Writing

Courage to Say No

Leave a comment

We are getting into the beginning of the holiday preparations and thus begins a particular battle with my daughter: the Christmas “wants”. The List.

My husband once told me, “You don’t really care of people like you or not. What really bothers you is if people are upset with you; you can’t stand it if people are upset with you.”

It’s true, I greatly dislike it if people are upset with me, particularly if I do not know why. However, there are times in which I do need to step forward beyond that fear. There are times when I need to have enough courage to let someone be disappointed and upset with me. And this is one of them.

My daughter’s Christmas wish list has been rather reasonable up to this point: books and dolls, a scooter…but there is one toy which has become the bone of contention. It is a unicorn. Now, my girl is currently mad for unicorns, which is not a problem in and of itself. It comes several different hues with multi-colored hair, dressed in a crop top and what looks like a cross between a diaper and high-cut denim booty shorts. But this particular unicorn has a singular function. You feed it a concoction made up of ingredients included with the purchase of the toy. Then you sit the unicorn on what looks like a child’s training potty, and said unicorn then poops out slime, to which glitter and color can then be added. Yes, you read that correctly: the function of this unicorn is to poop slime.

This is the toy that my child wants more than anything else for Christmas. This. It is one of a line of toys centered around either pooping or vomiting slime. I am not okay with this. I am not okay with this thing costing almost fifty dollars either (fifty bucks, you guys!). I have promised her to think and speak to her father about it, but I can tell you with 99.9% certainty that this particular unicorn will not be joining my daughter’s menagerie.

You may disagree with my parenting choices, and that’s fine. I know that they are my choices to make.

I do not like having Elizabeth disappointed with me. I do not like having her upset with me. I do not like her thinking that I do not want her to be happy (because I do).

Yet here I am, breathing deeply, reaching for my courage, and preparing to deny my daughter the thing she wants most in the world right now. I am preparing myself to stand under the weight of her possible displeasure and disappointment, even while she possibly receives everything else she has asked for.

Courage, dear heart. Courage to love my daughter, stand firm, and say no.

First-Time Courage

Leave a comment

Tonight, my daughter will embark on a milestone of childhood: her first sleepover…and an away-from-home sleepover at that. This little girl is Elizabeth’s best friend ever, and her family has already taken Elizabeth to heart with their kindness and generosity, for which I am immensely grateful.

I have no problem admitting that my child is far braver than I ever was as a little person. She loves the New (especially New People). I hated sleeping away from home and, whenever I tried, I would usually end up calling my parents to come get me. I was such a creature of homeostasis that I always preferred for my friends to come to me for sleepovers. In fact, I am not sure I can remember a time when I actually stayed at a sleepover that wasn’t at my own house. Huh.

Again, my girl has proven herself to be far braver than her mom at times. Admittedly, she is a little nervous amidst her excitement. I absolutely get that and have been encouraging her to be brave, reminding my dearest girl that having courage and being brave do NOT mean being unafraid. Rather, it is still being afraid (even if just a little bit) and choosing to do the thing anyway. I remind my girl that her friend loves her and that it is obvious that her family already does, too, and will take excellent care of her. Also, she gets to spend 24 whole hours with her best friend! How cool is that?

So, this afternoon, I will watch my daughter step into her courage for something brand-new, exciting, and maybe a little bit scary. I will hug her, kiss her, wish her the best time ever, and remind her that I love her always and am very proud of her and her bravery. Then I will breathe deep and let go.

This is scary for me, too. As scary as her moving into her new room upstairs bit by bit. It means change, growth, a shift in how things have always been. But it will be fun for her and good time with her best friend; she will enjoy it. So I will have Courage so that my daughter can have Joy.

Courage, dear heart.

Image from Today’s Parent

Borrowing a Lion’s Courage

Leave a comment

I have never seen myself as a particularly courageous person. I do not willingly rush into new things. I waffle. I drag my feet. I demure in preference of the safety of the Known. Even if I struggle in the Known, I often prefer that to the Unknown Struggle.

I feel timid in these moments. I feel weak and cowardly because I am aware of myself mentally recoiling at the thought of starting over or moving into the new and unknown. I hate that feeling. I hate how frustrating it is–for me and for the loved ones trying to help or encourage me in next steps.

It is days like these when I truly wish that I would find Aslan lying under the massive silver maple in my backyard, physical, tangible, touchable. I wish I could bury my fingers and face in his mane, breathe in the sunshine that scatters from it. I wish I could snuggle between his massive paws, reassured, and hear that gentle rumble of, “Courage, dear heart.” I wish to borrow it, wrap it up in my heart, strap it to my arm.

I want to be courageous. I want to be brave. I want to move forward into the Unknown. I want to be strong and take heart. I know that there is a new chapter awaiting me. I have been asking for it, and I want it. Stepping is scary. But I want to be courageous.

