"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -Emerson

Friday, July 31, 2015

On Stoop Living


Growing up, I had one thing I dreamed about my adult life including more than anything. It wasn’t a wedding day. Or a big fancy career. No, the one thing I envisioned as being the pinnacle of adulthood was a stoop. You know, a wide, stairway leading to a home, usually found in city dwellings and often times located next to another stoop. It’s the place in movies where neighbors would sit and talk for hours on hot summer days in between games of street football or jumping through the water from spraying fire hydrants. Perhaps it was my days watching Sesame Street as a small girl. Or Crooklyn as an angsty adolescent. But a stoop represented something that I knew I’d long for in my adulthood: community, conversation, life.  

I didn’t get a stoop. Stoops are in the city and I’ve lived the majority of my adult life in the suburbs, marked by cookie cutter homes, locked doors, and fenced yards. I was right about the longings of adults though – community, conversation, and life pretty much sums it up. It’s a craving I’ve seen time and time again, especially in women. But our social media laced existence has given us a false sense that we are satisfying that desire and so we come to the virtual stoop multiple times a day, looking for someone to engage with. As with any substitute for the real thing, we walk away feeling unfulfilled yet bloated, like we never really got what we wanted in the first place.

It’s got me thinking lately: what is it that keeps us from getting that thing we all want more than anything? It is the speed of our lives? Calendars completely booked months in advance? Or Pinterest induced insecurities that tell us not to let anyone in to the interior of our existence before it can be pinned and favorited? Have we filled ourselves with the junk food version of community by becoming peeping toms into the highs of each other’s days through Facebook? Have texts just become enough for interaction? Perhaps it’s a combination of it all, but one thing I know is that we were made for stoop living.

Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 NIV)

So many of us are falling and no one even notices, let alone helps us up because we have given up real, live, meaningful, consistent interactions with one another. Marriages are crumbling. Depression is overtaking. People are hurting, but there is no one who even sees it.

Community, though, has purpose beyond just our own personal benefit:

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10:24-25 NIV)

Stoops, dinner tables, living rooms—these are the places where we get our tanks filled up. As the great philosophizer Taylor Swift once alluded, the world is filled with haters who are gonna hate, hate, hate. We need spaces where we can gather and find our cheerleaders and co-laborers. People and conversations sprinkled with belief that we can do this thing called life and do it well in the midst of whatever circumstances God has placed us in: motherhood, mourning, brokenness, or on the mountaintops in our stories.

Hebrews tells us “not to give up meeting together” and goes on to say “as some are in the habit of doing.”  That tells me that community is a habit. It’s a choice we have to make daily. It requires turning off the computer, clearing off the calendar, and picking up the phone to say come on over. It is scary because it takes away the veneer of perfection that we so meticulously control with every Instagram post. It is vulnerable because we never know what awaits on the other end of the invitation. A no can feel like rejection that none of us want to endure. It can be painful because of the imperfect beings we invite inside may end up being a source of hurt. Real community requires a courage and a boldness some of us don’t feel like we can muster up quite yet.

I’ve watched countless women sit inside and look out the window, longing to come find a spot on the stoop. Day after day, I’ve seen people knock on their doors and invite them out, but they refuse. However, every so often their response will change and they will come and sit. I’ve yet to hear one ever say they regret stoop living. No, their words are always, “I wish I would’ve come out sooner.”

Here’s to finding your place on the stoop!

-C.

Your turn:

What keeps you from real community more than anything: fears, insecurities, or busyness? What have you done to seek it out? Does your home have a stoop, a place where people can come and conversation and life can emerge?  

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Dear Christian Friend on Facebook...

By: Catherine Fitzgerald

Dear Christian Friend on Facebook,

I know you watch the news. I can tell by your commentary and rants on reposted Fox News articles. I know the shifts of the cultural tides are really starting to freak you out, I get it. I really do. But, here is the thing: if you profess Christ, you’ve got a whole lot of hope in this world, even more in the next, and you know how it all ends, so let’s all take a deep, deep breath.  

