Tag: parenting

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Last week, I took the kids to the park. I watch my neighbor’s kids after school, so there were five of them. We had a great play date—the park was packed and the weather was gorgeous.

Just as we were leaving, I heard Gabe yell. I turned my head in time to see Ross, 8,  hit the ground, shoulder first. His feet were still hooked on the rope of the jungle gym. He was completely silent for a moment and then he started to scream, a thin, high, continuous sound. Gabe kept saying “It’s bad mom, it’s bad”,

This is what happens in my head at moments like this: EVERYTHING. All the things. At once.

Ross and I had a conversation that he doesn’t remember. I was holding him still, which he didn’t like, but I couldn’t tell which part of him was hurt. I figured out it was his arm, or shoulder. Gabe and Ross’ sister Sarah, who’d magically morphed into  EMTs, were chirping in my ear that I HAD TO call 911. Or Mercy Flight. And Ross’ mom.

I managed to get all five kids back to the car. I put Ross in the front seat. While I was buckling Annie, Ross panicked.

“Ms. Jen, you aren’t going to buckle me, right? Please don’t buckle me.” Then he started sobbing.

My brain was screaming at me to buckle him, because it was bad enough that his 8 year old self was in the front seat, and the seatbelt would not have touched his hurt arm.

I started to explain but he rolled his eyes up to heaven and yelled “Ms. Jen, can we PRAY????”

Uh, ok.  

I hesitated, but not because I didn’t think we needed prayer. If there was ever a time for Jesus to take the wheel, this was it. But I assume my guardian angel holds a place in the prayer line during emergencies until I can get around to the praying. Right at that exact moment, we needed to get around to the painkillers.

But since it was his pain and he wanted to pray, we prayed.

I can’t say his prayer word for word. He asked God to take his pain away and to be with him.

Then he sure did end with this: “Please God, please. Tell Ms. Jen RIGHT NOW that she doesn’t have to buckle me. Please. PLEASE.”

I almost laughed out loud. This kid–he knows me. He knew I would pray with him and he knew I didn’t want to hurt him and he tried to use God to seal the deal.

But I am a mama, and Jesus had a mama and she was fierce. He knows what’s what. If someone said “Lord, we have a request to change her heart on the seat belt decision”,  the Lord would say “Are you crazy, man?  She’s a MOM.”

When I prayed, I seconded Ross’ request that God ease his pain and come be with him. I asked God to calm his heart and his fears and help me drive quickly and safely to his mom at the ER.

I finished with “Lord, please help Ross understand that I have to buckle him for his own safety. Amen.”

And then I did it, before he knew what was happening.

In prayer, as in life, the mama knows best.

Ross had a broken elbow that required surgery the next day. Two weeks later he has a rad, neon green water proof cast. I took them all to the pool yesterday and he swam like a fish. He’s counting down the weeks until he has his arm back, which will be–thankfully–before the Fourth of July. 

Summer saved.

 

The Power of Mothers

 

Grace

You know we have great moms. You know we aspire to be great like them. On Sunday we will celebrate them in love and thanksgiving.

We will also patiently endure the love offerings of our own chicken nuggets. At the dinner table this week, Kate asked me what I wanted for Mother’s Day. I said “No jewelry. No appliances. Nothing for the kitchen.” And she turned her face to me, sweet forehead all scrunched up and asked “Well, what’s left?”

Did you know that the original idea for Mother’s Day was never meant to be about mothers?

It was supposed to be for mothers, a day when mothers all over the world came together to use their collective voice for peace.

I learned this from Glennon at Momastery.

Julia Ward Howe issued “An Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World” in 1870. It reads:

Arise, then, Christian women of this day ! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears ! Say firmly : We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

— Julia Ward Howe

What happened next was that, because she was a woman and a suffragette and she spoke the family business of her repressive marriage outside the bedroom, she was generally ignored.

Almost 40 years later, on May 10, 1908, Anna Jarvis observed the first Mother’s Day at her church. It was in honor of her mother, and again an effort to put the role and voice of mothers in the forefront of society. Her version was more palatable, and Mother’s Day became an official observance in 1914.

Then Hallmark realized there was money to be made and the rest is ugly history.

I don’t know any mother who says “Yippee! Mother’s Day!” For me, that’s because the rewards of my motherhood seem to flow towards me more than from me on any given day, to the point that I honestly feel I should thank my children for the love and joy they bring to my life.

But this iteration of Mother’s Day, as a call to action and justice—that feels real to me. It feels important. It feels powerful.

