s a fighter.  So, the more likely scenario is this, she’s gonna just keep fighting me.  And all that struggle is going to make it harder and harder for her to distinguish between what fights are worth fighting.  Everything will become a battle.  A way to assert who she is, to express her soul.
Isn’t adolescence all about figuring out who you are?  How can you do that when someone so close to you has filled every inch of the space around you?
So I’m trying to step back.  Trying to let her fill in more space in our lives.  Expand who she is and what she controls.  Boy is it hard.  And I’m really not getting it right most of the time, but I’m trying.
I did get it right decorating the Christmas tree this year.  Last year our family ornament hanging turned disastrous as I tried to do things according to my vision and Hazel resisted.   Hazel ended up storming away to her room and in a rage started a book called, “Faults of my Mom.”  Here is the first chapter:
Decorating Christmas tree:
The thing that makes me most mad is when my mom TRIES to make a happy peaceful setting in our house.  for example: we were decorating our Christmas tree and mom takes out ornaments one at a time, talking about each one as if it were really the most pretty, beautiful or interesting thing in the world.
example:
MOM: This ornament I bought at Market Basket because I felt like it
or:
MOM: This is another nylon reindeer we had on our tree when I was little. (weird!!)
PEACEFUL
     settings
in a HOME just
    COME.
you can't make
      them!
That is the thing I try to explain to my mom. I mean, thinking back, "organized moments" mom tried to make never worked.  Kids didn't want to take pictures, we argued, stuff like that. The only way to make Moments memorable is to not try so hard to make your self happy. Also CRUSH the plans that you might have made and trust them,  play along with you kids it will make the moments last any way.
Sighing off,
(I mean that)
Hazel
This year as we pulled out the ornament box and got ready to adorn that tree I decided to turn the whole process over to Hazel.  She did a fantastic job and I just got to sit back and watch as she merged both the order and sentimentality that she knew was important to me with the free flow sort of chaos that was important to her.  She even made a joke at the beginning by being sure to pick out the nylon reindeer and reminisce on it’s beauty and sentimental importance. 
She’s a good girl, that Hazel.  A deep, wise soul.  She just needs me to give her a little more space for her soul to expand.   

We travelled!!

Wow!  What a summer it has been.  We travelled!  We did it.  I still have to kind of pinch myself and look back at pictures to believe that we actually pulled that family adventure off.  There was a time when I was pretty convinced that we couldn’t make it happen.  But somehow we did, miracles and people and miles and good fares all fell into place and helped us make a dream come true.  This was just the adventure I think we all needed.  

We went to Europe as a family and we came home and no one died and we made all of our connections (just barely) and we saw the grandeur of cultures and places and new worlds.  Our eyes were opened, our brains have fired in new ways, we have felt alive and new again, we have woven other cultures and places into the fabric of who we are.  We feel smaller now in this big world full of majestic things but we also have a better sense for where we fit in it.   And we have adventure under our belts, which is something we kind of like as Shumways.

Sure it wasn’t all roses.  Man there were some crazy times.  Some downright not very fun times. (Don’t worry, I’ll share some of them just to keep it real).  We had some extremely frustrating times full of fighting and contention and stress and tears and hunger and exhaustion.  But memory is kind.  And most of the time it just took a few hours for memory to do her magic and make the bad stuff all fit into the great story of our adventure.  Other times it took a full day or two.  But I’m pretty sure all of us would agree that even though the little moments and days were sometimes a bit bleak, the whole of it glistens. 

These guys are really the most amazing little travelers.  They were so good on our crazy (four lay over journey to get to London).  Since I did a pretty good job of writing in my journal for the first part of the trip (when I had all my energy), I’m just going to post a bit of that so that I can better remember how it was as it was happening. 

