That's Not Why

When my kids were shorter than my knees, I always told myself that once they went to school, I would have time for me, and when that happened, I would write books to my heart's content. This went pretty well when my youngest started preschool in 2020. I would drop her off, head home, and immediately sit down to go to town on my keyboard for the next two hours. I had to set an alarm so I would remember to escape my imagination and go pick her up. My time was limited, so I made the most of it. 

Oh, how I looked forward to having all three of them in school all day so I could write. 

Last fall, the littlest started all-day kindergarten. I went into this school year fully anticipating finishing some ongoing manuscripts and writing one or two new ones. I would get into a good writing groove and by May I would be only a few steps away from publication. 

Spoiler alert: none of that happened. 

Instead, when I sent my baby to kindergarten, she was already reading at a second grade level. I knew she needed a few months to get used to school and to mature, but once the middle of year testing came along, it became clear that I needed to champion her into a higher grade level. As the year progressed, I spent more and more time at the school, helping her and her siblings. Suddenly, all these hours of time I thought I would have were chopped up into smaller bits. My stress levels increased as I worried about all three of my kids and their different tough challenges, so what little time I did have during the day between volunteering and dentist and doctor appointments was spent reading because that's how I survive. 

My kids didn't stop needing me just because they were at school all day. 

I also had the misconception that my husband would be busy working all day, and that would mean that he was taken care of and wouldn't need me.

(Insert laughing-crying emoji here). 

Scott working from home means he needs me to be his social interaction, his sounding board, his "water cooler" buddy. He's been working on getting healthier and I've been dragged along on this journey (but not kicking and screaming. I'm a willing participant). This means taking time for gym dates and lunchtime walks. Our daily Yahtzee and Quixx games at lunch are needed for both of us, but they take time, and sometimes the only uninterrupted time we get together is during those precious school hours. While we've had a few bumps and bruises trying to balance what he needs from me with the time I need for myself, I think we've finally found that open line of communication. 

School gets out for the summer tomorrow. 

A few days ago, Scott and I decided to take advantage of "our last week of freedom" and go out to lunch using a gift card we were given for our birthdays ten months ago. When something is bugging me, it takes a long time to get to a point where I feel I need to share that burden with someone else. Finally, away from the mess and chaos of home, I told him what had been weighing on me for the past two weeks since I returned from the writer's conference I attended with our neighbor. 

"I'm worried I won't have time to write this summer," I told him. "And I need to write because I'm so close to just giving it all up because I don't seem to be getting anywhere."

The look of shock, concern, and compassion on his face told me I could keep going. I don't need the work breaks to grunt and groan about how life is going. I'm an internal processor. I rarely get to the point where I need to work through personal thoughts out loud. So, when I told him how I felt like I was wasting time, trying to achieve this dream that felt so far away, I think he knew I was serious.

I'm not even very good at writing, I told him. I shared how I've been working all year (albeit sporadically) on a romcom manuscript that isn't working. After the conference, I felt I needed to scrap the whole series and just walk away because I was working in the wrong genre. I was frustrated because I felt like I'd never have anything to show for the time I spent writing. 

He paused, then meeting my eyes he gently said, "But that's not why you write."

His words stopped me, and I remembered Sarah M. Eden teaching in her keynote address at the conference that we needed to find our reason for writing, and that it couldn't be to attain some degree of fame or a certain award. When I got home from the conference, I'd taken an hour to write down all the reasons why I write. 

And Scott was right--money, publication, awards, none of that was listed in my "Why" document. 

I've been so busy helping my family and chasing my dream as an afterthought that I've veered off course. While I have a clear goal of wanting to see my name in print, I also want to put my family first. And I don't want writing to feel like a job. I'm not ready to give it up as a hobby in favor of a career. 

In that same keynote speech, Sarah M. Eden also challenged us to write something just for ourself. Put our best work and effort in and see our heart on the page.

And then she told us to delete every word. 

Letting go of your soul in written form is not something I'm ready to do yet. But I am ready to reset and go back to the reason I started writing in the first place, utilizing words as a tool to make sense of the world around me. 