Mothers are powerful. Yes, we are. Helicopter moms and grizzly bear moms and tree hugger moms and granola moms and stay at home moms and working moms—we have some power.

This year, let’s use it. After church and the brunch and the school crafts and the “gifts” have been attended, eaten and opened—find a way to use your power.

Donate to Glennon’s Compassion Collective, which is feeding 6000 families every day.

Adopt a child from World Vision and become a “mother” for a child stuck in grinding poverty.

Send an email to the presidential candidate you support and the one you dislike the most and tell them why. Ask them to advocate for kids and peace.

Decide that this is the year you will become a Sunday School teacher or choir director or troop leader or coach and be an important adult in the lives of someone else’s kids.

Commit to a month of rosaries, asking the Blessed Mother to bring peace and love to this world.

Mothers are powerful and the world needs us.

Happy Mother’s Day.

 

 

 

 

No Excuse for Relative Pronouns

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I read a post the other day about the North Carolina transgender bathroom bill.

A mom in the comments said she stood in support of the bill because her young girls shouldn’t have to see THAT. And after she took a solid challenge from other readers, she signed off by saying that we are really screwing our kids up and IT is sad.

THAT and IT.

They jump off the page at me. Old habit. All English teachers know what I’m saying here. In the beginning of my career I would write little notes to my students in the margins, encouraging them to be more precise. By the end, I just circled the words, and drew a big question mark. On a poster board in the back of the room was a key to my corrections:

? = WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU SAYING???

When I read her comment, I thought What the heck is she saying? What is THAT and what is IT?

I played it out in my head:

A transgendered woman comes into the women’s room to pee. Regardless of how long she lived as a he, someone taught her that it’s not polite to pee in the sink. So off to a stall she goes.

How does my daughter even know what is happening behind those closed doors?

Or a transgendered man comes into the men’s room. The urinals are not an option—I actually know this from personal experience, it’s a physical impossibility—so off to the stall he goes.

My son would assume one thing: serious business. And he would get out there as soon as possible to avoid the smell.

All good so far.

What WOULD cause an uproar is the reverse of that. There’s a McDonald’s in Redding where the bathrooms are reversed. Usually the women’s room is on the right. THE RIGHT. Annie had to pee and the door needed a token and no, I didn’t look at the sign.

The guy at the urinal sure did shriek like a woman when I rolled in there with my preschooler. Safe to say that he didn’t want to see me any more than I wanted to be there.

In my world, it will be a few more years before my little people notice things that may be seem different to them. I stand firmly by my “Need to Know” style of parenting. I’ll find the words then.

Because I have never once thought how I would explain transgendered to my kids.

There it is.

Maybe this mom who commented was her older self, with kids who are asking questions that need answers. Maybe she’s watching her babies take giant steps towards adulthood and suddenly all  those hard words she was going to find on a far-away tomorrow have to be in her head today.

So she’s freaking out and using relative pronouns.

Sister girl, I can relate to THAT.

But I don’t want to live in a relative pronoun world. And I need to stop punting to my older self because I’m tired now and my older self, the one with teenagers, will be tired and old.

So I’m going to remember that we are people who believe where we stand on the important things in life is not as important as how we stand. We stand in love.

Then I’m going to call my girlfriends and invite them for coffee but really it will be a brainstorming session called “What to tell our kids when”. Together we will buck up and find the hard words because fear is no excuse to use relative pronouns.

But also.

For the love of God, can we build children with hardier hearts? Children who aren’t so fragile that they will need twenty years of therapy at the sight of a woman peeing standing up? Or whose faith in all that is good and holy will not fall to pieces in the face of a man who appears to have boobs? That’s a house of cards built on shifting sands and I am not interested in that.

I want mighty warriors.

If I’m doing my job well, they will see things different from their idea of right and wrong and say “Huh.” Then go about their holy and sacred business of standing in love.

 

 

God, Love and Rock and Roll

If, when you think “Christian music concert”, you see lots of guitars and banjos—then we need to talk.

Four years ago, I was you.

Then a friend suggested I try the Air1 radio station, at the same time I was struggling to recover from my postpartum anxiety. I turned it on, figuring that melodic, folksy guitar music would be soothing, if nothing else.

Yeah it was soothing. But not folksy or melodic. Hip hop. Rock. Pop.

The same types of music on any top 40 station, except clean, faith-filled, uplifting. That was the end of secular radio in mama’s car.

Our kids really like music. Kate loves to sing along and Gabe is interested in drums. So last summer, when Toby Mac was coming to town, Shea got us tickets.

I didn’t know what to expect. My first concert was Bon Jovi in 1989. I’ve seen Pearl Jam and U2, Pink and Lenny Kravitz.