This month, I am going to try to start being so again. Walk with me?

Golden Glorious

2 Comments

It was her first sunset. All on her own. She dipped her brush and set its tip against the sky. She painted a fiery glow behind slate-grey clouds, lining their edges with light. Beneath the clouds, she then hung the glowing orb of the sun in all its bittersweet dragonfire, drawing it lower and brighter with all the delicacy of a single hair. Its glow spread like a flower opening its petals against the ever-darkening clouds that blanketed above.

It was slow yet quick work, the splendor only there for a few moments but the painting of its descent painstaking and detailed nevertheless. Finally, all that remained of the light were amaranthine clouds, their undersides touched with pearly pink, the golden glory now replaced with an amberesque awe.

The sun drawn down, the air turning blue with night cool, she lifted her brush away. The deed was done, the masterpiece painted. She just hoped that, maybe, someone had been watching. Maybe someone had enjoyed her work. Her first sunset.

= =

While the resplendence of the light still warmed the flush of her cheeks, the pictures flew from her phone like rapid fire. Pictures of this glorious sunset witnessed from where she had sat on the hood of her car, letting the evening deepen and cool around her. The groceries could wait. This had been more important and definitely more beautiful.

Grow

Leave a comment

For the past month, I have been intensely engaged on a journey to better health and fitness. I have developed better habits over the past few years altogether, but, at the beginning of the school year, I decided to be more closely concentrated on my eating habits and expanding into new exercises and fitness goals. Since then I have done better than I imagined I would or even could, and I have met several goals/milestones already. Honestly, I am ecstatic! This is so wonderful to me, and I am excited. But I also worry.

What if my growth stops? What if my progress peters out? What if I get discouraged? What if I give up? I don’t want to do any of these things. I want to continue growing and bettering myself. I want to keep getting and feeling stronger.

It can be so easy to be excited about a new chapter or journey, and it can be equally as easy to feel discouraged when things start to settle into routine, slow down, stop entirely, or, for the love of sanity, move in the opposite direction. As I continue on this journey, I will remind myself that work will not happen on its own; I have to do my part to get results of any kind. If I have a goal, then I need to act like it, even if it just one little step that I take that day. Every step towards growth helps.

Space

Leave a comment

It is a universal truth that our house lacks space. There is stuff everywhere. That’s what happens with life: it can fill up with stuff. Therefore, it can be difficult at times to carve out a space for myself in our house. Somewhere that is mine. With future plans in motion, I am hoping that will change with some work, but, for now, it is what it is.

My space right now seems to be my desk as school (but even that gets taken over) or, more frequently, the car. I spend a minimum of 90 minutes per day driving. Often, the car is the one place in which I can be still and alone, usually before I pick up my daughter at the end of the day. There, I can listen to Audible and lose myself in a story or helpful book while I drive. I can think. I can pray. I can let the outside world slip away while the road slips past under my tires.

I do not necessarily like to drive but the car is often my refuge. I have fond memories of long talks and Glee sing-a-longs with my husband when we would travel hither and yon before our little girl came along. I can think of long stretches of quiet as I drive to the gym on Saturday mornings or laughing to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” with the fresh new sunlight warm on my arm as we head out to a leisurely brunch. I have screamed out frustration, hurt, and anger in the car. I have poured out my heart and soul on telephone calls as I drive just to get away. The car is where I can be close to and alone with that loved one for just a little longer. The car is where I can linger.

It’s where I can make sacred space for myself.

Evening

Leave a comment

I love evenings. when the light turns blue and the shadows lengthen, deepen, and the verdant trees become dark outlines. It is like the earth exhales long and slow. I rarely venture out into the evenings now, into the twilight-blue, unless it is to take out the trash. I am usually consumed by dinner, bath time, bedtime prep. By the time I am done with all of those responsibilities, evening has passed me by and it is long since dark outside.

I miss evenings. I miss the blue air and opaquing shapes of trees and houses. It does my soul good, and I want to get back to that. I shall step out my door and breathe in evening tonight, breathe in its beauty, its slowness, its rest. Such moments are precious, and I could use a little more precious in my life.

Morning

Leave a comment

One of my favorite morning rituals during the weekends and summer breaks is heading to the gym early in the morning, when the light is still fresh and new. When the world still feels quiet and unsullied, when peace is still hanging on. During the week/school year, my mornings begin at 5:30am with waking my daughter and prepping to leave for school. They often feel rushed and harried and stressed, and I feel as though I cannot stop or we will fall behind, as my daughter is very much not a morning person.

One thing I have started to do is leaving the radio off for the first part of our drive to school. Usually, I listen to NPR in the early morning, to catch up and educate myself on the current affairs and goings on of the country and world. Lately, however, I have been gifting myself those minutes of quiet before I tune in to the world or my daughter demands her Disney songs.

