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.   

mid-life crisis. post #1.

Maybe it’s not a crisis.  Maybe more of a mid-life transition, or, as my friend Josie called it, a Mid-Life-Adjustment.  Whatever it is, it has occupied a big space in my brain and heart over the past year or so.   And having talked to many friends I’m realizing that I’m not alone.  Something happens around now in our lives, and it feels different.  There I was, bumping along a pretty challenging, but predictable path, and now suddenly there’s a big turn to make.

I went to Peter’s pre-k orientation this fall and they surprised me with the news that they’d enrolled Peter in more school hours than I had expected.  Of course I know I didn’t have to accept this schedule, but I had a big pit in my stomach as I sat there in his school with the teacher telling me all the reasons why this would be so great for Peter.  I wasn’t prepared for this kind of separation yet, wasn’t expecting to have to do it until kindergarten next year.  And it wasn’t really about the separation from Peter.  It was about the separation from this life covered with babies and little kids. As much as I had fantasized over the years about how much I could get done once all my kids were in school, I wasn’t emotionally prepared for life without little ones clamoring at my calves. 

Peter has been going to school more that we had planned this year, and during the fall it didn’t feel so strange since life was so packed with photo shoots and holiday prep.  In fact, it felt pretty fantastic to get so many things done without interruption.  But now that we’ve settled into a new year and the novelty of it has worn off I’m finding myself more aware of this big mid-life transition. 

I’m sure everyone experiences mid-life differently.  But in processing this transition for myself I’ve discovered a few things.  First, the root of it?  I think it’s that I’ve come to the end of my flushed out life vision.  Growing up my parents and church leaders and school teachers and mentors helped me to use my own desires and talents and ambitions to craft a vision for my life.  That vision included college and graduate school and starting in on a career and finding a soul mate and becoming a mother.  But it sort of ended there.  Of course I knew there was life beyond that horizon, that kids would grow up, that life wouldn’t end once I’d had my last child.  But I never created a real vision for it.  I’m not sure why, but talking to friends and family I’m finding that this is a common experience. 

This fall I spent lots of time running in the Fells listening to music (something I haven’t done much since I’ve found such a great running partner).  I have a totally cheesy country song on my play list that pretty much does me in every time I listen to it.  It always has.  It’s called “You’re Gonna Miss This.” The cheesier than cheese lyrics run you through a story of a girl who is always wishing for the next stage to arrive and being reminded by others who have lived longer about how much she’s gonna miss each stage once it’s gone.  As embarrassing as it is, I’ve listened to this teary eyed through the years and it’s been a good reminder to live in the moment, to appreciate the season I’m in without rushing to the next.  But this fall my mid-life transition/adjustment/crisis lens made me hear this song differently.  It dawned on me that it has quite a problematic ending.  Here is the last stanza/chorus. 

Five years later there's a plumber workin' on the water heater
Dog's barkin', phone's ringin'
One kid's cryin', one kid's screamin'
She keeps apologizin'
He says "They don't bother me
I've got two babies of my own
One's thirty six, one's twenty three
Huh, it's hard to believe, but

You're gonna miss this
You're gonna want this back
You're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast
These are some good times
So take a good look around
You may not know it now
But you're gonna miss this

While that stanza has really resonated with me for the past 11 childbearing years it hit me that…what the heck!…that’s the end of the song!  The writer didn’t go on to describe the next stage that we will one day miss. I doubt it was intentional, but somehow that ending sends a message that there’s no more life to miss after this stage with little kids clamoring at our calves. Do we just spend the second half of our lives pining for the days with a house full of little ones?   

I’ve spent a lot of energy over the past decade wishing the chaos away, waiting for some time to come up and breath, and now you’re telling me I’m going to spend the next 20 years wanting it back?  I sure hope not.

I’m determined not to go that route, not to believe that message.  These have been golden years, I can see that even more clearly now that I’m teetering on the other end, about to move into a whole new stage.  Even though those days were long and monotonous, those childbearing years were fleeting.  But I know life has all kinds of richness as kids grow up, as nests grow larger and then empty, as our children expand into bigger spaces in the world and we age into new stages of mothering.

