One of my favorite things to do when I have five minutes to myself to sit still is to read other people's blogs. I've always been a voracious reader, but let's face it - this season of motherhood does not lend itself to luxurious Saturday afternoons spent lounging around the house with my thoughts lost between the pages of a delicious 750 page novel. Well, most of the time it doesn't, but I still find moments here and there to fit a page or two into my days when the book is worth the effort. Blogs give my addiction to reading it's fix for the day, or the hour or the moment - whatever is needed. Coupons, Deal Shopping, DIY projects and updates from Scotty's college buddies that are sailing around the world . . . it's all candy to me. My favorite blogs are about mothering, whether it's funny stories by people that I have never met, updates and cute tidbits about friends and their children or inspirational how-to's by mothers more in tune with God's word than I am. Yesterday I caught up on some of my reading and was filled with information from entries on everything from fairies fastening seat belts to being a prayer warrior for boys specifically and how the home front is essentially my mission field for God. There was information on getting more veggies in my kids diets and more scripture in their memories. And for some reason there was a running theme on how short a time these children will be in our care and under our influence, or maybe that was just my perception.
Scooter turned six yesterday. I was already so aware of how fast time flies with these babies on their way to becoming men. I was so sensitive to the fleeting moments that I must have read this briefness into every word I saw on my screen. I was thinking of the afternoon he was born and how happy I was to hold my smiley little one. I thought of how there have only been a handful of days since that one that he hasn't been in my arms at least once in his entire little life. When he came out of school yesterday wearing his '6' birthday crown that his teacher made him for the occasion, I remembered that I had waddled that very hall just after my water broke to pick Tyler up on the way to the hospital. And that not quite 2 weeks after that March afternoon, Tyler had walked out the very same door wearing a crown made by the very same teacher with the very same '6' on the front. Six years is nothing. Six years is a heartbeat. Six years is so very, very fast.
I remember seeing moms like me back then. I was pregnant with a second child, one that I never thought would happen since I was sure that Tyler and I would be the full contingent of our family team until I fell in love with Scott. I saw mothers with more than one and smilingly envisioned how it would be to have a car full of munchkins. When I was pregnant with Riley I would do the math in my head . . . when Tyler is 10, Scooter will be 4 and this little one will be 2. The reality of it all still escaped me though. I thought I knew how fast time flew since I had one that was growing quickly beside me already. I just didn't understand that with each child you have the speed with which your children grow and mature hastens exponentially.
There literally are not enough minutes in the day. Laundry grows, the grocery list lengthens, the calendar fills up. And your awareness as a mother of everything you should be doing for your children, the things you need to pour into their spirits, that portion of a mothers heart grows and expands. Everything you manage to do for them and teach them only plants another seed within you so that there is always more to do for them and teach them. Reading is helpful, it aids in the 'how to', but sometimes it also adds to the list of 'to-do'. Five minutes of reading about mothering can easily lead to discouragement if you let it.
I know that switching out the laundry, changing the sheets, shopping for food and getting dinner on the table is important. I know that with each little act I am serving my family and therefore serving the Lord. But I also know that for every moment I spend doing the necessary, there is a moment lost in doing the joyful and esoteric and definitively spiritual. I wonder often if it will ever be enough. I mean, it would be so awesome if I could carve out thirty more minutes in the afternoon or evening to spend time on a family devotional and family scripture memorization and surely I can find a way to sneak 3 more veggies a day down their little throats and somewhere in all this chaos I can find a way to inspire them to be strong, loyal, Christian men who are leaders and self-confident and kind and patient and . . .
And it occurred to me today after I dropped the third one off at school that I might doing a lot of that important stuff without even realizing it, just in teeny tiny doses. No matter how chaotic our mornings can be, no matter how many arguments or reminders of the time, no matter how many of us are pouting when we walk out the door - somehow we all find peace in the morning car ride. I don't know quite what happens on the sidewalk between our front door and our minivan, but nine times out of ten everyone gets over everything before they get to school. And conversations happen, often the big ones. Sometimes we're quiet, sometimes all we talk about is the meaningless every day stuff, but more often than not this is when I get their attention and they get mine. You could not say the same for the afternoon ride which has more energy and plan-making or complaining of homework or weather. You could never compare it to a family filled Sunday where in reality everyone has all the attention they could ask for. This drive to school morning time is somehow different.
