Category Archives: Mama Loves
Mama Loves: Worthy Sacrifices
After two years of enduring her begging, we enrolled Ellie in ballet last fall. At that time, I had no idea how expensive a year of ballet could cost. I affectionately call it our “money pit.” The costs of tuition, practice costumes, two pairs of shoes (one for ballet and another for tap), a special ballet bag, a recital costume, tickets, photos, teacher gifts and — well, I’m sure I’m missing something! — it all added quickly to a small fortune.
But then some sacrifices are wonderful. Some sacrifices prove themselves worthy in as little as two minutes.
I love it.
By the way, this was actually the video of the dress rehearsal two weeks ago. (We weren’t permitted to tape the actual recital because they had professionals working it or something like that.) Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to wait this long to post this?? The girls were more “together” at the actual recital. They’re just too adorable.
Mama Loves: Reflective Clones
Every Tuesday I post a “Mama Loves” based on Philippians 4:8-9. The Message paraphrases those verses like this:
“I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.”
Focusing on the positive, as this verse urges us to do, doesn’t mean life is rosy. It doesn’t mean our lives are void of negative things or that we’re so surrounded by wonderful things that we can’t help but rejoice. No. The writer would not exhort readers to think positively if they were already doing it. He would not spend so much time encouraging them in this direction if it were easy. He challenges us to focus on the best even when faced with the worst. Sometimes, as I often write about on this blog, these true, noble, authentic thoughts are sobering. Sometimes these positive thoughts smack us in the face like a splash of icy water.
Mama loves reflective clones.
This weekend I lost my cool with Ellie. I love that girl more than anything, but sometimes she drives me crazy! A precocious know-it-all, she never runs out of energy and never stops talking. She always has a “better” idea, constantly corrects those around her (whether necessary or not), and is completely undisciplined when it comes to jobs she doesn’t thoroughly enjoy. She won’t give up until she gets her way. She’s melodramatic. She acts dumb in an attempt to charm people and shy when I know she’s not. She allows fear to paralyze her.
She’s my clone.
As I lay in bed still fuming over the day’s interactions, I thanked God for showing me me. How often do I argue with God when I know He’s right? How many times have I tried to remind Him of things I know He could never forget? I pout when I don’t get my way. I think I know everything and verbally prove otherwise on a regular basis. I’m lazy, selfish, bossy, arrogantly persistent and blow things way out of proportion. And yet in spite of all this, or maybe because of all this, God loves me. He loves me unconditionally the same way I love Ellie. She may drive me crazy, but I love her so much it hurts. She’s mine and I am His.
I thank God for His love for me, but I also thank Him for my reflective clone. Without her how would I see the dangers of my annoying characteristics? How would I recognize my flaws and move toward correcting them in both her and me? Without God giving me someone just like me, how would I be sanctified? Oh, there are ways, I’m sure, but this was a pretty creative solution. Annoying – yes. But wonderfully creative. And effective. I love it.
Mama Loves: Little imitators
Yesterday I wrote about how I want my kids to choose me as their best friends. For a while, I’ve got that. They LOVE me! They want to be just like me. For now anyway. I love that in spite of all my many, many mistakes — maybe because of my mistakes — they still love me. They still want to imitate me.
Now, some days the imitations are really annoying. I hate seeing myself in them — like when they repeat me saying I hate something. Ellie has recently declared “hate” as her favorite word. Once again God uses my kids to remind me of my shortcomings. I don’t like seeing my failures or the areas where I need to grow. That part’s not fun. But I do love seeing me through their eyes. I love seeing how wonderful and fun they think I am. I love that they think me worthy of imitation. I know I’m not always, but it’s nice to know that once in a while I do something right.
Lately the most frequent imitation (other than using the word “hate” far too often) is playing guitar. I’ve mentioned in previous posts that Rick bought me a guitar for my birthday this year. I LOVE it! I’ve wanted to learn to play forever, but could never justify the cost for something I didn’t think I’d ever have the time to work on anyway. It was a wonderful suprise, a perfect gift. Anyway, I am finding time to learn and am having SO much fun with it. Practice time is tough, though, because it almost always gets hijacked. Like this.
I love it. To use one of my Mama’s expressions, it tickles me to my core. Yes, the control freak part of me tenses at the possibility of a three-year-old dropping my precious guitar, but the real part of me remember that that three-year-old is way more precious than a hollowed out chunk of wood and strings.
Your turn! What can you find joy in this week? How can you focus on the lovely, the true, the pure, the good of life?
Mama Loves: Spring
Mama loves spring.
It’s filled with sunny days at the park, fresh flowers and new beginnings. At our house it looks like this:
Gorgeous, right? Except that makes us feel like this:
Mama Loves: Angels in Disguise
My weekly exercise in positive blogging, Mama Loves is Philippians 4:8-9 in action. Learn more at this post.
Mama loves angels in disguise.