I’ve been silently mustering up the courage to tell you all the things that go through my mind as I habitually scroll social media. I don’t think this current game plan is working. Posting a seething diatribe in the name of Jesus on hot topic issues, the president of the United States, or how this world is going to hell in a handbasket isn’t drawing anyone in to the greatest news of all. I’ve yet to hear of one conversion resulting from a disrespectful and downright unkind meme about the leader of the free world’s leadership. No one has ever told me that they’ve walked away from a sinful lifestyle because they were really convicted by the venomous posts from Christians railing against them on Facebook.

Truth, but what about truth! I hear you scream from the other side of this screen. We’ve got to make a stand.

If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

Jesus always gave truth, but He always did it within the context of a relationship. We must have relational leverage in order for any truth to be welcomed, let alone received. Unfortunately, we’ve clanged the symbol for far too long and have burnt bridges that are seemingly beyond repair. There are entire groups of people who are sick and tired of our brand of truth, to the point that they aren’t even willing to listen anymore. In fact, some are trying to make it illegal.

Here’s what I’m thinking to get this thing back on track. Why don’t we all take a big step away from the keyboard? Let’s stop airing every.single.opinion as if it’s the God’s honest truth. I’ve got a hard word for you and I promise, I’m giving you this because I love you:

            Fools find no pleasure in understanding, but delight in airing their own opinions. (Proverbs 18:2)

This social media thing has really spiraled out of control for even the best of us. We are now delighting in putting errrrrything we think about EVERYTHING out there. We witticize it. We pass it off as nothing more than a joke. We think in terms of our next snarky status. It's foolishness. And the whole world is watching and they aren’t impressed nor changed by this hypocrisy. They will know we are Christians by our political party affiliation and Facebook posts is not how the song goes. It’s love. Over and over and over again, it is boiled down to love.

Pharisees: Jesus, what’s the whole point of this massive book?

Jesus: Love God, Love people.

Before you start thinking about how you’re going to tear this apart in the comments section, question my application of scripture and refute all my points, I want you to take a minute to pray. In this Us v. Them group think mob mentality, how many of us have really taken steps to forage relationships with those whom some may consider them? For all the posts, the rants, the criticisms and judgments, what is the last loving thing you have done specifically for the people you may disagree with? Name the last homosexual you’ve had in your home for dinner. Tell me about the girl you’ve welcomed over for coffee who chose abortion over life. How many of your close friends voted for someone other than the GOP candidate? These aren’t the lines in the sand that Jesus drew. His line was much wider and one that tripped us all:

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11 “No one, sir,” she said.

Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:2-11)

See what He did there? He stuck up for the perceived worst sinner by all the religious elites. He fought for her. They were ready to stone her. Imagine the virtual flogging she would’ve received by Christians on FB. They were ready to mock and turn her sin in to a meme for the masses. Think about the .gif that could’ve resulted from the first stone being cast. It would’ve been liked, reposted and made complete with its own hashtag in a matter of minutes. But, He came out swinging over the visceral attacks of the church going types. The truth that you so adamantly proclaim as your purpose for your harsh and often times cruel posts, only came AFTER He built relationship. A man willing to stand in front of the stones about to be thrown in your direction is a man who has your attention. He is the kind of man a sinner like myself might be willing to hear out about areas in my life that I need to change. A guy bucking social and religious mores in an effort to show a girl from the wrong side of the tracks some grace and love is the kind of guy that can turn this whole crazy train around for us.

I love you friend and it’s because I love you and care for you that I am telling you these things. I don’t want any of us to get to heaven to receive the same harsh judgment we’ve been doling out from the sanctity of our computer screens. This whole thing really could be resolved if we all spent a lot less time on social media and a lot more time getting to know the sinners next door, of whom I am the worst. There is a whole world reeling from broken and bleeding hearts that need some mending and we are the ones who know the remedy. Let’s not keep them from even walking in our door because of all the junk we’ve posted from behind an emotionless, safe machine of courage. Your words may be the cause of some of the blood from those hearts and you don’t even know it. Let’s try to undo all the harm we as a group have already done.