We’re crossing the Atlantic.  Just me and the kids.  We’re on our third of four flights to get to London to start our big summer adventure.  I guess the adventure has already started.  Traveling alone with four kids used to terrify me, and I was a little nervous before the flight, but it was mostly about not making connections.  The kids have been awesome so far.  Seriously, total angels.  When Jeff dropped me off at the airport Hazel called all the kids around her to have a kids meeting.  I heard her laughing a little and the other three smiling and the snippets of the meeting that I could hear were Hazel saying something like “now, lets make sure to take care of mom.  Make sure we get her there safe, that she doesn’t loose any of us or anything.”  And boy have they done that so far.  Hazel has said to me quite a few times, “mom, let me take that, you just put your feet up.”  I have only had to carry my own little backpack through these first two connections.  Hazel and Charlie have worked out a tutor/tutee system where they trade off who is in charge of which little kid with each new flight.  They have been better than golden.

I’m expecting all of this perfection to blow up before too long.  We’re on an overnight flight and the kids haven’t eaten much all day, so they’re waiting to sleep until dinner has been served, which means they’ll only sleep a few hours before we have to get up and make a connection to our fourth flight.  I’m a little worried about that bit of the trip, but worrying won’t change  much.  I’m just going to pray that everyone can have an added measure of patience and energy, especially me.

It has been a huge hassle getting us all here.  I was packed up uncharacteristically early, with all that free floating anxiety kicking around me.  I think I’m getting more anxious in my old age.  Or maybe I just have a lot more kids to take adventuring with me.  I don’t remember getting so worried about connections and getting places before.  I guess the longer you live the more your brain is wired up in knots from all the mishaps you’ve experienced.  I’m trying to shut those out and go with my gut.  This is going to be a grand adventure.

Just booking the tickets for this trip in April made me feel more alive.  The winter was long and we haven’t had a big family adventure for a while, not really since England.  With no more babies on the horizon (that satiated my need for adventure for lots of years) I’ve been itching for something thrilling and different. 

When everyday life gets broken up by thrilling adventure and travel my brain starts firing in different ways and I really do feel like I’m waking up.  From a sleep I didn’t really realize I was in.

I am also really looking forward to being present with my kids.  Something about being away from the regular routine, the schedule, the housework etc throws me into the present. 

And boy the contrast between my brain once this journey started and while I was packing up/preparing is crazy stark.  I've found since the adventure started I’ve been able to focus on what my kids are feeling and saying and experiencing and asking.  I’ve spent the last week putting them off in order to get so many little logistics all packed up and squared away. 

Now its time to just enjoy.

 

We went from Boston to Montreal to Toronto to Ireland to England.  I know, crazy.  But the only way we could make this trip happen was if we stuck to an extremely tight budget.  And that crazy itinerary was the only way we could stick to it. 

Here we are in the Toronto Airport.  The kids didn’t let me dilly dally and take too many pictures.  They were all business getting their connections. 

The kids did sleep on the trans-Atlantic flight, but not very soundly.  It’s hard to get comfortable on those cramped up seats.  With the exception of Peter.  He sawed logs for nearly 5 hours.  Woke up and said, “Wow, that was quick!”  It was not short for me and my restless legs.

Emmeline and Peter each brought a little guy to take pictures of throughout the adventure.  It didn’t last past the first few days, but they sure did have fun posing them in funny places. 

I love how Em plays with little guys.  These little friends kept her busy for hours.  Here we are on one of our connections (in Ireland).  The kids were so excited to walk down stairs and out of an airplane.  It really does make you feel more like you’ve actually flown.  It was so fantastic to land in England finally.  England is where my heart lies.  I love that green land. 

And it was so good to see Amy and her little Elsa there waiting for us.  It was like coming home. 

