It Starts to Feel Like Something Big

I measure the grounds, three heaping scoopfuls because I drink my coffee like gasoline, and I get the mug ready. It looks more like a soup bowl than a coffee cup but there is much to be done today, pages-long lists of writing deadlines, emails to send, assignments to complete, calls to make.

It starts to feel like something big, some days.

Writing a book or two, going to college, giving speeches and having a blog and writing deadlines and things filling up a calendar. It’s a dream come true, after all.

I ponder the bigness of it a minute, feeling all of my 33 years for a change, like my words are taken seriously, like my foolish prose might amount to something that buds from my heart someday, something worth these eye-strained hours but just the sheer love of it.

So I pour it dark and sweet and breathe it in, and think much of me with my bowl full of coffee and my little words today. I am glad I have persisted with my tiny big thoughts, glad I have kept click-clacking the keys with contemplation and questions, challenges to those with bigger brains and bigger titles than me.

I think, today, I will have my coffee hot and strong and I will nibble the end of my glasses while I think. I will drink from my bowl over an email to my publisher and feel right distinguished with myself, for a moment.

But the thought is fleeting. 

Five plump fingers rest upon the flesh of my back thigh, just beneath the pink ruffled robe he likes to be wrapped up inside. I did not hear him coming.

“Mommy,” he cracks in his sleep-stuck voice, pulling at the robe ruffles. “I don’t want breakfast yet.”

(I hadn’t offered.)

“Mommy, I just want to snuggle.”

He rubs his eyes and drags his gray blanket across the floor, across dinner crumbs and the shabby teal rug that was new only weeks ago but already looks destined for the garbage. Twelve trampling feet will do that to a carpet. 

They will do it to a mother too, from time to time.

And even though I feel it now, the strain of this body premature for my years, it stings and groans for the hours I have not sat, the years I have not rested.

Bowl-mug in hand, we head to the couch and his head finds my belly, pushing gently into the body gone soft under the laps of three babies, tempered by the gnawing worry over all those not-born babies too, the one whose face I never got to see or kiss and all the ones who wore size 11 Nikes and called me mom just for a season. I am trampled shaggy and soft, body and heart, by those pink baby feet and those smelly boy feet, and those patent-leather-heeled feet. I have gone shaggier than the teal rug in my kitchen. 

It starts to feel like something big, some days.

Like all the mothering and loving and gnawing with worry amounts to more than all the words I could collect in a lifetime.

No title is bigger than mother, I think. None which I am after, anyhow.

So I settle into stale sleep breath and blonde bedhead and savor coffee and feel rightly distinguished, here, in this. 

Not for words, not for notice, not for anything but the elevated place of being the carpet below these precious toes, of a down-pillow belly holding up this sweaty head with its drooping blonde Mohawk.

I ponder the bigness of it, and smile.

It starts to feel like something big, some days.

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Book Review: When Work and Family Collide by Andy Stanley

When Work and Family Collide by Andy Stanley is a book dealing with the pressures heaped upon working parents, specifically the tendency we have to give our work life a higher priority with our time and devotion than our family life. Andy's main perspective is that no one has enough time to give 100% to every pursuit we're involved in. Therefore, we have to choose which area of our life to cheat (and in fact, the book was previously released with the title Choosing to Cheat). The concept can be applied not just to work and I know some hobby bloggers who could plug "blogging" into that outlet as well because of the demands it places on our time.  

Since I am a work-at-home mom trying to make a full-time living while also being home with my family, the title of the book was intriguing. Work and family collide for me every single day, and I'm always looking for ways to help me get my work done more efficiently so I can be fully present for my husband and kids. That wasn't really what the book turned out to be about. Rather, it first encourages you to see your family as your highest priority, reminding the reader that a company for which you are sacrificing that which is most important in the world may not be so loyal to you when it comes times for layoffs, and the author presents a formula for those spending too much time at work on how to approach your supervisor with alternate solutions.

