Apr
30
2014My sister is expecting her first baby. The other day she asked me about the best books for moms to read. I rattled off a few, but for her sake (and yours!) I’ll include only the best books to give to moms right here 🙂
These make great Mother’s Day or Baby Shower Gifts!!!
Books Every Mom Should Read
This book helps moms stop comparing their worst moments to their friends Facebook highlight reel. It debunks the myth of the perfect mom with laughter.
Lisa-Jo shows you that each mom is a super hero just for showing up everyday. Her celebration of being present in the chaos is refreshing.
Books to Help you Love your Children Better
Learning to express love for my children in the “languages” they best hear is my first defense against discipline problems. When they feel deeply loved, they don’t act out nearly as often.
I read the initial Boundaries book on the recommendation of a friend and it has really shaped me as a parent and I can’t wait to read this one.
I’m still only about halfway through this gem because I’m just soaking in all the rich truth. But seeing the value in the mundane is something I struggle with and it’s also somewhere I need to grow to love these little people more.
Books for when You’re Overwhelmed
What I love most about this book is the vision for an mentor mom to come alongside the desperate new mom and train her to love her kids. I think that middle aged women really treasure helping new moms, if we’re humble enough to seek them out.
I have never laughed so hard in my life. Rachel lives a life similar to mine with so many little ones and she makes me laugh myself into both repentance and action. The chapters are short enough to read one while your kids melt down outside your bathroom doorway.
Books on Disciplining Children
I know disciplining children is a touchy topic and there’s clearly more than one way to do things… but these are the methods and books that really resonated with me and my little ones.
Ginger Plowman helps give a framework for teaching your children to obey. I think reading this book at the same time as Give Them Grace will help temper this books step-by-step directives.
Elyse Fitzpatrick completely knocks over all your preconceptions about grace/discipline as she helps you develop a method for continually sharing the good news with your children. Those who love to read and think about the implications of applying theology will really resonate with this book. But those who don’t enjoy that as much should pair this with Don’t Make Me Count to 3.
If you have a strong willed little one who isn’t responding to discipline, Cynthia Tobias helps you understand how your child ticks. As a strong-willed mama of a strong-willed little girl, this book nails us both. I’m not even done with it… but I keep dying laughing over accurate descriptions of who I am.
Mar
13
2013I come upstairs from tossing the last of five sets of sheets in the washer to find the youngest of the three tossing his cookies (the figurative ones) right there in the high chair. Last night the wildest sleeper of the three had taken over our bed (and soiled two sets of sheets). The other twin had paid in 30 hours of not being able to keep in liquid and 48 hours of little food. My morning had started with the littlest one and I in the shower trying hard to wash away the sickly stench. I had to call Derek home from work so I could catch enough sleep to be able to handle the sick trio with sanity. He’s gone now while I clean up the baby and get them all down for naps.
Motherhood is far from glamorous. In fact, on days like this I might just want to pack up and run away. Oh, but what is puke if everything I have is grace? Grace. Puke is grace. But how?
I stop tapping at the keys a minute here while the three sleep and spend time in prayer with a bottle of diluted bleach over a high chair and my table. It’s not easy to see puke as grace. It’s not easy to choose gratitude over bitterness. Nothing worth doing is easy.
The table though cleaned with bleach still bears blue and yellow marks. And I am the same. This roiling boiling cauldron of selfishness and discontent and frustration seething just under the surface.
“But God!” Peter had preached these words just two weeks ago.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2:4-7
Puke is grace because it shows me how much I need Jesus. How ugly and messy I am without the saving power of grace. How ugly and mess I am when I refuse to see even puke as the grace pointing toward the proudly self-sufficient heart beating violently within.
This messy smelly puke it is grace because it points me to Him. To “the immeasureable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” To that place of blissful surrender that says the plans I have are not the ones that He has for me and His plans are in fact better for my own good.
Sometimes I need to be brought low to the reality of earthly motherhood so I can recognized the beauty of the perfect heavenly Father. So I can recognize just how much He loves me in all my filthy sin-soaked sheets and awake to the reality that He died to wash those sheets clean.
And, right here in this moment, puke contemplation gives me the grace to see what true love does. So I wrap the soiled clothes and rags in a towel and carry them down to the now finished washing machine. It’s time to be washed clean again.
Feb
22
2013I’m about to launch something that is super exciting to me here at Quiet Graces Photography. It involves giving, which is my primary love language. So over the next 4 days, sit tight with me and share a few stories about gifts and the love that gives them.
First up for me, a story about why I love gifts so much, inspired by Lisa Jo’s Five Minute Friday Prompt and my very own mom.
Start.
We didn’t have much at the beginning. But we never lacked. Mum worked late hours while we ate Hamburger Helper in the evening with Grandma. But Mom always brought us little trinkets from the gift shop she managed. Little things that said a simple “I love you,” to two little girls with big dreams.
