just keep swimming...

The other day, my little sister’s best friend posted this as her facebook status. I’m not usually one to refer to cartoons for life mantras, but it was strangely just what I needed to hear. ..a reminder of the only thing I can really do. Just keep swimming.

This week was a tough one for us. The financial reality of not having a job truly began to set in. Michael got an offer for a great job on Monday, which was promptly revoked a couple of hours later due to the fact that his step-brother works for the same company, and it violates their nepotism policy. (For the record, everyone that was a part of Michael’s interview process was aware of the situation and assured him that being step-brothers didn’t count as immediate family.) Anyway, there are no hard feelings toward the company or anyone involved…It just felt like having the rug put back under us and then ripped out again. It was a punch in the gut after everything else that has happened, and it took us a little while to get over.

Inevitably, it just seems to have been another little lesson for us. Patience and Faith. Patience and Faith. Patience and Faith. I repeat these things to myself when I feel panic or frustration starting to rise, and only after Monday did I realize that I haven’t been truly giving myself over to either patience or faith. It isn’t enough to cling to the ideas of patience and faith to help myself through this. I have to learn them. I have to practice them. I have to focus on WHAT THEY REALLY MEAN. And that’s hard.

I’m learning right now that patience doesn’t mean calming down or waiting for answers that will shortly present themselves to me. It’s not enough to have patience for a few days or a few weeks. We are making changes here…life changes. The answers to the questions that create life changes take time. I’m learning that I can’t expect my husband to decide how he wants to go about starting his career over in a few weeks. I’m learning that I can’t expect him to go about things the way I do. I’m learning that he needs the time to really look within himself and figure things out. These transitions we are going through aren’t set on a timeline like I wish they were. So I’m having a baby in a few months. That doesn’t mean we have a deadline. Babies are born into all sorts of crazy situations and everything turns out fine. This baby will be fine…and loved…and happy. What else really matters? Learning to have patience is hard for a control freak because it means giving up control (or at least the illusion of control). Relinquishing control is a daily (hourly) struggle for me, but I’m working on it. And sometimes I fail completely. But sometimes I don’t. This next week, I’m going to focus on harnessing this type of patience and letting it keep me afloat. I’m going to focus on NOT struggling against the tide.



And then there’s faith. This is a really hard one for me. Fundamentally, I believe in individual autonomy. To an extent, I believe that I control what happens to me. If I work hard, I am much closer to achieving what I want than if I just wait for it. This is how I’ve lived my entire life, and I think I’ve situated faith in a strange place. I have faith in what I have control (or the illusion of control) over. I have faith in the ultimate human good. I have faith that being a good person is always for the best. It has always been really hard for me to have faith that things would just work out for the best. Obviously, things don’t always work out for the best. People fail. People die. Tragedies happen. Good people don’t always have good lives. So there’s no point in believing that everything will turn out great. Maybe it will and maybe it won’t. That’s always always been my perspective on things. But I’m beginning to realize that I’ve left something out of that equation. Maybe things don’t always turn out for the best, but (and I do believe this) things always turn out how they are supposed to. Every single hard thing I’ve ever gone through has shaped me. Whether I fight it or struggle for control over it or wallow in my frustration with it, the universe always wins. It always finds a way to teach me what I’m in desperate need of learning. The faith that I’m searching for means that I need to relax and let the universe do what it’s going to do. Things will turn out exactly how they are supposed to without my overanalyzing and scrutinizing over every single decision. There is no use for all my worry and fear. One way or another, what is going to be will be. I just have to let it. This week, I’m going to focus on the faith that helps me let things be.

My sister in law is an elementary school teacher, and she once quoted from a book she’d read to her class: “Today was a bad day; Tomorrow will be better.”

So, after a long, hard, emotionally draining week, I’m going to spend the next few days focusing on the lessons I’ve learned from Disney movies and children’s books. I’m going to keep swimming toward a better tomorrow. I’m going to let go of today’s pains and move forward. I’m going to find the inner peace to let the universe shape me, reminding myself every moment that life isn’t about the jobs we have or the money we make. Life is about becoming who we are supposed to be, and this day’s challenge is just a step leading us in that direction.

