Day 14: Kids need mud

I was cleaning up dinner when a little someone scurried past in a hurry.

All I could make out was a blur of white object, which I assumed to be a colander, that was obviously muddy.

He was headed to the living room.
This never ends well.

I put down dishes and followed to investigate.
He had a pile of muddy rocks in a different colander sitting in the middle of the living room floor.
The muddy white colander was transporting newly discovered treasure to this stash.

"Why in the living room?" I (almost) yelled.

(I would give myself credit for keeping lent here, because though my voice was louder than typical speaking, it was more at the level of exclamation, rather than shouting.)

"Because, because, because they need to be in a new place."

"Why don't you make a new place -- outside?"

"ok"

...and off he trotted with his piles of rock back to the backyard.

Which, as I glanced out the back door I realized has turned into a disaster zone.

Longer days,
warmer weather,
spring is here and mud is going to be a part of my life for the next few months.

Mud, I think, is a form of meditation for kids.

I remember myself building out "rivers" for the rain and making dams along the way or forming mud pies or just drawing in the mud.

This mindless play felt a lot like what I feel when I walk the beach and stare down at all the random stuff that's washed ashore or when I hike and take time to breathe in the nature around me.

It is a holy and sacred decompressing. Letting the mind be gloriously empty and yet full of something close to gratitude.

Kids need this. With all the
homework
and structure
and screens
and expectations
placed on them,

a backyard full of mud is church.

A time to feel God's presence in the natural world
a time to tap into the creative nature that makes us in God's likeness
a time to feel gratitude for spring and warm weather
and to be at peace within themselves
content with who they are in this world.

I need to remember this when they track it in across my living room floor.
Dirty floors are a sign of some quality time spent with God.

Day 13: The power of invitation

I'm good at quite a few things, but making friends is not really one of them.

When I first moved to Livermore, I poured my whole self into trying to build community around myself. I joined mom groups. Went to church. Hung out at the library. Led a workout class.

Over time, there were a few "mom friends" that I saw regularly. We weren't terribly close and it wasn't really the community I was craving but it was something.

With time, more babies and more work came and I had to cut out a lot of the "extras" in life. Community was one of them.

I still went to church. But I didn't have time or energy to do the "extra" things that make you part of the church community. So, I sat in the pew and watched community around me.

My kids went to school. I volunteered in the classroom when I could, but between therapy and work, we never had playdates. And honestly, my kids weren't ready for friends. Most attempts of having them play with other kids failed miserably.

And so. I gave in to isolation. Accepting it as part of the season I was in.

As my world begins to open up, I find myself ever so slowly connecting. It awakens in me that yearning for friendship that I've quieted for a long time. But it also makes me feel like I'm back in school. I feel shy, nervous and unequipped for connection building. My path the last few years has been deep and hard and unusual. Not really the best material for small talk.

The last time I started a workout group, I was a little plugged in. I had a mom's group. I knew some people. I could at least get a small core group together to get started with. It made the whole process of getting off the ground less intimidating. They invited friends and it grew organically.

This time, it was a little more daunting.

Inviting someone can feel hard. Directly inviting someone to something feels like I've created an obligation for them. A decision they have now have to make. They have to consider the activity, the time, the date, location and the value...is this worth doing. They might have to check their calendar and figure out if it would work. I've complicated life for them. I know how busy and overwhelmed people generally are and it feels hard to add to this overload.

So, I prefer a more passive invitation -- hey, here's an opportunity for anyone interested. No one feel obligated to consider or even pay attention. If the activity is something they've been thinking about doing, they will self select to pay attention to the invite and consider the invitation.

But... invitation...personal invitation can be powerful. When someone thinks of me specifically, it feels for a moment that I've been seen. That my world, my passions, my existence has been considered and an invitation opens the possibility of relationship in a way that responding to a bulletin board flyer does not.

Today, I was brave enough to reach out.

