Thankful Thoughts from a Stay-at-Home Mom (whose kids are all in school)

At the risk of being terribly predictable, I can’t help but write about thankfulness this week. If I were to write out my thankful list, it would be a thousand pages long, so I’ll stick to just one thing this time.

I am so thankful I get to be a stay-at-home mom right now.

It’s not a prestigious job. Two of my college friends—sharp women who could be eating up the corporate world—have told me recently how let down people are when they give their occupation as stay-at-home mom. I’ve seen that, too, and I used to always find a way to work “writer/editor” into the discussion rather than confess that what I really do is pour juice and fold clothes. It sounds even less noble when your kids are in school and people wonder what on earth you’re still doing at home. I’m thankful that the older I get, the less I care how it sounds and the more I realize how important it is.

I’m thankful for the time I have to serve more people in more ways than I ever have before. I can truly be there for people in a way I never could when I was working and managing my own family. I’m so thankful I get to be used by God that way. I’m thankful that I have time during the day for all the cleaning, cooking, purchasing, scheduling, and organizing that working moms have to squeeze into evenings and weekends.

I’m thankful that I don’t have a job that causes me to view my sick child as a nuisance or school vacation days as a dreaded inconvenience. I’m thankful that I can be home and fully available to my kids at the end of the school day. Last spring my oldest daughter went through a rough time at school. When she came through the front door at 3:35, I needed to be well caught up, well prayed up, well rested, and well nourished in order to help her develop through this in faith and character. I shudder to think how impatient and unmerciful the working me would have been.

I’m so very thankful that in this character-building period of my children’s lives—where they still care what I think and want to talk to me about everything—I can focus on them with little else competing for my attention. I’m thankful that I had a job I loved and was able to do it when they were little, when it felt like all I was doing was keeping them alive. (Yes, I know there was more to it than that.) But, oh, how I love these critical days of their late childhood and teen years when they’re figuring out the kinds of people they want to be. I wouldn’t want to miss any part of this. I feel like I was made for this, and I’m thankful I get to do it full time.

I have the privilege of sitting with each of my kids after school and talking through their day. I get to spend my evenings memorizing Awana verses with them and reading with them and practicing their school poems. Even when I’m not loving these things, I’m thankful.

I’m thankful that I have the time and opportunities to develop relationships with my children’s friends and their parents. I’m thankful—extra thankful—for a husband who doesn’t ask me to earn money and life circumstances that don't require me to. 

Sometimes we stay-at-home moms need a good pep talk to see the value in our work, to feel like we’re contributing members of society even if we don’t step out of the house all day. If that’s you, I hope this helps. Remember these things the next time you have to list your profession on a questionnaire or you’re asked what you do by someone who’s expecting something more grand than the answer you’ll give. Being a stay-at-home mom is a privilege, and for me, there is nothing more grand. That’s why I’m thankful. 

Decisions, Decisions

Decision-making is not a great strength of mine. On the rare occasion when my husband and I get a date night, we can stare at each other for a half hour before we decide what we’re going to do. Our family went to Disneyland last month, and the decision-making that led up to it threatened to drain my every ounce of joy. And don’t even get me started on the “what’s for dinner?” decision that haunts my every day.

Decisions are inevitable, and every once in a while, a big one comes along. That’s happened to me in the past week. As I’ve worked through the cumbersome decision-making process, a couple of discoveries have sprung up along the way. I offer them up to encourage those of you who are facing big decisions, too.

First is this: God leads us according to how He makes us. Why would this be so eye opening to me? I should not be surprised that the God who knows the number of hairs on my head would also know how I make decisions. Anyone who’s taken a Myers-Briggs personality test knows that some of us make decisions from our brains and others make it from their hearts. Technically, I have an “F” for feeling in my personality profile, but it’s only because they stack the deck and give females extra feeling points for some reason. I’m not one to “follow my heart.” I follow my head, and it’s my head God started with in this big decision. He revealed truth to me time and time again, yet I was still holding back, waiting for some magical feeling to appear on the scene. It still hasn’t shown up, and it may not. I'm OK with that because God spoke to me in the way He knows I needed. For other people it’s just the reverse; they need to feel it before they can think it. Will I ever fully grasp how well God knows me? He reveals things to me with just the words I need. In just the way I need to hear it. At just the right time. 