We stopped at Boots in the airport for some much missed English sweets and then walked to the car, talking and feeling like we were floating through a jet lagged dream.  When we got to the car we did our little bag count (Charlie was in charge of counting the bags throughout our journey) and we were one bag short.  I guess all the excitement and release of stress in seeing Amy and making it to our destination took me off guard.  OF course it did!  I left Amy to pack all my kids in the car and sprinted back to where I had last seen the bag.  I wish I could describe how light I felt as I ran back through the terminal.  It was as if I had been carrying 500 pounds for miles and miles and suddenly dropped it all.  Even though I was a bit worried about the bag it felt GLORIOUS to be free of all those kids and bags.  This giddy joy welling up in me.  It was a pretty awesome few moments.  Especially since my bag was there waiting for me.  The drive to Amy’s was cloudy and blurry but so happy.  And the kids were delighted when we got there to jump on her trampoline and play with her girls and eat all the yummy English treats she had waiting for us which we’d missed so much.   It was such a great reunion.That evening we took a walk/bike ride to a beautiful manner house close to where she lives. She lives a pretty fairy tale life in her little village.  It is beautiful and so great to see where she has settled since we saw her last.Hazel of course gathered beauty and arranged it into something even more beautiful.  I love her eye.  Sadly I didn’t bring my good camera, and my phone was out of battery, so all I have to remember this crystally evening are these photos from Esther’s old phone.  The evening was 100 times more beautiful than these pictures depict.  I think we all have some pretty beautiful pictures in our minds and hearts.

The next day we woke up early to go and visit our old stomping grounds.We visited our most favorite little bakery that we used to stop by every time we took the tube into London.   

Some more from my journal:

Today Ames took us back to Woodford Green to see our old stomping grounds.  It made my heart all fluttery to see that place again.  I felt so thankful that God led us there, to that perfectly little British spot right on the tube line.  To that charming little house backing onto a cricket pitch.  We walked through our knighton woods and found our old climbing tree.  The kids remembered so much and were delighted by everything from the delicious doughnuts at the bakery where we used to stop on the way to London to the leaves and flowers they remembered on our walk down to the woods.  I loved seeing these memories cement in their minds as they walked the walk from 2012.

   Knighton Wood and this tree was our favorite place to frequent by our home there in Woodford Green.  I love how even the trunks of the trees are green in England. 

So many memories came flooding in as we walked on the paths that we had walked so often three years ago.  The kids could have climbed in that tree all day long.  I think we did climb I that tree all day long when we lived there.  It was like seeing an old friend. 

If Emmeline wasn’t totally falling apart we could have stayed in Woodford all day, but she wasn’t in the right place to do that (jet lag finally hit that girl while trying to climb our old tree in the Forrest).  So, we headed home to see the Schwartz girls and get my phone sorted out for our Europe needs.  Ames made me some delicious food and ordered pizza for the girls and then we went out to an EPIC playground near their house.  They know how to do playgrounds right here.  My kids are happiest at a British playground. 

I keep trying to stop and take in all this good.  The smells of the clothes washing in the English washer, the wet smell in the woods and the green trunks.  The slow and kind way people talk, the green fields we drive by.  Having my kids play with Amy’s kids.  Eating Amy’s food.  Talking and walking with my best friend.  It is all pretty magical to me when I stop to take a little picture in my soul.  I feel so thankful to be here.

We played in a super adventure park by Amy’s house that afternoon when the Schwartz girls got home from school.  They know how to do parks over there!  This is how Charlie feels about being in a park with so many girls for so long.  Actually, he mostly loved it, but didn’t want to take part in the group picture.  Hazel, on the other hand, was in heaven with all those good girl friends.  We walked down Amy’s foot paths and I reveled in the glory that is Amy’s life there in that charming little village.

More from the Journal:

I have been so excited to see Amy’s  new life so that I could know sort of what things are like for her day to day.  But now, having seeing it, it’s hard cause I’m totally COVETING every part of it.  She lives in such a beautiful little English village and rides her cool bike with a big huge bucket around beautiful bike paths to do all of her shopping and errands.  And she lives by so many beautiful walks and trails, it is really stunning.  I am so happy for her.  She seems happy, and I think her girls are four of my most favorite children in the world.  I want to move in next door.

Part two of the England part of our trip tomorrow. 

Power of Moms retreat - 2015

I’m not sure how I got to lucky, but I got to go out last weekend to attend and speak at the annual Power of Moms retreat in Park City.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous.   Utah looked so green compared with Boston!   

I love those retreats!  The power in that room full of 85 mothers is almost tangible.  I met so many amazing women, so deliberate in their mothering efforts.  All of them taking time away from their busy jobs as moms to step back and think about the job they’re doing.  I’m going away from it feeling full of ideas and inspiration. 

