Simba's daddy takes a nap

Just like everyone else in America, I grew up watching classic Disney movies.  So, I am really happy that they are re-releasing the films I loved for my own family to enjoy.  As you may well know, The Lion King just came out on DVD.  So my 2 year old daughter and I drove to the media store to pick up a copy for the Penny family.  We made some popcorn and slid it into the DVD player to enjoy the magical musical journey together.  Okay so honestly I was in the kitchen making chili and singing "I'm gonna be a mighty king" but we were together... ish.  

I assume you have seen the Lion Kind, but in case for some reason you missed it, In the middle of the story Simba gets caught in the path of a wild stampede.  In order to save Simba's life his dad, Mufasa runs in and plucks him from danger.  But in the process his own brother Scar pushes him off a cliff to his death.  After the stampede passes Simba rushes in to his father and  realizes with wide, sad eyes that his dad is gone.  


It's brutally heart wrenching.  At this point in the film, my two year old daughter looked up at my husband and said:  "Daddy, Simba's daddy take a nap?  Simba feel sad?"

At that moment my Mom heart broke a bit.  I ached inside, Oh God, not yet, I am not ready for her heart to comprehend death yet.  I'm not prepared for that moment where she tries to process the awful permanence of it.  I don't want her to lose so much as a pet hamster, let alone a cherished person in her life.  


This moment has been weighing heavily on my heart these past few days.  Just like any Mother, I want to protect her from the pain of this world, but I know that's not really an option.  I can provide the healthiest and safest environment possible, but she will still encounter heartache, sickness and death on her journey.


After a great deal of pondering I have come to several conclusions.  First of all, I don't have to explain this to her right now.  Cognitively she isn't there yet so for today it's perfectly fine for her to go on believing that Simba's daddy takes a nap.  On the other hand I do have to prepare myself to explain to my children eventually why they don't have the typical grandparent situation.  I think I'll start by telling them that all their grandmas and grandpas are in heaven.  And that God has put special people into their lives to love them, but that their Grandmas and Grandpas in heaven love them very much too.  And then someday I will have to explain what suicide is, although I plan to hold off on this for a long while.  


It is a blessing when you come to realize that your concerns for the future don't need to have concrete resolutions today.  We only have to be prepared to do our lives now, and then wisely prepare as best we can for the future.  That's really all we can do.  I don't have to explain death to my daughter right now, so I am not going to let it spoil my today.  Heck, I'm still trying to explain some aspects of it to myself.  I'm in the middle of sorting through my own sleeping lions this week.  


So today I will cherish the innocence that is found in her beautiful young heart.  I will educate and prepare myself to parent her well in her current and upcoming life stages.  I will pray for wisdom to be her mom and to know how God wants to use me to teach and guide her on this earth.  And I will thank him for the abundant gift that she is, and be thankful that for today it's okay to think that lion daddys are just sleeping.  

coffee date

View from my front door.  If there was sound you would hear a rooster crowing.  

I am a morning person, I love coffee and breakfast food.  I love the sunrise and the cool breeze that wafts in from the window. As long as I have about 6 hours of sleep under my belt, I'm fine with getting up.  My husband hates the morning and even though morning comes every day, it always seems to hit him like a nasty surprise.  This has been a source of tension in our marriage.  I expected a coffee date every morning with the man I love and instead I usually get a grumpy guy squinting and grumbling around the house in his boxers.  Ah well, such is life.  


It wasn't until this year that I got the coffee date buddy I wanted, and I only realized it this very morning.  Every morning I share a cup of coffee with my two year old daughter, Noelle.  Every morning when I help her out of her toddler bed she hugs me with an enthusiastic "Good morning!"  After the coffee is made, I pour myself a cup and then I heat up a bit of milk in a sippy cup and top it off with a couple tablespoons of coffee for her.  And this is my unexpected coffee partner.  I always thought my morning date would take place over two mugs, but it turns out that for now, it's a mug and a sippy cup.  

The remnants of my morning coffee date.

