One Step up, Two Looks Back

One step up, two Looks Back. That's my mantra right now as I struggle along this climb.

You can’t really tell how steep this part of my walk is. It’s pretty deceiving on the way down. Doesn’t feel like much of a workout. Seems like a lazy stroll. It’s the way back that proves its steepness. I walk this evening with my heart in a tizzy. Cardio is certainly at work in my chest, even if I am only on the strolling part of this journey. So many beats of low melancholy, with tumultuous thrums filling the in-between. I crave the exertion of that uphill stride, only to distract from it all. To feel my muscle, hear my labored breathing would relieve my racing thoughts. 

After sixteen years of motherhood, I didn’t realize that the stroll would be somewhere in the past days of diapers and breastfeeding babes. I stood at the very top of the incline, worrying about the steep, and the tumble that could come if my sleep deprived self messed up the nap schedule, or fed solids too soon. But, it was all a pleasant stroll...an instinctual drive to meet the needs of my children. But now? Somewhere at that twelve year bend, i have been struggling with the climb. I’ve faced those baby years in pictures and nicknacks and I pass them by with a worrisome step. Are the unsavored moments taunting, “you miss us now, don’t you”?

I know there are those who scoot their children up and out with joy. But is that joy interlaced with doubt and sorrow at all? I will admit that I sweat the stuff. My brow is covered with swirling beads of warring emotions like the oily marbles I played with as a child. It’s joy, regret, sorrow, pride, and so much love I could burst. I huff and wonder if my pace will ever be steady again—when car keys are handed over, and curfews are challenged—when broad shoulders fill the door, and I wrestle with swollen pride and choking tears. 

Too much—this parenting climb. Too difficult for a mama’s heart to bear when she once took for granted the pudgy fingers and cheeky smiles. 

The curve of the crest is ahead, and I try to slow down, breathing in and out to find some calm amidst the mama-storm. I try wiping away sad to marvel at the joy. 

One step up, and two looks back. 

A Mom in America

Look through my window and see me, I'm a mom in America. And this is what it's like:

I kiss my kids goodbye and watch the school bus pass my house.

And then I hold my breath, try to remain distracted for seven hours, until I rush across the school parking lot at dismissal, a sigh of relief escaping me when I securely grasp my child's hand.

Am I the only mama in this country who's been dancing this ritual each day lately? 

I cannot escape the fabrications in my mind that this could be my last goodbye, that the next phone call could be notice that the epidemic of school shootings has come home to us...that, if I go too far in my imagination, I am sobbing and shaking and hating, and realizing the worst is only a headline away.

I am trying to get a grip, I really am. I am writing this to aid in that effort. My heartbeat is uneven, my breath is sporadic, and the ticking clock is knifing at my peace. If only I could talk myself out of my irrationalities...if only I could believe that my irrationalities were irrational.

I am beginning to wonder...and I am beginning to have a very difficult time coming to grips with my notions these days...

First notion: Prayer is all I have. I know the power of prayer, I know the peace that comes with it. But, I still don't buy it completely. Not now, not in these moments of crisis when kids are being sheltered by desks, and teachers, and school lockdowns. Of all the hundreds of children who've been shot at school, there had to have been a prayer, or ten, said by a mama just like me, asking for protection of her baby. The baby she mourns now.

I hear the arguing, the media, the excuses, the brokenness, and I just feel...prayerless, hopeless, helpless.

The question rattling around in my mind in situations like these is: When do we trust that prayer is all God wants, and, when do we realize He is giving us a nudge (or an all out shove) begging us to do something? Seems to me, a school shooting per week is a pretty clear sign that it's time for action. And I am glad that half of the country sees action as a means to an end, how a solution could be met.
But, at the end of the day, action is not happening, and beyond prayer, I am devastated that it all comes down to depending on lawmakers, squawking journalists, and the ginormous gun industry to change their hearts. Changing those hearts through prayer? I believe that. In theory. But I also think there's a season for doing something.

We aren't suppose to just sit still. 

Second notion: I am in the greatest country, after all, the pros outweigh the cons.

I seriously had the thought today that maybe hubs could put in for an overseas transfer? Maybe then we can escape the ludicrous garbage of gun lobbying and second amendment battle. Wipe my hands clean of the fatality of clinging to tradition and losing sight of common sense. (I truly don't mean to offend, I mean to express my heart on this page...the thoughts that I am wrestling with, the view from which I am looking through the window.)

I love this country. I love what we've stood for at our shining moments in history. I adore our Constitution, and its protection, and what it represents. But I hate the one-sidedness, I hate the extremism, I hate the pride of each side in each issue, and I hate that we are killing each other instead of listening to each other.

I hate that the unity our forefathers represented, has been obliterated because of our bickering.

The pros have slipped, the cons are growing great, and I just don't see how we can toot our own horn much longer. Fleeing this country is not going to help any greater good, I know this. I know that I can be a minute inch toward change, so, I must convince myself that it's worth the fear.

