On Parenthood, Motherhood, and Gratitude

Yesterday afternoon, I crawled up on my couch after work and while the kids were still at daycare to watch the season finale of Parenthood. Let's be honest, I haven't been able to stay up until 11pm on a Thursday night in quite some time, so this Friday afternoon watchfest has become a sort of ritual. This show is one of my favorites, mainly because of its honest depiction of life. That, plus the fact that Craig T. Nelson has reminded me of my dad since starred on the show Coach, and this show pretty much had me from the get-go.

As I watched the story play out yesterday, I honed in on the Julia and Joel storyline. I feel a kindred connection to Julia's character (minus the part about cheating on my husband). She was portrayed as a go-getter, a woman who always was after success. Stanford degree, high-powered law firm, she was me. When she lost her job on the show, it sent me into long, contemplative thoughts about what we would do if I couldn't work, how that would change me as person. It revealed how much I value my title and the work I put into getting a P.A. degree. It made me think about how much pride I take when a paycheck goes into the bank with my name on it. Yes, a tv show had the ability to really make me think.

As I watched the finale as Joel and Julia decide to adopt Victor's little sister, something clicked in my head. Sometimes the best things in life are unplanned. If you know me at all, you know I like plans. 5 year plans, plans for next weekend, life goals, plans for potential economic downturns. You get the picture. I think Julia was a planner too, but here she was just throwing caution to the wind, I mean, a new baby, and like she said, they didn't even have room in the house (which Joel so cutely dispels because he can just build one). But what really got me was the scene when they fast forward and the FOUR children are opening up a puppy on Christmas morning. I don't know why that hit me so hard, but FOUR kids! Maybe it's because Brad and I have been spending a lot of time talking about how two kids might be enough for us, but I'm still not sure. Or maybe it is because it showed that plans are certainly not fool-proof and joy can be in the unexpected. Maybe it's because this show reminds me of my mom's family and how close they are and how there are just so many kids around and there is so much love in just being family. Or maybe it's all of the above.

I, like probably everyone in America that watches this show, audibly sobbed as Zeke asked Sarah if he was a good dad. Floods of childhood memories came flooding back into my head. The scene from my wedding day played as I asked my dad if he was ready to give me away and his response was, "No, but let's do this!" It made me want to hold my boys right now in this moment and smell their hair and listen to their laughter and capture their innocence for another day. It makes me think about my life and what the answer to the question, "Am I a good mother?" is. I mean, I just don't get this emotional watching the Housewives of New Jersey! Camille and Zeke's relationship reminds me of my parents. Both of them being so much about their kids and then having to face some pretty big changes in their empty nest years.

The parallels are enormous. And I know that I'm not alone. The struggles every Braverman family went through week after week are our struggles. They told our stories. And therein lies the greatness of this show. Therein lies why I will miss crying every Friday afternoon.  I got to see my life mirrored back to me. I got to glimpse the special-ness of the ordinary in my own family. It left me with gratitude.

It left me grateful for struggles that I share with a family that loves me. It left me with gratitude that I have these incredibly amazing boys that I get to love and teach and, some days, lose my mind with for the rest of my life. It left me with more appreciation for the now, the unplanned, and the surprises. I'm sad that this show ended, but I think it's appropriate, because it felt too short, it felt like there was so much more we could learn together, but then doesn't life feel the same way? Don't we take for granted what we have, thinking there will always be time for this or that? I am filled with gratitude that, with all the mundane, mindless media out there, this show was able to have meaning for me beyond the screen. I will mourn the loss for a couple more days, but I will take with me the lessons the show has taught me about myself, and I am inspired because it has shown me that showing the real side of life, like I strive to on this blog, can mean so much to so many!

Tired of being tired

Noises wake me up, a car engine running too long outside my window (aka looters about to break into my house...<begin creating escape plans while half asleep>) will force me out of bed to investigate, and just all the thoughts that go through my head in a day seem to resurface in those precious hours of rest. I am a light sleeper and I have been this way for my whole life. What I didn't realize was that becoming a mother would add a whole new dimension to this lack of sleep.

Let me be honest, I am not a woman who loves every second of being pregnant. I'm going to tell you I appreciated the miracle God has given women in the fact that from a few cells, an ENTIRE human is made. What I didn't appreciate was the uncomfortable positions this little person could push their way into the smallest recesses of my midsection. I also didn't appreciate that I could no longer sleep on my belly, which I had been doing for the 28 previous years.  This was stage one of feeling tired ALL the time!