I’m in a place where I’m not surrounded by friends and acquaintances who have moved onto this next stage.  I’m far from my sisters who are doing this so gracefully, and because of where we live our church congregation is comprised of lots of families younger than we are, there are only two families who have teenagers and not a whole lot of older women who’ve lived through similar mothering circumstances as mine. 

So, I’m looking for mentors.  And I’m finding them in all kinds of places.  I’m watching sisters and asking my mom and reaching out to friends and reading and thinking and asking and working hard to craft a vision that extends way down the road.   A vision that helps me see who I want to be in this next stage, what I want to accomplish, what I want to learn and experience, how I want to feel, how I want to love. 

Because I don’t want to go through the last half of my life wishing I was re-living the first half.

I’m hoping to get some help to write a few more stanzas of that cheesy song.  Who can tell me what I’ll miss about this stage with bigger kids, what I’ll miss about teenagers?  What I’ll miss about empty nesting and retirement? 

I really think with a little more perspective and deliberate processing I can create a new vision that will ease me through this transition, help me to feel full and alive, allow me to live in the present, enriched by the happy memories of the past and excited by the promise of a full and challenging and pretty great future. 

There are good things to come. 

(Stay tuned for part 2 of my mid-life crisis, more practical things I’m trying to do to ease this transition.  Would love to know how others out there have navigated this transition.  Please share!  I have a feeling I’m just at the very beginning of trying to unpack this and figure out how to make my way through.)

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grammie and Hazel and Lousia May

Somehow a few months ago my mom and Hazel started emailing.  I’m not sure how it started, but they emailed  back and forth about how virtual school was going, how Hazel was doing with her piano and singing, how she was feeling about friends etc.  And then it morphed into books.  Hazel would email Grammie about the books she was reading, Grammie would respond with recommendations which Hazel would then devour.  And then somehow Hazel started reading Little Women and told Grammie how much she loved it, which got Grammie to read it. And then, somehow, Grammie had booked tickets out to Boston to take Hazel to tour Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House.  That mom of mine is one amazing Grandma.  All of this emailing back and forth was exactly the boost Hazel has needed this year.  It makes me tear up just thinking about the special bond these two have formed over the past few months.  A bond Hazel will always have, rooting her into all that is good and strong and beautiful about my mother.   When I named Hazel I hoped she’d have a special relationship with my mom (whose mother’s name was Hazel).   I’m so thankful to my mom for seeing this need and nurturing it.  And for loving Hazel so perfectly.  Hazel feels from her the kind of unconditional love that I wish she could always feel from me.  Sometimes it’s hard for mothers and oldest daughters to fully feel the love they have for each other with the day to day tasks of raising and growing.    Grammie and I also read Little Women (well, we at least got through part one) in preparation for our visit to the Orchard House.  We stopped at the Colonial Inn in Concord before the tour for some brunch.  The dining room we ate in dates back to the 1700’s and as we ate we liked to think about how Louisa and her family certainly had walked through that place, if not eaten there for a special occasion.  The food was surprisingly delicious (Hazel got Chicken and Waffles!?!) and we had a nice chat.

We were all incredibly inspired by our visit to the Orchard House.  I wish we had a picture of our amazing tour guide Kathy.  Since no one else was there we had a private tour.  It only lasted an hour but I think we all wished it could last forever.  We learned so much about the Alcott family.  We all left feeling inspired in different ways.  I left feeling like I wanted to ditch my kids for a whole week and just read about Transcendentalism, read Thoreau and Emerson and Alcott and all the memoirs and biographies I could get my hands on for Louisa and her sisters and parents.  What an incredible group of thinkers.

