I did NOT grow up around children.
No babies to learn to coddle, no toddlers to learn to be patient with.
Hi Friends. Happy Fri-yay.
Few things amaze me recently.
The fact that wind pants have made a resurgence and that we’re still finding unique ways to use cauliflower.
Some things are a pleasant surprise.
Like the fact that high waisted everything is now in fashion again.
I’m allllll about my waist beginning just under my chin.
The second one to be exact.
And inevitably in the middle of change there are always those things that remain timeless.
Like my girls still fighting over who’s black skirt is who’s.
The older I get the more I understand that life is all about “Seasons.”
Nothing lasts forever.
Whatever I’m facing- hard or easy, pain or contagious joy, it is only for a season and it will pass.
I knew Motherhood wasn’t for wimps but with my kids growing up it has just taken life to a whole new level.
Don’t get me wrong, no one is more excited to see the potty-training season behind us than myself.
Knowing what to do ON YOUR OWN with sufficient amounts of toilet paper is golden.
Then you blink and they’re building forts in their rooms- pretending to be an orchestra with coat hangers for violins.
Always putting on a show.
I remember when I was a tween the neighborhood hunk and I choreographed an intense roller skating routine and invited everyone we could to come and watch us.
Of course he and I were the “stars” of the whole shindig and as I recall it really was something to behold.
The convenient two-car garage with sloping drain was an epic stage for our twist and turns.
My parents were conveniently busy that night and most nights working full-time jobs each, but somehow we convinced a few adults to actually come and clap for us.
Somewhere I just know the old hunk is telling his kids about this and laughing just as I am at how oblivious we were.
Life just seemed to stop while we dreamed of roller skate routines to draw the masses.
We really were hot stuff those days.
A little Bill Gaither and we were set to win the world for Christ.
Well we would eventually split because his family liked to bring tambourines to church and fall in the isles but it was fire while it lasted.
You learn and you grow, though truthfully I’ve always missed that tambourine.
Watching my kids grow into who God made them to be has been the dearest, scariest, most hope-inducing and equally tear-inducing thing I know of.
One day you believe that they will run a mission station in the jungle and the next you realize that they can’t run anything until they run and finally get their license.
I call my oldest girl my “anchor.”
This same girl who at twelve just could not understand why I wanted to go to the store or anywhere without her.
Before you think that this is a pretty heavy calling for an oldest girl, you need a little context.
Being a pastor’s wife means sitting in church for most of your adult life as a single Mom.
Runny noses, doodling, hitting a sibling, emergency bathroom jaunts, digging in your purse for candy, making them lift their feet to stay awake, telling them they need to sing and showing them for the umpteenth time where Ezra is all falls on you.
I’ve learned to hate this part, love this part and everything in between, honestly.
One of my favorite things over the years has been to watch how quickly my husband looses his cool when we have a special speaker and he sits in the row in charge for a change.
It may be fleshly of me, but hey, it’s the truth.
And it’s like five minutes.
Pastor’s wife Moms are awesome sauce.
So my kids and I have seen the good, the bad and frankly, the ugly.
We have stifled laughter over crazy prayer requests, slips by their dear father while preaching, or some inside joke,
And we have banded together when someone decided to yell at their dad each Sunday between Sunday school and morning service making the song service the longest we’ve had while we waited for him to show up.
They have been my seat partners on many a roller coaster while serving the Lord and I greatly appreciate them.
I treasure the fact that some of us “amen” at exactly the same time- that we always have an arm around someone, know which kind of candy goes to whom and that we have some killer harmonies during the invitation hymns.
I love my people.
Even that one son who shall not be named who once asked me not to “sing so loudly in his ear.’
I’m totally over that.
Really.
Okay, almost completely over it.
Send candy.
And I will tell you this.
If you love my kids, you love this Momma.
So this anchor girl and I have held hands through s few “happy-sads” the past few years.
She knows that the tears are just from overwhelm and that tea fixes most of life’s problems.
And new tears recently are from understanding that I have raised her to be so many other people’s anchor as well.
Part of parenting is pouring all that you have learned into your littles so that have a head-start into life.
A heap of, “this is what I’ve learned about God, about ministry, about meatloaf- about LIFE, so take it and run with it.”
You pour and you pour and you pour until some days it’s just overflowing and making a mess on the kitchen floor.
And then you watch them disciple their sibling.
You watch them bake for a friend.
You notice them fostering their walk with the Lord each morning on the same spot on the couch.
You see them begin their own neighborhood bible study and you go just to cheer them on.
And you wish you still had that tambourine for this very moment.
You feel this little pang in your chest because you realize that they have outgrown you.
That they are farther in life than you were at their age- which is totally what you have prepped for- but haven’t prepared your OWN heart for.
And it’s so twisted up in your heart that you don’t even know how to express it until you meet another mom in a hallway at an out-of-town teen event and you realize that you aren’t the only one grieving the growing that has happened right before our eyes.
I’m convinced we do ourselves a great disservice when we shut out the amazing moms around us for love and for prayer, for understanding and the "knowing" that comes when we open our hearts to one another.
We need older moms to remind us that we will indeed “make it through,” we need moms our age to concur with and we need younger moms to encourage along the way.
My kids are precious, precocious, pleasant, polite and pretty stinky sometimes.
Sometimes you smile as they lap you and sometimes you wish you had a little sign that said this:
A tambourine in your purse isn't a terrible idea either.
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