I’m on the plane home now and feel so inspired and excited about motherhood.  So ready to get back to my kids.  Certainly I’ll crash on re-entry but before I do I want to write some of the things that really struck me this time around, things I felt inspired to change in our home and in my mothering. 

Things are feeling a big broken in our family lately.  I was hoping to come away from the retreat armed with some ideas of how I could alter our family systems in order to help our kids behave better, respect more, clean more, obey more, fight less, work more, complain less etc etc etc.  But what I came away with instead was the desire to change things at the root.  Before swooping in and altering our systems or introducing new ones, new consequences, more rules, I need to take a good look at the foundation we have under us.  I feel pretty convinced that if our foundation isn’t built on love and enjoyment and positivity and praise anything we build on top of it will topple over.

I’ve been caught in a wave of negative mothering lately.  This weekend as I’ve been away I’ve realized that the way I see my children is muddy and mired.  Lately their weaknesses loom large in my mind, overshadowing so much that is good and strong and amazing about their little souls.  And since children really form their self image in the mirror of their parents perceptions, how I perceive them is critical to their wellbeing. 

How can I expect them to become their true selves if they can’t see themselves clearly.  Maybe my main job as a mother is to help my kids to see themselves clearly. 

So I’m going to work on altering my perception of them.  There is plenty of good stuff to see when that is my focus.  When I zoom out to see the bigger picture it’s easy to see them as beautiful, strong souls trying their best to figure out this world.  Pushing buttons, trying on behaviors, figuring out what pleases and what doesn’t, where the boundaries are.  That’s their job right now. These behaviors wont all spill into their adulthood.

Before changing any systems, clamping down on time outs, making a new and better list of family rules I want to make sure my kids know who they are.  I want to spend my energies right now figuring out how to create a more positive environment in my home.  A place where my kids can see themselves clearly because they stand firm on a foundation of love and acceptance. 

I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do this, but I think it starts by lots more affection and genuine praise and lots less criticizing.  This is much easier to do with some children than others.  But the ones who make it difficult are the ones who need it the most.

I’m determined to see the good.  To offer them genuine praise.  To cut out the criticism.  To sandwich corrections with complements.  To stop being (at least visibly) annoyed by their silly behavior. 

I’m also more determined than ever to cut out lots of things that are non-essential to my priorities as a mother.  I want more space in my life to enjoy the present.  When I have more space in my life I’m able to see everything a little clearer.  I have more patience, more energy to look past the frustrations of the present to the bigger picture.  At the retreat my mom spoke about cutting your job down to the essentials.  She encouraged us to make a list of the essential mothering tasks that we want to accomplish and then figure out ways to either delegate or delete those things that don’t light us up, that don’t help us towards mothering the way we’d like to.  I love that challenge.  Delegating and deleting are both hard for me!

Last I’m going to work on taking in the good in my life as a mother.  In my presentation I talked about enjoying the present.  How changing your perspective, zooming into details and zooming out to a bigger picture can help you enjoy the present more fully.  I talked about this great book I read called Hardwiring Happiness, which explains why our brains are like “Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good.”  How we can make all the good, beautiful stuff stick in our brains, changing the fabric of our brains to make us happier, calmer people.  Fascinating stuff.  I promise to write more about it sometime soon.  I’m loving teaching my children how to take in the good. 

I’m touching down.  Time to test all this out.  Even if re-entry is grueling (all the piled up laundry and kids who are a little mad that you left them) I’m all pumped up.  I feel like I have a clearer picture of what I want to accomplish, how I want to love.  

Thanks so much to my big sister Saren for creating Power of Moms.  A huge labor of love and dedication to supporting motherhood.  I love her.

Enjoy it!!!

I love being a mom.  I love my life.  I am happy.

But boy is it hard to enjoy the moment sometimes.  Life just sort of gets in the way.  Days are long.  Kids whine.  I’m tired.  There’s always too much to do.  It’s cold. We’re late. We’ve got to get to bed!