We have, without realizing it, developed a pattern. Tyler gets dropped off first and as he sits beside me in the front seat we will talk on the drive to school. If I blew up at him for losing track of time, he will hear my heartfelt apology and I will often hear his. He learns respect, he is listened to and he listens. Today we discussed church camp and a kid that came last summer and drove him crazy. We talked about patience, reaching the lost, finding common ground with fellow Christians and remembering to always have open arms for those that need it, even when all they want to do is act out because they get to be away from home. This is often when he hears a story from my own youth as an example and today was no different. He learns more of who I am in the morning and I see more of where he is. And then he was out of the car with a 'Have a Good Day!' and an 'I love you'.
Within moments of pulling away, it is Scooter's turn and he knows it, starts talking without prompting even as he has stayed quiet while Tyler had his time with me. He starts by telling me that if there is birthday cake left he would like a piece this afternoon and then talks to me about which of his new toys Riley can play with while he's at school and which ones he cannot. We negotiate the appropriate amount of sharing for brand new toys while he peppers me with comments about Transformers and we talk about adding milk to my next smoothie experiment for him in our effort to increase his diet. Then just before it's time to hop out of the car, he lets me know he thinks he would like Bumblebee (a Transformer) on his cake to share with his friends this weekend. He's only six today and so he still lets me kiss him goodbye before he walks into the school.
By the time I buckle back up, Riley has woken up enough to join the conversation. Sometimes he talks about Scooter going into school, sometimes he wonders if he can play with his brothers toys and if I will not tell them that he did so while they were at school. Other times he talks about his own class and his friends. Today he wondered if our trip to Lego Land was on our schedule since it was supposed to happen after Scooter's birthday and that was yesterday. So, we counted out the days until Saturday when we will have that special experience. Then we discussed the 'Circus' that is happening at his school today, but he got shy when he told me he didn't know what a circus was anyway. We talked about it right up until we walked in the door and then I lost him to the fulfillment of an empty tummy and the effort of getting a toy sword to stay in a toy Jack Sparrow pirate hand.
It's five minutes. Five minutes for me of reading of how I can do better or of how whatever effort I make, when I do it with Joy, Patience, Faith and Love - it's enough. Five minutes for each child - even if that's all we get in the craziness of our day. Five minutes of quiet and peaceful that is never quite repeated until the following morning. Five minutes of Joy, Patience, Faith and Love - maybe not all at once, but each in it's turn. Five minutes. That seems like so little in the grand scheme of things, but at least I know that they each get those minutes of undivided attention. But maybe in the long run, five minutes a day is a lot since it's five minutes every day. If six years is a heartbeat and goes too fast, maybe five minutes of mothering is a lifetime and an investment that will never be depleted or spent. At least that's how I choose to see it today.
I hope you can find five minutes today too, to either fill up your soul or to pour your spirit into the little ones that love you.
Thanks and God Bless!
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Their Mighty Hearts . . .
They are small, my boys, in different ways. Some of them are little in body, a couple are little in self confidence, one is tiny in his new faith. Little, small, timid and tiny, my boys. But in other ways they are mighty - in words, in actions and in love.
Mighty Words - While Riley and I waited in the school pick up line yesterday, we were thumbing through a stack of photo prints I had just picked up. There were several that will hopefully fill out a collage frame I got for Christmas and grace our living room wall, but there were also a stack of random shots that I thought might be nice to look at when they weren't on a computer screen. Riley enjoyed finding photos of each of us, most especially himself. I had selected the pictures in large clumps since I was short on time so there were some photos that would be seeing the inside of a trash can in the very near future. A lot of these were not-so-attractive shots of me that Riley had taken himself during his recent fascination with my camera. Riley centered on one of me that was completely unflattering (no shower or makeup, hair pulled into some kind of wad on the back of my head, mouth gaping open in mid-comment to another child, ratty clothes covered in ingredients that would hopefully become dinner) and he told me I was 'so beautiful momma'. Really? Not this one over here that the pro took on photo day with daddy (and makeup)? 'No, this one momma, you are soooo beautiful'. This from the same child who asked me on Sunday why I wanted lipstick to try and look pretty. A reminder to me that what my children see of me is certainly not the image I try and portray to the world at large. So sweet. And yet, that picture is still going to find it's way into both the real trash can in my kitchen and the cyber receptacle on my computer.