Then the baby arrives and as Amy Poehler so honestly puts it in her book Yes Please!, "you so afraid that they are going to die that you stay up and jump up at any slight noise." Add to that that I breast fed, and had to do that every two hours, while it takes me a good 45 minutes to return to sleep, and you do the math. I've been sleep deprived since 2010!

I thought when my kids slept through the night this would change. I would go back to feeling not tired, but that's not true. I think I remember reading studies during those blurry first years of mommyhood about sleep deprivation and how it just keeps banking up and you have to have days where you play catch up. Apparently I never slept when the baby slept because (1.) I did want some laundry clean and (2.) I went back to work.  My children have seemed to recover nicely from their erratic sleep and yes, they sleep through the night, but they are non-stop during the day.

What was also never stated in the books is that you don't get to choose your own bedtime. My children choose my bedtime. We have a set schedule, every night starting at 8pm, but my children are masterminds of prolonging the inevitable. Last night, Brad started the routine which usually means that he puts them to bed in their room, but at 10pm they were both laying in bed with me while Brad snoozed in their bedroom. We play musical beds nightly, and apparently I'm just a participant, I don't run the game!

Gone are the days when I would come home from work and peruse the internet for a little while and then flip over to an evening show or two before deciding I was tired and needed to go to bed. My nights are now filled with laughter, fighting, at least one sword fight a night (we don't even need a sword in the house, this still happens). I love our nights and really try to appreciate these little years, but honestly, I miss those days every so often where I wasn't responsible for another wonderful little person.

Most nights end with my little one talking his non-sensical, stream-of-conscience babble while I drift slowly into an uncomfortable sleep. Inevitably I wake up 2 hours later in some weird contortion between 2 children and feel like I had a great nap! This is when I can't get back to sleep and I usually watch all of the Bravo TV shows I can't watch while my kids are awake. Of course, I do get tired at some point, usually around an hour or two before I have  to be awake. Then I spend 30 minutes thinking about how little time I have to fall asleep and get any semblance of a decent night's sleep.

Some of my sweet friends with grown children have told me it will only be 18 years of this sleep deprivation! I would like to say, "Please do not say this to my slightly on the fritz mind as it is already sleep deprived and really could snap in seconds!" I start thinking about those days so far ahead, but then I feel guilty for wishing these exhausting years away. So what is the answer? I'm not really sure. I feel good when I'm rested but that doesn't happen all that often. I want to be a person that can live in the moment without wishing it away, which is hard to do when all I really want to do is sit on the couch and perhaps take a snooze.

I'm becoming more creative. I now know that I can lay on the couch and turn a video on and get a twenty minute nap in every once in a while. I still wake up to little bodies using me as their target as they cannonball off the upper portion of the couch. There are times I try to go to bed early on the nights it is not my turn to put the kids to bed, but there always is another "I love you" that needs to be said or a hug that needs to be given, which I don't mind at all. I have relinquished that fact that I will not feel well-rested in any month in the new year. And maybe that's where I need to redirect my thoughts and realize that it's my problem and not my kids' problem. I don't have to be with my children every waking moment that I'm not working. I am trying to encourage independent, non-reckless play and I say lots of prayers that these two things will happen. I need to ask for some time for myself, because there will never be time if I always put everyone else's needs first. I can't keep making judgements about myself based on this mommy group I've created in my head who watches everything I do and sneers at how I'm raising my kids.

I need to take a shot at a nap when available and trust that I will not wake up with markers on the walls or a new make-over via my boys. Or I just embrace it if that happens, that's why we buy washable markers (or I'll trudge on over to Pinterest for a solution). With all that said, I'm not sure I'm going to ever be well-rested, but I do know that I'm going try to be better about taking care of myself. I'm even thinking about starting a business called MWNN-"Moms Who Need Naps" and all the employees get 2 short naps a day, required. I'm pretty sure I'd pay good money for that! Who's in?

REJECTED!!!