Can Christian concerts be that big, loud, fun?

Yes they can. Minus the pot, liquor and boobs.

And—they’re cheaper.

Last weekend we took our kids to Toby Mac’s Hits Deep Tour in Eugene. We saw 8 top artists in 4 hours. We got churched up. We danced and sang til we were dripping sweat. I may have cried once or twice.

The place was sold out. Easily 10,000 people. Lots of kids of all ages. Lots of smiles and hugs and manners.

Not one curse word. Not. One.

These artists—they are amazing live. Dancing, standing on tables, jumping into the pit. They could be making so much more money in the secular music world. And instead, they use their gifts for God.

That’s the kind of role model I’m talking about. Not to mention, these are grown men and women testifying. They are walking their talk.

You better believe I want my kids to see that.

The tour has partnered with Food For the Hungry, so at one point, an African pastor came out and talked to us about their mission. His story went like this: If all of the people in the world could be represented by 100 people standing in a line, then we are all at the front. And at the back are children who are starving to death. One child dies from hunger every three seconds. 1-2-3. Another one gone. We may wonder why we are lucky enough to be at the front of the line. It’s because we have the power to make a difference for those at the back of the line. We can’t fix it all, but we can fix one. And God will see us fix that one and He will know we did what we could.

At the end, he counted again: 1-2-3. Then he shouted “Who will help save the ones at the back of the line?!” and Kate shot out of her seat with her hands and voice raised: “ME!!!!!!!”

So we adopted another African child. His name is Kirodunge and he lives in Burundi. It costs $35/month, but there’s no way to put a price on my little girl using her tithing money to help another child.

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Annie getting her worship on for Capital Kings

For more information on the Hits Deep Tour, visit tobymac.com. For other tours and events, visit http://www.air1.com or http://www.klove.com.

 

 

10 Years

It was a Monday. I was scheduled to work for three more weeks. And my department was having a happy hour baby shower for me. So twenty minutes after the bell rang, I left the piles where they lay, grabbed my things and headed out the door.

I tried really hard to get the waitress to serve me a margarita, but the belly gave me away. “How far along are you?” she asked.

Thirty six weeks, on the button.

I had onion rings for dinner. I laughed with my colleagues about how the room wasn’t painted, the baby clothes weren’t washed, the bag wasn’t packed and we had two more childbirth classes to go.

“Cutting it close” one of the guys said.

“Nah, we have time” Shea told him.

“Are you ready?”

“I was born ready” I said.

Before I left the restaurant, I hit the bathroom. My chones were wet, which was weird because I had not been a leaker up til that point. Last month, I thought to myself.

Except on the way home, I felt some more leak.

So I called my sister in law, who’d had my nephew 9 months previously.

“What does it feel like to lose your mucus plug?”

“Like a glop.”

“Let me go check.” I handed the phone to Shea and went to the bathroom. When I sat down on the toilet, there was a whoosh of liquid and I yelled.

I could hear her yell back at Shea “DID HER WATER JUST BREAK?????”

I went upstairs, sat on the bed and started to think of all the things left undone on my desk.

180 essays. A stack of homework. Lesson plans for the next twelve weeks.

I’m not ready.

When Shea came out of the closet with a duffel bag, he said “Are you going to take a shower?”

No.

“Are you going to change your pants?”

I already took my pants off.

“Are you going to put some new pants on?”

No.

“No???”

No. I’m not ready. I’m not having a baby tonight.

He got my mom on the phone. She called me Jennifer Margaret and told me to get in the car. She said she’d be there as soon as possible.

Right, then.

I toyed with the idea of delivering naturally and made it all the way to 7 cm. That’s when we found out that I am one of those people whose blood pressure bottoms out with anesthesia. I revisited my onion rings. I pushed for three hours before calling it quits. I was occasionally awake.

Gabriel was born by c-section at 7:54 am, 7 lbs even, 21 inches and with a giant bruise around his right eye.  He’d been trying to see his way out.

Yesterday, he turned 10. My preemie boy who struggled to eat for the first month of his life, is now 5’1” tall.

That younger me on the night of March 6, 2006, the one who felt not ready—she was ready and Gabriel’s early arrival was only the first lesson in parenting. All of the medical issues we faced in the two weeks after his birth, the jaundice and the weight loss and the blood tests and the weigh-ins. They were our parent bootcamp.

They taught us that life wasn’t going to look the way we imagined.

Life was going to look the way it was, every single joyful, messy, scary, exciting, daunting, exhausting minute.

And now I know I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Cheers to ten years of parenting.

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