Nobody blogs any more, but I'm still here. I remember how I felt when I was sharing and writing these personal essays on a weekly basis. I'd like to get back to that. There are memories and moments with my children I need to record, like watching my oldest confidently walk her little sister to her first full day of first grade in April and remembering how she used to cry every time I dropped her off at preschool. Or how all three of my kids called me while I was at my writing conference and begged me to teach them how to write their own books this summer. Now, when people ask them what they are looking forward to this summer, it isn't sleeping in or our trip to Yellowstone. They immediately start telling about how we'll be doing "Writer Wednesday" and their mom is going to teach them how to write a book. Their confidence in my ability to teach them astounds me. They have no doubts that I will help them "write a better story." It doesn't matter that I'm not published and outside of a few hundred followers on instagram, no one knows my name. They know me. Their friends and teachers know me. 

They need me.

That's why I write. 

I am Here

 My youngest child does not sleep through the night. She hasn't since we took her binky away. That was nearly three years ago now. We fought it for a while, but that just resulted in all three of us being purely exhausted every morning. We finally just put her crib mattress next to our bed and told her that if she needed to, she could always come and sleep there. This has saved us a lot of sleep. Some nights she comes in without waking us up. Most nights, I am still awake reading when she comes in. For a long time, I couldn't go to sleep until I knew she was settled. Call it one too many nights of falling asleep only to be woken up ten minutes later and be up for another two hours because sleeping is hard, y'all. 

Every once in a while, she has a night terror. Last night was one of these nights. I was in the bathroom when she started to cry out. My husband when to check on her and she flipped out on him. She must have associated him with whatever villian she was fighting in her dream, because she absolutely did not want anything to do with him, even to the point that she refused to go into our room. "I don't want Daddy! I just want my Mom!" 

"I am your mom," I would tell her. "I am here. I am here." 

After much effort, she finally agreed to drink some water, which is usually what snaps her out of her trance enough to reason with us logically. I got her some water, held her for a while, and when I knew she was capable of thinking, suggest we go back into my room. She fell asleep on the mattress a few minutes later, a peaceful smile on her face. 

For a long while afterward, surrounded by the sound of my husband's CPAP machine on one side and her congested sniffles on the other, I thought about those words: "I am here."

My mind went straight to Horton Hears a Who. We talk a lot about Horton, and revere him for caring and listening, but what about the Whos? Sometimes we just want someone to acknowledge that we are here.

We are here.

We are here.

We are here.

When I was a child, I struggled with debilitating anxiety and panic attacks. Nights were always the worst time of day. My parents did what they could, but I recognize their exhaustion now. At the time, I thought they were so mean for not caring that I was dying in the middle of the night. I try to remind myself of those terror-filled nights when I'm being woken up yet again by a little person needing me. "Can I cuddle with you, Mom? Just for a minute?" 

I know someday she will grow out of it. I know for sure she's already on her way to growing too big for the crib mattress. But until that day comes, and even after, I will be here. 

There is a line in scripture that often comes to my mind; it is about the Savior and how his "arms are stretched out still." I know there are times when I am annoying. I know that I often ask too much of him. I know that there are days when I'm just not what he needs me to be. Regardless, his arms are stretched out still. 

"I am here," the Great I Am says. 

And he is here, for me. Every day. Every night. When I need him and when I don't recognize that he is the person I am crying out for in my terror. 

"I am here," he comforts, and his arms are there, stretched out still. 

Book Review for Lynn Austin's newest release, "Chasing Shadows"

4.5 Stars* for Lynn Austin's latest slam dunk contribution to historical Christian Fiction. I've been a fan for a long time and this book did not disappoint!

Lynn Austin's love and respect for the Dutch people comes through every page. There are a million WW2 books out there, but this one really opened my eyes to the struggle of the everyday citizen in occupied countries. The characters show a full range of experiences, from the refuge to the ordinary citizen just trying to do the right thing in a world gone wrong. "What would I do in this situation?" came to my mind more than once, and the story has stayed with me for days.

In the story, Lena calls the people she is hiding on her farm "the shadow people." They only came out at night; most of the time she didn't even see their faces. Yet she fed and sheltered them. They didn't know her or her family, but they depended on her for their very lives. The shadow metaphor grows stronger throughout the story. Over and over, the main characters learn to take refuge in God's shadow, trusting in His will and His word as they sought to survive the darkness.

An excellent choice for book clubs or anyone seeking to deepen their faith, I highly recommend this book!

*4.5 stars instead of 5 because I did feel that there could have been more language showing instead of telling the story. Some parts moved too quickly for my liking; I felt that they could have been flushed out more.