Here are some notes I took on my phone, things I wanted to remember and think about more.  Maybe I’ll write more about them one of these days:

• The Alcotts were incredibly deliberate parents.  They raised 4 solidly independent and talented daughters who each thoroughly perused their passions.   Anna was an actress, Lousia a writer, Beth a pianist (and an angel) and May a very accomplished artist.  I was super inspired by this, I want to help my children to find their passions and pursue them.  I wish I could take Amos and Abby to dinner and pick their brains about how they discovered their daughters strengths and how they encouraged them.  Maybe someone has written this in a book somewhere. 
• The Alcott children kept two journals.  One was a heart journal where they wrote the private workings of their hearts.  The other was a journal that their mother (and maybe father?) read and wrote responses in.  I love that idea.  Just started it with Charlie and hope to do it with Hazel too (once she warms up to the idea…sometimes that takes a little while).
• Grandpa Alcott wrote this beautiful poem to his little Grandson (I think it was Anna’s child).  It’s framed in the room that was their nursery once their father died and Anna spent more time back at the orchard house.  Darn, I can’t find it on the internet.  I’ll post it when I find it.
• Lousia believed that you should run and play and do lots of housework in order to be a good writer.   My mom bought Hazel a whole little booklet of “Aunt Jo’s Literary lessons.”  Lots of great advice for young writers.
• Lousia was a stormy woman with a strong will and a lot of gusto.  Lots like Jo in Little Women. 
• She wrote Little Women on her little desk in her room right in that house. She wrote part one in 6 weeks.  We saw the desk, I wanted to sneak a hipshot picture, but I liked our tour guide too much to blatantly disobey her.  So we took pictures in our mind. 
• She wrote sometimes for 16 hours a day.  She taught herself to write with both her right and left hand so that she could just keep going.  Her pen couldn’t keep up with her thoughts most of the time. 
• Little Beth (third sister) was the Angel of the house, but we all decided on the tour that the mother, Abby Alcott was the arch-angel of the house.  She came form privilege and money but then gave it up to marry for love.  The Alcotts moved like 27 times before finally settling in the Orchard House.  They were always struggling financially. Abigail worked to help support her family and found positions for her daughters to also work. Part of the reason Lousia wrote was to help support her family.  Abigail seemed to be fiercely dedicated to her girls, to raising them to be strong and good and complete.     
• Louisa had a “mood” pillow.  It was set different ways on the couch to indicate Louisa’s mood.  If it was one way than it was safe to talk to her, if it was turned the other way she was in a mood, or busy writing and was to be left alone.  Hazel LOVED this idea and now has her own mood pillow. 
• Louisa’s first book is called “Flower Fables” and is a collection of stories that Thoreau told her as he walked with her through the woods.  She had a huge crush on Emerson and seemed to always be mingling with all those great minds. 
• The group of people who lived in Concord during that time were INSPIRED.  Amazing things happened within that group of people at that time.  Connections are so important to furthering ideas.   That afternoon when the kids got out of school we took a trip to the Science Museum.  I love that view from the Museum.  We got to see a free IMAX film about the Galapagos as part of the MOS Free Friday Films.  My mom and I kind of fell asleep, but everyone else loved it.  Of course my mom showered us with new books.  She knows what we like!  These were some serious winners.      And then people started throwing up.  We spent the greater part of Sunday with barfing children.  My mom came to the rescue when, just as we were leaving, all gussied up for church, peter was sick all over himself and me.  She calmly drove everyone to church and did all the sacrament meeting wrestling that I normally have to do.  Bless her!

On Sunday night (after all of Peter’s birthday festivities) I got to speak with my mom as part of our Stake Women’s speaker series.  This was so fun for me.  We spent a lot of time preparing (for my sake of course, I don’t think my mom has ever prepared so much for a talk!).  It was so fun to talk with her about so many deep issues about life and being present.  And to see how her mind works and to work together to put all of our thoughts into some kind of structure.  I will always cherish that working time I had with her.  And then when we finally got up there in front of our audience it was fantastic.  My dad’s a lucky man to speak with her all over the world.  She is so full of charisma as she speaks and even though she is usually speaking to total strangers, the room always fills with her love.  I hope we get to do that together again some day. 

I promise to post some of what we talked about soon.  It was all stuff that really has altered the way I’m thinking about life. 

And after the event a few friends came over and we talked for a few hours.  I think I need a weekly dose of that.   I wish I had a picture so that I could remember that evening and all we discussed.  Hopefully these words will help me recall it.  On Monday she took Emmeline and Charlie each on their own little Grammie Date.  Em had earned a trip to get frozen yogurt for filling up that whole happy practicing chart and she was thrilled to have Grammie take her rather than boring old mom. 

