Grow Where You Are Planted

I remember when I first moved to Norman for college in the summer of 2006.  I despised everything about the town except for the university.  I hated that I would walk by a beautiful house on one street and find a dump within 50 feet of it (what zoning?), thought it was weird that there were bus stops and people actually waited at them to catch the city bus (where is your new BMW?), and lamented the loss of my Lifetime Fitness membership because most gyms in Norman are not big, corporate establishments.  Growing up in suburban Dallas with a bunch of rich, white folks left me with little tolerance for much that was different from the people and lifestyle I had grown accustomed to over the past 18 years.

During my years at the University of Oklahoma, I met my husband, who, much to my dismay at the time, is from Oklahoma.  We married and settled down in Norman, a place I swore I would leave as soon as I graduated.  I’m still here, almost 10 years after I arrived.  And, by God’s grace, I’ve grown to love this place.  Continue reading here.

On Productivity and Perspective

After a whole summer plus almost seven glorious weeks at home enjoying my little ones, I'm headed back to work tomorrow.  I have mixed emotions, naturally.  I feel so much purpose in my job as a Pre-K teacher.  And I love my own children.  I told Piper this morning that we were all just going to go to Momma's work together tomorrow.  She seemed to think that would be fine.

I am productive at my job.  If there is one thing I can do well, it is cranking out lesson plans.  I can efficiently gather materials for centers, execute small group instruction, and write individual behavior and education plans.  I have my "off" days, like everyone else, and I am not under any delusion that I am the best teacher ever to exist.  But I know how to get things done.

Home is a different story.  My two-year-old was just getting pretty good at entertaining herself for a short time when I gave birth to Caroline.  Y'all, it took me three hours to make dinner on Friday.  Three hours!  This is about how long it takes to do anything anymore.  Get out the onions to chop.  Toddler wakes up from nap.  "I want a snack."  Start chopping onions.  "I need to go potty."  Finish chopping onions, get out meat to brown.  Toddler begins coloring on the table with chalk.  Baby wakes up (girl can scream when she's hungry).  Start feeding baby.  She spits up in my hair, for the third time today.  Finish feeding baby.  Blowout!  All over my jeans that just came out of the laundry (which is forever overflowing)!  Toddler is playing in the cleaning supplies.  Finish browning meat.  "Piper, you can't put your hand on Sissy's tummy when you're trying to stand up!"  Calm two crying children... You get it.  This is normal life.  Days full of nonstop activity, yet I rarely have anything to show for them when my husband walks in the door at 6:00 p.m.  I write things on my daily to-do list, and they may or may not be done three days later.  A prime example is the fact that, so far, it has taken me 53 minutes and approximately seven interruptions to write this blog post.

I have had to completely change my perspective on how I view this season of my life.  My children cause interruptions, but they themselves are not interruptions.  They are gifts.  I have found that, 95 percent of the time when I get frustrated with the way my day is going, it is because my plans (which usually are self-centered) have gone awry.  Andrew was getting ready to go for a run a few nights ago when both girls woke up screaming.  His response was, "Well, I'm basically not going to get to do things when I want to do them anymore, ever, right now."  We're both coming around to accepting that.

This time is a season.  These girls are a blessing.  This work is good.  I might not have anything tangible to show for all I've done with my kids at the end of the day, but I get to mold young hearts and minds, teach them about the world around them, and hope that God will use my filthy hands to point them to Christ.  There could be nothing more productive or important than that.  And one day, I'm sure I'll miss these little people needing me so much.           

  

Enough.

Confession: I am a worrier.

In our culture today, worrying has become a relatively minor sin, or, as Jerry Bridges would call it, a "respectable sin".  Saying, "I am a worrier" sounds less offensive than, "I am a cheater" or, "I am a liar."  "Everyone worries" is a common argument.  In fact, many people (Christians or otherwise) would not consider worrying to be a sin at all.  The truth is that worrying belittles God.  Essentially, it is saying to God that we do not trust Him to take care of our future and that we do not believe him to be enough for our present.  (Continue reading here.)

"The days are long, but the years are short."

I might add that the nights are long, too, when you have a newborn and a two-year-old.  Otherwise, the above quote from my mom couldn't be more accurate.  Yesterday was the first time in 22 years that I haven't been to a first day of school.  That was weird.  I'll go back in October, but for now, I'm staying home with my girls and trying to figure out life with a new little person in it.  Piper goes to school part-time, but Caroline and I hang out at the house.  She's a very easy baby (as far as babies go), but I'm exhausted.  When Piper is home, she's a challenge.  I know that our sweet little girl is hidden somewhere behind all of the defiance, tantrums, and accidents, but there are certainly days when I feel my body physically release all kinds of tension after she is finally in bed (following nearly an hour-long bedtime routine) and Caroline is bathed, changed, and fed.  The days do seem long.

Then I look at this precious family of mine, and I realize that God knows exactly how much I can handle.  They're not perfect, I'm not perfect, and being a mom is plain hard sometimes.  The years will be short.  But there can be joy in each moment, if I choose to look for it.

 

Caroline

After having one baby, you wonder how in the world you could possibly love another as much as the first.  And then you do.  This is the story of Caroline Grace.