Dear Grandchildren: A Few Thoughts about the Pandemic

 Dear future grandchildren,

I know someday you will be given a school assignment to interview some old person who lived through the Covid-19 pandemic, and since your grandfather will probably drag his feet about an assignment like this, I thought I'd be proactive and write down a few thoughts while the soreness in my arm from my second vaccination shot is still fresh.

It has been a longer year than anyone ever imagined it would be. I know that your parents will have different memories of the pandemic than I do. Hopefully they remember the fun things we did--like going for walks to peek at the teddy bears in our neighbor's windows or the Christmas parade where we stood in the driveway and waited for the parade to come to us and your grandpa threw out Elf MREs. I sure hope that movie is still one you watch at Christmastime. Perhaps they will remember being anxious about the health of their grandparents, or how much they missed playing with their friends and going to church. I'm sure they will remember when schools shut down, and how it was no big deal to wear a mask to go back in the fall because every one was just so grateful to be able to be back at school.

There were tears as we waited anxiously to see if everybody would be 100% healthy so we could go to Thanksgiving at Papa's house. And Kevin told me more than once, "if it means keeping Papa safe, we can stay home."

The prophet asked us to fast and pray to end the pandemic, and miracles did come from those prayers, although it took more time than anybody wished. At some point, 11 months into the pandemic, Sly remembered that we had forgotten to pray for the end of the coronavirus and he said that was probably why it wasn't going away. Some would call it a coincidence that in the days after his prayers, his father and I were approved to get the vaccine. I call it calling upon the powers of heaven.

There were birthdays without grandparents, a postponed baptism, and Sophie's preschool shutting down for two weeks at a time, three months in a row. We wore masks everywhere. We cancelled vacations. We cancelled family gatherings. We learned to measure time without the landmarks of holiday traditions.

But we also embraced new traditions, new experiences. We went hiking more. We played as a family more. We went for walks and the kids finally learned to ride a bike. We left treats and dinners on doorsteps, admired new babies from afar, spoke to neighbors six feet apart or over fences. We found new ways to show we cared, new ways to serve. There are a lot of things I hope don't go back to the way they were "Before."

I've written a lot about what the pandemic was like for my kids and my family as a whole, but what you probably need to ask about is how the pandemic affected me. 

Were there tears? More than once.

Did I wake up at night in a cold sweat because I'd dreamed I'd gotten sick and there was no one to take care of my children? More than once.

Did I panic and go get tested even though the only symptom I had was a shortness of breath that was probably due to an anxiety attack? Thankfully, that only happened once.

I've never felt so weary and weighted as I have this past year. In some ways, it was lonely, but in others I was less lonely because we were more aware of the need to reach out. 

Two weeks into the pandemic, my niece and nephew came to stay for an undetermined amount of time, since with their Mom having pregnancy complications in another state and grandparents quarantined to stay safe from the pandemic, there was no safe place for them to be. This was one of the hardest things I'd ever experienced--not because they were hard kids or that I resented having them here. Oh no. Quite the opposite. I worried about all of the little ones. I struggled to keep them occupied, distracted, and happy. I am so proud of how brave those two were, having to be away from their parents for a month, staying in a new home with new rules, even celebrating their birthdays without their mom and dad. All five of the kids were total champs. Yes, there were squabbles and tantrums and whining and all the normal childhood maladies (in addition to a sprained ankle, ear infection, and homesickness), but the thing that wore on me was the emotional toll of worrying and not being able to fix anything. 

Eventually, God provided a series of miracles that allowed my niece and nephew to head home and enjoy their dog and new baby brother. I was so relieved but even now, a year later, I miss having them here (don't tell your Grandpa I said that). I miss the feeling of being useful, of being needed. 

That was only the beginning to the hard things that 2020 brought. It wasn't just the pandemic--in fact, by the end, the pandemic was just something we were accustomed to working around with masks and hand sanitizer and distance. 

And, I have to admit right here, we were in no way hit as hard as others. Grandpa's job stayed the same, and he'd already gotten used to working from home. Financially, we'd never been more stable. We had a comfortable home. We had resources to buy new vehicles, do home improvement projects, help with a wedding. 

But during 2020, we did have to bury Grandma Gardner. We watched as Pa (Grandpa's dad) succumbed the effects of early-onset Alzheimer's. In the beginning, it was trying to keep him happy and occupied as his wife took care of her mother's end-of-life symptoms. Then, Grandma Fowler decided it was time to sell their house. We helped with the move, and although your grandpa didn't seem upset by it, I mourned the loss of what had become a third home for me. Then, after we wrapped up the move, Pa had to move into a memory care facility. A month later, four days before Christmas, he was gone. 