                                           (Elizabeth Williams from my alma mater showing how it's done!)
Getting rejected is never fun. I realize that it shouldn’t affect me and I shouldn’t get as upset about it at this point in my life. I remember several of my high school crushes not returning the admiration I had for them…rejection. I remember getting told I wasn’t going to be in the sorority I had preffed…rejection. I also remember a few weeks ago when I submitted an article to a magazine and they said, “Thank you. But this won’t work for us right now. “ Rejection. So as you can see, being rejected in lots of different ways has left lasting stings along the way. I don’t think anyone is particularly thrilled with hearing, “You didn’t do enough” or “You aren't the right one.” These times in our life really drill in deep and they can be a crossroads, of sorts.

Regjections stick out like sore thumbs to me, because in all honesty, I have been accepted in many instances for most of my life. I had good friends in childhood and my teen years. I got into the college of my dreams. I was accepted into a sorority and while I thought I wasn’t going to enjoy it, I made friends that I still cherish today. I’ve been picked for sports teams. And I also didn’t get rejected by the one guy that mattered. Even typing this right now, I think, “Why are you complaining?” But the truth is, it doesn’t matter what form it comes in, rejection hurts.

I know as a parent I will have to deal with my kids facing rejection. My boys are pretty awesome, but I know that there will be a day that they want something so badly and it will slip through their fingers, or there will be a sport they are convinced they are great at and the coach doesn’t agree. It will happen. My heart already breaks because I’ve seen how sometimes these crushing blows knock people right off the trajectory they had aligned themselves on. My hope is that my sons have the ability and the perspective to realize that sometimes the trajectory needed to change.

When I think about life, of course I wish that I could skip the pain. I hate it. I hate feeling out of control (control and me are like BFFs). I hate not being able to just get over the feeling of losing out, of not making it. It’s like we are never suppose to feel the burn of rejection or mourn the loss of a dream. I just think that’s ridiculous! If you had a hope (and we are told constantly to "Aim for the stars"), and it doesn’t come to fruition and you’ve poured blood, sweat, and tears into it, then it hurts when it doesn’t happen. It is probably more devastating if it is a relationship or a life goal. We are given little room for the grieving process.

As I've mentioned before my BFF "Control" and I have this thing called a plan. A 5 year plan, a 20 year plan, a remodeling plan, you name it, I've got a plan for it! So when that planned trajectory is clear in my mind, and something happens to the flight path, I come a little unglued. I think this is where God is definitely pushing me this year, because if I think I am going on this trip of life and I am going to just stay in my comfort zone and have all my hopes and dreams come true just the way I have planned, that doesn't really isn't realistic.  But getting knocked out my comfort zone and off of the planned path is no less disappointing and is no less turbulent.  We don’t give the same grace to emotional turbulence as we do to the physical, even though I would argue emotional turbulence can be ten times worse. I think this is true for me mainly because I cannot separate my thoughts from myself. I can ruminate on that rejection every night for a long, long time. I have imaginary conversations in my head:

“Brain, please think about nice things, not the awful stuff that I’ve already lived with all day!”

“Lisa, that is next to impossible because this is ALL you’ve thought about ALL day!”

“Okay, well I’m going to pray about what I’m thankful for then and that will do it…Lord, thank you for my family. Thanks for my job, and my home, but Lord could you please take away this awful pit in my stomach every time I think about that rejection…DANGGIT!”

And begin the conversation with the brain again.

It’s so hard. We are so intertwined with our wants, desires, hopes, dreams, thankfulness,and  hurt. It’s really hard to separate all of it. If you are anything like me, you have this invisible audience of the world watching your every move, enjoying seeing you fail, ready to laugh and shout an “I told you so!” Maybe there are a few of those out there, but in reality I have a lot more supporters than I do audience members. And when I really think about it, the people that matter are there for me no matter what. I just so easily lose sight of this that so many days are harder than they probably need to be.

I’ve been fortunate in this life to be able to reflect on those rejections (since I still like to carry them around with me). I see that they may have made up a broken road, but it lead to many good things. And I have to remember that sometimes I have to accept the sidetrack to really put a fire back in my belly, or maybe the rejection is a chance to sort out what really is important in life. I know that writing, and for an audience greater than what I currently reach, is hard. There are lots of voices out there making noise and I have to be clear in what I’m saying or it just drowns in with the hum. This last submission rejection just means I have to study my material better. It means I have to write, write, and write some more. I know that a lot of people have gone years on end with hearing, “No, you're not what we are looking for,” and then when they figure out their niche, it clicks.