Mum gifted us toys, and clothing, and handmade dresses. When my parents couldn’t afford gifts for us at Christmas, she gifted us with the humility of putting our names on Angel Tree lists so that we would still have gifts. She may or may not have worn the same jeans for all 10 years that I can remember while she loved and gifted us what she saw fit.
When we were older and finances had leveled, Mum let us pick our own angel tree names. She freely helped any of our friends who were going through hard times. She gifted us concerts and sleep overs and laughter.
In college, Mum gifted me a gas credit card so I could spend my summer earned money on things that I needed and not worry about paying for gas. And bags and bags of quarters so that I could wash my laundry and share with others.
The gifts weren’t what mattered, in fact most of them I can’t even remember, but I do know each gift was wrapped in her love.
Stop.
Jan
16
2013There’s a group of kids, none over 15 tender years, standing on the stage. They’re singing this favorite from Rich Mullins at an ordination service for two men in our church.
The same song that Amy Smallwood sang quietly while walking through miles of wilderness, when she didn’t think we could hear her. 70+ miles with 60+ pounds on my back in the North/South Carolina early fall humid heat. How do you keep walking when you think you can’t make it up the next rise? When you have to ask for help from the boys just to get your pack on your shoulders again for over a week before you can manage to lift it on your own?
But I heard her. And those words resonated.
Sometimes the climb can be so steep, I may falter in my steps but never beyond Your reach… and step by step You’ll lead me, and I will follow You all of my days.
There’s so many hard days as a mom where I just drop everything. Faltering hardly begins to describe the mess I can make. I yell, rage, hurt feelings, let them cry too long, act unwisely, and just can be so selfish. It’s not pretty. Oh, but the grace there to start again is precious. The grace that I don’t have to have it together because He did perfect for me.
I think the biggest thing for me right now to keep in focus is those little faces.
That Aeralind Grace with her crazy tired chatter.
That Bronwyn Hope who just climbs right up into your space uninvited.
That Sedryn Justice with his mischievous smirk.
This is my biggest God-sized Dream (more of what God wants for me in my life). My biggest area of calling. Those little eager faces waiting for me to speak grace.
That said, there’s this part of me called to photograph the beautiful-mess of others. This unexpected calling blossoming right in the middle of the chaos of early childhood. A timing so unexpected for me that my breath is still taken away. And the following of both of those callings, mothering and photographing, is just Step by Step. Moment by moment. Never beyond His reach.
Holley asked us God-sized dreamers to write just a bit about one step we’ve taken for our dreams since this started. All of mine are small. Some took more time than others. I’ve written 6+ Beginner Photography Class posts when what I really want to do is teach hands on with a small group. It’s a start. I’ve photographed a few sessions for free and a paid one or two. I’ve volunteered to photograph 3 single moms a year, because really the beautiful strength in their day to day mess just takes my breath away.
But none of the steps I take are more important than guarding my calling of motherhood to those three precious faces. So I’m putting this out here in the world for you to see and hold me accountable.
As I pursue this dream, I will strive by God’s grace
- Not to edit a session while my children are awake
- Not to take on more than 3 sessions per month
- to continue to capture my beautiful-messy life both with the lens and the pen (or keyboard).
I just wanted you to know that I don’t think there’s a more important step for me to take right now than these.
Hop on over to Holley’s and see what steps others are taking.
Jan
05
2013Sedryn’s lying on my chest, wheezing hard, in the dark exam room. What started as what I thought was croup, was ending in what I clearly knew was bronchialitis. That evil RSV virus that inflames airways and makes my babies feel like their drowning in their own lungs.
All three of them have faced this battle. The girls spent many nights curled up in our beds and signing please at the sight of the nebulizer. Sedryn summons the energy to fight the nebulizer for a bit, but then collapses in a lifeless heap back on my chest.
In the morning, he wakes feeling a little better. He drinks his milk and curls in next to me. I ask him if he wants his back rubbed. He says “Yah,” with the slightest hint of mischief in his voice. I rub that back and each time I think he’s fallen back asleep and stop rubbing, he wiggles his body to tell me to keep it up. Sweet little stinker.
I only have this opportunity once. Only one moment right now where I can lay him next to me and rub. The same moments already passed with his sweet sisters two years ago (and hopefully they will not need visits with Mr. Nebulizer ever again).
This moment is ordinary. Nothing special. Nothing tragic. Just normal day in and day out mothering. But it’s my only opportunity to live this moment fully. To live all there.
Sedryn, he sleeps 6+ hours each day while sick. The girls ask to do their reading homework. They surprise me with what they’ve retained since my last feeble attempt to read with them. One opportunity to hear them read the words “am” and “me” for the first time. One opportunity to see that excitement.
I don’t want to miss these opportunities.