Funerals during pandemics are so different. Grandma Gardner's was held outside in a grove of trees. Being December, that wasn't an option for Pa's funeral, so the gathering was limited to family and close friends. It felt like a half-funeral, because so many traditions were left out, but in the end, I think that made it even more beautiful.

In 2020, my dad was diagnosed with melanoma, aka skin cancer. I helped drive him down to Salt Lake for appointments and surgeries. I waited in a cold car in a parking terrace because I wasn't allowed inside the hospital--we were just grateful that my mom was allowed to go with him. 

In 2020, my foot started hurting again. I'd had a major surgery on it in 2019 and had hoped to be done with foot issues for a while, but that was not to be. In November, I had a third (albeit minor) surgery. 

We all dealt with mental health issues in one way or another. We learned to work around things that had been our usual crutches--and other crutches became much more necessary. I watched more TV in 2020 than I ever had in my life, simply because by the time the kids finally went to bed (your parents were such stinkers), we had no brain power or energy to do anything but eat peanut M&Ms and watch Netflix. I lost count of how many shows we binge-watched. 

I think the thing I have learned most from this past year is that life doesn't stop. The pandemic tried to shut everything down--no sports, no school, no church, no gatherings, no vacations--but it failed to stop life from moving in its usual cycles. Our family experienced births and death, weddings and moves and all the usual growing pains that come within an annual trip around the sun. 

As I think back on all of the hard memories, I have a hard time recalling just why they were so hard because there was so much beauty in the midst of it all. And as our lives once again change and the world seeks a new normal, my gratitude for so many things has enhanced. Things like not being scared to go to the grocery store, planning a vacation, taking a friend to lunch for her birthday, picking out books at the library, inviting friends over for a holiday party. 

We held an Easter Egg hunt last week with my best friends from college. I am teary just thinking about how wonderful it felt to be together, in person. We'd kept in touch through texts, phone calls, Marco Polo video chats, cards in the mail, care packages dropped of on porches. All of those things helped us survive, but nothing felt so good as wrapping my arms around my friends (who had also had hellish years), holding them tight, and feeling loved. 

You can't stop living. That's what we learned. After a couple of months of strict quarantine, we started to decide what was worth risking. For my mom, it was hugging her grandchild. For my children, it was playing with friends outside whenever the weather allowed and wearing masks to school. For me, it was letting God take my worries so I could focus on what was happening instead of what could happen.

We didn't live through the pandemic perfectly. We tripped over bumps in the road so many times. But now that we've made it to the end, I can't say that I regret any of it. I am grateful we came out better than others, but I think if I came out of this experience having not changed at all, I'd just be a fully-vaccinated failure. 

Love,

Your Future Grandma

PS- You are welcome for the dig at Grandpa in the first paragraph. Simply remind him what I said and he'll do anything for you. Who am I kidding? If he's anything like my dad as a Papa, all bets are off and he'll do anything you want him to do. So maybe you will choose to interview him after all, but just know, I'm prepared. 

Not My Own

 She's been complaining all week that she didn't have preschool.

Naturally, I thought that she'd be excited to go this morning. 

We picked out a cute outfit for her to wear, the same one her sister wore to school on her fourth birthday. Probably my favorite of all the size 5 clothes in her closet. I let her play on the tablet while I curled her hair. We practiced her smile. 

And as soon as our neighbor's car pulled into the driveway to take her to school, she curled up like a potato bug in a child's hand. 

This child, my youngest, is the most cleverly manipulative of all my children. Just yesterday, I told her I needed to go talk to Dad before we could play baby dolls. After about five minutes of sitting in his office, we heard a boom crash above us and then little footsteps descending the stairs. She burst into the room, handing her dad a package of crackers so he could have a snack. How sweet, you might be tempted to think (and her Dad certainly thought so), but I could see the working gears grinding in her head. Bring Dad snacks. If he's eating, he can't talk. If he can't talk, Mom can come play baby dolls with me. 

Meet my Sophie, blog world. You don't really know her, because life got admittedly 1000 times crazier after she was born. She is no stranger to social media. She has quite a following on my instagram account. My mom always reports to me that "so-and-so said she loves your Sophie Stories." Chronicles of Sophie, my mom calls them. 