The kids don't come and drag me out of bed as soon as they wake up on the weekend anymore (THANK GOODNESS!!!) and will play on their own for quite a while before I have to get up. I hear them though and on Saturday morning I was woken to the sounds of two little boys playing together. I would hear their voices, turn over and try to eke out 5 more minutes of shut eye. One of the wakeful times brought me voices that weren't happy. They weren't yelling, but I heard Riley say 'Please forgive me' to his brother in a very sad voice. Scooter didn't answer right away and then Riley said 'Scooter, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?' Scooter replied 'All right, but please don't do that again' which was answered with an 'Otay!' and then the boys moved on. I don't know what the disagreement was about, but I was so proud that they resolved it all by themselves. A few moments later I heard Riley educating his older brother on the finer points of 'Stop, Drop & Roll' which led to some actual dropping and rolling . . . right into the coffee table which was my cue that it was time to get up and start the coffee.
Mighty Love - It was only a year ago that I answered question after question about Scooter relating to empathy and his lack thereof. This was something I really worried about because it's one of the more frustrating aspects of autism, at least for me. I stressed about the possibility that my child really was on this spectrum and wasn't ever going to develop empathy which was going to make his relationships with his brothers increasingly difficult. How could such a sensitive child be so lacking in empathy? It didn't make sense to me and I worried about how it would affect our family. It turns out though, that Scooter was just slow to develop and/or demonstrate this emotion. I see more and more examples of his growth all the time. Sometimes it's just the fact that if his brother falls right next to him he actually stops to ask if he's okay now, but other times it's even more evident.
This morning Scooter asked me why good guys sometimes had to go to jail. Since I wasn't sure what the heck he was talking about I asked him what made him think of that question. He said he thought he remembered me saying 'one time' that sometimes good guys went to jail. Ummmm, okay. I didn't remember that so I tried to come up with reasons that this situation might occur and settled on 'sometimes the police think they did something wrong, but then they figure it out and let them go'. About a minute later I heard crying in the back seat and turned to find Scooter upset. It took some urging to get out what was wrong, but it was finally revealed that 'I just don't like it when good guys go to jail'. I asked him if he was scared that was going to happen to someone he knew, but he wasn't. We whittled down what he was feeling to just not liking that this could happen to people. Hello empathy.
Mighty Faith - My son Tyler is a brand new Christian. The joy I feel when I think of this is so immeasurable and indescribable. My baby is about to be 12 and at the same time he is a brand spanking new creation in the the eyes of the Lord. How amazing is that!!!!!! With this 'newness' has come a new awareness that has taken me by surprise. I've seen adults do this, but my general idea of a child that is a new Christian is that there isn't too drastic of a difference - or so I thought. Within days of Tyler's decision I noticed differences in his attitudes toward his friends and his brothers. A boy on his basketball team had annoyed him until he noticed the boys parents fighting in front of him after a game and realized that his friend was hurting and could very well be facing a split family situation soon. We have had several discussions about the friend he took to church and whether that friend was going to 'forgive' him for expressing his beliefs and taking him with us (he didn't have to go - he chose to go, why is he holding it against my son????) which led to me teaching him what it means to look at something 'in light of eternity'.