Those few minutes of quiet help me to feel myself breathe. I am working on making it into a practice.

Struggling at the End

2 Comments

This is scary but I will write it anyway.

For the whole of this summer, I have struggled.

I have struggled to grieve.

I have struggled to process.

I have struggled to write.

I don’t like struggling. I am sure you do not either. It is hard, it hurts, and answers are not forthcoming. I feel stuck, and that is definitely no fun. I have written. Pages. But when I look back at them, I cannot help but feel that they don’t actually say anything, that I am just babbling on paper. I have even asked myself,

“Am I even doing this right?”

Did you catch that? I was questioning whether or not I am grieving correctly. If you have been a Reader for long, then you know I am intimate friends (frenemies?) with uncertainty. I question myself on the regular and now I have found myself questioning if I am moving through my emotions, my grief, my disappointment, in the right way.

God bless for a husband who sometimes reads over my shoulder when I am scribbling madly. He reminded me not too long after I had scratched this down on during a worship service that there is no right way to grieve. No “right way” to process. Grief is hard, sometimes solitary, and often confusing work. I have seen death throughout my life but am honestly unsure as to how exactly I grieved in each case.

I have struggled all summer, it feels like. Struggled to rest, struggled to recover, struggled to enjoy. Now we are coming to the end, and I feel like I want to despair. I would love a do-over of this summer, but we are not given the benefit of time-travel, are we? I feel panicky as the summer days draw closer to an end, scrabbling to grasp the last of my free time before it disappears, and school with all of its responsibilities and stresses crowds in again. I do not want to carry this burden in August. But grief doesn’t exactly give us a timeline of operation, does it?

I do not have an answer for how to do all of this, I am sorry. All I know is that I am just trying every day and doing my best to give myself permission to feel hard feelings and to lean on my dear ones when I need it. To look for the light when it seems that there is none.

In this same vein and right on time, something unexpected happened yesterday. A dear friend sent me a beautiful Twitter thread by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg discussing Mr. Fred Rogers, his beliefs, and how he manifested those beliefs and ministry throughout his life and tenure on television. She discussed how he directly addressed some of the big issues and questions of the time, putting them into words and actions that children and adults alike could understand, demonstrating his love and care for all people who walk this mortal coil. Touched and inspired by the post, I retweeted it on my own Twitter page and then, seized by a heart-nudge, I screenshot every page of the thread, making sure I got everything, including Rabbi Ruttenberg’s name, and then posted the photos on this blog’s FB page, making sure to tag the original thread, as well as Rabbi Ruttenberg’s public FB page so that everyone who saw it could explore this wonderful woman of God’s posts and encouragements. These were not and are not my words, BUT I am privileged to be able to share them. Up to this point (2:49pm on 7/23/19), my post of the thread has had 3.4 thousand shares, and, in all its journeying, has reached over 139,600 people. I am agog at this, dear friends! Simply agog. But my aforementioned dear husband made a very poignant point.

“Is that really that surprising? People are looking for grace and goodness in their lives.”

I know that he is right, and I know that, for many of us, Mr. Rogers and his work were a formative influence in the development of that same grace and goodness, empathy and encouragement, in our lives. What I posted in that thread are not my words but those of a woman wise in life and faith who shares her heart, mind, and conviction with the world, in the hopes of “cultivating empathy, allowing for curiosity, and loving our neighbor has ourselves”. Those words are reaching, encouraging, and inspiring others beyond what I ever thought possible, and it’s amazing to watch.

I am so glad that I was able to share your words, Rabbi Ruttenberg, and thank you for the hope that they have given to this struggling woman. Thank you for reminding me that it’s okay to have hard feelings, and it’s even okay to struggle for a time.

A Picture of Grief

2 Comments

This is what grief looks like. It looks like abandoning today’s carefully-laid-out page in your planner in favor of a couch and a blanket. It looks like wanting to do nothing but sleep all day long. It looks like not being ready to tell almost anyone what has happened yet, because that will make it undeniably true.

This is what grief looks like. It looks like pulling yourself up and pushing through with at least that one errand that simply must be completed today. It looks like continuing with business as usual because things must get done, and who else is going to do them?

Grief looks like silence, of not knowing what to think or how to feel, of being unsure of what to do next. It looks like not knowing what to say to someone else whose loss feels so much deeper than yours. It looks like talking to a friend for a long while yet finding yourself unable to tell them what you’re going through. It looks like crumbling into tears when unconditional kindness and help are offered by someone who does know.

My maternal grandmother died on Monday evening. It was not unexpected but that does not make it any easier, I am finding. She has been saying, “Not today,” to death for years now, and, in a way, that makes it harder. There are other things that make it harder, too, but those are neither here nor there.

This is what grief looks like. It is strange. I feel strange. I do not know how to do this.