Sometimes I’ll go through a whole day so focused on moving us through everything only to find at the end of it all that I haven’t really seen the beauty of what’s happening.  This usually hits me when I see my kids in a picture I’ve posted on Instagram at the end of the day, or catch a glimpse of them sleeping when I come in to put away folded laundry.  When things are still and quite, stripped of the chaos of the moment, I see the wonder of the life I’m living.

I love this quote by Anna Quindlen:

“But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make…. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.”

Of course it’s impossible to grasp and enjoy every moment of a mothering day.   But I’ve been working hard lately on trying to find a few seconds each day to stop to treasure the doing.  To enjoy the moment.  Because it’s happening, and really won’t be happening like this forever.

As a photographer there are two ways to really capture beauty.  One is by zooming into it.  When seeing your subject up close, all the intricate details pop out and something simple transforms into something miraculous.  The second is by zooming out, way out and seeing your subject in the context of a bigger picture.

In my journey this year to figure out how to enjoy the present more I’ve tried to apply these two concepts to daily living.  When I find myself moving through a day harried and frazzled and devoid of joy I’ve been trying to either zoom in and see more acutely the details of my life or to zoom out and get above the chaos and grind to see what I’m doing in a larger context.  And when I exert the time and will power it takes to change my focal length I can see the joy in the moment.    

Zooming in can be as simple as stopping for three seconds to see a beautiful but overlooked detail in your life.  I stop to see the dark brown speck in Emmeline’s right eye as she tells me about the game she is playing upstairs with Peter, it is beautiful and in it I can see into her soul.  Or I pause for a split second to listen to Hazel as she talks all motherly to Peter, there is love deeply planted in that sibling relationship.  Or I gasp as I walk out of the store to a parking lot filled with spring air lighting up a pink sky, breathing in the joy of the world.  Stopping to recognize the intricate loveliness in the mundane moments helps me feel the thrill of the present.  Usually it only takes a second, but I can bask in the beauty of that moment for quite a lot longer. 

Zooming out might take a bit more time, but it is powerful.  We zoom out any time we take a step back from our lives to see it from a different angle.   We zoom out when we go away for a day or take a walk for 20 minutes or just shut ourselves in the bathroom for 30 seconds and breathe.  We zoom out when we walk outside of our house and look in. Suddenly we can’t hear the kids yelling, we can’t feel the crumbs under our feet, we can’t see the piles of laundry (or at least they don’t look so overwhelming).  Through the windows we just see a house with children running around inside, soft light flooding out of the kitchen full of people working to build a family.  We zoom out when we look at a picture someone snapped of us with a child at the beech on a stormy day, smiling, happy.  When we see the big picture of our lives the angsty emotions of the moment are drown out by the beauty of the whole. 

When we change our focal length by zooming in or out we turn down the volume of the chaos or discontent we might feel as move through life.  We see the whole of our lives.   And like a pointillism painting the dark bits combined with the light ones make a beautiful picture.  A glistening whole.  I’m stuck on that idea, that image.  The dark and the light together, the whole of it, experienced in the moment by changing our lens, that’s what makes life glisten.

So.  Speaking of zooming out, I get to come to a Power of Moms’ retreat in Utah in a few weeks!   I’ve been to quite a few of these retreats and they always give me a hefty dose of perspective.  They help me both zoom in and zoom out of my life.  They help me take a microscope to my mothering and think hard about where I want to be and where I am.  But also they get me get above my job as a mother to a higher ground where I can see the big picture and gain some clarity.  I love being in a room full of mothers all carving out space to think about their job as moms.  I always leave feeling inspired and ready to hit the ground running.

Not only do I get to attend the retreat but I also get to present about strategies for living in the moment.  My mom and I gave a speech together about this in March here in Boston and I get to present a big part of it at the retreat in May.

If you’re in Utah the first Saturday in May please consider coming, there is still space, but I know it’s filling up pretty fast.  Click here to find out more information.   I know it’s hard to get away for a whole day, but it is definitely worth the investment.  You’ll re-enter life the next day with a totally new perspective on yourself, on your kids, your husband.  I always go away from those things feeling more powerful, armed with the resources, ideas, motivation and love that I need to really enjoy my job as a mom.   