I’m thinking this might be the way to get a few more ears willing to hear us out on this whole matter of truth. What do ya think?

Love,

Your equally as sinful Christian Facebook Friend

P.S. No where above do I reveal my thoughts on aforementioned “hot topics” or current administration. If you want those thoughts, you’re only going to get them over some of my famous spaghetti at my kitchen table, not through some impersonal blogging post. Then and only then you can hear my tone, see my inflection, and ultimately, my heart.

P.P.S. My spaghetti is worth it. 

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Beggars can't be choosers and other lies I tell myself...


For the past three years or so, God has been utterly messing me up. I’ve always leaned towards the side of the underdog and the down and out, but through a series of books and my own journey through scripture, I’ve felt a paradigm shift and my ideas get more radical…more like Jesus. He has exposed blind spots in my life that at first, were very uncomfortable for me to deal with. My world is pretty homogeneous, my circle is filled with a lot of like me’s. White, middle class, moms who have the luxury of staying at home with their children. Sometimes it gets mixed up with my working mom friends, but for the most part, the mold is pretty similar down the line. I’ve realized the more and more I get in to God’s word, He thinks and talks a lot about the poor and those on the outskirts, and if I want to obey His commands, I’m going to have to go somewhere to find the people He is talking about.  

Thus began my search for finding those who were nothing like me. It started with getting involved with a local refugee ministry and has now expanded to include the local food pantry. It’s been a great avenue to discussing the things of God’s word with my 8 year old, but as I was serving today in the giant food pantry warehouse without any air conditioning (the heat makes a girl think sometimes), it got me thinking about how while God has used these experiences to make some great strides in my thinking and my views of the world, it has also exposed some ugly thought patterns that I, as a member of the “fortunate,” tend to have. Things that we don’t talk about, but that can best be seen in our actions and reactions to the poor.

If you’ve ever served in any sort of ministry or organization serving the underprivileged that receives donations, you’ve seen the gamut of “stuff” that is given to these places. So much of our collective thoughts on the poor can be seen where donations are received. In our blame shift culture, it is easy to start picking apart the people and places doing their very best to serve with what they’ve been given. But hear me clearly on this one, any “shoulds,” “oughts,” and “need to’s” are only to be reserved for us, the resourced consumers in the community, not the organizations trying to do something to alleviate hunger and meet the needs of the least among us. Our rhetoric is perhaps one of the greatest instigators for this perpetual thinking that most of us silently harbor when it comes to the poor.  

Here are the thoughts I’ve found myself battling against at times that just remind me how little I get “it” sometimes:

1.       Beggars can’t be choosers:

How many times have we muttered this under our breath when giving away something for free? I see myself struggle with this sometimes when I’m handing a bag of random meat to an impoverished stranger or giving away an old, hole-y pair of shoes. Why is the freedom to choose reserved only for the haves of this world? Shouldn’t our poor neighbors have choices in what they feed their families or the clothes they wear? Isn’t that a part of being human? Isn’t that giving someone the dignity of acknowledging them as a human: freedom to choose? My husband once told a story about when he went to Haiti after the earthquakes and the people there would refuse the peanut butter rations. Cultural tastes most likely played into that. But from the perspective of a person who encounters a multitude of choices every time I open the refrigerator, why do I believe that the poor shouldn’t have that same ability to choose? The choice may be between the offerings at hand or nothing, but why should I be the judge of the choice they make?  

The majority of options we offer the poor are the least healthy. Prepackaged, sodium laced, high in calories and fat. At the grocery store the other day the cashier asked if I would like to donate a box of Pop tarts to the local food bank. Pop tarts or cheese doodles. An almost rotten tomato or a wilted cabbage. Those are the choices we as a society are willing to offer our poor neighbors. We can and we must do better than that.

