Mother's Day (Repost 2015)

Happy Mother’s Day Friend.

Oh how I have missed you!  Are you well caffeinated?  How is your heart today?  I ask because Mother’s Day can be rough.  Like many holidays, the Hallmark card misses many of the real heart issues behind the calendar event.   I was praying for you last night.  Trying to post on any special day is a bit of a nightmare, because inevitably I will say something stupid that might upset you.  By the time I fell asleep, I was hoping that the start to your day would be a good one.  That somehow, by God’s grace, you wouldn't feel alone on a day that is intended to bless.

I have been on the phone a lot this week.  In fact, by the time Friday hit I was utterly unfit for human interaction.  Too much talking and not enough prayer or sleep caught up with me.  I sniffled my way through the better part of the afternoon until my husband came home, made me tea and then insisted I have a nap.  He is a wise man. The point is, there is a lot going on in the world of motherhood.  It isn’t a place for cowards.  Maybe it would help if I shared what Mother’s Day looks like for some of the wonderful people in my world.

My first interaction this morning was with a darling cookie of a woman who has just come back from an extended time away.  She flew into town only to realize her family had come into contact with some evil form of stomach virus on the flight home.  In the early morning hours, her husband (chief chef of mother’s day) became ill.  She was last sighted in her kitchen, feeding her children, wandering in circles, tending to her man, with no sign of celebration on the horizon.  Motherhood involves trenches.

Another call last weekend had me speaking with a favorite person in my world.  At 46, she has been happily married to a lovely man for decades although they have never had children.  That is until God pulled a fast one and blessed her with an unexpected gift.  Later this year, at the age of 47, she will become a mother for the first time.  Talk about an unexpected turn of events.  Motherhood leads us into new territory.

One of my closest friends had me rethinking motherhood two months ago.  Every six months or so, I go out with two friends for dinner.  We share food, fun and get the Spark notes on each other’s spiritual lives.   We consume chocolate, salt and laughter.  While navigating roads in the U district, my friend exclaimed, “Oh, look!  You guys can see the building where I was inseminated.”  I would have said something, but my jaw had gotten lost somewhere on the floor in the back of the car.  This darling heart waited 13 years to have children.  Turning to alternate methods, she now is the mother of a beautiful family.  It is safe to say, that the memories she holds of getting pregnant are radically different than mine.  There are different roads to motherhood my friend and not all of them are laced with daisies. 

The beach is the first place my friend “Tina” goes on mother’s day.  She gets up early and sneaks out of the house.  At the beach, she walks and prays.  It is an annual pilgrimage.   There, under grey skies, the cold waters of the Sound wash away poisonous childhood memories.  Every year she chooses to be thankful and every year she adds beautiful new memories to the word Mother.  She sneaks back into the house a couple hours later, and waits in bed until a pajama clad little brings her coffee and burnt toast. 

The most somber thoughts I had this week revolved around a woman who successfully invested in her family her entire life.  My thoughts branched from there, to the many mothers who are now in their seventies, eighties and nineties.  As end of life issues present themselves, we are overcome with emotions and memories that span lifetimes.  How can you possibly thank someone for pouring their life in yours?  How do you quantify the tears, heartache and dedication it takes to raise a child?  More than that, how do you possibly begin to appreciate the discipline of denying self in order to invest in another’s life? 

Thankfulness is my first guess: gratitude and thankfulness.  My own Mummy raised 6 children and I have no memories of her grumbling as much as I do.   Which brings us to one of the defining characteristics of great mothers.  Great mothers love.  They teach us how to love, to serve and to live.  There is so much for which to be thankful.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends... so now faith, hope and love abide, these three: but the greatest of these is love.  

1 Corinthians 13:4-7,13

I am praying for you today my friend.  I don’t know if you are on the mountain or in the valley, but I pray that God’s love will find you there. 

xoxK 

  

An Audience of One

Aesthetically pleasing and economically viable sea urchins 

He stared at me in amazement and I stared back. 

“Where were you?” I scream whispered at a fresh faced youth donned in a skirt, wearing long haired wig bedecked with a crown of seashells. 

“I was helping my friend!” He whispered just as intensely, “He was upset!”

“THAT…IS …NOT…YOUR…JOB!” I scream scolded, “You almost missed your cue!”

“Yes, sort of …” Was the reply from the King of the Sea. 

“I love you!  Go away and pay attention,” were my last words before I turned away and grabbed the headset from the table.  While turning, I bumped into a 9 year old pulling a curtain roughly 10 times her body weight.  “Sorry little one,”  I whispered patting her shoulder.  “Good job.”

Yes indeed.  I am navigating the world of backstage drama and no, I’m not using metaphors.  It’s show time in my community and I’m having a bit of trouble keeping up with the giftedness swirling around me.  On the night in question, I managed to:  lose a stagehand  during intermission because socializing with friends is awesome, misplace another on stage, where he rode out a scene under a kitchen counter, leave a banquet chair in an undersea lair, zip a stuck zipper on a fish and injure myself on a delightfully constructed toothpick sea urchin.  And that was Act 2.  I’m choosing not to remember Act 1.   