So please join us!  Saturday, May 2nd, Park City Utah.  Click here for the details.  

On kids getting in the way of your parenting.

We are in our last week of our Easter month celebration, and it has been amazing.  I’ve instagramed lots of Easter moments that might look awesome from the outside and I’ll probably blog some details that might look like we had it all together around here.  But I want to document that it’s also been much more of a rollercoaster than I had anticipated!  I had envisioned lots of spirit filled, sparkly devotionals before bed where the spirit would feel thick and sweet and we’d feel Christ more tangibly in our home.  I was hoping for some kind of Jesus magic to settle in around here and change all the pestering and bickering and button pushing to service and compliments and loving interactions.  Hmmmmm.  Things haven’t played out that perfectly.

Thankfully there have been a quite a few golden moments where we have felt that Jesus magic, where everything has snapped into place and time is slow and the air is crystally and the Savior feels near at hand.  A few times I have noticed my children talk about Jesus spontaneously and consider Him when they think about something new, or make a decision.  And I have certainly felt more bonded with the Savior in relearning so many things about who He was, what he taught and His mighty miraculous power.  But boy have there been lots of moments of chaos and fighting and resistance and refusals.  Lots of mom frustration and kid frustration.  Lots of pushing and resisting.  Lots of plans gone awry. 

Before becoming a mother I think I knew that things would be hard and that everything wouldn’t always go according to plan.  I imagined I’d be tired, that I’d lack vision and energy, that I’d have a hard time controlling my temper, that my kids would do cute little mischievous things, that I'd have to teach them to share and get a long.  But I didn’t realize how much my kids would get in the way of me parenting them!  Isn’t that some kind of oxymoron? I didn’t realize that I’d put in all this work and effort and time and prayer and planning on their behalf only to have them wreck it with resistance, a bad mood, too little blood sugar, a strong will to do something different, silliness, the list goes on and on. 

Sometimes I want to just say to my kids: “Trust me! Just go with it, it’s gonna be good.  Just follow the program! I HAD A VISION HERE PEOPLE!!  And that vision was so much more beautiful than this mess you’re making of it!” 

In those moments I find myself wanting a remote control.  To turn them off, or at least turn them down.  I want to move their arms and legs away from all the buttons they’re trying to push and into a nice folded position.  I want to turn on their ears and off their lips.  I want to rewire their little brains to see things from my perspective.  I want a button to mute, a joystick to move them into place and a pause button to keep them there until I get all collected and ready go.  And I want a rewind button, to go back and get it right.  And lots of times a fast forward button would be nice too (get sugar into their blood stream at fast forward speed!).  

But God didn’t give me a remote control.  That’s not the plan.  As fantastic as it sounds, that would sort of defeat the purpose of parenting.  We are to teach our children to control themselves, to ultimately make good choices without us using the remote of privileges given or withheld.  If we could control them they’d just be little puppets, unable to direct their own lives, and really, that might get a little boring. I’m finding that Motherhood is a constant dance between knowing when to be deliberate and structured and planned out and when to throw up our hands and just shower down love.  When to let things flow in a natural way and when to push your plan through even in the wake of resistance and chaos and discontented children. 

This Easter season has had a hefty dose of that dance for me.  I sat down to dinner on Holy Monday to tell the kids the plan for the week.  All four kids were in quite a state that night.  Maybe too many late weekend nights in a row, maybe too much sugar, who knows.  But one was pestering, one was screaming, one was laughing and one was arguing with me about how tired they were of Jesus.  Can’t we just do some worldly stuff for Easter?  We already know all this stuff about Jesus.