Coping mechanism, I call them.

Last fall, we signed her up for soccer. She showed the most promise of all our children, naturally dribbling a ball across the backyard during our family scrimmages.  Boisterous and bubbly, we thought for sure she'd be the one to get in there and be aggressive and confident. 

No, instead she stubbornly sat on the sidelines and threw funny fits and I decided that instead of getting frustrated at her not playing, we should just roll with it, and I started recording her antics in my instagram stories. Thus Sideline Sophie was born. 

Yesterday I was looking for a blog post I wrote years and years ago, and I chuckled when I came across one titled "The End of the Threenage Year(s)." Curious, I clicked on it, and immediately felt guilty because I used to be so much better at recording my thoughts and feelings. Blogging was the coping mechanism that allowed me to survive Kevin's early childhood. As I read, my guilt morphed because I had such a hard time remembering Kevin as I described her in that blog post. She turned nine two weeks ago. She's now a confident third-grader who finishes her library books within two days and loves to play card games, roll her eyes at her dad, and tackle new art projects. 

What if I forget what Sophie is like that this age? I wondered as I formed a bow with the yellow ties on her dress. I've been so terrible at journaling or blogging. What if I forget how she says funny things constantly? How she joins Scott and I for lunch daily and when I tried to excuse her behavior toward him the other day, she said, "Nope, Dad, I was making fun of you." And then, ten minutes later, "Dad, I'm still making fun of you!" Or how she goes grocery shopping while the big kids are at school and thanks me for "Mommy and Sophie Time" as if she never gets enough of it? Which, clearly, must be true because she inevitably crawls into my bed every night. And in the morning, when she's just waking up and her arms start to snake around my neck and I ask her why she's in my bed, did she have a bad dream? She whispers, "No, I just needed you."

I love being needed, but I am exhausted. I don't sleep because I need that hour of reading time to myself in bed after Scott starts snoring. It's the only peace I have, knowing they are all asleep and I can breathe and be me.

I picked my little potato-bug preschooler off the ground and cradled her as I walked out the door to put her in my friend's car. "You can't stay home with me, sweetheart, I have to go to the dentist this morning." 

Buckling her in was a tag team effort. I told myself she'd stop crying as they pulled out. After all, her best friend cried all the way to ballet when we carpooled for that on Tuesday and then she was just fine. I went inside, fixed myself a cup of Nestle hot chocolate with just a hint of Stephen's Raspberry Chocolate flavoring. I sat down and folded my arms, out of habit, and I started saying a prayer in my mind, out of habit. I thought of my crying daughter and my prayer changed into a pleading with my Heavenly Father to please help her be brave and take care of her. 

I went to the dentist. I got home and there was a message on my phone from her preschool teacher. "Hi. CALL ME." 

I did. Picture day was not going well. "She only says she'll do it if her Mom is here." 

It's the first time I've ever had a teacher call me for any of my children, asking me to come. I've gotten calls for Kevin about clumsy playground accidents, but they usually ended with, "She's fine now, I just wanted you to know." I've never had a teacher complain about Sly. Ever. (This is probably the most surprising thing about my life, as Sly these days is a whole other blog post I'm not sure I'm ready to write). 

So I put on shoes and a jacket for the second time this morning, and Scott emerged from his office to come get a snack. "I guess Sophie doesn't want me to be a writer," I told him, trying not to be frustrated that my writing time was being further interrupted this morning (going to the dentist is bad enough). I'd promised myself long ago that once my children were in school, I would use that time to write. When we registered Sophie for preschool last spring, I was ecstatic thinking that time was almost here. For four hours every week in September, I wrote. For four hours the first two weeks of October, I wrote. And then life happened. I spent that time helping chauffer my parents to my dad's melanoma surgeries and appointments in Salt Lake City. I was happy to help. Then, when it seemed like that hurdle was conquered, Sophie's school went into a soft closure for two weeks. That began a three month journey of two weeks in school and then two weeks out of school for Covid closures. In between all that was Thanksgiving break and Christmas break and pretty soon, I was scheduling Relief Society meetings and  dentist appointments and doctor appointments and errands while Sophie was at school because it was just easier.  I told myself I'd get back to writing, that I would become like those lady authors I started following on bookstagram, that I could do it too, even though I don't now how any of them manage to publish books with smaller children than mine at home. Don't compare yourself, I constantly lecture my psyche. You do you. Now is not the time.