2.       Take what you can get:

This is perhaps the greatest underlying current in our collective “generosity.” When it’s time to donate to the places changing the world, what do we usually offer? Our leftovers. It is all the clothes and canned goods I’ve rejected. I’m saving the best for who else? Me. I’ll give you the shirts I never wear or the cans of beans I bought randomly and will never fix for my family, but ask for my best or even something new, then that’s when I get stingy. That’s when I start scaling back my generosity. Two bags of stained, outdated clothing no problem, but brand new anything, I’ll get you maybe one, the cheapest one I can find, if I remember the next time I’m at Walmart, buying a bunch of things I don’t need for my people.

I’ve seen this in the produce given away at the pantry. Moldy strawberries, lettuce on the verge of expiration, bruised and battered vegetables. Again, the onus for this one is not on the organizations that give this stuff away, they are doing their best with what WE have given them. No, the burden of responsibility is on us as a community. Why aren’t we stockpiling these places with our best offerings instead of our scraps? This isn’t merely a guilt trip, this is a Biblical mandate.

As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others.  All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”-Luke 21:1-4

Put that in the context of what we give to others. The widow gave until it hurt, the rich gave out of their richness. Are our unused leftovers really the best we can do? Is that doing the hard work of denying ourselves more so that we can give completely openhandedly? Do we honor Jesus in the highest way when all we are willing to contribute is our overabundance of junk? Don’t think I’m lecturing you on this one, this is a big fat note to self.

3.       It just shows me how #blessed I am:

Oh, how often do I reduce my changed perspective after working with people outside of my zone of comfort to this? This is when blind spots turn from stupid ignorant underlying beliefs to dangerous, destructive core principles. Material and monetary abundance have absolutely no correlation with God’s blessing on us. If it did, we are telling the majority of the world that God just doesn’t care as much about them, which simply put, ain’t true.
“Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position. 10 But the rich should take pride in their humiliation—since they will pass away like a wild flower. 11 For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.”- James 1:9-11

Did you catch that? Stuff is not the reward to those who love Jesus. In fact, the poor are higher on this totem pole of faith than the rich. Why? Because more often than not, our possessions can quickly become the very things that seek to destroy and distract us from our actual blessings. The comforts of this world are the very things that can assuage me in to a false sense that I don’t need God, instead of the daily, hourly or even minute by minute reminder that only the pangs of hunger and the lack of shelter can give.

“Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?-James 2:5

The faith of our impoverished brothers and sisters around the globe is the kind of faith that impresses God, not the miserly, tight fisted confidence of his spoiled kids. I’ll trust you God when I’m full, start taking things away and that’s when my faith gets shaky. But true faith gets richer in depth and color when our bellies and bodies ache for hunger and warmth. When those eyes turn to the heavens, this stuff gets real. The kingdom moves frenetically at the sound of the cries of those saints.

So, what do we do with this all? It’s easy to take this  as a call to sell everything, move off the grid, and seek out poverty a la David Platt or Francis Chan. For some, that may be the exact thing He is calling us to. I don’t think that’s the only point of what Christ is saying, but I do think we have to do a few things as we wrestle with this tension:

-          Start giving our best away: Don’t stop giving away all the stuff we don’t use anymore, but start looking for ways to give that hurt too. It’s Cross work, Holy Spirit training that will get us to this point where that insatiable American need for more is replaced with a kingdom minded perspective of consuming less in order to give more.

-          Margin, margin, margin: We like to live our lives to the edge of everything: our time, our finances, our square footage. We cannot give more until we have the room and space. At some point, we’ve got to take our name out of the rat race and get off the hamster wheel of busyness, stress and debt so that we can dip deeper in to our pockets and our hearts.

-          Pray: We can’t merely do some magic behavioral modifications and call it a day. We’re only going to get this thing even semi-close to right through the power of the Holy Spirit. I can never, on my own accord, be less selfish or less of a consumer. Our American culture is shiny and glittery and the shelves of Target are all aiming their sights at my friends and me. This place is gunning for us and won’t stop. It’s only an act of God moving within me that is going to keep me from getting hit by another tranquilizer dart of comfort and excess.