My little budding engineer is also very stressed out about how his science teacher has been talking in class lately. There have been a lot of comments recently that fall under the 'some religious people believe' heading with a fair amount of negative connotation backing them up evidently. Tyler wants to fight back, but I advised him against open defiance. I appreciate how he feels and I told him several stories about studying Anthropology and History and finding a way to reconcile what I believe with what is 'known' and 'taught'. Fighting when you don't have enough knowledge on either side of the topic is a sure fire way to get squashed, but someday he'll have the knowledge to back up an argument with an authority figure like that. We talked a lot about God inspiring us to seek answers, whether we are believers or not, and that it is people's interpretation of the things they learn that gets muddled. It's the people that determine you absolutely cannot believe in both religion and science that don't respect the power and majesty of either one. To think we could ever understand it all is naive in the extreme, no matter how educated a person may be. He told me he didn't want to study science and be an engineer if it was going to get in the way of what he believed, but I told him that there were believers in every field and every job - he has to use the gifts God gave him and make a difference that way. We also talked about how our God is bigger than the misunderstandings of human intelligence. We're having lunch with a friend who is an engineer and a believer this weekend and I am hoping that he can encourage Tyler in this area. (Insert a side grumble here - why are teachers allowed to undermine religion, but not allowed to say what they believe when they are believers? If you don't think Christianity is persecuted in today's enlightened society you are mistaken. Just sayin . . .) In the mean time - it's just like any other year when you don't like a teacher or you disagree with them, he just has to get through a couple more months and then he'll be on to the next challenge.
Yep, my kids are tiny in some ways. Riley is working hard at being the shortest 4 year old we meet, but he does pack a whollop with the things he says and the way he says them with that little voice of his. Scooter's social skills and confidence are something he will always have to work on and even though he sometimes doesn't understand why he needs to respond to the person in front of him, his love for other people can sometimes be overwhelming to his sweet little soul. Tyler's faith is new and fragile and needs careful and diligent tending but the evidence of it's existence and the changes that God can make are staggering in just one little life. They are so Mighty, my boys. Yeah, we fight the normal battles of selfishness, disobedience and attitudes. I try so hard to teach them what is right and true and just and then I wake up and realize once again that it's the children teaching me again and they teach it to me with their great big, huge, humble, sensitive and MIGHTY hearts.
Thanks and God Bless!
Mighty Words - While Riley and I waited in the school pick up line yesterday, we were thumbing through a stack of photo prints I had just picked up. There were several that will hopefully fill out a collage frame I got for Christmas and grace our living room wall, but there were also a stack of random shots that I thought might be nice to look at when they weren't on a computer screen. Riley enjoyed finding photos of each of us, most especially himself. I had selected the pictures in large clumps since I was short on time so there were some photos that would be seeing the inside of a trash can in the very near future. A lot of these were not-so-attractive shots of me that Riley had taken himself during his recent fascination with my camera. Riley centered on one of me that was completely unflattering (no shower or makeup, hair pulled into some kind of wad on the back of my head, mouth gaping open in mid-comment to another child, ratty clothes covered in ingredients that would hopefully become dinner) and he told me I was 'so beautiful momma'. Really? Not this one over here that the pro took on photo day with daddy (and makeup)? 'No, this one momma, you are soooo beautiful'. This from the same child who asked me on Sunday why I wanted lipstick to try and look pretty. A reminder to me that what my children see of me is certainly not the image I try and portray to the world at large. So sweet. And yet, that picture is still going to find it's way into both the real trash can in my kitchen and the cyber receptacle on my computer.
The kids don't come and drag me out of bed as soon as they wake up on the weekend anymore (THANK GOODNESS!!!) and will play on their own for quite a while before I have to get up. I hear them though and on Saturday morning I was woken to the sounds of two little boys playing together. I would hear their voices, turn over and try to eke out 5 more minutes of shut eye. One of the wakeful times brought me voices that weren't happy. They weren't yelling, but I heard Riley say 'Please forgive me' to his brother in a very sad voice. Scooter didn't answer right away and then Riley said 'Scooter, I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?' Scooter replied 'All right, but please don't do that again' which was answered with an 'Otay!' and then the boys moved on. I don't know what the disagreement was about, but I was so proud that they resolved it all by themselves. A few moments later I heard Riley educating his older brother on the finer points of 'Stop, Drop & Roll' which led to some actual dropping and rolling . . . right into the coffee table which was my cue that it was time to get up and start the coffee.
Mighty Love - It was only a year ago that I answered question after question about Scooter relating to empathy and his lack thereof. This was something I really worried about because it's one of the more frustrating aspects of autism, at least for me. I stressed about the possibility that my child really was on this spectrum and wasn't ever going to develop empathy which was going to make his relationships with his brothers increasingly difficult. How could such a sensitive child be so lacking in empathy? It didn't make sense to me and I worried about how it would affect our family. It turns out though, that Scooter was just slow to develop and/or demonstrate this emotion. I see more and more examples of his growth all the time. Sometimes it's just the fact that if his brother falls right next to him he actually stops to ask if he's okay now, but other times it's even more evident.