I drove to the school, thinking about what part of my manuscript I would have been writing had Sophie not needed me. Self-conciously, I tried to manuver my mini-van through the waves of teenagers leaving campus. I know what I look like to them, I thought, glad a mask covered up most of my make-up-less, uneven countenance. A middle-aged soccer mom in unfashionable clothing, waaaaaayyy out of her element. 

Still, my daughter needed me, so I parked the van and started walking to the school. My phone buzzed. A text from Sophie's teacher.

"We got her to take a picture! It turned out so cute! She's fine now!"

After confirming that she did not need me after all, I told Teacher Sue I would let her be and to tell her that I'm proud of her for being brave.

Climbing back into the van, I removed my mask and took a deep breath. If I hurry, I can still have 45 minutes of writing time before I have to come back to pick her up. Then I let out a groan and welcomed the familiar complaint: my time is not my own.

Immediately, a picture came to mind of a man sleeping in a boat. Weary and sorrowful, He was seeking time to himself to sleep and grieve the loss of his cousin. But the winds and the waves and his companions on ship would not leave him alone. 

His time was not his own, either. 

He got up from a needed rest. He calmed the winds and the waves and the storm and the sailors. 

And my heart.

I've always believed there is a season in life for every thing I want to accomplish. Sometimes those seasons overlap, like when I get to take a break from normal life to travel someplace different and new. I pointed out to Scott yesterday that this year marks 10 years since I graduated from college, and next year will be 10 years since I've had a real, paying job. I don't regret leaving the workforce. I don't regret choosing to stay home with my children. But the absence of regrets does not always equal the absence of restlessness and the desire to be and do more. 

"I'm just too tired," I told Scott as I bemoaned the fact that I wanted to go help our neighbor get her house ready to sell but I didn't even have enough energy to take care of all that my house needed. 

On Sunday, a friend of mine shared a story in a sacrament meeting talk about Henry B. Eyring and his father. Hal was having a hard time with a physics problem, and his father was trying to help him but realized his son was stuck. Brother Eyring was surprised that his son didn't think about physics all the time like he did. This led to him telling his son to figure out what it was that he thought about when he didn't have to be thinking about it, and then choose a career in that field. 

For the past several days, I have tried to pinpoint what I think about when I don't have to be thinking about it. Mostly, it's sleep I crave. Then I think about my to do list. Then, my children. Then, what book I want to be reading. Occasionally, I think about what I want to be writing. But I'd be lying if I said I thought about writing all the time. 

I feel like in the last nine years of motherhood and ten years of marriage, my identity is constantly being put in the Lost and Found bin of my brain. Who am I and what am I doing? I have no idea. What do I want from life? So much, but ask me later because I'd rather take this moment for me.

Back to Sophie, because I have two minutes until I need to go and pick her up for realsies this time. 

I do not regret giving up my writing time to go to her school and not enter. If she needs me, I will be there. But I am equally grateful that she is discovering that sometimes she does not need me. 

Right now, my time is not always my own. That's okay. I've always wanted to be serving God instead of myself, and raising a family is what He has asked of me. And I won't regret feeling weary or tired or taking a nap, because even the Greatest of All did the same. And I will try not to grumble the next time an REM cycle is interrupted by fuzzy, fine blonde hairs in my face and a little body settling into mine, breathing deep sighs because she has found relief.  

It is a wonderful thing to be needed. It is even better to be wanted. 

And, life will not always be this way.

In six years, life will look different, and it will be a different daughter whose threenage years are a fuzzy memory instead of a stark reality. 

Hopefully by then she is sleeping through the night in her own bed. So I will take my 45 stolen-back minutes and I will record my feelings and I will get back to basics because maybe, just maybe, that is where I will find myself again.

Thoughts on Time and Self-Love

It's been awhile.

I have so many thoughts flying around my brain that I am still trying to make sense of. Two weeks ago, I realized it had literally been months since I'd taken time to write anything more than a grocery list. Even my usually bursting planner has been abandoned for most of this summer. I gave up on updating our family blog a while ago. I have been trying to muddle through Shutterfly scrapbooks, but I'm still a year behind on those. I haven't created anything, painted anything, or designed anything just for the sheer joy of it in months and months.

Why? I thought to myself. Why am I not making time for these things that I love?