Meditations on Patience and Faith...and Blessings

It’s been a pretty crazy couple of weeks for this little family. And I mean crazy. On June 30th, Michael got a pretty shocking call at four o’clock in the morning. It was his confused boss, letting him know that he thought Yarnell’s Ice Cream, the company Michael has worked for for the past five years, had gone out of business overnight…without any warning to employees.

In all honesty, it has been pretty obvious that things were going downhill at Yarnell’s for a while now. After a string of drastic pay cuts, we began casually looking for new options for Michael. But Yarnell’s has continued to pay our bills (and not much more) in the meantime…until last weekend, when he and two hundred other employees received their final paychecks which included no severance, no pay for saved vacation time, and nothing else.

So here we sit…in small town Arkansas, with a seventeen month old and another baby due in sixteen (ish??? I’ve lost count) weeks, and no jobs. All our plans have been thrown up into the air, along with all our feelings of security and peace. With the last little bit of my master’s degree able to be wrapped up from home, I was all set to stay home with my babies for a year or so before really trying to get my career started. Michael was content with Yarnell’s but hoping to find something better for us in the meantime. It wouldn’t have been easy, but we would have gotten by while our babies were little. And now..who knows? Either one or both of us could end up having to go to work. We’re most likely looking at relocating, which is equally exciting and terrifying for a number of reasons. We may or may not have a settled life before the birth of this baby. We’re starting over.

We’ve been trying to look at this as an opportunity rather than a hardship. Michael has been tied to a job he hasn’t loved for a long time. Now, he’s not. He needed a change, and now he has to make one. There is a plan in all this…but it’s still scary. I am hardwired for anxiety, and I’ve done my best to keep it at bay – to be the most supportive and encouraging wife, the most calm and assuring mommy, the most soothing and healthy home for our littlest one. It’s my first tough lesson in motherhood. I’ve always known that women hold families together and keep things smooth and peaceful, but I’ve never been challenged to try to do this when I feel so anxious and uncertain about the future. I do my best to take things one day at a time, to enjoy the time with my husband, to focus on what I can learn.

Right now, I’m spending a lot of time meditating on patience and faith. These are the lessons the universe is trying to teach me through this. These two things have always been some of my greatest weaknesses, and I know that somehow, through this, I am being shaped and prepared for a day when I will truly need to lean on patience and faith. In the scheme of things, our problems are small. We have each other, our health and love and absolute assurance in one another. We have safety and security and a roof over our heads. We have a huge community of family and friends loving us through this. If I can’t learn to be patient and have faith that we will be taken care of, that we are on the path to what is meant for us, in the face of all of these blessings, then how could I ever hope to make it through something really hard? There are people all over this world struggling to literally survive. There are people who’ve lost their homes and loved ones in disasters. There are people who live every single day afraid of real and dangerous threats. There are people who are fighting addictions and diseases. There are people who are truly broken and alone. And somehow, these people survive.
We will make it through this. We will find the right way to provide for our little family. Our children will grow up knowing love and hope and happiness (and hopefully, someday, faith and patience). I look forward to the day when things will seem more settled and less scary.

Until then, I will do my best to wait and believe that things will work out. I will make the most of these days. Until then, I will focus on how thankful I am. I am thankful for the soft places to land. I am thankful that when I freak out and cry and talk one hundred miles an hour and make absolutely no sense, my husband just holds me and breathes deep for me and tells me it’s all going to work out fine the 157 times I need to hear it. I am thankful for knowing that even the hands that sometimes seem to be pushing me are really just trying to help hold me up and keep me steady. I am thankful for the best family who loves me and the kindest and most wonderfully supportive, best friends in the world. I am thankful for a hot shower and good smelling candles and the perfect Ryan Adams song coming on the radio. I am thankful for the smiliest, funniest, happiest little boy. I am thankful for this healthy littlest one. Most of all, I am thankful for knowing that no matter how much time I spend measuring out, counting, categorizing, and strategizing against my pains and worries and frustrations, they will never compare to the blessings I can count up in just a couple of seconds.

Letters to Babies

Last Monday, we went for our big ultrasound with Baby # 2. Our insurance only covers two ultrasounds unless complications require more, so if all goes well, we won’t get to see littlest one again until sometime in late October! We decided not to find out the gender, and even after watching this little wiggle worm spin around and around on the screen, I really have no clear guess as to whether or not it is a he or a she.