Charlie and Grammie went together to buy Charlie a batting helmet that he’s been dreaming about.   

Oh how we love that Grammie. 

As I drove away from the airport after dropping her off, thinking of all that she did for us in that little extended weekend I lost it.  How did I get so lucky to have this woman as my mother?  She has loved me my whole life, I’ve always known that, but to watch her love in action?  To see it transform my children?  I can see that it’s got a supernatural power to it, a power that has blessed my life beyond what I can comprehend but that I can see a little more clearly as it encircles my children, arming them for life in this world. 

I know I’m sounding super over the top here, but really, she’s that great.

(for a better written and more complete account of this trip see my mom’s blog here….)

Being Present

I’ve been thinking a lot about being present lately.  My sisters and I have all resolved to enjoy more in 2015.  To not just go through the motions of life, but to enjoy them.  This sounds easy, but is so hard to practice when life is buzzing by you in a flurry of busyness and work and repetitive tasks day after day.   Life is stunning when you look up close, or when you back way up, but when you just barrel through it it can be grueling, mundane and blah.  So I’m trying to figure out how to see the details and the big picture.  How to both zoom in and back out of my life to see it’s beauty.

Of course it’s impossible to live in the present of every minute of your life.  I love this post on Momastery about how crazy it is to think we can seize every moment of every day.  I think probably most of each day just needs to be lived through. There is laundry to be done, groceries to buy, kids to hustle out the door and then back home and through homework and dinner and the bedtime routine. 

But there are moments in every day that can take our breath away and fill us with joy.  If we can figure out how to stop all the multi tasking and business and freeze those moments, time slows down and we can see crystals in the air.  Things become clear and we feel happy.

I love this TED talk about happiness and being in the present.   After collecting more in the moment happiness research than has ever been collected before this social scientist found that people are happier when they are present and focused at the task at hand,  even if the task is unpleasant and the place where their mind is wondering is pleasant.  It seems that social science keeps uncovering what children so instinctively know: we are happy when we are living in the moment. 

Photography has taught me a lot about the present moment.  In a photo none of the craziness is captured, just the raw emotions, the beauty happening in the second of that shutter speed.  Somehow it’s so hard to see it when you’re riding the wave of real life, but when you can stop and freeze it it’s all so obvious.

Take these pictures for example: Emmeline’s birthday party.  10 kids there, lots of noise and excitement and emotion.  Emmeline was tearing through her presents with Hazel’s help as I snapped photos.  When she got to this present and I realized what it was my mood fell. A princess drum set?  This is something no parent ever considers buying for their own child.   It’s meant for grandparents to give to children to thrill them and win them over without a thought to the crazy chaos it will bring.    As Em opened this present all that I could think about was the noise this would fill our house with.  And with those thoughts I missed these faces of delight and glee that were happening in that moment.   

When I sat down to go through her birthday pictures the next week I saw all that I missed in the moment.  Look at the pure joy on that child’s face.  While looking at these pictures, with the noise and chaos and dread about the chaos to come stripped away, I fell in love with Emmeline all over again.  I saw the beauty of that moment. 

As much as I love being able to relive something and see it more clearly through a photograph, I’d like to become better at stripping all the clutter away in real time.    How to freeze the moments with my brain instead of just with my camera.  How to have more of those slow moving crystally moments where love sinks into your relationships and you’re filled with wonder and joy and gratitude.  I’m not asking for a whole life time of this, just a few little chunks each day.  I think that that is where real happiness lies.  

My mom is here this week.  She came to spend some special time with Hazel, her little pen pal, and I cajoled her into speaking with me for our Stake Relief Society women’s speaker series on Sunday.   Our topic is: Enjoy it, because it’s happening. Picturing the present with an eternal perspective.   We’ve been brainstorming like crazy to figure out what helps bring more perspective and how we can be more mindful and engaged and present in life.  My mom is so good at this.  My mom.  She’s really amazing.  I’m so excited to speak with her. 