Second, some decisions should not be made by the person you are today. Sometimes they need to be made by the person you want to become. Depending on the day, I may be drawn to comfort and convenience more than stretching faith or desperate dependence on God. OK, let’s be honest. Most days comfort wins out. But I don’t want that to be my basis for making important decisions. The person I want to become does not choose comfort over trusting God. She believes that the best kind of growth comes from hard circumstances that are out of her control and rely fully on the power of God. She intentionally puts herself in these types of circumstances, knowing that when she reaches the end of herself, God will show up in a big way. This person may not be in the driver’s seat on a daily basis, but she—the faith-filled, hungry-for-God, led-by-the-Spirit Leura—needs to be allowed to make the big decisions. The slightly whiney, convenience-loving Leura can stick to the dinner-making kinds of decisions. That’s what frozen pizzas are for.

May all the big decisions you face this week be made by the you that you want to become, and may you delight in seeing God lead you in the way that He’s made you. 

Accepting Who They Aren't

My dad was a high school football coach who probably never dreamed he’d have a girl. His first child was a boy, and I’m sure he assumed his second wouldn’t be any different. Although I only got 17 years with him, I spent those years feeling like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of me. He pushed me hard at sports, yelled at me like he did the boys, and it only made me cry. I liked musicals and cheerleading and wearing makeup. I must have seemed like an alien to him. I know he loved me, but did he ever let go of his disappointment over who I wasn’t? I’m not so sure.  

What I resented as a teenager I now understand as a parent. Any good parent knows you have to love your kids for who they are. What we hear much less about is accepting your kids for who they aren’t.

You hold that little baby and can’t help but dream big dreams for his life. The events in your little girl’s life play out in your head, and they include all the things that you, her mother, love. New parents are so busy dreaming that we forget this little person will soon enough be a separate and unique individual with his own personality and preferences. You can dress him in cute baseball onesies all you want, but as a kindergartner, he may enjoy picking daisies in the outfield over fielding grounders, and by the time he’s in college, he may think the World Series is just a nuisance that interrupts October’s regular TV programming.

I dreamed of a daughter who would take dance and wear sweet little dresses. It took me three tries to get one, and she only eked out a year of dance. I never envisioned myself with daughters who would only wear “boy shorts,” who couldn’t be persuaded to wear sandals, and who couldn’t care less about the stains on their shirts and faces. None of my children cares a whit about their hair or their penmanship, two focal points of my young life. It’s enough to make me wonder if they’re truly mine.

While my son cares deeply about words and books just like I do, he doesn’t much care about football. Football was the staple of my childhood. My dad coached it, my brother played it through college, and I married a man who lived and breathed it. Yet we produced a son who has to be bribed to watch a Broncos game. Where did this come from?

It’s even harder when it’s personality instead of just preferences. I’d like to have inclusive children who make others feel welcome. Yet week after week I watch my daughter sit by herself at Awana, interacting with no one, until her one friend arrives. I’m not even sure she knows the other girls’ names. Warm and welcoming is just not who my little introvert is.

All of my children have amazing strengths—many are strengths I wish I had myself. I love, ferociously, who each of them is and who they’re becoming. I love the way they surprise me. I love that a day doesn’t go by without one of them completely amazing me. I have no problem at all loving my kids. It’s the part about accepting who they’re not that is taking some time to figure out.

It’s another piece of the Great Surrendering Project that God calls us to do. Am I willing to surrender my dreams for this child and trust that His dreams for her are even better? Can I believe that God can do even greater things with my child’s life as a [fill in the blank: car salesman/landscaper/hairdresser/bartender] in Colorado Springs than I could by pushing him to be a missionary in the Congo? Can I just encourage these little people—who are rapidly becoming bigger people—to fully become who God intends for them to be, even if it’s well outside what I ever imagined for them?

Like all of the great parenting challenges I face, I hope to do this one well. And you can be sure I’ll be cutting my dad some slack while I navigate this one. 

When Bad Turns Good

I want so badly to live in a black and white world. A world where good is always good and bad is always bad, where right is right and wrong is wrong, and anyone with any common sense can tell the difference. But the world is not cooperating. Almighty God Himself—the author or all that is right and good and true—is not cooperating with my preferences. He refuses to be contained that way, refuses to paint His world as rigidly and uniformly as I desire. He also won’t let my finite little mind go unchallenged.

I grew up as the stereotypical “good girl.” I followed all the good-girl rules about cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. Nancy Reagan was preaching to the choir when her campaign to “Just Say No!” reached my small-town ears. I needed no convincing to decide that drugs were always bad for all people at all times. That deep-seated conviction followed me well into adulthood, until about 2006. That was the year I found myself on the receiving end of a self-dispensing narcotics pump and felt its pain-relieving effects. Thankfully. But I was in a hospital under the watchful eye of a medical doctor. So my conviction became this: Drugs are bad for all people at all times except for those in hospitals who will either die or kill someone else if their pain is not alleviated. 

But drugs are still bad.