During kindergarten drop off, I ran into a mom with her adorable 2 year old that I've developed a small hallway relationship with. Peek-a-boo with the toddler. Comments exchanged about kindergarten. The typical. I knew that she was home with the little one, so I felt less intimidated about extending an invitation to join me at workout.

She texted me a bit later asking for more details and showed up to my very first class.

She was the only one.

To be fair, most of the general announcements that I shared at the church preschool and to email lists didn't actually go out until monday night or even this morning. So, while there were several people interested in the workout group, it was too short notice for them to join this week.

So..
it was the two of us.
Actually the three of us.
Me, my kindergarten mom friend and her toddler.

We had an awesome workout. She was approximately the same fitness level as I was and like me, used to workout a lot more and loved exercise. Her toddler ran around, driving cars on us, dive bombing her during floor exercises and occasionally mimicking our awesome moves.

It was just right. I was able to test out my playlist, my imagined list of exercises and shake the dust off my "workout leader voice." She was able to workout with someone else without any worry that her little guy was disturbing anyone.

Reflecting on this made me really take home how much power lies in the simple act of inviting.
It's incredibly vulnerable.
It creates opportunity to be rejected.
It opens the possibility that I could disappoint someone.
It disrupts someone's potential plans.
It may be inconvenient.
It may offend someone, somehow.

So many things could happen when we have courage to take a step, see someone and extend an invitation. And while my lizard brain tends to focus on the negative ones, there are a host of beautiful outcomes.

An invitation could tell someone they've been seen. It opens the possibility of connection. It could give someone something they really need or have been waiting for, or hoping for. Or, it could just be a great afternoon together that would otherwise be spent alone.

Day 12: On marriage

Pregnancy is the trump card.

I need pillows.
I'm craving a very specific food item that is located 3 towns over.
Can you get me another glass of water, I literally CANT move.

For good reason. I would wager that being pregnant is still much harder then being married to a pregnant woman.

In the throws of 1st trimester exhaustion and nausea, I've needed more support.
Of course as Murphy's Law would have it, I can't get morning sickness in the actual morning when my kids are at school and I have more space to ride through... nope... I get sick starting just before afternoon pickup and stay that way until kids are asleep.

Generally, I am asleep before them but I do make valiant efforts to make it all the way to the end of the day.

I really could use a hand in the afternoon.

This is where I would play my trump card.

"I need you home."

But, my husband, as it would turn out is the the middle of his own stuff. At work, we are finishing a clinical trial getting ready to submit a 510k on a new product that he has been developing over the last year. The submission was actually supposed to be done at the beginning of February but as these things go, there have been bumps and dips in the road and he's been working tirelessly to keep things on track.

So, even though I have the trump card, I don't play it.
In fact, I let him work late. Right now, he needs to.

I wade through the after-school routine as best I can. Some days dinner is frozen pizza on the couch in front of a movie . But homework is done. Kids are loved and I'm in one piece, so we call it a win.

And as I try to keep my eyes open on the couch, he walks in the door and starts cleaning the kitchen.

Love is...

coming home from a long stressful day at work
and cleaning up the kitchen and putting kids to bed.

and..

cooking dinner when you don't feel good
so there's something for him to eat when he gets there.

Marriage is choosing not to play your trump cards.

Day 11: Fight back against fear

Blogging during Lent has the strange consequence of slightly increasing my time on social media. I don't have a TV and don't watch the news, but I tend to take the temperature of what's happening on the news by what I see in social media. And this Lent... there's been a lot of freaking out.

Election and CoronaVirus.

Actually, mostly COVID.

Something has to be pretty powerful to override politics on facebook during an election year, but COVID seems be be dominating --both in article shares and memes (which have gotten pretty funny.)

One particular meme that has captured my thoughts lists all the things we've "thought would kill us all" starting with Y2K and listing major societal freak-outs every year until now. 20 solid years of mass hysteria.

What I've been meditating on is why people are afraid and what that fear looks like.

