Sad/Glad Nana Daze

“Nana home….sad.”  These words from my 23-month-old granddaughter pretty much sum it up. About a week ago Woody and I returned from a wonderful 10 days in Dublin, visiting our daughter Erika and her husband Richie and their daughter Gabriella.

It was an almost magical time.  We read books, ran on the green, had tea parties and danced the Hokey-Pokey in the sunroom, explored Ikea’s play areas, discovered pumpkins, rode the train, bounced in leaf piles, and just generally had a fabulous fun time.

But then we came home.  Not only did we come home, but I came home sick.  Sicker, actually, than I’ve been in a long time.  My usual post-Dublin daze turned into a complete blur.  It wasn’t until the wonder of antibiotics kicked in that I began to make my way out of the fog.  Going directly from “Planet Nana” to Planet Sick” is not much fun at all, let me tell you!

But it made me wonder again and again, “What do Mommies do when they get this sick?”    Do mamas get sick days?  Hmm.  I think we all know the answer to that.

I’m not sure I can actually remember feeling quite so sick when my kids were young.  Maybe God’s granted a blissful forgetting.  But I kept thinking of all of you mommies out there.  I found myself hoping and praying that for any of you who find yourself on “Planet Sick,” there is a Mama nearby (your own or borrowed—maybe your Titus 2 leader if you’re in Mom to Mom) who will step in and lend a hand, make a meal, watch the kids, or do whatever she can to ease your load.

If you are one of those moms whose kids are now on their own, I hope you’ll be alert to the moms around you who could use a hand in times like this.

I learned another little lesson in the midst of last week’s fog.   Memories can be powerful medicine when you’re sick.  Or when you’re just a sad Nana, wishing you were back in Dublin reading bedtime books with Gabriella.  If you ever need a dose of joy—truly abandoned joy—try hanging out with a 23-month-old—or even looking at pictures you brought home with you.

Gratitude helps, too.  When I miss my grandkids (which is often!) I am reminded how very grateful I am to have five beautiful, healthy grandchildren.  Counting these blessings can turn “sad Nana” into “glad Nana.”

All things considered, though, I’d rather be back in Dublin.

You Gotta Keep Laughin’!

I recently returned from a trip to Michigan in which I met lots of moms - moms from three different Mom to Mom groups.  Some were young moms with their first new baby; others had a houseful of toddlers and preschoolers. Some were celebrating their kids going back to school, others bemoaning kids who’d left for college.  Yet others were mentor moms comparing notes (and pictures, of course!) about grandchildren.   We all had one thing in common.  Actually, we all had a lot in common.  But one thing that struck me particularly was that we all so desperately need to keep laughing!

I was speaking on the topic “Can You Really Love Your Kids and Your Life—at the Same Time?”  As I looked out on these audiences of moms, two things were obvious: First, these moms really love their kids.  They really, really do.  But also, these moms desperately need to be able to laugh with other moms about the daily “mission impossible” challenges of being a mom.  Sometimes it’s a matter of survival.  At the very least, it makes being a mom more fun.

As I talked with moms after each session, we found ourselves laughing a lot.  Not that we didn’t have serious conversations.  Some very heavy things were shared, and I find myself still praying for some of the moms I met.  But I also noticed how crucial it was for these moms to hold on to their sense of humor.

There was the one mom who came half an hour early for our Mom to Mom Dessert Night because it just felt so good to get out of the house and let her husband put the kids to bed.  She wasn’t in any hurry to leave, either, when the party was over.  Even though she spent a good bit of her time showing me pictures of her two adorable little girls.  :)   And there was the mom who told me “Hey, we’re doing pretty well even though my kids are so close together in age.  I haven’t put any up on Craig’s List yet!”   Laughter really is one of the best medicines for a mom.

All this reminded me of an older woman I knew many years ago who influenced me more than she ever knew.    She was the woman I wanted to be when I grew up.  An older woman in our church that most people called Grammy Perkins,  she was one of the funniest—and Godliest—women I ever knew.  And that, I must say, is one fantastic combination!

She led the Tuesday morning women’s prayer group at our church.  And what mighty prayer warriors those women were!  I remember my dad often commenting that it was the prayers of those women that got him through the completion of a manuscript he was writing on the Old Testament—and even got it published with a big-name publisher.