This morning Scooter asked me why good guys sometimes had to go to jail. Since I wasn't sure what the heck he was talking about I asked him what made him think of that question. He said he thought he remembered me saying 'one time' that sometimes good guys went to jail. Ummmm, okay. I didn't remember that so I tried to come up with reasons that this situation might occur and settled on 'sometimes the police think they did something wrong, but then they figure it out and let them go'. About a minute later I heard crying in the back seat and turned to find Scooter upset. It took some urging to get out what was wrong, but it was finally revealed that 'I just don't like it when good guys go to jail'. I asked him if he was scared that was going to happen to someone he knew, but he wasn't. We whittled down what he was feeling to just not liking that this could happen to people. Hello empathy.
Mighty Faith - My son Tyler is a brand new Christian. The joy I feel when I think of this is so immeasurable and indescribable. My baby is about to be 12 and at the same time he is a brand spanking new creation in the the eyes of the Lord. How amazing is that!!!!!! With this 'newness' has come a new awareness that has taken me by surprise. I've seen adults do this, but my general idea of a child that is a new Christian is that there isn't too drastic of a difference - or so I thought. Within days of Tyler's decision I noticed differences in his attitudes toward his friends and his brothers. A boy on his basketball team had annoyed him until he noticed the boys parents fighting in front of him after a game and realized that his friend was hurting and could very well be facing a split family situation soon. We have had several discussions about the friend he took to church and whether that friend was going to 'forgive' him for expressing his beliefs and taking him with us (he didn't have to go - he chose to go, why is he holding it against my son????) which led to me teaching him what it means to look at something 'in light of eternity'.
My little budding engineer is also very stressed out about how his science teacher has been talking in class lately. There have been a lot of comments recently that fall under the 'some religious people believe' heading with a fair amount of negative connotation backing them up evidently. Tyler wants to fight back, but I advised him against open defiance. I appreciate how he feels and I told him several stories about studying Anthropology and History and finding a way to reconcile what I believe with what is 'known' and 'taught'. Fighting when you don't have enough knowledge on either side of the topic is a sure fire way to get squashed, but someday he'll have the knowledge to back up an argument with an authority figure like that. We talked a lot about God inspiring us to seek answers, whether we are believers or not, and that it is people's interpretation of the things they learn that gets muddled. It's the people that determine you absolutely cannot believe in both religion and science that don't respect the power and majesty of either one. To think we could ever understand it all is naive in the extreme, no matter how educated a person may be. He told me he didn't want to study science and be an engineer if it was going to get in the way of what he believed, but I told him that there were believers in every field and every job - he has to use the gifts God gave him and make a difference that way. We also talked about how our God is bigger than the misunderstandings of human intelligence. We're having lunch with a friend who is an engineer and a believer this weekend and I am hoping that he can encourage Tyler in this area. (Insert a side grumble here - why are teachers allowed to undermine religion, but not allowed to say what they believe when they are believers? If you don't think Christianity is persecuted in today's enlightened society you are mistaken. Just sayin . . .) In the mean time - it's just like any other year when you don't like a teacher or you disagree with them, he just has to get through a couple more months and then he'll be on to the next challenge.
Yep, my kids are tiny in some ways. Riley is working hard at being the shortest 4 year old we meet, but he does pack a whollop with the things he says and the way he says them with that little voice of his. Scooter's social skills and confidence are something he will always have to work on and even though he sometimes doesn't understand why he needs to respond to the person in front of him, his love for other people can sometimes be overwhelming to his sweet little soul. Tyler's faith is new and fragile and needs careful and diligent tending but the evidence of it's existence and the changes that God can make are staggering in just one little life. They are so Mighty, my boys. Yeah, we fight the normal battles of selfishness, disobedience and attitudes. I try so hard to teach them what is right and true and just and then I wake up and realize once again that it's the children teaching me again and they teach it to me with their great big, huge, humble, sensitive and MIGHTY hearts.
Thanks and God Bless!
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