Since the dawn of time, people have been afraid -- superstitious, overwhelmed, hysterical. Our response to fear has changed -- we've switched from reaching out to help from God and our community to stockpiling our own provisions and doing what we can to take control.

In some ways our response to fear as a society has improved. Many of the antiquated responses to an outbreak of disease or famine such as self-flogging, starting witch hunts or other sacrifices to the sun god were not particularly healthy. A lack of education and pragmatism to understanding the causes of such unfortunate events created additional hardship and tragedy among people who already suffered. And... in some cases...worsened the original plague.

So, we've gotten smarter. We organized as a society to understand and prepare for catastrophic events -- weather, fires, disease outbreaks, violence, etc. Countless professionals receive specialized training that most never use. Data collection systems are in place and monitored -- even as much of the time --all is well. We analyze trends. We predict the future. And... we prevent a lot of disasters. We have building codes, emergency responders, vaccines, evacuation plans and safety equipment that have in combination prevented countless deaths. The world as a whole has gotten a lot safer.

But in our ever vigilant state we've gone a bit over-board. We have more control over the world. And yet, we can't control it. We can prepare for weather and disease and other bad things but we cannot put ourselves in a bubble. People still die. Everyone still dies.

In our physical preparedness, we, as a society, have not put in the same level of building emotional resilience. There has been a decline in many activities that build the muscles of spiritual growth. Honestly, it's easy to see why. In isolation, none of these activities seem particularly high priority to "achieving things in life" Church is boring. There's a lot of old people there. Same with family gatherings... and community barb-a-ques... and libraries. There's just a whole lot of sitting around and not doing much anything useful.

Except there is.

Community puts other in front of self. And that flies in the face of our individual American value. But in community, everyone belongs. Everyone is part of something bigger. Everyone shares the highs and lows of life and has support when life get hard. We watch older people grow old and die. We learn from them. And when our time comes to face old-age, health issues and death, we are more prepared. We've learned from the grace of our elders and we march through those challenges with people who love, support and value us at our sides.

We watch babies be born and grow up and we teach them and look out for them. We pass on what we know and help them find thier place in the world. And it gives us and them deep meaning and something solid to stand on when life gets uncertain.

And.. in communities of faith...we share a belief in a God that is bigger than our lives. That there are promises that go beyond death and that there is more to life than what we earn or what we do or how famous we are. And through the rhythms of community we find courage to lean in and trust those promises and as we die to ourselves we are born into a deeper life defined by faith and hope beyond words.

The antedote to fear is love.
And the antedote to mass freakout is community.

It feels hard to want to fight for something that feels so old-fashioned and unimpressive as church potlucks but the world really needs it right now. There are a lot of people who are genuinely afraid without much of a safety net to turn to.

Day 10: Making space for kindness

The practice of trying to do something kind for someone every day has been an interesting experiment. The constraints of it not being part of my work or family really reveals how much of my life is focused on my life.

Honestly, there isn't a ton of time.
Get up, drop kids off, go to work, pick kids up, come home.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I hardly have exposure to the outside world.

Sometimes I've been able to think of a friend who could use a text or email.But I don't have all that many friends. Sometimes, it's been obvious that there was an opportunity to help someone. But most of the time, it's been challenging to even put the practice at the front of my mind. The day goes at a pace that is hard to remember all the things. Even with lists. Even with phone reminders. There's just more things to do than hours of the day. And kindness gets boxed out.

So how to make space for priorities?
Those important, non-urgent, life-defining things that matter most?

I could do them first.
I could slack off at other things.
I could exhaust myself.

Kindness doesn't take necessarily time but I've found that as our world gets more convenient, going out of my way to interact with people does take time and energy and intention. Rolling up my sleeves to find more time, energy and intention to be present for important things.

Day 9: Grace in the overwhelm

This morning I took the three oldest boys to an appointment for evaluation for a highly rated summer camp that develops individual plans to help kids gain confidence, social skills, executive functioning skills and body awareness. It is the kind of thing I've been really praying for -- especially for Eddie.