This stuff is so stinking hard. Sometimes I just wonder how my faith would be different had I been born in the majority of the world, where hunger and poverty is as much the norm as abundance and excess is here. God has just encouraged me as I’ve watched numerous Christian authors and my friends repeatedly echoing the same things, I want to live with less so I can give more. Let’s do this thing together. Let’s make radical choices and come up with crazy, hair brained schemes about how to fix the mess we’ve created.

Your turn: what’s the hardest part of this all for you? What is your biggest struggle in the chasm between doing the stuff God says to do and living out the American dream?

Monday, July 13, 2015

Freedom Found


I want to tell you a story so pull up a chair...

There once was a little girl. This little girl always found herself longing…longing for the next thing. She often felt like life was like dangling on the monkey bars on the playground, swaying back and forth, back and forth, this girl was just trying to muster up the strength to swing herself to the next rung, the next big thing.

It started from the beginning. As a young girl, all she could dream about was becoming a teenager. When I’m a teenager, she would say, I can drive and then I’ll be happy because I’ll be independent and free. So swing, swing, swing she would on her monkey bars. She’d ride her banana seat bike with a pink flowery basket around the neighborhood. Inside the basket was a small battery operated radio shaped like McDonald’s French Fries. She’d turn it on and pretend it was her car radio. She would drive in the street, stop at all the stop signs, and make fake clicking sounds with her mouth and pretend it was the sound of her turn signal.

Finally, she swung to that bar she had longed for and drive she did. It wasn’t that banana seat bike masquerading as an automobile though. It was a real car. But what she didn’t know was that being a teenager was hard. It was where some of her deepest wounds were cut in to her heart. Her first heartbreak. Her first encounter of mean girls. Her first experiences of becoming a person she always said she would never be. So, this girl, a little older now and with a license, swung, swung, swung, back and forth, back and forth on the monkey bars of her life. This time she set her sights on college. If she could just swing a little harder and grab hold of her young adulthood, then she’d be happy, free to do as she pleased out in the real world, she thought.

Swing, swing, swing she did and college came. However, college wasn’t all she thought it would be. The freedom she had hoped and wished for wasn’t completely free. There were responsibilities and decisions to make that would impact the entire course of her life. It seemed like there were so many doors, so many options to choose from, and she just didn’t know which one to pick. The freedom she wanted was actually the very thing that sought to suffocate her. This freedom was all hers now, but she just didn’t know which door to choose. What if she chose the wrong one? What if she opened it and fell flat on her face? Pick the one that seems the most important, she said, and then you’ll be happy. So, with one lurch, she swung forward and grabbed a rung that she thought would be it.

It was graduate school and a big shiny career. Careers will bring money and money will give you freedom, she thought. But, as she got deeper and deeper in her studies, she realized she picked the wrong door. It wasn’t the career for her and so her freedom was met with failure. Failure felt like a freefall off the monkey bars, so she had to pick herself up, jump straight up and grab the bar again. But the bars were so high and she was so small. She struggled, trying to jump up and grab the bar she had fallen off of. Struggle and jumping. But, finally she was back on the monkey bars, ready to swing again. Find a man, she thought, because love and romance, that is true happiness and freedom. And so she swung.

She loved the man she chose. He was kind and handsome and funny. And love was fun. But, she was ready to swing to the next bar. Marriage required work and it didn’t feel as free as she thought it would. It was messy at times in ways she never imagined. Two people becoming one meant a lot of downsizing. She had to downsize her pride and that was hard because it was big and she didn’t want to make it smaller. And it felt like something was missing. Babies, she thought, babies will fulfill you and make you happy and free, just swing on over. So back and forth, back and forth she went and grabbed the next rung.

With a death grip, she held on. Babies came. But, they didn’t come easy. There was morning sickness and weight gain. Pains in places she never knew existed. And then there were heartaches with words like miscarriage. Sleepless nights and toddler tantrums. Chaos and disorder. Little beings pushing against her every command. Small humans with wills battling for control. Motherhood didn’t seem so free. If I just get them raised, she thought, then I’ll be free, then I’ll be happy. So she swung, swung, swung a little harder until those babies grew up and got dreams of their own and ran after them.

