Stress is like wearing a flannel shirt when you’re washing dishes, you know?
One minute, you’ve got your hands in the water, scrubbing, the edge of your cuffs kissing the water. Next minute, the water’s bled up to your armpits. (For this reason, my husband’s told me that in Boy Scouts, they always said “Cotton is death”: If you’re wearing cotton when you’re active in the cold, it absorbs your perspiration, and can quickly bring you to hypothermia in bad weather.)
It’s been more than one mom who I’ve talked to about it. I recognize the furtive look in their eyes, the zealous advocacy–of a different kind than mine, I think. He doesn’t need the stigma, they’ve told me. Do you know what teachers think of kids with ADHD?
Actually, I do.
I recall vividly the very night someone suggested my son might have ADHD. I remember the day, too, when his teachers suggested there might be something wrong. And while a diagnosis was scary? From the place where I stand–the opposite is scarier.
A couple of weeks ago, I was stuffing paper bags with sandwiches, flipping pancakes, signing permission slips, smelling breath to confirm teeth brushing, etc.–all your average morning chaos. That’s when my middle child told me he was quitting football.
Imagine the activity in my kitchen suddenly lurching to a halt. “What? Why?”
He had some good reasons. And a few not-great, 12-year-old ones. It was one of those weird parenting situations where you wish there was a highly detailed playbook. What to do when your kid wants to quit football and he’s been in it for a month and isn’t getting to play and… I told him to go to practice, and we’d talk about it on the weekend.
The other night after small group, I experienced the cutest thing all week: The daughter of one of our members—who, when she wears pigtails, reminds me of a blonde, blue-eyed version of Boo from Monsters Inc. Our host home had The Most Patient Cat in the World, who allowed Boo to exclaim in her sweet little voice over all of his main body parts, touching as she went: “TAIL!” “EYES!” “FACE!” about 546 times. We watched said cat for an entire half hour.
She was disarming, delightful, and chock-full of sheer happiness. She was adorably undignified, openly affectionate.
I’ve been thinking about how God wants us to come to him like Boo—no. Actually, requires we come somehow like her.
Allow me to sketch for you a brief (yet oh-so-vivid) moment from about eight years ago. You would have found me slumped against the wall in the hallway one afternoon. He was only a year and a half old–and the potential for catastrophe was spreading before me.
Funny thing is, I don’t even remember what my then-toddler did to cause me to groan in despair. I just remember a lot of the stories that give me a pretty good idea: like that time while I was in the bathroom, when he pulled a barstool up to the counter, snatched a packet of drink mix from the top of the toaster oven, wrenched it open, and sprinkled it around the house like fairy dust.
For ideas on how to make the most of these questions, see the first interview.
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