At the appointment, the head psychologist talked to the boys about the camp and helped them self identify goals that they might want to work on.

They did a pretty good job getting through the appointment (even if there was some minor wrestling and a whole bunch of fidgeting) and came out really excited about summer.

I headed back to school and when we arrived to drop Philip off, he started whining that he didn't want to go to school I did the mom thing. I grabbed his hand and dragged him behind me as whines turned to cries and cries turned into a tantrum. I signed him in at the front office fully expecting that once we headed toward the classroom he would snap out of it and get excited about all the things at school. He loves school and today he had science class after.

But, instead, he threw himself to the floor and I had to pick him up and carry him to the classroom.
He clung to me the way a toddler clings to mom when they don't want to be dropped off at the babysitter. As I walked him into the classroom, his grip tightened. He stopped crying but he kept whispering. "I don't want to go to school."

I went into troubleshooting mode.
What was causing this?
He had never done this...
Change in schedule?
He usually handles change in schedule ok.

I sat with him. He held me. His teacher came over to talk to him. He listened but buried his face in my chest. I sat on the chair that she uses to read stories. Thinking... I was growing antsy because Eddie and Andrew were still in the car. I didn't want to make them extra late, but I could tell that he needed more time... What would he do if I left?

Usually the recommendation would be to work it through. Stay and push until he eventually calms down and continues about his day. But I didn't have the luxury of another 30 or 60 or 90 minutes. I made the call.

"Philip. You can choose not to go to school today if this is just too hard. But you have to own that decision. You need to go tell your teacher with your own words that school is too hard today and you need to get all the work to take home so that you can do it at home. If you come with me, it will not be as fun as staying at school. You'll just have to do the work by yourself with no friends around. But if it really is too hard today, you can make that choice."

Slowly he got up. With his eyes covered, he walked towards his teacher. Studdering and very softly trying to express that school was too much. Keeping his hands on his face, he went to gather materials from around the room and packed them into his bag. The teacher came over to him and said that she was sad that it was too hard to stay and asked him what he thought about tomorrow. He brightened up a little and still with his hands on his face, letting his eyes twinkle through his fingers, he said he'd be there tomorrow.

Sometimes life is overwhelming and we just need people to see us where we are and work from there. Philip came home and went straight to work on his homework. I really took home the lesson that sometimes the best thing to do is to make space so that the overwhelming isn't quite so overwhelming.

Day 8: A little bit of self-doubt

One deep passion I've developed over time has been helping people with their health. I've led workout classes, served as a birth doula and served as a health coach. 

Our bodies give us each unique mountains to climb - both physical and emotional. Pain and limitations. Blemishes and fat in wrong places. Weird things. Things that undermine our self-confidence and freedom. They are the cages and temples we dwell in.

So, as part of embracing new things in life, I've decided to pick up an old hobby of leading a workout class. Church offers the space. I lead the group and it ends up being a free way to get a great workout.

I love working out.... once I get started. And I love sharing this with others especially people who don't see themselves as "the type to exercise." 

Perhaps my favorite group that I've ever led was a group of older women who had significant health issues -- very limited mobility, heart failure and the like. It was a gentle workout. We sat in chairs with hand weights. We stood up. We sat down. We walked around the room. I was inspired by those women. We made gains. We celebrated victories. And they kept showing up.

Cutting workout was one of the sad choices that I had to make as life got overwhelming and as I've seen space opening back in my life, it was first on my list to bring back.

But I find myself nervous and pushing back against a little self-doubt. It's been a while since I've done this. I don't even have friends anymore that I can invite so if anyone comes at all, they will likely be strangers. My heart screams all the ways I can fall on my face. 

Courage is not silencing those voices but staying the course despite of them. Faith is trusting that God has a plan in this and will be with me as I open my heart and self to new paths. Shutting doors and opening doors as I go. 

It's all very uncomfortable. But... there is joy ahead.