Anyway, I know it’s just in two days, but I’ve been trying to get this blog up all week to ask your thoughts.  We’d love to hear any ideas you have on how to be more mindful, cut more out, see more clearly, enjoy the present.  How do you zoom in and slow down to see the magnificent details and how do you back up to see the bigger picture? 

We’d also love anyone local to come and join us on Sunday night.  It’s at the LDS Revere Chapel, 455 Washington St. at 7pm on Sunday. 

And if you can’t make it on Sunday, please join the conversation here.  I’m planning on posting a bit more about this topic this year as I embark on a quest to really figure out how to be more present.  How to be all here (but not all the time, that would be crazy).

dead things will come alive again.

I got all teary over salad this week. 

I made our summer salad.  (recipe back here)  During the summer we had this salad at least 4 times a week.  Sometimes as a main dish with some chicken mixed in.  And then when late fall hit I ran out of pesto and the salad sort of fell off the radar.  Until this past Wednesday night.

It was a busy weeknight and I pulled together some pasta with meat sauce for dinner.  As I was thinking about what kind of salad to throw into the mix I remembered that sometime in late August I had put aside some pesto that I had made from the crazy amounts of basil that grew in our garden last year.  I put in in the freezer thinking that it would taste nice in the middle of the winter. 

I had no idea then what a brilliant idea that was.  How incredible it would be to taste summer in the DEAD of THIS winter. 

The kids were all pretty excited when they heard we were having summer salad (funny, they never raved over it before).  Midway through dinner I told them that this wasn’t just any old summer salad.  I told them that the basil in the pesto grew out of the ground in our back yard.  We looked out of the window and tried to remember that under all that snow and ice there is earth, and that earth has the power to grow things.   Green things, things full of flavor and color and life.  Snow will melt, the sun still works, the sky will bring warmth, the ground will unfreeze, the strawberries and raspberries and cilantro and mint is still alive under there and will grow back.  The earth will carry the seedlings we will plant, the sun will coax them through the ground.  The birds will come back, the trees will put on their brilliant green and before we know it we’ll be popping little yellow tomatoes in our mouths as we ride our bikes in the back yard. 

My kids sat memorized by my words, probably mostly because I was tearing up (that always gets them to pay close attention) but also because they could feel the truth and reality of what I was saying.    And with every bite of that salad, that summer salad, we remembered the abundance this world does bear every single year.  Our faith in spring was renewed, we were all lit up with hope.

We discussed how perfect it is to celebrate Christ’s resurrection in the spring. How the whole world testifies that dead things do come alive again. 

I think this year (with over 100 inches of snow) we will have a new appreciation for life in the natural world.  We’re trying our best to find beauty in all this snow, but maybe the real beauty is in the contrast that it will give our lives.   As I go about my life and observe those around me and listen to the radio (grumpy people everywhere) I’m pretty sure this Boston winter is carving out a deep yucky hole in most of us right now (still more snow in the forecast!).  But I’m also pretty sure that the glory of spring will fill that hole, to it’s depth, with exquisite wonder and delight.  We will cherish those buds and daffodils and little green shoots more keenly than we have ever before, for our vessels have been dug deep.   We have more capacity.

So it is with life. Sorrow, discomfort, sadness, pain, trials--they all build our capacity to feel joy, comfort, happiness, triumph. 

This is the beauty of God’s plan for us.  He will give us beauty for ashes.  He will make the ugly things beautiful.  When we trust Him then our sorrow and trials will root us deep and give us more holding power for joy.   

Dead things will come alive again. 

Hope is a glorious thing. 

At dinner Hazel decided that every August we should all make pesto together to freeze for the dead of winter.  We could all sense that that pesto taught us what Hope tastes like.  And it tastes really good. 

Escaped.

 

Bless my mom forever for organizing a little sisters trip in the middle of February to Arizona.  This is exactly what my cold caged up soul needed.  Since Hazel does online school, and since she hadn’t seen her cousin Claire forever I decided to take her along with me.  We had quite a time, though today, facing all this grimy snow seems like a little slap in the face.  Spring will come, right?

Hazel was pretty darn excited about getting away.  We debated on the plane whether we were more excited about being together, seeing our long lost sisters and cousins, or trading snow for sunshine.  It was a pretty close race, but I think the sunshine won by a hair. 