I've been reading. Actually, I've been flying through the fluff fiction. 25 books since May. Reading is breathing for me. It's life.

But it isn't everything.

I'd be lying if I said that this summer has been the best ever. Parts of it have been amazing, but 70% has been downright miserable. I've been losing track of myself, retreating into a person who is neither pleasant nor successful nor content. I feel as if I've been hiking through wet sand, uphill, in a wind storm. My husband comes home to find me battered, listless, and completely worn out. I'm not usually one to back down from a fight, but my whole summer has been a losing battle.

In explaining these emotions, I wish I could find the reason for it all. I have my suspicions: an anxiety-riddled six-year-old, a potty training flunkie, a curious baby who makes me realize that my other two were, in fact, somewhat mellow toddlers. At least more mellow than her! I shake my head and have to laugh. My favorite portion of my older two's childhoods was undoubtedly that period between 12 and 20 months. I'd got back to 4-6 months with my youngest in a heartbeat. She had such a pleasant babyhood and oh how I loved being with her! Of course she is highly entertaining nowadays and nothing melts me more than when she'll stop whatever mischief she is making, crawl over, and thrust her head into my lap for a sort of half-cuddle before she is off again.

With all my energies going three different directions, there is very little leftover, and what I do have, I like to give away: to my husband, my parents, my friends, my home. I've been doing these people a disservice though, because I haven't been taking enough time for me.

I don't feel like my routine has changed that much. I've been going to the gym, saying prayers, showering on a consistent basis. I am starting to realize, however, that sometimes when life gets harder, you need longer time outs and more time for you. As a mom, it is hard for me to take that time without feeling like I'm stealing something from the people I love. An overnighter with my best friends restored me more to myself than I've felt in weeks--but I still came home feeling like I'd been away too long and cheated my family out of something that should have been theirs. I feel like I take these breaks but they are always a race against the clock, because there is always something waiting for me when the break ends.

Having something to come home to is a wonderful thing. I first really learned this lesson nine years ago on my intermission, when time was both my enemy and my ally. This time my break was at home, doing some of the things I now like to escape from. I wanted so badly to be back in Texas, but oh how I relished that time that I had to be somebody's sweetheart, somebody's sister, somebody's best friend--and all without a nametag and a structured bedtime.

The other night my newfound stylist and friend had a last minute opening for a haircut. My hair feels like it has been falling out faster over the past few weeks, and sometimes  haircut gives me a mental peace of mind that I won't go bald. I know it doesn't make much sense, but that's the way it is. I snapped up that appointment and then made sure it was okay with my husband. When he got home from work a few hours later, he found the wife he's been finding all summer in a not-great state. A conversation about going out for dinner turned into trying to get the kids herded out the door, a feat that we gave up after twenty minutes of pre-leaving activities (like putting away laundry and going potty and getting along). After overhearing me leave a child's room when said child refused to do his/her (protecting the identity of the not-so-innocent) responsibility or listen to what I was calmly (I'm giving myself props for staying calm here) trying to say to said child, he came upstairs to find me brushing my teeth at 5:00 and, for the first time in our married life, pushed me out the door with a directive to go get some dinner and have some time to myself before my haircut.

So I did. I left. His actions gave me the permission to breathe for a minute. I used a birthday coupon to get a free hamburger and treated myself to onion rings, which I ate in the library parking lot while reading a book on my phone. I went to the store without having to coral children or feel guilt about spending money. I was buying toilet bowl cleaner. I felt...liberated?

Then I took my tired eyes to my appointment and spent the next two hours (the haircut did not take nearly that long) talking to a kindred spirit. I found myself telling her about the struggles of this summer. We talked about the wonderfulness of understanding husbands, the frustrations of messy houses, the challenge of mental illness and depression, the feeling of losing control and losing yourself. I found myself explaining to her that writing was my outlet, my thing that helped me make sense of the world. And I inwardly kicked myself because I have been robbing myself of that understanding. I called it cheap therapy, but she corrected me and said no, there's nothing cheap about it. It is therapy and it is necessary.

And I've been ignoring it.

No wonder I haven't been able to make sense of life lately. No wonder simple chores have seemed pointless and my relationships with my children strained. I've said to Scott on more than one occasion how I feel like they treat me like I'm worthless and there is no element of gratitude, only entitlement and how I wish I could get that through to them that life doesn't owe them anything.