Grammy Perkins was also one spunky lady.  One of the best stories I heard about her was how she got her driver’s license.  As an older woman (I don’t know how old she was.  She seemed very old to me—but then I was in fifth grade at the time!),  she had never learned to drive.  She kept telling her husband she was going to learn. “Oh, Julia,” he’s say.  “You know you’re never going to do that at your age.  In fact if you got your license, I would buy you any car you want.”  That was all Julia needed. Out she went and enrolled in driver training classes—right along with all those teenagers.  And, unbeknownst to her husband, she got her license.  Then one night he came home for dinner to find her brand new license hanging from the chandelier  in the dining room—along with a note on the kind of car she wanted.  And she got it!

But what I remember most about her was a little prayer she said she often had to pray: “Lord, fix me up, Lord, fix me up.”

Oh, how often I need to pray that prayer.  “Lord, fix me up, Lord fix me up.”  As a young mom with small children, as a mother of teens, even now as a grandmother.  It’s a prayer I need regularly.  And I notice, along with wonderful Grammy Perkins, that one of the ways God works in me, one of the way He fixes me up, is through laughter.  Truly, it is good medicine.  Often, it is God’s medicine.

I believe it was Charles Swindoll who said, “Of all the things God created, I am often most grateful He created laughter.”  I think Grammy Perkins would agree.  Especially for moms.

Praying and laughing—perhaps the two most crucial ingredients for a mom.  My prayer for you is that  you’re doing lots of  both!

SuperMom vs. Truly Having It All

Recently, I was asked to speak on the topic “The Myth of the SuperMom.”  My first reaction was: the title says it all—SuperMom is a myth.

SuperMom simply doesn’t exist.  Not in real life, anyway.  SuperMom is a figment of our mom-imaginations.  She is the mom everyone else seems to be—and the mom we can’t seem to measure up to.  The imaginary mom we come up with when we compare our inside (how we feel about ourselves as moms) with everyone else’s outside (the “successful” moms we see all around us).

But this is a very persistent myth.  Years ago, Erma Bombeck wrote about “Sharon,” the SuperMom.  Sharon not only “color-coordinated the children’s clothes and put them in labeled drawers, laundered aluminum foil and used it again, planned family reunions, wrote her congressman, cut everyone’s hair, and knew her health insurance number by heart”; she also “planned a theme party for the dog’s birthday, made her children Halloween costumes out of old grocery bags . . . and put a basketball hoop over the clothes hamper as an incentive for good habits.”

The problem was, as Bombeck discovered long ago, everyone considered Sharon a SuperMom except her kids.  They preferred hanging out at a neighbor’s house.

SuperMom, it turns out, would not really be that great a mom after all—even if she really did exist.  Why?  Because real kids do not need a SuperMom.

They do not need a SuperMom because, first of all, SuperMom is FakeMom—a mom who is trying to impress everyone within viewing distance that she has it all together—and so do her kids.  The real story tends to be very different.  The real inside-the-house story.  Just ask her kids.

Why?  Because SuperMom is trying to do so many things, accomplish so much, fit so many things into her schedule, that she often misses the most important things.  The things—or rather the people, the husband and kids—right in front of her.

In addition, SuperMom tends to do way too much for her kids—to give them too much, to protect them too much, to hover too much.  At the same time she tends to expect too much from her kids just as she does from herself.  After all, a SuperMom must have SuperKids, right?  Talk about pressure!

Furthermore, even if SuperMom were the real thing, she wouldn’t be much good at preparing her kids for real life.  The real life where we can’t do it all, be it all, have it all.  The real life most of us live.

No, your kids do not need SuperMom.  They need RealMom.  They need a real, authentic mom who acknowledges her human-ness, her limitations, even her mess-ups.  She is willing to apologize when needed, to live within healthy boundaries, and to learn along with her children.  RealMom laughs a lot more than SuperMom.

Most importantly, she is willing to acknowledge that she doesn’t “have it all.”  But she knows where to go to get what she needs.  No, she doesn’t have all wisdom, all strength, all patience, all knowledge.  But she knows the One who does have all these things.  The One Who promises to be strength in our weakness, wisdom in our confusion, and patience when ours has long ago run out.

Recently, I came across a verse that jumped out at me in a new way as a great mom-verse.  It’s 2 Corinthians 9:8: “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (italics mine)

It’s a totally different perspective on “having it all,” isn’t it?  God doesn’t expect us to be SuperMom.  He already knows we’re not.  And He loves us anyway.  Not only does He love us; but He provides for us “all we need”—all grace at all times for all things.  That’s a promise I can live on.

