Random Motherly Thoughts for May
May 9, 2010
Hello fellow travelers! Mother’s Day weekend is here and I am living the life of a mother. Friday night I spent three hours fighting traffic and sitting in a gym to see one daughter dance around the May pole at our little town’s annual May Day festival. I also went to see the little girl I nanny, all gussied up in a formal, throw petals on the gym floor as a tiny queen attendant, and watch several of my Wednesday night first graders dance with their school classes. On Saturday, I cleaned house and went shopping with two daughters, then ate pizza like my thighs wouldn’t notice (but judging from past experience, I doubt that I fooled them.) I also started the laundry, and since I haven’t quite got a handle on finding the wonder in dirty clothes, that made me a bit grumpy. The girls have brewed something for Sunday, but I don’t know what. Motherhood is so full of the unexpected and the very daily. It can be a little jarring at times. But worth it nonetheless.
Two of my girls will be leaving on a trip to Great Britain in less than three weeks. I’ll probably need some major drugs by the time they leave. So many packing details to remember, and scary thoughts to try to forget, including one that had never crossed my mind until recently–the possibility of an Icelandic volcano explosion, for crying out loud! As if terrorists, mechanical malfunctions and getting separated from the group in an airport or subway aren’t enough to keep me awake. Okay, so they are fully functioning (more or less) adultish type people. What’s there to worry about? They are my DAUGHTERS, that’s what! Another nice little joy of motherhood.
I’m currently going through Beth Moore’s *Daniel* study in Sunday School. This is actually my second time through it, so I should have this all down by now, but alas, I seem to be denser than a hound dog chasing a lizard around a tree stump (you might need to know Eujane, the bloodhound, to get the full effect of this analogy, but believe me, that’s pretty dense.) I should know by now, that as Beth says, I need “to practice a holy habit long enough that it becomes the old pattern,” such as being “anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” Philippians 4:6. I still seem to be caught in the “be anxious first, and then pray” mode most of the time. Beth also brought out the fact that being thankful, even when we’re not sure how to be thankful, grows our faith and thwarts the enemy, when we speak our thanks aloud. Satan can’t read our thoughts, so we need to express our thanks to God out loud to give him the heebie jeebies, so he’ll leave us alone. So here goes, really loudly, **”Thank you, Lord, for providing the funds for this trip the girls are going on. Thank you that you are going with them. Thank you that you are sovereign over volcanoes and mass transit. Thank you for cell phones and good travel leaders and daughters with brains. Amen.”** If that doesn’t scare the devil, then, he must be denser than Eujane.
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It is now officially Mother’s Day and I am holed up in my bedroom under orders not to come out until called, or until 2:00, I’m not sure which. I can hear chopping going on in the kitchen. This is a good indication that I am going to be fed eventually. Yes! This old mom likes her food! This old mom likes to travel down memory lane, too, except today I traveled down one I probably shouldn’t have. I got a little emotional at church, thinking about a Mother’s Day 25 years ago when I said goodbye to my mother, who died about a week later from cancer. It doesn’t seem possible that so much time has passed, and I’ve lived almost my entire motherhood days without my own mom. My oldest daughter was seven months old when Mama died.
Just as I was about to get really weepy, God reminded me that for all those years without Mama, I’ve had a wonderful older sister and the best mother-in-law ever created, who’ve been moms to me, and grandmothers to my girls. I couldn’t have raised my girls without their support and prayers and friendship. So thanks Barbara and Arnita! You’re both great moms to me.
So lest I leave everyone in a pool of sentimental muck, let me tell you a little story from the wifey side of motherhood. My dear husband, who just finished off his college professorial duties, came home from taking Carly to school one morning this week, and greeted me like I was some kind of joyous vision as I sat eating my breakfast. You must understand that Bret is a morning person and a very happy-go-lucky type who sees everything simply and positively. I am not this kind of person. I like the night time, and I like to think dark thoughts and get completely frazzled and disturbed about every little thing. That’s just the way God made me, so if you have a problem with that, go discuss it with Him!
But I digress. Anyway, I made some kind of snarly sound at him and said something like, “What’s your problem? I’m just eating breakfast. Why is that making you smile like that?”
He answered that he was just happy and content. I muttered something about how he is always content, when there are all kinds of things that need to be done around the house, that being content isn’t going to fix. He then mentioned that he had just recently been thinking that if everyone in the world were like him, nothing much would be accomplished. We probably wouldn’t have electricity, or running water or cars, because the people who came up with all our modern conveniences had to have been discontent with the way things were and must have been ambitious enough to do something about it.
So, from my pleasant early morning fogof discontent I replied, “Yeah, if everyone had been like you, we’d still be throwing rocks at animals and laughing even when we missed.”
For some reason, known only to the truly contented and joyous among us, Bret laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. If he had said something similar to me, I would have thrown a rock, and it wouldn’t have been at an animal. Well, a virtual rock anyhow.
This is what I have to put up with. **Constant niceness**.Can anything be more irritating?
Really, I’m grateful to have such tortures to endure. God is good. And so is my husband.
Go hug a mom. And a husband or wife if you have one. And your children and/or pets. And maybe just anyone who needs to feel some love.
Until next time.