It was really pretty glorious to feel heat from the sky again.  This winter in Boston makes you question whether the sun really does generate anything besides cold bright blinding light.  I was starting to feel pretty stuck in a winter funk, so this really was what my soul needed. 

But seeing my sisters and mother might have done even more good for my winter funk.  They are just full of light and knowledge and wisdom and we could talk for eternity without running out of stimulating conversation.  I recognize that loving your sister-friends so intensely is not always the case.  I feel so lucky that I was born into the same family as some of my dearest most inspirational friends.  Before everyone arrived Shawni and I had almost a whole day with our two girls.  Shawni took Claire out of school to come and pick us up and we went to lunch and hung out by the pool at the hotel my mom got for my sisters and I to stay in that night.   The girls played and swam while Shawni and I talked and then (being the oh so cool mothers that we are) we all got in the pool and made up a synchronized swimming routine together.  I think Claire and Hazel were delighted that we actually got our hair wet (I remember always being so excited when my mom got her hair wet in the pool).  It was so good to see Hazel so happy with Claire.  She’s been needing to connect after so many hours at home doing school online.  And Claire is the sweetest cousin you could ask for.  She took great care of Hazel while I got to go off with my sisters and mom.  I love cousin connections.  They are so important to our family since we’re so far away from family out here in Boston.

         And of course it was heaven to finally unite with these ladies.  We grabbed some take out and ate it at the hotel that night while we caught up on each others lives and talked about all the deep things caged up in our minds.  The next morning we went on a walk around the golf course (boy was I hot in all that navy).   And then we had a delicious breakfast buffet.  We get almost as excited about food as we do about sun and beauty and being together.  (Don’t you love Shawni’s plate of doughnuts?  I love that girl.) We spent the bulk of the day sitting by the pool and walking or swimming against the current on the lazy river.  The whole time we were going against the flow we were trying to analyze why it is we are always going against the current.  What part of our upbringing made us all want to take on so much all the time.  We talked about how we all want to learn how to be more present, how to enjoy the moment a little more, how to build more margins and slack into our lives.  It’s like a group therapy session when we’re together.  So great to talk through your issues with people with the same upbringing and genes.  After we got kicked out of our hotel we went on the most gorgeous hike/walk.  Through acres and acres of cactus and sage greenery.  It was a feast for my eyes to see green.  This may be the only time of year where Arizona looks brilliantly green to a Bostonian.  We couldn’t stop taking pictures, the light was so perfectly slanted.  God’s art so meticulous and breathtaking. Eyre sisters together get drunk with all that beauty.   I love being with people who let nature sink down into their souls and walk around incredulous at the astounding beauty around them. I think my sisters feel beauty the same way I do, and it’s so fun to drink it in together.      On Sunday we got to go to church with the Pothiers.  Wow, is that a different world!  They had a recently returned missionary speak and announced that he was one of 6 missionaries who have returned to their ward since January.  I think we’ve had 2 missionaries leave and come home in the history of our ward, ever.  Their ward was bursting with families all sort of in the same stage as Shawni.  I love where we are in Boston, but sometimes long for that kind of experience.

After church we had a little FHE with the Pothiers and then we cooked up a storm.  I love cooking with my sisters, and I loved working in that gorgeous kitchen.  All that space!  My cooking style didn’t seem as much like an explosion as it does in my little kitchen. 

On Sunday night we sat by Shawni’s outdoor fire and discussed this talk about Grace by Sheri Dew.  It was such a fantastic discussion.  I’d like to write more about it on here sometime.  My mom gave us all a copy of this print from the MOA at BYU.  It was painted by Frans Schwartz, a contemporary of Carl Bloch.  Isn’t it beautiful?  I love it, and I love the feelings from that discussion that it brings back.   On Monday we got to go with Shawni to her work out class.  I am still sore, three days later.  Wow, that’s good hard stuff.  It was fun to see a little bit into her life.  We also got to go and see my brother Josh in action in his school.  He is such a great teacher.  We asked those kids about him and they unanimously responded that he is the best teacher in the universe.  They said he has a good heart and makes learning fun.  Wish my kids could be in his class.  After sending Saren and Charity and my mom off to their homes Hazel and I got to stay an extra day in that sunny wonderland.  We had a great dinner on Monday night, a trip to Yogurtland for FHE and a great discussion with Dave.  Those guys are just good people. I loved being there with them, feeling the feeling in their home, observing their life for a bit.  I wish I lived closer, I would glean so much from watching them in action daily.       