Community life is not for cowards.

My summary statement is that drama is a very dramatic medium, where souls are bared and so are attitudes.   Observation is a powerful teacher and how someone gets along with others during times of heightened anxiety will teach you a great deal about a person. 

Days before the show opened, I had the joy of chatting with a dear woman who knows a lot about prolonged anxiety.  I asked her to meet with me because I needed two things; logistical help solving a problem and some spiritual input on a problem that wasn’t going away.  Her words stuck with me this week, as opening night came and went, applause rang in the air and people enjoyed the harvest of hard work. 

“During the times I was suffering, I spent a lot of time focusing on the concept of an audience of one.  When it is hard to do the right thing, I remember that I do have an audience and what He sees is the only thing that really counts.”

It was an interesting statement to contemplate as the curtain opened to a sold out show. 

I go through many of life’s dramatic moments wanting to be understood, heard and seen.  I prefer a speaking part, where I can control the narrative and paint myself as the sympathetic hero.  But what happens when the dialogue is overtaken by someone whose interests are not the same as my own?  Or who doesn’t speak the truth?  Am I able to continue to act in a way that is pleasing to the Lord?  When the scene changes and my audience has moved on to other things, do I have the character to continue unseen?

You my dear friend are seen by your Creator.  What you do matters.  When you refuse to return evil for evil, heaven notices.  You are playing to an audience of one.  Don’t give up your role.  Don’t go silent.  Continue to praise, continue to worship.  When the audience leaves, keep going, stay onstage, fulfill your responsibilities and , be all that your role requires.

I’m praying for you,

Break a leg.

xoxKaren

Footprints

I was folding blueberries into the muffin batter when I felt the shard pierce the skin of my left foot.  Fussing, I hopped over to the sink to remove the piece of glass.  I knew it would find me sooner or later, after a glancing blow knocked a segment off the rim of a mason jar an hour previous.  Meaning to sweep the floor, I instead moved from one thing to the next while I set to baking a cake and muffins at the same time.   I was thankful I stepped on the wayward object and not one of my children.  I berated myself and kept mixing batter because if you leave blueberries in batter for too long without baking them, the batter  becomes an offensive off blue colour.   If baking came with colour swatches soggy blueberry muffin batter comes in somewhere in between “this looks like blue mold” and “my grandmother’s blueberry muffins were never purple.”

It’s a baking thing.

Onward I went, a valiant warrior, adding baking soda and flour to different bowls, spraying muffin pans and scooping mix until I slipped and about fell over.  “Why is the floor wet?” I asked in a most exasperated tone to the empty kitchen.  People with baking shows don’t slip on wet floors, why must I suffer so?  I assumed a guilty child had splashed water on the floor and left me to slide to an uncoordinated yet impressive manner.  I groaned, put down the muffin pans and looked at the floor. 

Then I screamed. 

Then my daughter, sitting in the next room came running into the kitchen and looked at the floor.  She groaned.  Regaining her composure she looked at me, “Mum what the heck?”

“Clearly, I’m bored and bleeding out,” was my snotty reply, which was entirely unfair.  All the poor kid did was show up in order to help her me and I was being bloody and grumpy.  Sighing, my dear girl marched upstairs, rummaged under the bathroom sink, came back into the kitchen and wordlessly handed me a Band-Aid. “Do you need Dad?”   “Nooooo,” was my civil reply, Dad didn’t need to witness this kind of skill set, he knows who he married; best not remind the poor fellow.  

It was all quite exciting really, if not a bit gross.  But it was interesting because it got me thinking about the foot prints we unintentionally make when we are hurt.    

Three days later I was having a seaside moment with my youngest when a woman walking down the beach caught my eye.  She was older, dressed in a black coat and dragging an umbrella in the sand.  Wandering the beach, she pulled her umbrella, leaving squiggles and swirls behind her.  The thought of leaving a mark came to mind once more.  I reflected that when we have first been hurt, it is easy to make a mess as we navigate crisis.  When the suffering is protracted, we can leave a bloody trail of anger, frustration and despair as life takes us to places we never imagined.  Pain marks a soul and without intentional actions to heal, it will mark our footsteps as well.

I followed Umbrella lady down the beach, thinking about the difference between the lovely swirls she left and my bloody footprints the kitchen.  Why is it when pain comes into a life that some people are able to rise above it and leave a legacy of beauty, yet others bleed and never recover from their wounds?  I was getting all church about the issue, thinking about the role of faith in suffering when Umbrella Lady stopped walking. 

You realize my friend, that when I recount a story it is often more clear in hindsight than it is in the moment.  At this moment thoughts were floating through my mind and I was trying to make sense of suffering with grace versus suffering without it.  I walked up to where Umbrella Lady left her scribbles in the sand, wondering what a 70 year old writes as she doodles her way down the beach.

I was not disappointed.

And with this message in the sand, I found some peace for I believe that it is a grateful heart that can and does make all the difference in our walk.

I’m praying for you this week,

xoxK