And what’s more, so can my kids.  They learned long ago that they didn’t have SuperMom.  It wasn’t just the magnet on the refrigerator: “So I’m not SuperMom. Adjust.”   They knew it in everyday life.  But I like to think it was good preparation for their life as not SuperParents.  Now, I must say how grateful I am that my kids are such good parents.  But I hope they don’t expect themselves to be SuperParents.

Being real parents—real moms and real dads—turns out to be so much more fun.  You know you will make mistakes, but you also know that God—and kids—are very forgiving.  You know you don’t “have it all.”  But you know where to go to get all you need.  Very freeing, actually.  Much more fun.  Better for your kids.  And you laugh a whole lot more, don’t you think?

Do You Love Your Kids But Hate Your Life?

“I Love My Children I Hate My Life.”  That’s the title of a recent cover story in New York Magazine , written by Jennifer Senior.  I learned about it through a Today Show segment in which the author was interviewed.  I haven’t been able to get the question out of my mind since.

I went online and read the article, which is rather long but very interesting.  Senior explores the question, “Does having kids make you happy?”  She reports on all kinds of research on the subject, interspersed with personal experiences with her own 2 ½ year old and those of friends.  Is parenting really “all joy but no fun” as one of her friends described it?

My first, kind of knee-jerk reaction was “Oh no, parenting can actually be a lot of fun.  And I don’t think I hated my life when my kids were little.”  (Of course I miss those days now!  You will, too, one day!)  But then I remembered some of my real-life-as-a-mom days.  Days during my “three kids 5 and under living at the end of a dead-end street with Woody never home” era.  Well . . . maybe I did hate my life from time to time.  At least moments of my life.

Like when my only moments in days (or so it seemed) away from the kids were when I walked, v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y, down my driveway to get the mail while they were all safely napping or “resting” at the same time.   Or when one was having a tantrum, the other in his “whining chair,” and the baby screaming her head off.  Or when I’d flip on the news occasionally for a minute or two just to make sure the outside world was still there.

The interview and the article also reminded me of a conversation I had with two moms in Pennsylvania a while back.  “How did you handle the daily boredom?’ they asked.  “Sometimes I think that if I have to play Candyland one more time or read Goodnight Moon again for the hundredth time today, I am going to lose my mind!"

Sound familiar?   I bet just about every mom can identify.  Parenting is such a roller-coaster ride, isn’t it?   It jerks you around like almost nothing else in life.  The highs are so high and the lows can be so low.

That’s why we need each other, isn’t it?  And God!  I think it’s a major reason why Mom to Mom exists.  To help us keep our balance, to help us hold on for the wild ride of being a mom.

It does help, doesn’t it, to know other moms have felt the same ambivalence you feel?  Loving their kids beyond all words one minute and ready to trade them in the next!  And it helps to be reminded that there’s a bigger picture out there.  That you won’t be sleep deprived forever—really, trust me.  That your two-year-old tantrum queen could actually one day turn out to be one of your best friends (I know,  that’s a long way off—but I’ve seen it happen!)  That your strong-willed teen may actually grow up to one day do amazing things for God.

I’d love to know how some of you feel when asked the question: “Do you love your kids but hate your life?”  It may depend on how old your kids are.   Or how many you have.  Or how many days it is till school starts in your area.   Or how many weeks it’s been since your Mom to Mom group met!  Truthfully, it may depend on what hour of the day the question is asked—right?

Because I suspect we’ve all felt that way from time to time.  Even while, at the same time insisting we wouldn’t trade being a mom for any other life in the world!

A Look at Life from a 19-month-old’s Perspective

For the past month, Woody and I have had the great joy of having a house full of family.  Since our kids and grandkids all live far from us, this is a gift beyond words.  It’s also been a great refresher course on life with kids—and life through the eyes of a toddler. For a few brief days—wonderful, joyfully chaotic days—we had all five grandkids here, ages four months to four-and-a half years.  But for a whole month (yay!) we’ve had Gabriella (aka Gigi) and her mom, our daughter Erika, with us from Dublin, Ireland, with Richie (Erika’s husband and Gigi’s dad) here for two weeks.

Erika and I would like to share a few “hot tips” I’ve picked up along the way from life with Gigi.  We moms can learn a lot from a 19-month-old!