On Tuesday morning Shawni and I climbed Camelback mountain (well almost climbed it).  It was cool and sunny and beautiful.  We could see the top, were about 10 min away from the summit when we decided we really should be responsible and get back so that we could have lunch with Claire at school.  Even though we didn’t make it to to the top, the views we got were pretty incredible and the feeling of climbing so high above life lead us to some great discussions.  I love that about hiking.      We got to bring this Claire girl some In n Out burgers and eat lunch in her cafeteria.  It was great to see what her school was like and meet some of her friends.  Hazel was a bit nervous about the whole thing, but she ended up feeling comfortable enough to tell Claire’s whole class about all the snow we have in Boston.  These girls are the best. It was hard to say goodbye to all that light.  Sunshine and warmth from the sky as well as from those brilliant women.  Made us wish we could live in Arizona….but maybe just for the winter. 

    

I want to remember all that wisdom we uncovered together as we talked about our lives, our struggles, our joys.  Here are a few things we discussed:

- Life needs to be lived in the present.  We are all trying this year to figure out how to enjoy life a little more.  How to slow down and live a little more in the moment.  Here are some ideas we brainstormed on how to do that:

- stop in the moment – figure out how to take yourself out of the picture in order to recognize how beautiful it is.  See the moment from the outside in.  It’s so much more beautiful with a little distance.

- Figure out ways to compartmentalize life.  Focus on just one thing a few times during the day.  Stop multitasking ALL THE TIME. 

- gratitude.  write about things you’re grateful for….keep a gratitude journal…..stop to point out the beauty of the moment

- we all find ourselves a little more present if we stop to take a picture…either with a real camera or with our hearts.  seeing your life in a picture makes you see how beautiful it is, even the hard parts.

- turn off technology.  leave your phone in one place.  don’t invite it to dinner.  turn it off. 

-watch your kids sleeping at night.  Another way to get above it all land recognize the real stuff in life.

- live in anticipation of the memory (need to write a whole post on this, i think I already have….great advice from my sister in law).  When things feel grimy and gritty and not so fun, recognize that it will be a beautiful (or at least meaningful) memory one day.

- We talked a lot about our worries and joys.  It’s always so great to process these things with wise and loving people who know you and are invested in your happiness.

-  Parenting.  I was able to run all my parenting worries by these wise souls.  I love having sisters further down the road from me to help me know what’s passing, what I should and shouldn’t worry about.  To give me ideas and inspiration from the trenches.  They had such great advice.  I especially love my mom’s perspective on mothering.  She is always reminding me that the most important things to remember when parenting are giving ownership and responsibility and loving those little people to death. 

- I got some great movie and book suggestions….I love knowing what my sisters are into and love.

- We discussed marriage and relationships and the importance of really trying to understand where our spouses are coming from, to really empathize even if their experience is vastly different than ours.  It’s so fun to talk about this since I think all of our spouses are trying to make sense of a lot of the same issues that we sisters all have in common, namely, high expectations.  I think all of our husbands are getting pretty good at ratcheting those down.  Jeff is forever telling me the key to happiness is low expectations.  It’s nice to commiserate with these girls and try to figure out what role high expectations play and when it’s better to lower them.

Ok, I've got to go.  Maybe more about all we talked about later.  I want to remember it all so much.

Coming back to Boston has felt a little like a slap in the face.  Everything looks so bleak and messy here after all that sunshine and order in Arizona.  But I’m also feeling renewed….inspired by all the ideas swirling in my head.  Committed to enjoying this life, even with all the snow banks.  And so grateful for a life full of sister-friends and a mom who has always cultivated our relationships and shown us the mark a strong woman can make on the world.