Perhaps the answer here is as simple as my epiphany about getting Kevin to practice her piano. It's probably the same as reading, I thought. She sees me reading, so she knows I love books and she wants that too. Maybe I just need to find time to sit down and play the piano more just because I enjoy it and she'll see that it can be fun and not self-imposed torture. 

Maybe if she sees me taking the time to love myself more and treat myself better, she'll find that she wants to do the same. Maybe it's okay to put myself first, to come home and not apologize for being gone too long, to sit down at the computer and ignore the to-do list and focus on the to-be category.

As my dear friend Anne Shirley says, "It's not what the world holds for you, it's what you bring to it."

I'm going to spend a little more time bringing myself.

Small Moments, Simple Words, Great Things

This is my 2018 entry for Fruitland Home's annual Motherhood Monologues collaboration. I wrote it a few weeks ago, but I didn't want to forget to post it here. 

I was sitting in the mother’s room at church, feeling guilty for taking up a rocker with my bottle-fed, clearly-not-sleeping baby when I heard the voice over the speaker say these familiar words: “Through small and simple things, are great things brought to pass.”

A planned lesson. A hello, how are you? A kind look. Calling a child by name. Greeting a newcomer. Volunteering for an assignment. Participating in class. Getting the children ready. Making sure we are there. Raising my hand to sustain my husband in his new calling, knowing that it means more lonely evenings, chaotic one-woman bedtime routines and dirty dishes left in the sink.

I was standing in the kitchen, pen in hand, planner open, baby on my hip, and looking the faded clipping of a painting I’d cut out of an Ensign nearly ten years ago. The faces in the painting, familiar to me because of the models, show a mother and two sons with a Bible open between them, reading the words of God. The caption my adolescent Sunday School teacher attached to his painting was an unassuming scripture: “Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.”

Piles of reading homework from the kindergartener. Joy school lesson plans scribbled on index cards. Baby bottles lining the kitchen counter, keeping the painted rocks and brown paper bags company next to last week’s grocery ads. An open planner, the empty slots betraying the business of my days because writing “laundry” six times on a weekly spread is depressing. This month’s book club book waiting to be opened, the calendar says the meeting is next week. Crayon drawings adorn the fridge, the star space belonging to a construction paper pot-of-gold with a glued on rainbow drawing and lined white paper with pencil markings that proclaim, “mY sistr si speshul.” Two piles of photos from birthday collages, waiting to be put away in memory boxes. In the garbage is an orange bag that used to be filled with peanut butter M&Ms—my husband got a handful. My kids didn’t even know the bag existed until it was empty and they found it in the garbage.

I was scrolling through my Instagram feed, ignoring the screams and yells of my children fighting and the voice in my head highlighting my failures at keeping a peaceful home, when I read the words a friend had attached to a snapshot of her daughters, dressed in their Sunday best but clearly not wanting to pause for a picture: “’We may be doing things that only God can see, but they are the very things that make the greatest difference in our own lives and in the lives of those we love’-Tiffanie Brown, April Ensign.”

A kind word. A phone call, a text, a pinterest joke. Updated family pictures on the walls, a record of our family's growth. Blog posts from events that happened almost a year ago. An email here or there.  Hours spent researching family history. A prayer for a friend in need. Giving up a shower to cuddle a baby. Making sure everyone has clean underwear. Picking up debris off the floor before it finds the baby's mouth. 

I was sitting on the floor in my living room, trying to ignore the piles of toddler toys surrounding me as I talked to my mom on the phone for the first time in a week. I knew my husband was waiting for me to spend some rare time with him, but I just couldn’t help continuing the conversation because all week, I’ve needed my mom and we finally had a chance to talk. She’d left me a message on Thursday, the hardest day of my week, but I couldn’t call her back for fear of the tears that I knew would come once she answered the phone. All evening, I treasured that voicemail in my heart, thinking, my mom called me. SHE called ME.

On this evening, I had called her. I wasn’t feeling as alone, had taken a nap that afternoon, and was refreshed by the parts of the Sabbath day that didn’t include wrestling and wrangling children.

After so many days and so many reminders, I finally found myself voicing the truth I felt inside my heart:

“It’s hard to be the one at home. He’s got so many amazing and grand things going on, and I’m in the throngs of the small and simple.”

“Yes,” my mother’s voice confirmed. “But Rinda, the small and simple things one day will be the great things.”