Last Thursday I woke with this prayer: “God, I’ve done it again. I overbooked myself today. Forgive me and please help me make it through the day with me and my children all in one piece.” Read the rest of this entry
Mama Loves: Unplugged days
I love Tamar (my new laptop). I love catching up on blogs and playing games on facebook and watching a good movie, but I really love unplugged days. You know those days when the computer and tv stay off. Time seems irrelevant. Everything passes with ease, intentionally slow. Not without purpose, mind you, but with the simple purpose of absorbing the joy of the moment. Today is one of those days.
I’m unplugging in order to relish this day with my kids. It may rain. It may be gross outside, but inside it’ll be just us and a house full of blessings.
Catch y’all tomorrow.
Mama Loves: Blatant honesty
Mama Loves is my weekly exercise in positive blogging. Learn more at this post.
This week reminded me how much Mama loves blatant honesty.
Anyone who has ever spent time around preschoolers or knows anyone who has knows they speak their minds. No internal censor exists. What they see and think is what you get. I love it. Sure, a little tact might be nice once in a while, but they have plenty of time to learn that. For now, I find it refreshing to be around people who say exactly what they observe. Here are some of my favorites from this week.
Ellie: “Mommy, you have hair all over skin! Your body’s covered with it, just like Grandpa.”
Ellie: “Mama, you’ve got lots of freckles. I don’t like freckles. Maybe you should put make-up on those.”
Zach, while patting my thigh: “You’re so jiggly.”
Zach: “Please stop singing. You’re giving me a headache.”
Yup. There’s nothing like a couple preschoolers to tell it like it is. A perfectly wonderful humbling experience.
Mama Loves Sleep.
It’s Tuesday. On this blog, that means Mama Loves.
Mama loves sleep.
Recently the kids initiated a new nighttime pattern. Zach starts screaming around 11pm. I think he dreams about dinosaurs. He thought dinos were cool until about a week ago. Now he’s dreadfully afraid of them, so much so that he won’t wear his Toy Story t-shirt any more. It shows the whole gang, including Rex. You remember Rex – right? The only dinosaur tamer than Rex is Barney and — well, Barney kinda scares me, so maybe Zach has his reasons for being afraid of Rex. Anyway, about an hour after we get Zach back to sleep, Ellie comes knocking on our door. She’s scared and thirsty and wants allergy medicine and can’t get back to sleep. In truth, she just wants to sleep with us. So, for the last few nights (I’d say four or five) I have been squished between Rick and Ellie, trying not to get too hot under the down comforter that I can’t get out from under because they’re both either lying on top of it or clutching it tightly. I also spend my nights trying not to move too much (so Rick can get enough sleep for work) and protecting all my vital parts (in case a stray elbow or foot should hurtle toward me).
Mama loves sleep, but I’m not getting much lately. And that’s okay. Every time I suffer sleep deprivation, I remember these verses.
“Do not love sleep or you will grow poor; stay awake and you will have food to spare.”
- Proverbs 20:13 (NIV)
“In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for he grants sleep to those he loves.”
- Psalm 127:2 (NIV)
I know God loves me and eventually He’ll grant me the sleep I long for. Until then, I treasure the cuddles while I’m awake. Mama loves sleep and cuddles! And trips to the park. I love sunshiny days and kids running after kites that won’t fly. I love building intricate patterns with the dozens of pieces of Thomas train tracks. Mama loves good food, Girl Scout cookies and watching Zach’s face as he drops quarters in the offering. I love the songs Ellie sings. I love the stories Zach tells. I love that they share their imaginary friends. I love that they know their friends are imaginary, but still act as if they’re real and I’m friends with “Mousy” and “Dennis”s parents. I love that my kids love each other. I love that even when I think I have little to be grateful for, naming just one opens a floodgate of blessings. I am indeed a very rich woman.
Give it a try. What are you grateful for this week? What are you loving about your life?
Horton Hears the Gospel
Mama loves when they “get it.”
I love to watch my kids learn, but even more I love to witness the “getting it” of spiritual truths. This goes one step beyond understanding to accepting as truth. It’s the most amazing thing! Then there are times they get it more than I do. They pinpoint connections I’ve missed and amplify for me the very truths I’ve ignored. Draw all these moments together and I am absolutely thrilled. I’m overwhelmed. My skin tingles, my heart flutters, my every breath and very existence praises God!
We don’t watch many movies around here, a side effect of parenthood. When we do see movies (that are less than five years old) it’s on a date (all three Bourne movies and … huh. The last movie we saw in the theatre before that was Finding Nemo.) or we rent a kids’ movie. Believe it or not, I actually paid to see Space Buddies recently. Space Buddies! What happened to me? A movie with talking dogs going to the moon?! Yup. Kids change everything.
I digress.
We also rented the new Horton Hears a Who featuring the voices of Jim Carrey, Steve Carell and Carol Burnett. Carol Burnett! I love that woman. I wanted to be her, complete with ear-tug. It’s really a great movie. With a few caveats, which I’ll detail in a minute, I can’t recommend it highly enough! I loved it and had to buy the DVD the same week. (By the way, the best price I found for the DVD was on Amazon. They even beat Target with a coupon.)
