Book Review::Surprised by Motherhood

I am not a mother, but odds are I will be someday.

 

Someday my fridge will be covered with crayon masterpieces, my walls with jelly stains, and my floors with cheerios. Someday hubby and I will be entrusted with one or more miniature humans and I know deep in my gut that our lives will never be the same.  

 

Honestly, it’s terrifying.

 

Even though I love children.

Even though I get wistful over the soft curls of my friend's kids.

Even though I pray for the ones who will someday look like me and my husband.

Change has just never been my favorite, and the knowledge that two little pink lines will one day change absolutely everything--well, it scares the bejeezus out of me.

 

When that day comes, I will be so thankful for moms like Lisa-Jo and brave, hope-filled words like hers that come straight from the trenches. Which is why...I'm unashamedly doing my very first book review/promo for her!

 

Surprised by Motherhood reads like a heartfelt conversation on the couch with the author, a girl from South Africa who married a "cowboy-green eyed" man from the Northwest on the firm understanding that she would never bear his children. Ten years and three kids later, she bravely bares her heart and invites you into the messy, hilarious journey all laced with truth and wild hope.

 

 

She writes for you mommies. You, the ones who feel caught on the exhausting treadmill of life wondering, "will things ever slow down?" She believes you deserve a super-hero cape and a cheering squad and she's volunteering to wave pom-poms for you.

 

"I would throw away most of the parenting books that made me feel like I was somehow failing this most important test of womanhood—being a mother. I’d throw out the advice about what I was doing wrong or should be doing differently or should aspire to be doing. I’d just revel in the daily, sleep-deprived merry-go-round and eat a lot more chocolate cake.(p. x)"

 

She puts it this way:

This isn’t a “how-to” book, it’s simply my “you can” story.

 

She writes for you daughters too, especially for those who feel the absence of their mothers. When she was entering high school, her own mom was entering a hospital. Now, more than eighteen years after her mother's death, Lisa-Jo understands the pain of working through the unsaid, the unexplained. Whether the absence is literal or emotional, the wounds are real and she offers her own journey in all its confusion and healing.

 

She also writes for the not-yet mommies and someday mommies, the ones of us who need someone to say, "I was scared too. Yes, it's hard--but it's glorious and beautiful and worth it."

 

“Parenting is not for the faint of heart. And it’s especially not for those type A personalities accustomed to having all their ducks in a row, all their check boxes checked, and their sofa cushions, cereal boxes, and entire lives neatly arranged.” (p. 4)

 

  It doesn't hurt that she is type-A like me. Just an added layer of commonality to make me believe dying to self in the area of perfection might actually be possible.

Grab the first three chapters here for free!

Five Minute Friday: "Write"

I follow a blog by a mommy from South Africa. She writes real and deep and often, and I get courage from her going into the mothering world ahead of me.

Every Friday, she hosts a kind of free-write flash mob on her blog. This is how she explains it:

 

"On Fridays around these parts we like to write.

Not for comments or traffic or anyone else’s agenda. But for fun, for practice, for joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker. We love to just write without worrying if it’s just right or not. For five minutes flat. All on the same topic. Not sure how to participate – the step-by-step directions are over here: Here’s how we do it:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat with no editing, tweaking or self critiquing.

2. Link back here and invite others to join in .

3. Go and tell the person who linked up before you what their words meant to you. Every writer longs to feel heard. OK, are you ready? Give us your best five minutes for the prompt: - See more at: http://lisajobaker.com/2013/07/five-minute-friday-beautiful/#sthash.ub47n92a.dpuf"

 

 

SO...here is my unedited, five-minute contribution to the fun! The prompt: "WRITE"

 

__________________________________________________________________

 

A word spoken is a magical thing. Released into the space between speaker and hearer, it has the power either to create or destroy. Its meaning can be lost in tone or word choice, misconstrued by insecurities or word choice, forgotten or remembered for years. But it can never be unsaid.

 

All this power for a spoken word, that lasts only a moment in the vibrating air.

 

But a written word—or a string of them? Well, that has power with permanence.

 

Last night I began reading “1985”. Somehow I managed to skip reading this high school literature staple. I’m only three chapters in, and already I feel sick on behalf of Winston. He is caught in a world without tragedy or love, where truth is lie and he is not even sure of the date.

 

Knowing he commits the ultimate crime, he begins a journal. He writes. It is a physical extension of the few cubic inches between his ears that, until now, has been his only private domain. He writes in fear, but with reckless courage, because words on a page have the power of permenance to condemn him and make his thoughts real. He writes for a future that may never acknowledge or know him.

 

I feel thankful for a world without Big Brother, without a telescreen watching my every move. I can think without crime, write without fear.

 

But Winston has reminded me of my power.

 

A few taps, and words exist in a cyberspace that never forgets. A few careless keystrokes can have the power to build up or destroy in a far more permanent way than simply talking.

