Moments

Last year I participated in One Word 365 in picking one word for the year. Last year my word was "Generous". Their website (oneword365.com) says it best:

"Forget New Year’s Resolutions. Scrap that long list of goals you won’t remember three weeks from now anyway. Choose just one word. One word that sums up who you want to be or how you want to live. One word that you can focus on every day, all year long.
It will take intentionality and commitment, but if you let it, your word will shape you and your year. It will guide your decisions and help you grow. Discover the big impact one word can make. One word. 365 days. A changed life."
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The last few months of last year, as my sweet son has come into our lives, I have been bombarded with the word "moment". Live in the moment. Cherish this moment. This moment won't last forever. Last year it took a while for me to pick my "one word" but this year the word seemed to pick me. 

My sweet baby boy is now almost 10 weeks old as I write this. In those first few weeks of his life I was utterly exhausted (No surprise right? Sleep deprivation is the inevitable christening of parenthood). Those midnight feedings...oh God...they were hell to me. Saying that I love sleeping is an understatement. I freaking LOVE to sleep. I use to tell people I'd be totally happy if I could sleep all the time and just dream about the real world. My bed was my happy place. I love sleep. And my son had other plans. Henry nursed every single hour for the first 3 weeks of his life. And the next few weeks it was every hour and a half. And then every 2 hours, and finally at almost 10 weeks old, he has stretched his feedings out to every 3 hours. If you would have told me a year ago that I would REJOICE over only having to wake up every 3 hours I would have laughed at you. I knew a new baby would wake up to fed at night...but...I had no idea it was like THIS. I am beyond elated right now that (for now) my son wakes up at 12:30, 3:30 and 6:30. But this is not what I want to write about.

In those early days of nursing every hour, I was angry.  I was angry at my baby. I was so desperate for sleep that after feeding at 1:00am, when 2:00 would roll around and he would be screaming, I would get so close to his face and I would shush and shush and shush and say "Please go to sleep, please go to sleep. I just want to sleep" over and over. Wes would often "rescue" me and without a word, just take him out of my arms and leave the room. Motherhood is hard. Sometimes we do things and think things we wish we didn't. And I am sad that I wasted so much time trying to shush my boy. 

I have followed Megan Tietz over at SortaCrunchy for several years now, and picked up her book "Spirit-Led Parenting" when I found out I was pregnant. During those tough first weeks I opened up her book and read the chapter on sleep. The words that Megan and co-author Laura wrote spoke straight to my heart.

"In truth, our roles as parents do not end in late evening and pick up again when the sun rises. The way we parent our children at night is just as crucial to their development as the way we parent in the day time hours." 

"...could I possibly conceive of the idea that these moments alone in the dark and quiet at night were a gift from [God]?...Rather than viewing these little interruptions at night as exhausting drudgery and empty sacrifice, perhaps I could use them as pockets of solitude and prayer and scripture meditation...The nights that once held heartache now held the promise of peace and the comfort of communion with [God]." 

"...these new baby days (and nights) do not last forever, and there is more rest just around the corner... and there is a part of you that will someday miss sitting in your cozy recliner in the nighttime stillness with a baby snuggled up in your arms...you may find yourself drawing your little one just a bit closer to you in that big chair, thanking God for the gift of that moment."

I began to challenge myself in those awful midnight feedings. Instead of dreading them - being on Facebook while I nursed my baby, trying to pass the time quickly, I began to stop and pray. Staring at his sweet face, noticing that his eyelashes are growing. Seeing a milk-drunk sleep smile as he unlatches. Thanking God for this beautiful boy, thanking God for this moment that I have with him. I will never have this moment, right here, ever again. In this little routine of midnight feedings, with just one small change in my thinking, I have actually begun to enjoy these times. And so now those moments I use to hate have become moments I love and hold dear to my heart. 

I have a song that I sing to Henry almost every day. It's a song from the 70's that my sister found when I was pregnant. "This song is for Henry!" she told me as she showed me this video. And it is. The words are simple and sweet: "If I had words to make a day for you, I'd sing you a morning golden and new. I would make this day last for all time, give you a night deep in moonshine" The whole song repeats this refrain. I've been singing this song to him since before he was born, and it is the perfect reminder to me to cherish these moments. 

Click here to listen to the song.

Warning: this song is epically 70's. I sing it to him in a much more acoustic and folksy way ;)

So for this year I want to focus on the moments. Not only to be present in the sweet and easy day time moments but to cherish the ones I don't even yet realize are moments I won't want to forget (like the way he may wake up crying, but I'm the one who knows exactly how to comfort my child and make him feel so loved).  

So my one word is MOMENTS. And I don't want to miss a single one. 

Henry after nursing in the middle of the night.

Prayer in the Midst of Anxiety

Loving and peace-giving God,
I so desperately desire that "peace that passes all understanding". My heart has been so full of anxiety and pain, and I know You aren't a genie, but I know You ARE life giving. I just want it to go away. I want to feel confident that this will pass...that I am always going to make it through. I know in my heart that I can stay strong, but my mind has a harder time believing it.


May I have peace, God. May I feel peace. May I show peace. Please throughout this day, whisper "I am here. I am with you. It will all be okay." And please come carry me if it feels too hard. Remind me that I am growing. I am growing EVERY DAY. And I want to grow to be more like You. Help me see what looks like you. Help me give You those sorrows I hold onto so tightly, so that I can focus on showing this world Your love.

Transparency

This week I saw an incredible amount of transparency in a very unexpected situation. My roommate and I were watching “Ellen” and the minute she stepped out and the camera’s started rolling, she began to cry. We weren’t expecting that. And as tears began to fall she said,

“"People say to me a lot, 'How do you do the show if you're in a bad mood? How do you do your show if you're sad, or, don't you have bad days?' I'm a human being and I have bad days and I have sad days. But when I walk out here, and you all cheer, and when you're here to dance, you're here to laugh, and I know I make people happy, it changes my mood. I come out here and I can do anything because of the energy I get. But today is a hard day for me. Today is bad. I am not capable of coming out and pretending to be funny when things are going so terribly wrong right now. I'm so sorry -- I'm just not able to pretend. So I'm going to tell you the story. I'm going to get over it and we're going to have a good show.”

This kind of emotion and transparency is rare. Regardless of how you feel about Ellen DeGeneres, and regardless of the fact that her story ended up being about a dog, you cannot help but know that her emotion was real, and she wasn’t afraid to be transparent for a moment.

When we are transparent with someone, we are forced into relationship with them. When you see pain in another human beings eyes, you cannot help but feel connected to them. I don’t know Ellen, and I never will, but in that moment we were connected, because I know the emotion that came out. I see it in myself; I see it in hearts of the people I love. And I see it in the eyes of the people I’ve never met. This is a common and deep bond between human beings.

The most chilling and profound sentence to me was when she said, “I am not capable of coming out and pretending to be funny when things are going so terribly wrong right now.” It was to this point where she wasn’t even CAPABLE of putting a mask on anymore. It wasn’t even an option.

I think you know that feeling. When someone comes along just at the right moment and asks the right question: “How are you?” and you just can’t do it. You can’t say “Fine” anymore. You begin to cry, or maybe shift about if you’re the tough type, and then you let it down. You let the walls down. “You know…things aren’t going so good right now.” And then you talk.

I wish I saw this more often. This realization that life is not lived alone and that we are in this amazing continuous relationship with one another. Life is meant to be lived transparently. You might think Ellen is annoying, you might think she’s odd, and you might despise her because of her lifestyle, but I pray that you got past how you feel about someone to see that you are just the same as them. Be transparent…please.