Sep
18
2012The baby, he skipped a nap so he’s up super early from that second nap and I’m worried about getting my nine hours of sleep tonight.
I wonder if I’ll ever manage to catch up on taking photos of the things I make for my Year of Action, or if I should just call that portion quits. Resign to try again during a less hectic season.
In the past seven days, I’ve made almost a complete quilt top (needs a solid border), a dress, a piece of embroidery, and some gifts. But I feel spent. Not a giver. Just tired.
I don’t think I have any thoughts to write down right now that are the least bit coherent (and I really ought to get that baby up…).
But I do want to say this.
You are enough (and so am I).
You are enough not because of what you have done or what you have not done.
No, you are enough because of what Someone has done for you.
Someone died for you to make you His beloved.
And that is enough.
More than enough.
Sep
18
2012Julia wrote this great Mama Loves post inspired by my Social Media Dare. She challenged us all to share our mess visually as well. I’m all for it! Here’s real life today in the Aldrich house. Um… and I was too lazy to get my real camera and used my phone instead. Ha!
Looks like the girls gave up on cooking and called for take-out?
That’s my pile of clothing that’s fit for consignment.
Someone is unloading my dirty dishwasher and slinging around a fork in my sweeping tape square.
Meanwhile Goodnight Moon Game is taking over the girl’s room.
Ooh, but look, my bed is made! A new habit I’m cultivating, maybe that makes up for the following image?
Yeah, that’s my at least 1 month uncleaned potty. (I cleaned it after I took this shot…)
And that is a half made dress tossed over my sewing machine with the rest of the project carnage (and toddler toys) spread all around the room. Oh, and a pile of clothes too stained to consign.
Sep
06
2012I’ve had quite a few opportunities to sneak some writing this week. Longer than usual nights… longer than usual naps. I guess that’s a lose-win. But I’ll take it.
The following is a little piece I wrote for my MOPs newsletter. I took the plunge today and lead a discussion group at MOPs and I can’t wait to see the change God enacts in the hearts of these ladies over the year.
However, I want you to know that being in charge of anything sort of overwhelms me in a number of ways. Did I do enough? Was I too much? Did I hurt someone’s feelings when I teased them about separating them? Did we do the important work of digging into relationships?
I just know this is a position that God has called me to during this season. So I’ll just hang on to his hand and see where he leads. And maybe just take my own advice….
I needed to wring the sweat out of my shirt when I walked back to the car. If you’d seen me, you’d have thought I had just finished a marathon. Yet all I had done was ask an acquaintance at my table to go to the zoo with me. She’d volunteered to take anyone who wanted to go on her free pass nearly a month before. A month I spent working up the courage to ask her on a “mom date” to the zoo. I agonized through the next 4 days before our date about what it would be like. Would she question or judge my parenting decisions? Would she like me? Would she ever talk to me again?
Nearly two years later I can look back and laugh at myself. That woman is now counted among my closest friends. Yet those feelings of fear still plague me daily in all of my relationships. Will my husband, my kids, my friends, my parents, or whoever still like me after I share my heart? I feel relationally-paralyzed by fear of inadequacy. I have a feeling this fear isn’t unique to me.
In my journey to overcome this fear, I stumble on this truth. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whomever fears has not been perfected in love.” (1 John 4:18) I inhale sharply. Am I afraid of relationships because I have an identity crisis? Who am I after all? Perhaps I’m asking the wrong question. Maybe I should ask: Whose am I?
I am the beloved daughter of the most high King. And if I am loved by the One who took the punishment that I deserved for my inadequacy, then what can I fear?
As we plunge into the next year at MOPS, let’s all do a few things to help each other overcome our fear-based relational paralysis.
1. Let us remind each other (and ourselves) who we are in Christ. We are loved beyond reason no matter what we do or don’t do. Preach that truth to everyone who expresses anxiety, or hurt, or pain, or fear, or doubt. Christ’s perfect love is the only thing that can keep us diving into the uncharted places with confident hope.
2. Let your words be a safe harbor rather than a rocky shore. Seek to understand more than you seek to share your views. Early mothering is filled with strong opinions about what is “right”: co-sleeping vs. cry-it-out, breastfeeding vs. bottlefeeding, physical discipline vs. time-out… the list just goes on and on! It’s okay to have an opinion, but it’s not okay to preach your opinion as if it’s the only right way. This type of conversation breeds guilt or a feeling of failure in the listener. Ask questions to understand, use your words to build up, and share your strong opinions gently.
3. Let love cover a multitude of sins. So often we hurt each other unintentionally with a careless word. That hurt festers into a bitterness that can tear down the relationship (I think most marriages fail from this in a snowball effect). Assume that your friend didn’t mean to hurt you, but go one step further and share your hurt with your friend. Being free to say “When you said… I felt hurt because….” brings a relationship to a whole new level. Acknowledging our grievances with our friends frees us from the chains of bitterness and shows our friends that we value the relationship enough to share our deepest places of hurt.
Plunging into the uncharted waters of relationships isn’t easy to do without fear, but if we anchor ourselves on our identity in Christ and love deeply the risk is far less than the rewards.
Sep
05
2012I just laughed hysterically at my son as he crawled around with a bucket around his neck after dumping the rest of the joint compound dust-slush all over himself. Of course, I grabbed a camera before rescuing him.