Invisible Gardening

Buried in darkness, the germ of life waits in secret. So much potential packaged so tiny, lost in the loam, out of sight.

Under the heat lamp and the peat and the dark, the first finger of growth presses through membrane into the earth and tiny fibers take shape. Cells add themselves to each other feverishly, exploding quietly.

But above the lamp, I hover. I'm impatient. I see none of the growth below, and the dirt is just dirt, and I wait.

You might have noticed that I haven’t blogged. Normally, I’m not one to lack words, but the creativity seemed buried as well this Christmas. In many ways, my heart has been like a seed in one of my peat trays, growing invisibly, even to me. 

Most mornings I’ve had to take a deep breath, releasing my desire to perform and achieve and produce, trusting that even in the darkness, the Gardener was doing something good in me.

Out my back door lies a freshly dug hole, wide and shallow. My biceps ache, but I’m happy. In the hole rests a new wooden box I made, open to receive compost and the baby plants that now stretch green toward my desk lamp.

So much preparation, weeks in advance of any growth.

For the past few months, I have plugging away doggedly at the things I know are good for my heart. I’ve been reading a challenging book, asking myself the challenging questions, choosing to be vulnerable. And honestly, the lack of visible growth been frustrating.  I’m a more patient gardener than I am a garden, it seems.

But last night, a friend told me that I seemed less anxious and more trusting than I was in the fall. A tendril of green that I had overlooked!

Even when our hearts feel like bare dirt, He is good, and He is at work.

Thanksgiving :: A Hard Discipline

Honesty time, ya'll.  Last Friday night, I had a world class emotional breakdown. (Or, as my friend would call it, an "EBD".)

Every abrasion of my heart felt like it had just received an alcohol bath, all my failures were hanging out on the line for the world to mock, my eyeliner was at clown proportions from tears, and the last thing I wanted to do was eat a cheerful Thanksgiving dinner with my homegroup. The last thing on my mind was thanks.

But I went. Mainly because I was bringing the salad. Teeth clenched, expectations nonexistent, I gripped the glass bowl and stomped out to the car.

And...of course, the pecan pie and laughter and paper football shenanigans softened my crustiness.

Give thanks in all circumstances.

Seriously--this is a hard lesson!  Can there be anything more difficult than thanksgiving when the car won't start? Does anything rub more against the natural grain when you and your hard work feel invisible and unwanted, when the card declines, when the future is murky, when your energy bottoms out and you get a paper cut on top of it all?

I'm learning that discipline can be a mercy, that the very thing that puckers my mouth may settle my stomach, that obedience is always best, even if I go kicking and flailing. Thankfulness--like love--is a choice, not a Norman Rockwell painting or giddy emotion.

I've read about a life brimming with "eucharisto thankfulness" in Anne Voskamp's book. I know that no other life is fuller, even if poverty is the discouraging reality of the bank statement, the pantry, or the social calendar. But if I'm going to stick to honesty, I have to admit I'm out of practice.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds...

So here we go: I'm going to practice this week. I'm taking the Joy Dare, and I hope it extends past Thursday.

I can take a hint

In the spring, I did this Bible study on the book of James:

I never got around to blogging about it, but that was partly because it (and life in general) was so intense. We had daily homework, and every week we watched hour-long videos of Beth Moore's teaching that unpacked the verses even more.

By the time we finished, I had decided that the apostles James and Paul were not contradictory, as I had always secretly feared. I also had a fuller picture of what my life should look like as a follower of Jesus, and a deeper appreciation for James'  Jewish style of writing and reasoning.

Now, five months later, guess which book of the Bible my homegroup has decided to study for the fall?

Ok, God...I guess you're wanting me to REALLY study James this year, huh?

I can take a hint, and when it's a hint from my Savior, I don't really want to respond halfway.

So I decided to commit James to memory.

I've memorized scripture before, but never an entire book, so I'm going to need some encouragement from all of you! Now that I'm not in school, I have more free brain cells, and I can think of no better employment for them than to memorize words that give, rather than take, life.

We'll see how it goes!

Running (ok, blogging) to get the prize

Confession time: my motives in writing this blog post  are slightly self-serving.  I'm shamelessly trying to win a set of books that another blogger is giving away: http://gatheringpeeps.typepad.com/gathering_peeps/

The reason that my motives are only slightly selfish is...well, look at the titles !>>>>>

Whenever I dream about the trajectory of my heart as I pursue Christ, one of the things I pray for is to be "mission minded"--that the overarching bent of everything I do would point to Jesus and be for Him.

The dream gets even sweeter when hubby is part of the picture.  The two of us, united in the Purpose that supercedes any dream that we could have for ourselves alone.

But if we are successful in raising kids with this purpose and desire?  Wow. That would be the cherry-on-top of all these dreamy dreams.

But I need practicals.  Even if I don't win this book set, I think I'll add it to my list of books to buy.