But, now that little girl, all grown up, just dangled on the second to last rung. She just hung there because she knew she was almost to the end. She had time now. Time to pursue all the things she wanted to do when those babies were home and she couldn’t. But, her body and mind were tired. They didn’t care about working out so much. Or reading a bunch of books. Or shopping alone. Or organizing cupboards and pantries. They just wanted the noise and life that were in the house just a few short years ago. The little girl, all grown up, with newfound freedom, just wanted to swing, swing, swing herself backwards to the rungs behind her, but she couldn’t because they had disappeared. Had she spent all of her time wishing and wanting for things to come without knowing that what she truly wanted was right in front of her? She didn’t need freedom, or at least not in the way she thought. She thought freedom meant being able to do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. But true freedom was something so much more than that. True freedom required a fight. It was a battle every day, on every rung to just allow herself to be. To stop trying to swing herself forward and to enjoy the moment she had right then. It meant looking at the scenery while cruising on a banana seat bicycle. It was befriending that equally heartbroken, lonely teenage girl beside her in math class. It required figuring out what she loved to do instead of trying to chase after what she thought would make money. It was going to mean getting down low and mustering up sincere I’m sorry’s in the midst of the struggles of marriage. It would be a sink full of dirty dishes every.single.day. because today tables and couches were turning into forts and princes and princesses were fighting imaginary dragons beneath them. It was a hard fight for freedom. One that had to be fought every single moment at every single rung of the little girl’s monkey bars of a life. But if she fought hard, she found, something was springing up inside her. It was like a tiny light peeking through drawn curtains. Or a small flower breaking through the cracks of a concrete jungle. With three letters, her freedom rose inside her.

                J

                                O

                                                Y

The little girl fell to the ground. Her arms were weak and tired from hanging for so long, but the good news was she was off the monkey bars. No more waiting to swing to the next rung. She was done with that. And so off she ran to fight for her freedom. Laughing as she slid down the slide. Looking in to the eyes of her friend next to her as they flew in to the air on the swings. Enjoying the ups and downs of the seesaw. This, she thought, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is freedom.

You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
-Psalm 16:11
 
Here's to finding JOY right where you are!
-C.
 

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Mommy Rules throughout the Ages


A couple of months ago, I took my then 10 month old to her 9 month checkup. Yep. A whole month late. Not only was she late for her 9 month appointment, but apparently, I totally skipped her 6 month one. After arguing pretty vehemently with the nurse that surely her record keeping was amiss because certainly I wouldn’t forget a child’s very important checkup and scheduled shots appointment, I was handed a neat little OFFICIAL print out with all of her vaccine information and alas, no dates listed around her 6 month birthday. #momfail

After the whole “Shotgate” of 2015, the doctor went through the standard parenting questions for well child visits. Third kid, I could do this appointment in my sleep…and I may have been sleeping because it’s the third kid and I didn’t do any of that sleep training like I was supposed to at birth because well, it’s the third kid and we are pretty much operating on prison rules here. It’s every person for themselves, man.

When she got to the eating portion of her inquisition, I blurted out, “so what are the rules now? What can I feed this kid?” You see, the list of “things to feed a baby” had been permanently expunged from my brain the nanosecond child #2 turned into a toddler and I replaced it with the “things to feed a toddler” list. Expecting the itemization of DO NOT FEED’s that are posted at most zoos, I was shocked to learn that the new rule for feeding babies is that there are no rules, EXCEPT for the nefarious honey. Honey will jack your baby up. DO NOT FEED YOUR BABY HONEY.

But, it got me thinking as I was slipping in and out of slumber, answering a million questions on my parenting choices, our generation has a whole laundry list of rules for childrearing that is longer than any other generation’s before it. We’ve got rules on how and when a child should eat, sleep, poop, play, watch tv, brush teeth, do chores, and the list goes on and on… it made me wonder, what has happened to us? How have we complicated this already complicated parenting thing so much? It also made me think about life before Pinterest, WebMD, Facebook, and the like. How did humanity survive without the internet to guide it in its every waking moment? What were the rules of previous generations? I’m pretty sure it went something like this:

Prehistoric Mom’s Rules to Live By: Don’t let baby get eaten by Saber Tooth Tiger.