Thoughts on Father’s Day

Sunday is Father’s Day, and I have been thinking a lot about fathers lately. Like Mother’s Day, this holiday often raises a flood of mixed feelings. One friend of mine is mourning the recent loss of her very precious dad. He was probably, next to her husband, her best friend. Others mourn the father they always wished they’d had—or the one they never really got to know. Still others find themselves wishing that their children had a father in their lives—or a different father, one who really cared about his children and let them know it.

Yet many of us have been blessed to have wonderful fathers. And blessed to be married to men who are fabulous dads. The two dads I’ve known best—my own father and then Woody, the father of my children—have both been wonderful fathers. And as I celebrate them in my heart this Father’s Day, I am struck by what very different personalities fathers can have and yet be great fathers.

What is it, actually, that children need most in a dad? Put in the simplest words, I think kids need to know two things: That Dad loves God, and that Dad loves them. Fathers may communicate these things in a host of different ways.

When I think of my own father, whose birthday was this past week and who went to be with Jesus nearly five years ago, three pictures immediately spring to mind: a living room chair, a dining room table, and an open door in a study at the top of the stairs. Some of my earliest memories involve mornings when I would get up early and tip-toe into our tiny living room. There, on his knees at a worn chair in the corner, would be my dad, beginning his morning with his God. It was the way each day started. And we knew how important his God was to him. I never knew just what he talked to God about. But I bet my brother and I figured into the conversation.

A second memory is the lively conversations that occurred around our dining room table in another house when I was in my early teens. My brother and I both tended to have lots of questions about all kinds of things—and strong opinions as well. I particularly remember one time when I had listened to a teacher who seemed to know all about the end times, and could explain everything with pictures and charts as well. As I was enlightening my family on this mysterious subject, my dad, who was a Bible scholar, an ordained minister, a professor, and a highly educated man, listened respectfully for a really long time before he began to ask me questions. Of course I couldn’t answer them, and the dangers of oversimplifying were rapidly revealed. But Dad never rejected our questions. He listened, he asked questions of his own, and he loved us with a no-matter-what love through it all.

In a third house where we lived in my older teen years, I remember Dad’s study at the top of the stairs. The door was always open. You could tell that no matter what he was doing, he was just hoping that my brother and I would pop in on our way up the stairs and flop into the chair opposite from him and tell him about our day. He always seemed so interested in what we were doing, so proud of us, cheering us on through any and every thing that came along. Clearly, my dad loved God deeply. But I wonder how much of that love he would have passed along to us if he had not so clearly loved and cared about us.

My own children are fortunate to have a dad who loves God with all his heart and who loves them, his children and their spouses and his grandchildren, passionately. Yet Woody’s ways of expressing this have been completely different.

Instead of being on his knees at a “prayer chair” in the morning, he has been in the hospital making rounds. But before he leaves, he always makes his own rounds through their rooms (in the past, patting their sleeping bodies; now, patting the stuffed animals representing them in the rooms they sometimes visit), praying for each of them and their families. And he prays for them on the way to work, often Jesus’ “John 17 prayer”—that they will learn to live well “in the world but not of it.”

Woody was not often home at dinner time, either, when the kids were young. Nor was he sitting at a desk in a study when they came home from school. But he was there for them in the deepest sense of the word—and they knew it. They have memories of his showing up at nearly every game they ever played—not usually at the beginning, but as soon as he could possibly get away from his office full of patients. They have memories of Saturday morning trips (several a month, usually, the ones not on call) to the rocks off the coast of Gloucester to make imaginary villages in the tide. To the Concord River to throw pebbles or branches as far as they could into the current. To the sledding hill to attempt “death defying” descents (almost literally, in one case with Lars) no matter how icy the slopes. Daddy was fun! Daddy was a little dangerous at times (What mother would take her kids up on the roof one fine Saturday?!) But above all, Dad loved God. And Dad loved them. And they knew it!

My father and my children’s father: Two very different men. But in completely different ways, they gave their children the same message: I love God, and I want you to. And I love you—always and forever.

Which brings me to the really good news about Father’s Day. Whatever dad you—or your children—do or do not have, you (and they!) have a Father who will love them always and forever. Perhaps the verse Woody often typed and laminated for our kids when they were in college, on mission trips, or moving into a new venture sums it up: “Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in Him, for he shields [them] all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders.” (Deuteronomy 33:12)

Sounds like a Father to me!

Babies, Birds’ Nests—and Mamas Forever?