The people of my great state didn’t get the message. I was appalled last year when we became the first state to pass a law sanctioning the legal use of recreational marijuana. I am a proud fifth-generation Coloradan, and this was my state’s most shameful hour. What had the world come to, and where was Nancy Reagan when we needed her?

And then into my nice, tidy, common-sense world came Charlotte Figi. She’s becoming a household name in Colorado Springs, but if you aren’t familiar with her story, you can read it here. After suffering seizures so debilitating that she lost her speech, her mobility, and any semblance of a normal life, this young child was without hope. Medication after medication had failed her, until, after much soul-searching and with grave concerns, her desperate parents turned to cannabis. For reasons no one really understands, the drug that others use for a mellow high was the key to giving little Charlotte her life back. I can almost hear her saying to this illegal (in most places) little plant, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20).

God is in the redeeming business, and He can redeem anything.

The very same day I read about Charlotte for the first time, I also read about a heavy-equipment operator in Philadelphia who was responsible for the deaths of six people after he showed up for work high on marijuana. It’s a silly little plant with the power to destroy lives. Yet with the transformational power of God behind it, it can save a child’s life.

My black-and-white mind doesn’t know what to do with Charlotte. She doesn’t fit with what I think I know to be true, nor do the scores of other children who are flocking to my state in droves, uprooted by parents so desperate they’ll leave everything in the world behind for a shot with Charlotte’s web. Not everything fits into my nice little box. Actually, when I put my pride and fears on the shelf for a minute, I realize that nothing fits in my box, least of all God. He is a God of wonders, and He will keep me guessing, spinning, and stretching until He calls me home. As for you, little Charlotte, I really do know what to do with you. I will pray for you, and I’ll accept that God can heal you any way He wants to. Drugs are always bad. Unless they’re in the hands of a good God.

A Hard Surrender

Twenty years ago this week, I moved to Colorado Springs. It was the day before my 23^rd birthday, and I didn’t know a soul in town. The people I would meet over the course of the next month, and then the years that followed, would literally change the direction of my life. They were like people I’d never known before, people with a long obedience in the same direction, to quote Eugene Peterson. One of them would become for me the greatest example of longsuffering I’ve ever known.

This dear friend—and I can hardly imagine that he was ever a stranger—became my professional mentor, teaching me nearly everything I know about putting words and paragraphs and books together. More significantly, he became my mentor in patiently enduring the very worst storms of life, and his came fast and furious. He has suffered chronic, teeth-gritting pain since long before I met him. The hospital is his second home, physical therapists are his constant companions, and rehab is a way of life.

But there’s been a lot more to his journey than physical pain. Though he’s one of the most talented people I know, professional upheaval and the constant threat of layoffs or termination have hung over his head for decades. And just when he made it through another day, he returned home to a family with needs so big that you wonder how any mere mortal could begin to bear them. Yet bear them he has, a clear picture of God’s strength showing up in human weakness.

My friend now faces his biggest storm to date. When I asked him last week if he’s ever been through anything so bad, he quickly answered, “Oh, no. Nothing like this.” And that’s when I lost it. The tears and the questions exploded out of me with equal force. “WHY? Why can’t you just stop already, Lord? How can such a humble and gentle man receive such fierce treatment? It’s too much. Stop. RELENT!”

Over and over, all I could do was beg God to relent. I wonder if this is how the Old Testament prophets felt? I even wondered if I could take the blows for my friend. It’s so unfair. Why is my life so easy, so beautiful, when his is so . . . this? Except that I bet if I asked, he’d say his life is beautiful. Maybe not easy, but beautiful still.

When I quieted my heart long enough to stop shaking my fist and stomping my feet at the Lord of the universe, I felt Him gently asking me this: “Are you willing to surrender your ‘right’ to know why I do what I do? Are you willing to trust My promise that I’m working for the good of all who love Me? (And yes, I know this man loves Me very much.) Are you willing to believe that I’ve got this, that I will not give him more than in My strength he can bear?”

Just when I think I’ve surrendered everything I’m holding onto, I see my hands throttled around something else. In this case, it’s my need to know why. I think it would be easier surrendered if it were my own life on the line. It’s much harder when it’s someone who has suffered so much. What would I have done if I’d been Job’s friend? Could I have surrendered my right to know why his suffering was so great, or would I have been like his wife, who urged him to curse God and die? What if I had been standing at the foot of the cross while Jesus suffered and died? Even if by chance I had known the Plan, that it included saving all humanity, could I have watched without screaming, “Relent, God! Surely there’s a better way!”?

Everything in me hates suffering. I want a different plan—for my friend, for Job, for the salvation of the world. But by an act of my will, a very hard act, I choose to surrender what I want and what I think I need to know. I choose to trust God. 