So, that night, instead of teaching them about Christ cleansing the temple I plated my own figurative whip and I put them all to bed in a quiet (but kind of scary) mothering rage and flung myself on my bed to have a good long ugly cry.  The flood gates opened and all the emotions contained for months spewed forth. I cried out pleas for Jesus to come in and clean out our temple here.  Cast out all the filthiness in me, in us, in our patterns of interaction.  I felt hypocritical, like somehow on the outside I might look like I was getting it all right, but on the inside things were a royal mess.  I felt the frightening and utter lack of control that is really the reality of parenting.  I felt stuck and unable to realize my visions, to love the way I wanted to, to teach and enjoy the blessings packaged up in these little children of mine.  I felt the frustration of trying with all your might to do something good and have it go totally wrong. 

I know half of those rushing emotions that night were irrational….hormones flaring up their crazy heads.  But I truly believe that sometimes those crazy, seemingly irrational emotions are also meant to propel us towards something new, to get us back on track, to give us the ambition to change.  So I tried to embrace all the feelings flooding my soul that night.  I entertained them.  I felt them fully.  I wrote them down.  And I woke feeling much better, but weak and reliant on God.  Like all of those tears had washed away my resolve to cling to what I had believed was right, leaving me clear to rethink, a cleaner slate to rewrite. To start fresh and carve a new path, less mired by my limited vision and more inspired by God’s. 

And so Holy Week went on.  One of my newest friends in our ward who doesn’t have children of her own came over to do some cute Easter crafts on Tuesday and stayed for our devotional.  She was a god send.  Everyone seemed to be reset, to be ready to listen and feel and focus again on Jesus.  I relinquished some of the control I had been wielding over to God and was reminded again and again (by the Spirit and by Jeff) that really the purpose of all of this Holy Week, this Holy Month was for all of us to feel love towards each other. 

So, as soon as I felt things were going awry, as soon as I felt that urge to throw up my hands and give up, I just let go instead.  I let things flow.  I delegated parts of our celebration to the kids so that they felt more involved. I modified when things started going south.  I danced that dance right on the edge and realized that with each situation I needed to start with a plan but be so ready to look for God’s way rather than sticking to my own.

On Thursday we met up with Eva to go for an Easter Walk through the (still snow covered) woods at the Ipswich River Wild Life Sanctuary  (thanks so much for this beautiful idea Catherine).  I had printed out little lists of things in nature that I wanted the kids to look for.  At the end of the walk I had envisioned that we’d sit in some nice warm sun filled spot and look through their bags of nature symbols and discuss the ways in which each one points to Christ.  The kids weren’t too excited about this plan and I was bracing myself to be seriously disappointed until I decided to just let it flow.  They traipsed through the woods unfettered and, being led by serendipity instead of the printed sheet they found symbols and signs much more profound and real and thrilling than the ones I had included on the hunt. 

We stopped still for nearly an hour to feed little Chickadees who fluttered down and ate right out of the kids’ hands.  The excitement was thick as the kids felt a new connection to the wild.   We noticed the thawing earth, the melting ice, the succulent water lily plants poking through the snow, the warm bright sun.  We noted how thorns hedged up some of the way, how the lichen looked so brilliant and alive against the rest of the cold world still waiting for more warmth to bring new life.  We spotted crosses in branches and bright green mossy growth.  We walked through a tunnel carved through stone and stood in the damp middle of that path breathing in the smell of an empty tomb.  We didn’t read any scriptures or talk about anything too serious.  We just let ourselves feel the thrill of breathing in the brink of spring.   

One year we’ll do the Easter Walk I had planned.  We’ll collect beautiful signs and bring them home and make a centerpiece for our Easter Table.  But this year where serendipity took us was perfect. 

Parenthood is a great balancing act.  Of course we want to plan and think and be deliberate and create meaningful experiences for our children.  Of course we should push through lots of things even (and maybe especially) when our children cry out in protest against them.  But this Easter season I’ve been reminded that the minute I feel like my kids are getting in the way of me parenting  is the minute I need to step back, zoom out, re think my plan and connect with God who sees the big picture. 

I can’t wait to post more about our Easter season, because it really was stretching and bonding and strengthened the foundation of our family.  But I wanted to post all of this first because it’s so easy to see all the happy perfect pictures and forget that there was a struggle beneath them.  We can’t forget the struggle because it’s the struggle that  makes everything beautiful.  The dark parts are what make the whole glisten.