What I leave you with is this: we are all in this together. You with your rejection and me with mine. We don’t need to fix the rejection, we can all just sit here with it together and figure out our next moves. Maybe we can even motivate ourselves to try again, especially if it’s something we really want. I see these rejections as an opportunity to realize that this life is not going to be perfect and if I want something, I have to work for it, or let it go, or realize it is not right for me at this time in my life. What I cannot do is let it overcome me. I cannot let it define every day, every moment of my significance. Because the truth is, there are opportunities all around and if I’m not paying attention, the path that is started by a rejection may be one that was better than the planned path. And those might be the ones that could be the biggest life-changers of them all! 

New Year's Revolution

I remember setting up an elaborate seating arrangement that included a large wooden desk chair, a booster seat and some pillows. I faced it out my large bedroom window. Mind you, this was at the tender age of 4 or 5. It was from this makeshift throne that I started a conversation with God. It's interesting looking back how I just sensed this God that I heard about in Sunday School and that my Grandmother would talk about with us as she babysat my sister and I. I didn't have any concept of the ride I would take with the Divine at that young age, and of course how could I? The world really hadn't had a chance to rear it's ugly, dark head.

As I grew up, I went to church camp, became a believer (looking back, I wonder if my moment was really in that chair at the window), and starting living my life for Christ. That's something that may not come too hard for a older elementary student, but the burden seemed placed on me as now I was suppose to share this faith. I'm not a person who has ever felt like I needed to push my beliefs on others and now I feel that it's imperative that I do not push anyone into believing. But somewhere in the early stages of my faith journey, that was what I was told needed to happen. I really didn't have a great story that I felt was profound in any way. Most of my friends had some connection to church and my family was all pretty religious. I didn't really want to be responsible for converting anybody.

Then I grew up and moved away. I realized that my idyllic little Christian bubble was not going to work for the greater world who had been hurt by Bible-beaters, people who used their faith to wield power, and then there were the intellectuals who knew more Bible verses than I did, and had a counterpoint to everything I held as true. Funny, but while all this discontent raged in my mind, my heart and soul remembered those conversations between God and a 4-year-old girl. And then I met other people struggling and wondering about how faith belonged in a world where people would rather choose a side than find a middle ground. Maybe the best thing anyone has ever said to me was that while I was struggling with this burden of converting people, I had forgotten that the world already had a Savior. It wasn't my job to prove anything to them, instead it was my job to show them that a living God lived in me, and His preferred method of life is through love.

This has spurred a revolution to my old way of approaching this world. I no longer feel that I have show people the sin in their life and force a conversion (whew! I'm glad God resolved that idea, because I was freaked out by it!), and instead, I am only called to go to the ends of the earth and show love. That means I take part in the struggles of this world. I stand up for those that don't have a voice: the poor, the communities that are being discriminated against because of their skin color or their sexual orientation, women who are downtrodden by manipulation of their families or partners, and children who do not have access to the things that my kids take for granted.

I hope I cannot be grouped into a category because I'm for everyone in this life, I'm for God's love being shown to anyone who needs it. Liberal, conservative, alcoholic, perfectionist, we all know tragedy, we all know hardships. I cannot live like I'm in this life for myself, because if I take Jesus' words as truth, that I have to go out and make disciples, then I have to leave my usual haunts and step into places that God doesn't show up too often. Does that petrify me? Yup! Then I realize that God's asking me to trust in Him, that's where the "Do Not Fear" stuff comes in. On my own, I'm toast. But through God all things are possible. I've seen that more as I put trust in this invisible One who each day brings a new dawn. He who has given me perspective during a very trying year. He who allows me to travel to places that others pass by because of fear. And I am so grateful because the thing about God's love is that when I trust that He loves everyone just as much as He loves me, I see that love too. It's a comfort and it's addictive. I can no longer be all about me doing God's work because God is already there.

So this year, I'm not making any resolutions, because I tend to not keep those very long. This year I'm committing to this silent revolution, the "Irresistible Revolution" as Shane Claiborne calls it. One that shows God's love is bigger than politics, or individual nations, and most certainly, it's bigger than me. Life may throw a few thousand curveballs my way, and loving people who do a crappy job of loving me or even liking me stinks, but I'm ready, because I trust that love conquers all. And even if I'm wrong, I'm willing to err on the side of love every time.