I really wanted to wait to find out with Chase, but he was the first grandbaby/nephew for all parties involved. People were just so excited to learn more about our little one, and maybe we were just a tad curious ourselves. I struggled with the decision of whether or not to find out for weeks, but we decided to go for it and make everyone happy. I was so overwhelmed by the all the possibilities of the person growing inside me that I wasn’t ready to begin to limit those possibilities in any way. I felt so afraid to know whether he was a boy or girl because I didn’t want the world to just go ahead and assign him a personality, a set of likes and dislikes, or a life path. I wanted him to always know that he could be anyone. I wanted him to come into this world undefined.

This is what I wrote to Chase before we learned he was a Chase:

September 17, 2009

Dear Baby,
Today is the day we find out if you are a boy or a girl. On the one hand, I am excited to see you again and to know that you are healthy and safe. I am excited to learn more about you. But, on the other hand, I am sad because I know that you will already begin to be defined, categorized, and classified before you are even born or get the chance to become anyone. I have to tell you, before I know anything about you other than that you are my child, that it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter how you want to act or what you want to do or who you want to be. I will always love you for being exactly who you are. I hope that I can show you that every single day of your life, but I know sometimes I’ll mess up. And sometimes the world around you won’t be as supportive of you as you want them to be (or I want them to be…or they should be). Sometimes, many times, the world will try to tell you who to be.
The greatest desire I have for you is that you are able to shut out those voices and create in yourself the person you want to be. I hope that you are always becoming that person, even when it is the most difficult, the most confusing, the most scary thing in the world. I want you to love yourself, to know yourself, to be happy with yourself, and to know that you have the potential to be whomever and whatever you ever desire to be…follow your heart to that person. And while you are doing that, always ALWAYS know that you are loved and respected in this family for having the courage to be yourself and do what is right for you.

I love you,

Mom

Now that I know him, the beautiful little soul I wrote this letter to nearly two years ago, my fears are quiet.


This boy follows his feet where they carry him. He doesn’t wait for anyone’s approval. He runs toward himself and we follow him just to witness his brilliance and catch some of the joy that scatters out along his path.

And so we wait to find out more about Baby #2. Not because I am afraid of definitions, but because I am excited to meet everything about this little one when he or she gets here. We wait because of the excitement of big (huge) surprises. We wait because 20 more weeks fly by when you have a little Chase to chase around…in no time at all we’ll be holding both our babies and watching them both become themselves.

So here is my letter to you, Littlest One,
I trust you. You will be exactly who you are supposed to be. I love you, exactly how you are and ever will be. You are our blessing, and you are one lucky little baby because you’ve got the most wonderful big brother to follow. He will help you find yourself in this big old world. There is a big hole in this family waiting to be filled by you. There is a place for you here. We love you.

This is how my garden grows...

Sometime in the summer of 2009, after I found out I was pregnant with my son, I bought I big, flower-covered journal to write to him in. I didn't know anything about him yet, even that he was a boy, but I had so much to say...so, so much I needed to say in written words to my baby - words about my pregnancy, how much I loved him, how I hoped his life to be...words about myself, my own hopes and dreams, my flaws and my shortcomings...words about our life, how it began and how it was changing. After he was born, I continued to write to him. At first, I wrote a lot.
But as things got busier and busier, that little journal just sat on the nightstand collecting dust. Now that he is almost seventeen months old and has another sibling on the way, I feel a renewed need to say things to my babies that they just can't understand right now. I feel a need to record these days for them...to show them how we grew.

As a blogger, my history is a little spotty. My first attempt in the blogging world, Conversation Time, was a lifesaver to me in the months after Chase's birth. Writing in that space about anything and everything gave me a renewed sense of self in a world that I was struggling to place myself in. As I tried to learn to recognize myself not only as me, but also as someone's mother, blogging was a way for me to reconnect with who I'd been...to find my voice during a season when my heart had grown so big that it drowned everything else out. But, like the baby journal, that blog has been sitting in some forgotten corner of the internet collecting dust for months now.

I have realized that what I need as a blogger (and a writer...and a person) is focus to follow through. I need purpose and less personal pressure to be perfect. Like the plants in my garden, and the babies in my home and belly, I need a place to grow. I need a place to plant seeds and watch what they grow into. I need a place to talk about who I am becoming as a mother and a person. I need a place to watch my family grow and change. So, friends, welcome to my garden!