Month: May 2016

Birthing Me

On By LisaIn Faith, PlumLeave a comment

I’ve been watching babies lately, watching mama’s snuggling little bodies, smelling sweet necks.  I love babies.  I love to sway and rock and hold.  My immediate circle is filled with big children who run, tell stories, make things.  They bring joy but don’t want to be sniffed or swayed.  In three days my grandson will graduate from preschool, leaving behind teachers who love him.  They have nurtured him, understood tough times, found his strengths. In three months he will spend full days away from me, with a new teacher and many, many more children.  He is no longer a baby who relies on me for everything, he can get his own milk.  Having let go before with my own children, I know what this feels like.  But this is my last letting go, the final time I will send a child off to school for the first time.  I was blessed to have this second time around, as exhausting as it has been to parent as a late 40-early 50 year old.  I look at him and still see the baby I rocked, the one I sang to.  I see that in his father as well, his aunt.  Maybe I just want a do-over with those two.  Too many mistakes, far too many regrets.

The reality is that I do have a new life to nurture, one to protect and love.  I can teach this new baby to walk and talk, to take chances and be nice.  This one though comes with a history, not a clean slate.   My baby, me, gets to learn to depend on others, accept love, seek help, trust.  Accepting God’s grace, truly finding His restorative joy in this fresh life, is every bit as challenging as midnight feedings.  Remembering that each new day is a gift to start over and God doesn’t keep track of our mistakes even if others do, means I get to take this gift of time, days free from caring for others and begin to care for me.  Becoming self-centered doesn’t mean I have to be selfish.  My long neglected soul, much like an extended pregnancy, is anxiously awaiting this birth.  Oh how I love babies.  Time to let myself be born.

bedtime stories, lifetime fears

On By LisaIn Faith, StellaLeave a comment

I play a game each night before I fall asleep, a horrible game.  Rather than end my day in prayer and supplication, I burrow under heavy blankets and imagine that I have cancer, that I have been in a terrible accident, any number of other horrific scenarios have befallen me.  I skip over the actual bad part, the suffering, the hurt, the true pain such an event would cause.  I don’t linger over details.  The rich part of my nightly imagining is when my daughter realizes how precious life is, how much she really loves her mother and she comes back.  I see her at my bedside, holding my hand, saying she loves me.  I see the miraculous recovery, how I squeeze her hand, we have reconnected, joined once again.

I don’t want to get sick, to get hurt.  I actually hurt enough already.  The problem is she can’t see my destroyed heart.  There are no doctors and nurses rushing me anywhere to fix it. Tubes aren’t sticking out of me, I don’t have beeping machines registering where my life stands.  Yet every night I lay just as still, just as lifeless, waiting for her.   I already know that life can be crippled when you carry regrets, words left unspoken.  I watched the destruction in my brother’s life when my father had a heart attack and never left the hospital after a fight they had.  My brother carried that weight for his too short life.  The reassurances we gave that my father loved him, knew my brother loved him back could never erase the regret of a foolish fight left unresolved.  Standing on righteous anger only led to kneeling in a puddle of despair.

I wake each morning and pray this is the day that she too has recovered from a night of fear that our breach could be a forever one and she feels compelled to act.  It has been too long time wandering in this wilderness, too many nights dreaming up a way to reach her.  I wonder what she thinks about as she lays her head on the pillow, her alone time with just her and her true thoughts.  I trust God is working on her heart as well.  Please let her listen before my imaginings become true.