It was a conversation in my cubicle more than a decade ago, but my friend’s words remain seared in my mind: “You know, I think God loves strugglers.”
You know? I see it.
It was a conversation in my cubicle more than a decade ago, but my friend’s words remain seared in my mind: “You know, I think God loves strugglers.”
You know? I see it.
May all your kids come home, and may they get along with each other. Or at least fake it.
May you have a white Christmas to the point that you feel Christmas-y and can say no to an activity you didn’t really want to go to, but don’t lose electricity and heat. May everyone wipe their boots.
My parents, bless their slim pocketbooks, paid for a lot of piano and voice lessons over the years on my behalf. I took piano for 12 years–and to be honest, should be able to play better than I do…
There was the female teacher with the faint mustache and house that smelled like a casserole. The redhead who glared at teenaged-me for not practicing. Sally with her center-parted long hair and laminated flashcards. There was the pianist with astonishingly long fingers who also taught my voice lessons with a broad repertoire of Broadway hits, easing into a few Latin and German numbers.
A couple of weeks ago one of my teenagers was super-miffed with my husband and me.
On a car ride home from church, after explaining a biblical position we held on a touchy subject, this unnamed teenager maintained his shock and sudden anger.
So there’s this chance raising teenagers could kill me.
I’m (again) in one of these parenting seasons where hope feels like a mind game. There is indeed a battlefield in my brain, in my soul.
When my son was seven, I’d ask him to clean his room.
Unfortunately, I could come in half an hour later and the place still looked like someone had turned the place upside down and shook it, then sprayed cheese-in-a-can on top.
Months ago, I stumbled upon what I thought was an epiphany: silicone scar strips…which promised, with 4.5 stars on Amazon, to fade stretch marks, people.
My heart lifted. My first child ballooned my belly like a watermelon, complete with stripes. When another mother asked to glimpse my stretch marks after I mentioned their severity, she gasped aloud with some equivalent of Good golly.
“What’s one word you would use to describe your 2020?”
I heard someone ask this last week, and was a bit stumped. How do you shoehorn this year into a word?
That day, in the whirlwind of working with kids at home, I received the kind of email I felt in my chest. Bad news.
I heard my respiration accelerate as my fingers curled the counter’s edge. My daughter watched my face, then looked at the screen.
As we all prep for school-or-not, ’tis the season for Death by Appointment. The last few weeks have carted my kids to the dentist, the doctor, the counselor, the orthodonist, back to the dentist and doctor (four times, at least), and finally, the endodontist. I am now old enough to have a child who needs his wisdom teeth out.
As God continues to nudge me to not do for my kids what they can/should do for themselves, I had my 16-year-old fill out his own paperwork. But y’know, he’s the kind of kid that takes his own spin off, say, the boxes asking, “Are you pregnant?”
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