Fair enough.

Middle Ages Motherhood: Don’t let baby play with rats.

                Done. The plague was no joke.

Moms of Westward Expansion: Don’t let baby near the edge of the wagon.

                Yup. I get it. Car seats not invented yet.

And if we fast forward to perhaps say the generation of my mom, the moms of the 80’s, the rule list might be: don’t let your baby watch PeeWee Herman.

                Because let’s face it, that cat was weird.

But now, now motherhood is inundated with so many rules that I can’t even keep up. Not only are there so many rules, but so many conflicting ones that are out there AND the rules keep changing. It’s like a moving target of parenting perfection. A bull’s eye even Katniss couldn’t hit. So many voices shouting at me from inside my computer screen, telling me all the ways I am royally screwing my kids up. Not to mention, I’ve got all these friends, who are hearing these other voices, and who are now whispering at me through insidious social media posts as to why breastfed is best fed, homeschool is hot, and vaccines are a shot to my child’s soul with every prick of the needle.

Hear me when I say this, no matter what side of the parenting wars you fall on, I’m not saying you are wrong. I’m not saying you are right either. I’m just saying I can’t say with certainty what THE way to raise these kids are and I’m pretty sure you can’t either.

The fact is that this parenting gig is really 1% knowledge and 99% faith but we have reversed those numbers. There are all these false promises (aka RULES) I keep telling myself:

If I can keep red dye #40 out of my kid’s diet, he will never disobey me.

If I just homeschool my little one, then they won’t turn to drugs, sex, and rock and roll come the teenage years.

If I ensure no more than thirty minutes of screen time a day, these kids will be paying for our nursing home with all the degrees they will have.

Truth is, it doesn’t work like that. Motherhood is as much about finding the perfect formula as dieting is about taking the right “as seen on TV” pill. It ain’t going to happen with some magic fix. It’s a lot of hard work coupled with a whole lot of faith in the One who gave you the title of MOTHER. And can I let you in on a little secret? I’m pretty sure the God that created the vast array of creatures, systems, and matter is a rather creative guy. He individualized snowflakes so I am guessing He was banking on us moms each being unique in our form, yet coming together to make a blanket of beautiful.

Bottom line: I CAN’T KEEP UP WITH ALL THE RULES. And mama, something tells me you can’t either. Let’s stop making Pinterest the standard in which we assess our parenting skills. Can we just say no to a Facebook diatribe on a hot button parenting issue because we never know when we are yet another voice screaming in the ear of our already insecure mommy friend? Could we accept that maybe parenting does not have to be as complicated as a common core math problem? How about we dial down the internet search in to the rabbit hole of knowledge? Just for a minute. I’m thinking there is no way to make this mothering thing “easy”, but I have a feeling there is a way we could all make it a little lighter…

 

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30

Here’s to the mamas of all generations!

-C.

The year of RESURRECTION

This year marked a milestone...I turned 33. Thirty had me throwing a pretty killer pity party and its been downhill ever since. My thoughts on 33 was that I am officially the same age as Jesus was when he died. Not one for being dramatic, I have officially dubbed this my year of crucifixion and resurrection. Crucifying all those things that need to die in me and bringing back to life all that stuff that is needed for life. 33 is close to mid thirties and we all know that is pretty much 40, which is virtually half of ones life so its really almost over at this point.

I tell you all this because I have decided to RESURRECT this blog. I had been waiting until I found a blog designer person to make me a really cute header thingy (technical terms) and come up with a witty name and so forth, but with three kids, I'm lucky to brush my teeth and pee with the door shut. Mommy blogging is so overdone, I know. I promise this won't be pinteresting pictures of my perfect angels and my Pottery Barn maintained house with my systems that if you just follow them, will solve all your ills. No, this will be my thoughts (err--ramblings) on messy life, messy parenting, and messy faith.

Thanks for checking it out!!