I’m kind of cranky today and that’s coming out mostly toward the girls. Bronwyn lost her mind at 3 AM because she couldn’t find her stuffed Pooh in her bed. All stuffed things but dollies are now prohibited from their bedroom as just (?) punishment.
Sedryn woke up on her coattails around 4 and screamed for quite awhile; he shut up when Derek finally went in there with a pacifier. I’m thinking of chucking 44 pacifiers in bed with him and getting a crib bumper to hold them all inside. That way, whatever direction he rolls, he’ll be bound to run into one! I’d like to sleep about 8 hours a night for a month or more.
I think I hurt Aeralind’s feelings making her clean up the reams of pasta on my kitchen floor. She had been trying to unload the unwanted stuff into the trash bag.
I actually forced the girls to sit still and do a paper collage project today. While none of us really had the concentration to complete it… we all needed a break from free play (or free fighting over the same toy).
I’m relishing having a toy time out box. Suddenly all the doll house pieces are mostly ending up back where they belong.
Purchasing a new (used) car is about to drive us mad. Derek wrecked at 5 mph a couple weeks ago and managed to total his car. We were hoping for something with three rows, but since we’re limited by our cash budget… we may end up leaving me with the Corolla for a season and getting him something that will last until the tax return makes our budget larger. Honestly, car shopping for something I know I’m going to run into the ground (but would rather do later rather than sooner) is harder than house shopping was for us!
The point of this all: just totally feeling my unworthiness. That Christ died for me… knowing I’d still wreck on day like this with my attitude…. oh, shear joy.
Aug
27
2012Sometimes we pop on social media for just five minutes as a break from day to day life. We need a second to recharge and decide to see what our Facebook friends are up to. More often than not, I think we women leave Facebook (or Twitter or Pinterest or whatever the newest social networking craze may be) feeling worthless.
Anna’s taking her kids to Disney, look at all her fun Instagram photos. She’s the greatest mom ever! (I wish we could afford Disney. I never have that much fun with my kids.)
Dana fixed an amazing meal of Veal Scallopini for her husband’s dinner. Wow! (I think my husband got crock pot leftover veggie soup… )
Heidi’s 6 month old can pull to stand. (Do I need to take Sedryn to the doctor? Is he that behind?)
Jenna just posted a whole list of things she accomplished today. Her kids even helped her dust! (dust… what’s that?)
Can you believe all the things that Morgan has completed from her Pinterest boards? (my toliets aren’t clean, we had grilled cheese for dinner, and I’m so tired I just want to go to bed. I must be a crafty failure).
The truth is: we’re comparing our normal or even our worst to someone else’s very best.
As I think over my current blog posting “schedule” (My Home-life Project 52, and Toddler Activity of the Week, or even just about anything from my Year of Action), I realize that even my very personal blog can make others feel like they do not accomplish enough. It’s not my intention. I’m just trying to celebrate and record our life as it happens and also to challenge myself out of laziness.
Let me tell you some truths.
- Sometimes I feed Sedryn Chocolate smoothies for dinner.
- I let Aeralind and Bronwyn scream and fight it out in another room, while I conveniently fold laundry.
- I haven’t cleaned one of my toilets in a month. Oh, and another one of our toilets has been broken since we moved in almost 4 years ago.
- Sometime I just sit in the middle of the room and cry when I have no idea what to do next.
- I yell at my children.
- I’ve left all my kids screaming in a crib because if I didn’t, I’m not sure they’d still be here today.
- I need to apologize to someone more than once a day.
- My sink is probably full of dirty dishes.
- I sometimes lack consistency in discipline (sometimes more often than not).
- I have joint compound on at least 4 walls and 2 walls that are only primed.
- My quilt corners rarely nest perfectly
- Aeralind refuses to snuggle or kiss me during this season.
- Bronwyn climbs all over me until I retreat to the bathroom for a second hoping for some peace (I rarely get it.)
- Sedryn rarely sleeps past 5:50 am
- Derek and I fight. Often. (but not all the time… only by the grace of God, I’m sure!)
- I often forget when the last time the kids were bathed (the pool counts right?)
- I get to stores with all kids in tow and alive, then promptly forget why we’re there
- I struggle to make friends
- I can’t manage to check my voice mail in a timely manner
- I battle a holier-than-thou attitude
- I try not to have any sweets in the house because if they’re here I struggle with self-control
- I have 6 half-completed projects right now: two of them need to be finished by Friday (um… well I wrote this last week… ha!) or I’ll have nothing to wear to a ball.
- I write almost all my blog posts on Sunday nights and schedule them throughout the week (hence the regular monotony). If I didn’t write it on a Sunday night, I probably wrote it with pen and paper (including most of this one) while spoon feeding a baby and listening to endless chatter from girls who hardly ever eat their veggies or the crust on their sandwiches.
It’s not easy for me to tell you the truth. And it’s even less easy to share such truths (though they are far more encouraging!) on social media.
I think I’d like to challenge all of us to a little social media dare. What if we spent this week trying to encourage our Facebook (or whatever social media outlet you indulge in) friends by sharing our weaknesses? Not in a complaining way… in a “MY grace is sufficient (even if the Mt. Laundry is being scaled by wild eyed children), for MY power is made perfect in weakness.” Let us humbly admit the messes, gratefully share his everyday graces, and let His power to change wretches like us encourage someone else.
But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