A couple days after watching, Ellie made an announcement on our way to school. “Mom, we’re the speck and Jesus takes good care of us – right?”
She gets it! The movie never mentions God or Jesus or anything religious, but she made the connection without me ever explaining it to her. Of course, I already saw the many spiritual connections in the plot — the faithfulness, devotion, high value of life upheld, forgiveness, someone greater caring for the lesser, faith in the unseen — but I didn’t think my kids, ages 3 and 5, would parallel this fun Dr. Seuss story with God’s truth. But they did. And I love it.
Your turn! What thrilled you this week? What little miracles did you witness?
Click over to this post to read more about Mama Loves, my weekly exercise in Philippians 4:8-9.
Now for the caveats about the movie. My standards for movies change as my kids grow, not only because they can handle more, but because they repeat more. With that in mind, here are my warnings about this fabulous movie:
- It employs a few select words that I don’t want my kids to repeat: boob, idiot, and “shut up.” These are all used innocently enough, but I still don’t like my kids refering to foolishness as “boobery”, a term also used in the movie. Some parents might also like to know: one character claims her imaginary world is filled with ponies who “poop butterflies.” I thought that was funny, but some might find it offensive.
- Two characters are definitely scary for younger children: the kangaroo, “self-proclaimed head of the Jungle of Nool,” and the vulture, Vlad, a rather scary guy who chases Horton and regurgitates bones in a very spooky cave. Even at 5, Ellie won’t watch the sceens with Vlad unless I’m in the room.
- Finally, and I don’t think the kids get this, but maybe they do: in one sceen the chairman berates the mayor in a sound-proof dome. Through the glass we see him pointing to the mayor and then to a picture of a horse’s behind. Kids are smart. It won’t take long for them to connect the dots and start calling each other butthead or something worse.
These things are SO SMALL, but I insist on being well-informed when it comes to my kids and feel an obligation to offer the same courtesy when recommending anything to other parents for their kids.
One last warning: your kids might get stuck on the big musical number at the end. Ellie especially loves belting out “I can’t fight this feeling anymore!” with Horton and the Whos. She and Zach have the choreography down pat and, after repeating that one sceen fifty times a day, I wake each morning with that lovely tune firmly planted in my brain. Oh, mama loves her kids.
Heather also did a review on this movie. Check out her thoughts here.
Oh, and in case anyone is interested, I do not recommend Space Buddies. It was like a mental labotomy, no offense to the creative people who will undoubtedly make a lot of money from it.
Mama Loves: Remembering miracles.
Last week the kids and I had lunch with some friends from life BC (Before Children). It was so great! I miss those girls and desperately wish we lived closer. There’s just something fantastic about having friends who know so much about you and still love you, friends who don’t play favorites or keep secrets. What you see is what you get. Our afternoon together felt like a mini vacation to me. We have to do it again soon!
During our hours of chatting and eating and laughing and sharing these precious friends reminded me of the miracle of my children. I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth mentioning again.
We endured four years of infertility before God gave us Ellie. We went through tests and procedures. I prayed and fasted, join support groups, wept and measured and charted and underwent one very painful surgery. I took fertility drugs, saw specialists and prayed some more. I shouted out in frustration to God and my husband and just about anyone who would listen. Every month offered proof I had failed again. My desires slipped further and further away, down a dark road I didn’t want to travel. It was arguably the most difficult time in my life.
Finally, after four years, I fell under an unexplained peace. My doctor referred us to yet another specialist. “I’ve done everything I can do,” she said. The next step seemed too invasive, too much like playing God. We didn’t want to go there. Instead we decided on adoption. Two weeks after starting our agency research and three days after receiving our first applications, I took a test. A bright blue plus sign stared up at me. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it! I took four more tests (both in and out of my doctor’s office) then held my breath for three months. After the first trimester I started to believe it was real. Our miracle had come. Only six more months until we would meet her.
Ellie turns five next week. Sometimes in the rigor of everyday parenting I forget what a miracle these children are. Yes, Ellie was and is an unexplained gift to us, but so is Zach. I was nursing and on birth control when we conceived him! God really wanted us to have these two children when we had them. I can’t explain the timing or the ways. I’ll never understand exactly what happened in either case, but I know it was all God. He knit these children together … I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
Lately my hands always seem full. I ask the kids over and over: “How many hands does Mama have? Are they full or empty?” Once Zach yelled out “Four!” Not exactly the right answer. I don’t ask the question out of exasperation, but simply to teach patience to them and diligence to myself. I want to work hard, to use my hands wisely, but also remember that I can only do so much. Where I fall short, God may have a miracle waiting. I want to be sure my hands are prepared to receive it. Some days my hands are overflowing. Some days my heart is too.
Mama loves remembering miracles.
For more info on Mama Loves, visit this post.