Third notion: Pull them out. Just do it, Angie. Pull them out of school, out of their classrooms, out of the hardship of socialization, out of the care of acquaintances, out of the government-run school system...just pull them out, and decrease their risk.

I don't have faith in that, either. I don't have faith in myself to give them the amazing education that they now receive. I don't have faith that in doing so, they won't miss something I can't give them. I don't have strength for the battle with my youngest who LOVES school so much, and gains SO much out of it...I don't have the self-control to not imagine life ahead, and all the regret and resentment she might have because I kept her home when she was flourishing at school.

And, I have always touted, "Not going to give into fear." I said that when we hopped on a plane to Europe, days after September 11, 2001. I said that when I pulled my kids from Christian school and enrolled them in public school. I said that when I debated walking away from my marriage for fear of the consequences of an unbelieving husband, an atheist father for my children.

Nope. I believe it still. Not going to cave in to fear.

So, I sit here, shaking in my skin, trying to catch my breath, seated in a very palpable pool of fear, wondering what it might look like to stand up and walk out of it?

There's a mustard seed of faith left in my soul. I might hold my breath for the next eleven years of schooling in America, but I am going to have faith that change will happen, I am going to be sure to not just sit idly by but take action, and I am going to love my kids fiercely, and fight for them and their future.

And pray.

I will never stop praying. Never stop praying on days of faithlessness...never stop praying when I am filled up with trust. Just gonna pray because in the end, my soul goes there involuntarily...the Spirit moves regardless of my fear. But prayer is not all I'm going to do.

If you want to join me in doing something about this crisis in America, check out Moms Demand Action. It's not about taking away rights, it's about being responsible with the rights we are given. Let's take action together. Let's protect our country, and our kids.

Borrowed Heartbits: Roald Dahl

I may not have written a novel that quotes Mr. Dahl for today's borrowed heartbit, but I have a heart filled with his stories since I was a child. The BFG was a beloved book in my childhood, and I've revisited it time and again through the years.

Perhaps my own abundant bookshelves growing up have shaped my mama heart to fill our kids' lives with books...and this sentiment by Roald Dahl is an obvious one to me:

"If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books."

Around here, I struggle with screen time with my kids...um, if you follow me on social media, I am sure that is just as obvious as this quote. It seems, my children's time is divided between what they need to get done--school, schoolwork, and meals, and then screen time.

No slender pieces of the pie showing a slew of hobbies, pastimes. Just obligation and screen time.

The practical me knows that it is not entirely true. Thank you, Youth Sports, for squeezing as many minutes out of my overcrowded schedule as you can. But, THANK YOU, Youth Sports, for giving my kids time away from their screens.

Seriously, my heart shudders at the thought of what life will look like from these blue-faced sessions of cyber-living a decade from now.

And that is why, my children will tell you,

"My mom is all crazy 'bout reading. Like, real paper books. Like, away from my screen. Wha'???"

When I get fed up with their mental drainage into the world of Minecraft and Fortnite and whatever

else...they get two suggestions when the dreaded question, "What else can I do?" comes out of their whine.

"Here's a chore..."
or
"Get a book..."

And while they will declare their chores are done, there is always a book unread around here.

Lots of books.

Everywhere.

The picture above shows a glimpse at the shelves in my daughter's room, only because it is the neatest display at the moment...we have books coming out our ears. And, fortunately, my children READ.

A long time ago, when chapter book assignments came home, my kids were allowed to independent read at bedtime. And now, it's a deeply rooted habit--an AMAZING excuse to prolong sleep for them...but to soothe my anxiety away that they are going nowhere with a screen attached to their palm.

And, they are my children--forever night owls...forever bucking the idea that sleep is a good thing. And while I will reprimand them at 10 pm...11 pm...for staying up with a book glued to their face, my mama heart leaps.

Books. The doorways to great ideas, imagination, and knowledge. There might be fabricated digital lands that maneuver them to someone else's imagination by day, but at night, they get to plunge into a story and come up with their own thoughts and ideas.

I rest in those moments when I know, my children are going somewhere.

That went so fast, Lord

“That went so fast, Lord,” I exclaim as I go through papers and drawings and knick knacks of a 4th grader turned Freshman in high school. 

“In.a.blink.” 

I hated that saying when I was in the throes of toddler chaos and colicky newborns. Looking back, it is all a blur, all a mode of survival. But now, the truth of it is so devastating, so painful, when I discover how i had been so tempted to blink away the moments and get to the easier part. Too many blinks, and now it’s all being packed up in plastic bins to be gone through by daughter-in-laws and grand children. 

Ugh, my mama heart hurts. 

Packing up handwriting exercises and art projects, I realize how much of that little boy I have forgotten...and how too many moments slipped by without savoring, without being fully present. Life is short. 

And it’s all about the people. 

My people. 

My babies they will always be.