Even though we often part ways after we receive our java (she watches mickey on the couch and I usually sit down at the table to write before the boys get up) there is a camaraderie that links us across the room.  She is the coffee date I always wanted, and every morning I try to make her feel wanted and seen.  Even at the age of two we all long to connect, and since she isn't able to connect on my level, I have to get down and connect with her on hers.  


Pretty much any time I reflect on mothering, I drift back to my own Mom.  Who doesn't?   Our relationship was usually pretty hard.  For starters, I am energy incarnate.  I don't' stop moving from the time I leave bed until the time I crawl back in.  I have always been this way, I played so hard I often fell asleep face down in spaghetti in my highchair.  My daughter is a lot the same way.  


My energy was a source of frustration for my Mom, because she was coping with mental illness and I pushed her buttons and ran her down with my willfulness.  Growing up I often felt all- wrong, like a mistake or a problem.  I was taken to a lot of doctors and put on a lot of pills from the age of three until the age of 18.  For along time I felt like they were trying to fix me but that they couldn't because I was too screwed up.  My mom made some mistakes, but in hindsight I  give her grace, mostly because being angry with her now solves nothing.  However, this insight does serve as a reminder of how I want to respond to my own little energetic girl, who just came over to steal sips of my coffee after she drained her own.  She also is refusing to eat the overnight fig-raisin steel-cut oatmeal I made us.  Sad.  


Everyone wants to feel important, seen and loved and so I try to respond like that to my daughter.  Even when she asks the same question ten times in a row I respond to most of her chatter, because I remember how awful it is to feel like an annoyance every time you open your mouth.  I am not a perfect mom, I screw up every day, I promise.  I am not always intentional and I am not always patient.  Some days I feel like all that is keeping me going is the hope of a glass of wine after they fall asleep.  But I love my children, and I want them to feel cherished.  I know that they will have moments of self doubt, but I want to do all I can to communicate to them that I love who God created them to be, even if some days it flat out exhausts me.  


So most mornings Noelle and I drink coffee and watch Mickey Mouse.  We build a lot of block towers and we bake pretend cakes.  We race across the backyard and draw endless shapes on the patio.  Right now she is running around with a clothespin in her mouth.  I should probably go put a stop to that.  So in closing, I hope that you are able to see the people in your life as the beautiful gifts they are, even when they drain you dry.  God is the source that will quench your thirst, and he typically only gives you enough to do one day, it keeps you coming back.  He's brilliant that way.  


We all have pain from our past, but instead of carrying it around with you, forgive.  And use it to influence the choices you make today.  What is something from your past you can unload from your backpack.  Haul it out and leave it this morning, then use the memory of it to change the way you move forward.  

Peanut Butter Mouse & Expectations

Life never turns out exactly as you planned.  I know that because today as I am writing to you from my office / play room there is peanut butter on my computer mouse.  I didn't plan that, It got there because my daughter made off with a peanut butter sandwich before I realized it.  And since the peanut butter is delicious and the computer has tons of buttons there was an obvious collision.  I chuckle a little when I click the mouse and come away with a sticky palm because this is so typical of my life these days.  I'm still in yoga pants in the afternoon, we haven't left the house and as the kids nap and I switch my brain into adult mode, I find I cannot escape kid land.  


I finished college, I even did a little grad school and during those times I used up some of my mental energy envisioning myself in heels and trendy outfits working happily and efficiently in my tastefully decorated office.  Life didn't exactly turn out that way and I can pretty much pinpoint the moment I decided to put the high heels, business card lifestyle on hold.  Being a full time mom is a choice I made, but believe it or not it was harder for me than going back to work.  I like life organized and neat.  I love to click around in high heels.  I love adult conversation around wine, fancy dishes and $17 cheese.

However now, any time I clean something, my 2 year old ensures that it immediately gets messy again, there isn't room in the budget for expensive cheese and wearing heels around the house is both stupid and hazardous considering that extreme sippy cup spills are commonplace.  I have had to grow and adjust into this little people life where I give a lot more than I get.  My expectations of life were totally different than the reality I am living in.