On Monday, August 3rd, at 2:23 a.m., I woke up out of a dead sleep, flipped on the bedside lamp, and told Andrew, "Uh, I'm pretty sure my water just broke."  Sure enough, it had.  The prompt little lady decided that she was ready to come into the world on her exact due date.  Oddly, my body was not ready and did not go into active labor on its own.  We waited to go up to the hospital until 9:30 because I had a doctor's appointment then anyway, and he sent me across the street to Labor and Delivery.  After a couple of doses of a medication to speed up the process and working through contractions for nearly 11 hours, I still hadn't made any progress.  Eventually, I got an epidural and Pitocin and was ready to push just three hours later.  After about seven minutes of pushing, Caroline was here.  (I'll spare you the rest of the details.)  According to the nurses, I should have about seven more babies.  Right.

Most things about Caroline's birth were not at all like the movies, but the moment she came out was every bit the same.  Andrew and I burst into tears immediately, and our hearts were so full of love that we thought they would explode.  Suddenly, all of the annoyances of pregnancy and the pains of childbirth were worth everything.

Piper was a miracle because she made me a mother for the first time, and this child is a miracle because she beat the odds.  Doctors said she wouldn't be here.  I remember staring at Piper in disbelief during her first days home because I couldn't believe that she was mine.  The feelings are identical with Caroline.

Being home has been hard, honestly.  Caroline is an unbelievably easy, sweet baby, and I couldn't be more thankful.  Piper has had a hard time adjusting, which I should have expected more than I did.  Every day gets a little less difficult, which gives me hope that our well-mannered, thoughtful two-year-old will soon make her return.  For now, though, our "new normal" is tough.  One of the best parts of this experience has been having Andrew by my side the whole time.  I'm dreading when he has to go back to work next week.  During labor and delivery, he was my rock, and he continues to be steady and patient during the trials of parenting and my flip-flopping hormones.  He reminds me that I'm beautiful when all I feel lately is swollen and sore.  I've been more attracted to him in the past few days than I have been since we've known each other.  Things will get easier, I'm sure.

We found out about Caroline just a few weeks following the hardest moments we have ever endured as a couple.  There was never any debate about her name; it literally took us about five minutes to decide what she would be called if she was a girl.  Caroline: "joyful song".  It is based on Psalm 126, and one of my favorite hymns that we sing at church:

"Our mouths, they were filled, filled with laughter

Our tongues they were loosed, loosed with joy

Restore us, O Lord,

Restore us, O Lord,

Although we are weeping, 

Lord, help us keep sowing the seeds of your kingdom

For the day you will reap them

Your sheaves we will carry, 

Lord, please do not tarry, 

All those who sow weeping will go out with songs of joy."

Truly, He has filled us with joy a hundred times over through this precious child, the perfect addition to our little family.

He has done great things.

We renewed our vows last weekend.

I'm not exactly sure what I had envisioned for this celebration, but whatever I wanted was exactly what happened.  It was the perfect day.  When Andrew and I got married six years ago, I was convinced that our wedding day would be the best day of our lives, and it probably was up until that point.  But I'm really happy to think, now, that that wonderful day was just the beginning of several "best days" to come.  The day that Piper was born was a "best day", and this sixth anniversary celebration was another one.

There were many times in the last couple of years when I didn't think that we would make it to our fifth anniversary, much less to our sixth.  Though six years isn't necessarily one of the "big" or "special" anniversaries, it is the biggest and most special one to us.  This July 11th, we got to celebrate, not just the fact that we made it to year six, but that we made it to year six more in love and more grateful than we've ever been before- not in spite of the hard times, but because of them.

I complain a lot (at least in my head) about how huge and unattractive I feel because I'm nine months pregnant, but I think that when I look back at the pictures from our vow renewal ceremony years from now, I will realize that I was glowing and possibly more beautiful than I've ever been before.  There is something so precious about another life growing inside of a human being, and this life in particular is a marker or healing for us.  Our entire little family of four got to be a part of us recommitting our lives to each other and to God.

If I had to do our wedding over again, I'd most likely do a lot of things differently.  I was all about having a grand, fancy wedding at the time, but now I tend to think that the most important thing can easily get lost in the pursuit of perfect flowers, an expensive dress, and the most exquisite food.  My dress for this past weekend cost less than a tenth of my wedding dress, we had no flowers, and everyone ate sandwiches from Wal-Mart afterward (which were pretty tasty and economical, by the way).  We had no obligation to invite my mom's Great-Uncle Charlie (who doesn't actually exist, but you get my point), but we got to be with the people who have walked through our lives and our marriage with us, which happened to be about 60 people instead of 225.  We chose a lovely church for our wedding, but for renewing our vows, we got to be at this church, City Pres, that has loved us and become our home over the past four years.  And everything about all of that was perfect.  In the words of the song that we all sang together at our ceremony, truly, "He has done great things."

"We will feast in the house of Zion,

We will sing with our hearts restored,

'He has done great things,' we will say together

We will feast and weep no more!"

My greatest love on this earth

Our sweet Piper

Family.  Missed you, brother.

Two families are one.

My people.

Before "walking down the aisle" as a family

Forever, again.

Probably more pictures to come...

Minimizing the Miraculous

I remember sitting in a park in Alaska around this time last year, staring off at Denali in the distance while listening to the rush of a nearby stream that cut through the mountains and thinking simply, “This is nice.”  Not, “This is spectacular,” “What an amazing view,” or, “I’ve never seen such beautiful scenery anywhere.”  “This is nice” was all I felt.  Even in that moment, I knew that I should have been more aware of my surroundings and more appreciative of the Creator’s handiwork.  But I wasn’t.  

Continue reading here.