“Honey, you never stop being a mom.”   That’s what my mom always used to tell me.  She’d say that when I was worrying about something in the life of one of my kids—or when she was worried about me!  I’ve been thinking about her words a lot lately.

I think it all started with the birds’ nest we found in a tree in our front yard.  We didn’t even know it as there until one afternoon when we were examining a very sad-looking spruce tree which had been so damaged by the past two winters that it looks like a comma.  That’s what my neighbor calls it: the comma tree.  We were wondering if there was any way to save it—or if it would have to come down.

Suddenly there it was.  Buried deep in the branches was a beautifully built nest with three perfect eggs. The eggs are that spectacular color we call “robin’s egg blue” but which I never thought could be that brilliant in real life. Ever since our discovery, I’ve been monitoring the nest daily—well, more like several times a day.  Most of the time the mama-bird is sitting on it.  As she sits all puffed out on that nest, she looks just like I felt when I was pregnant—fierce and fat.   And very protective.  Very, very protective.   Her expression says it all: “Don’t you even think about messing with my babies!”  (BTW, if you don’t think robins have facial expressions, you really need to meet this one.) Kind of like us human mamas, don’t you think?  But here’s a big difference.  I’ve been wondering how long till those babies will hatch (I’m afraid I will miss them when I’m out of town), so I asked my brother, who knows a lot about birds, what the timetable might be for these babies.  He tells me that once the eggs hatch, the babies will probably only be in the nest 14-18 days.

14-18 days??!!  Quite different from our mom-job, girls.  More like 18 years for us.  At least that’s what I used to think.  Now I know much better.  Each year when Mother’s Day rolls around, I realize even more the truth of my mom’s words.  You never do stop being a mom.  Oh, the job description changes.   Those of you with children over the age of, say, 6 months, know how the job description for a mom changes constantly as our kids need different things from us.

The good thing is that, as they grow, we grow, too.  (I hope that sounds familiar to those of you who’ve done our Mom to Mom curriculum Growing Together)  It’s a very stretching experience, indeed, to be a mom—and I’m not just talking about pregnancy stretch marks!  I remember thinking, when I was a young mom, that I always felt just a little behind my kids.  It seemed I had just gotten the knack of being, for example, a pre-school mom, when suddenly they were in elementary school.   And just as I got comfortable with my role as mother of elementary school kids, they were charging into adolescence.  To say nothing of all the adjustments and new roles as mother of a college student, then mother-in-law—and now, glorious but amazing, a Nana!  All these things I never thought I’d be old enough to be!

No, you never stop being a mom.  Sure, the job description changes.  But here’s what doesn’t: the mama-heart.  I’m reminded of what my friend Mary told me just before Bjorn, our first child, was born.  “Linda,” she said, “being a mom is the best thing ever.  I love being a mom.  But you need to know that, once that baby is born, your life will never be the same again.”  No, not the same.  Once you are a mom, you will forever think differently, sleep differently, pray differently.  For life—and, I suspect, on into eternity.

What was it someone said—“To be a mom is to walk around the rest of your life with your heart outside your body”?  I’m not sure who said it, but it rings true.

Recently we attended a wedding where the bride and groom, both now in their 50’s but once high school sweethearts, have rediscovered each other—and, it seems, their faith, after many twists and turns in the plot of their lives.  They both looked so happy—so very happy.  But the best part of the wedding was watching the groom’s mother beam with joy.  She has prayed many years for this son.  And here he was standing before God and a wonderful Godly pastor, entering into a very Christian marriage.  The mother of the groom is over 80 years old.

No, we never stop being moms.  That’s why I wanted to take time out this week from our “great questions from moms” topic  (we’ll get back to it soon!) to salute every mom reading this blog—and even those who don’t!  Whether you are an expectant mom, a brand-new mom, an exhausted toilet-training mom, an exasperated teen-mom, or the mom of a much-loved young adult who seems to be taking the long way around to God … I salute you!  You are doing a phenomenally important job.  Whether you are changing diapers or living in your van between soccer matches or wearing out your knee pads praying a prodigal home, you are doing something no one else can do.

You are loving your children as only a mom can.  And you are, I trust, praying for them as only a mom can.   As Winston Churchill famously said, “Never never never never never never give up!”   Even when—and there are so many days like this in our mom-lives—you feel like it.  God hasn’t given up on them—or you.  Just keep changing those knee-pads.

Happy Mothers' Day!

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