Since I am self-employed and am blessed to have found a workable solution to help me keep my family my first priority, I didn't gain as much from this book as would someone working a "normal" out of the home job or struggling with a typical work/life balance problem. There were several passages of the text that I would have liked my husband to read, since I know he has a very strong work ethic and can tend to give a great deal of himself to his work, and this has, in the past, been a point of contention. He used to travel a great deal and this book does address that particular situation quite a bit.

To be honest, I found the "you have to cheat somewhere" notion a little strange. He clearly isn't telling anyone to be dishonest or defraud their company; rather it's all a matter of prioritizing, but the "cheat" thing had some negative undertones to it and I sometimes found it hard to overcome the "cheat at work" mindset. I believe it's important both to put your family before your work as a general matter but also, to work hard and give it the best you have. I think managing a family and a career sometimes takes creative problem solving, and I'm not sure that his one-size-fits-all approach (based on Daniel's diet story in Scripture) is really applicable in all or even most situations.

It is a quick read, though, and definitely has some great encouragement for seeing your family in its proper place, then following through on that with action. If you struggle with how to give more of yourself to your family while holding down a career that demands a lot of you, you may benefit from giving it a read.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free in exchange for a review from the Blogging for Books program. All opinions are always my own. Review contains affiliate links. 

Rush, Rush... Hush, Hush

There is a laundry pile in my bedroom requiring a harness and ropes to scale. Scattered Legos lay like landmines across the living room floor and graham cracker crumbs wind a trail through the kitchen like Hansel and Gretel's roadmap. Little C munches on licorice sticks while last night's spaghetti pot still soaks in suds and dishwater. Girl Child's hair is tangled but her fingernails gleam with freshly painted purple sparkles.

This is what we've chosen, today.

Don't worry. The mess will be tidied, the dishes and laundry and landmines will be cleared… but not today.

The lot of us is up to here with busyness and interruptions – dental appointments and conjunctivitis, volunteer commitments, adoption paperwork, book reports, ear infections, dirty floors, church functions, birthday party plans and work to be done.

When I visited my mom yesterday, fiddling with email on my phone while we chatted, she joked, "It's okay to rest, you know." I flinched. "You don't have to be busying yourself every second."

I chuckled and she did too – knowing me and my penchant for distraction, constant motion, attention deficit disorder. Juggling with both hands and both feet and burning the candle that I hold between my teeth. It's just the way it is. And while I wish I didn't have to be deliberate about rest, I realize that even Jesus was, and how wise He was to be. In a world where otherwise normal people spend hours with thumbs jumping across the screen of their cell phones, electronically hurdling animated birds at neon pigs as if we needed one more pointless thing to occupy us, it's hard to remember that it's okay (it's necessary) to sometimes... just. be.

I scan the landscape before me, three prone bodies draped listless over couches, feet in the air, carefree giggles like soft music. The shades are open and the air is still, soft gray, not cloudy and not bright, as though the sun and rain and wind are resting too. All is quiet and calm and comfortably still, until C pops up from the couch in a concentrated tuck-and-roll, hopping across the carpet, exploding in imaginative play. A tickle war ensues, we catapult toys across couch-pillow barriers, and rescue make-believe princesses from make-believe dragons. We blow bubbles and eat marshmallows and talk about Jesus and hide-and-seek like we were born for only this. It's serious business, this rest stuff.

It amounts to refocusing, honing our eyes and ears to the vitally important. Filling our insides with laughter and love and peace -- fuel for the journey ahead. Tomorrow we'll be back to school, back to work, back to learning cursive and washing dishes, feeding the hungry and encouraging downcast friends. Tomorrow I'll gear up and scale the laundry mountain and these moments… these bottled giggles and captured yawns will course through me, strength for the road.

Is your family too busy? Your house too harried? Check out Little House on the Freeway, a resource for getting busy families off the rushed freeway of life.