If I didn't learn to adjust my expectations I would spend my days miserable, and I did for a while.  This concept is so much bigger than me and I am convinced that it applies to everyone on the planet.  I have stopped expecting a spotless house or dinners filled with adult conversation and I donated a lot of my heels and invested in a wardrobe that allowed me to chase my kids around and be comfortable.  

Whatever life you are living now I am sure that it's different than the one you expected to have.  I think God works like that on purpose to keep us guessing and relying on him.  You have to learn to love the life that God gave you, because if you hate it that much you should probably make a change, and if you're not willing to change you may as well fall in love with it.  

Just when I made peace with the full time Mom life God started to drop hints that he wants me to be a writer.  He loves to keep me on my toes, and I am thankful for the ways I see him using me now and on the horizon.   

a prayer of no guarantees

A few items of business:

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Now on to the meat of something that has been tumbling in my head a long time, waiting to be polished.

Today my 2 year old daughter smacked my 6 month old son in the face with a large cardboard block. Pretty hard too. She didn't mean it, she was just twirling with helicopter arms and got too close to his face and boom, impact. Had I seen it coming I would have interceded, and I often save him from sore toes or well intended hug smotherings. However, as much as I love every square inch of him I can't block every shot.

I absolutely love my two kids, I hope this isn't a big secret to anyone in my life either online or otherwise. When I take a look back at all the junk and pain I have gone through with my immediate family one of my first instincts is to figure out a way to make sure that nothing like that ever happens to my precious boy and girl. I want to keep them physically safe. I buy top of the line car seats and follow safety standards to the letter. I also want to keep them emotionally safe and I want to do everything I can to make sure that they don't lose their parents as early or as tragically as I did. I lost my Dad at the age of 49 to heart disease and so along those lines I eat very little red meat, drink red wine and pay close attention to my blood pressure and cholesterol levels. My mom died from mental Illness and so I go to counseling, stay active, and I try to keep a good pulse on my emotional well being so that I can catch any problems early.

I'm a realist, I know I can't protect them from all hurts but I guess I wish for them the bare minimum. I want them to appreciate the depth of life, with its highs and lows, but I do pray that God shields them from the big and rare hurts. The ones that only befall a few.

This is my prayer for my children, and in a way it is my prayer for everyone I love.

My dear precious ones, until you are parents you will not understand how much I treasure you. I delight in your bright eyes and endless energy even on my worst days. Your curly hair and huge smiles have made me thankful to a level I never knew possible. I want to put a hedge around all of us to guarantee that this innocent joyful living will last forever. It is with a heavy heart that I need to let you in on one of life's more painful secrets. There is no hedge that will keep out pain, brokenness and loss.

This brokenness is the reason I can't give you the gift of knowing your grandparents. However, I am deeply dedicated to helping you know who they were so you can carry parts of them with you as you bring your own unique gifts into this world.

I am doing everything in my human capacity to keep you safe from things that try to break you both physically and emotionally. I am coming to the edge of the realization that my love and precautions can't keep the breaks from happening to you. So I am jumping in and rethinking my strategy. A life with no pain isn't really living and so for you I pray just enough pain to appreciate the joy. I know you will have disappointments, failures, and breakups and I will be there for all of those tears. I pray that as much as possible you learn well from the mistakes of myself and others so you can avoid some of life's potholes. I pray that I have the strength to let you fall on occasion, so you can learn how to pick yourself back up. Above all else I pray that God protects you from the thousands of things I worry may befall you. I will do my best to lead you into situations that will give you a knowledge of your powerful and loving God, and that your Dad and I will model trust in him through the way we live our lives. I pray that you will trust in the love of God as you discover it in relationship with him, through his beautiful creation and through interacting with the people whose lives intersect yours.

I will be around as long as I possibly can, and while I am I will do everything in my power to point to a God who will sustain you more than I ever could. Gods love, grace, and providence are the ultimate healers. If you go to him for your truth and healing, you will weather any storm that this "no guarantees" world throws your way.

Amen and Amen.