Picture Day

Here’s a definition of maturity that I heard recently: Being in distress and remaining your best self. I don’t know anyone who’s mastered that, but I can say for sure one of the times I am my least mature, worst self—school picture day.

Whose idea was it, exactly, to send our children off for a seven-hour day of school—a day which will include a soccer game in PE, a spill-fest in the cafeteria, and a few hundred twirls around the monkey bars—and have their picture taken? For the yearbook? Had to be a man. A man with sons. And why did God think I could be my best self with three daughters, anyway? Some days I wonder, and picture day is my most wondering day of all.

Was I my best self when my littlest girl wanted to wear a dress three inches too short or have her hair “all curly”? (I really stink at hair.) No, I wasn’t. What about when my middle daughter pulled out the most bizarre combination of clothes imaginable and called it dressing up? (Every year I send Brooka to school on picture day and wait for the call: “Mrs. Jones, you know it was a dress-up day, right? Not a costume day?”) Or when she plastered her bangs to her head with a water bottle, setting off a chain of events that led to her little sister toppling into the trash can and spilling dirty Kleenexes all over the floor? Um, no, not my best self. I also didn’t redeem myself when my oldest daughter—wearing her school uniform because I’ve learned not even to go there with her—needed to handle the chickens as we walked out the door—on picture day!

Was I my best self when the younger two wrestled on the floor over toothpaste, on picture day? (That’s freshly-curled hair in the line of toothpaste fire, you know!) No. Or when one of the girls couldn’t find her picture order form, the one I so carefully filled out the night before? No again. How about when we pulled up to school? My best self would say, “I love you, girls!” or “Be kind!” or “Love others well today!” My picture-day self hollered, “Be sure you pull your hair forward for the picture!” My best self, the one who cares about character and kindness far more than hair, just refused to show up. The sad thing is, I wasn’t even in distress. I was merely being stretched beyond my normal early-morning capacity.    

Slightly defeated, I returned home with two assurances. First, the grace of God covers a multitude of my failures. I'm so thankful. And second, I’ll have the opportunity to practice maturity all over again on next year’s picture day. (Although surely I can find a more attainable definition of maturity by then.)

(Dedicated to my friend Rebecca, who lives my parallel life about a mile down the road and whose daughters have even more hair than mine.)

Breaking the Addiction

My name is Leura, and I’m a chaos addict.

I got my first taste of it as a full-time college student working two jobs. By the time I became a working mom, I was hooked. My identity was sealed, and I loved it as much as I hated it: I was the Queen Juggler. The woman who hauled her breast pump into the office, her babies to out-of-town conferences, and her coworkers to ad-hoc meetings in the McDonald’s play area. The woman who squeezed in one last important interview 12 hours before her C-Section. The woman who edited the better part of a book with a pen in one hand and the other hand secured to the swimming suit straps of her one-year-old who toddled around the inflatable backyard pool.

Today there is no more job, there are no more toddlers, and the juggling balls have come to rest, at least to some extent. As activities director for a family of six, the juggling act is still alive and well. It’s just that my shift has changed, and now I find myself with seven chaos-free hours a day. Unnerving! I kept those balls in the air for so long—thrived on them, even as I cursed them—that I’m not exactly sure how to live life without them.

I’ve entered this still-and-quiet sort of phase, a place that’s foreign and awkward for a chaos junkie. Every part of me wants to keep up the juggling act, to just swap my old balls for new ones. That’s what a lot of chaos addicts do. But it’s not how God is leading me. While I’ve got lots of good ways to fill my time—Bible study, freelance work, volunteering, helping people in need—I believe God is telling me that I also need to embrace the quiet and to discover Him in it. The monks were probably onto something with their silence, solitude, and contemplation, and while those things scare the bejeebers out of me, if they are of God, how can I ignore them? 

It’s becoming more and more clear to me that busyness is an idol, and I have been one of its chief worshipers. Even worse, I’ve been proud of it. I’ve worn my busyness like a badge of honor. Busyness makes people think I’m important. It makes me think I’m important. My ego takes a serious blow every time I realize that no one’s expecting me anywhere, no one needs me anywhere. Busyness keeps me from true intimacy with God and other people. For years, I’ve been the last to arrive and the first to leave—because I was busy! Lingering just wasn’t something I did, yet lingering is often the gateway to true fellowship with others. More significantly, it’s often the door that leads to deeper intimacy with God, if only we will linger with Him and silence the voices that beckon us on to other things.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Ironic that this chaos addict has always loved that verse. The time has come to stop merely reciting it and start practicing it. Off I go. To be still.