motherhood

Emptying That Makes Us Full

lpatangan

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you amazing women who make me both a better mother and a better person! For all of the emptying you do, may your hearts be full today! ~ love, Lara

After the aerobic chase of cajoling my teenager into a 15-second photoshoot to memorialize the first day of his senior year in high school, I comfortably settled myself back into my morning routine. Only my husband kept interrupting my coffee euphoria by lamenting how sad it was that our son had reached this milestone that would leave us empty nesters in a year’s time.

“It’s so sad. Aren’t you sad?”  he repeatedly asked.  Half-jokingly I responded, “I’m always sad.  So today is just another day for me.”

And, while I don’t really think of myself as a sad person, I have long recognized the loss that comes with motherhood. It’s been a long journey in grief that began sometime around the loss of my belly button during pregnancy. I’ve been grieving the first of countless lasts since when only mere days after their birth the umbilical cord, the lifeline that once tied their lives to mine, unceremoniously crusted over and lost itself under the rumple of sheets. From there, the lasts continued without any fanfare of formal goodbyes. There was the last time I nursed; the last time I read them a good night story; the last time they slept in bed with me; the last time I packed a lunch; the last time I volunteered in the classroom; the last time I patiently waited while bored in the toy aisle; the last story time at the library; the last time I carried them on my hip; the last time I spent weeks planning a themed birthday party.

I could write volumes on the lasts of motherhood and yes, it would make me sad. But because I’ve been told that it’s important to get out of bed in the morning, I try not to look back. Still, I recognize the inherent imbalance in parenting. Sometimes it feels eerily akin to a bad middle school crush where you live, breathe, and surely would die for that cute boy across the room. Only he meets your unmatched devotion with a vague and indifferent acknowledgment of your existence that is somehow associated with being fed.

It hardly seems romantic, much less fair. But motherhood was never meant to be a two-way street. It’s inherently a giving away of self. It’s sacrifice and sleepless nights. Motherhood is exhaustive and exhausting. It’s frustrating and formidable. It’s all the scary and confusing words you can muster and then a few more that exist in some unknown-to-you language experienced as stomach spasms, migraines, mental breakdowns, or garden-variety heart attacks.

When your newborn spikes a fever, your toddler crawls out of their bed for the umpteenth time, your middle schooler struggles with making friends, your teenager does something epically stupid that’s immortalized on social media, or your adult child experiences a profound loss that you can’t fix, you realize just how much words fail to capture the spectrum of patience, unconditional love, and black coffee which motherhood demands. Being a mama is not a frilly experience of poetic endearment. I’ve never seen a greeting card that describes the supernatural strength, courage, endurance, and overwhelmingly raw ache that it encompasses.

And yet, being a mother has allowed me to experience the deepest most joyful love I’ve known. The emptying of self we experience in motherhood fills us with something far greater. Mothers embrace sacrifice with an uncanny enthusiasm to unravel the best parts of ourselves so that our children can be wrapped in the silky threads of our love. Becoming a mother fundamentally and unalterably changes our identities. Motherhood isn’t about putting our children’s needs before our own, it’s that inexplicable way that their needs supersede our own. No matter how fulfilling or engaging my other life pursuits are, none of them can erode the core component of my maternal identity.  Foremost, I am a mother.  I have a primal need to nurture, protect, and ensure my children’s future.  Whatever I must lose to accomplish that, I lose with joy. This isn’t an either/or experience of good or bad; easy or hard; happy or sad. It’s ands that go on forever linking the coexistence of love’s joy with the sacrifice and loss it entails.

I may get less of them as they grow older, but they remain the biggest part of me. So, whether it’s their first day of school or their last, I’m used to being sad. But the paradox of motherhood, of love itself, is that in the end, this sadness, emptying, and sacrifice ends up being one more thing to be happy about. So, yeah today is just another day for me.

Surrender: Into the Arms of God

lpatangan

Fully embracing the mundanity of my middle-aged life, I watched a documentary about an octopus. I won’t get into the details because you too may be interested in octopi documentaries so I don’t want to spoil anything. Yet one of the most interesting things I learned is that after an octopus lays her eggs, she quits eating and wastes away. By the time the eggs hatch, she dies. It’s like a Disney movie where the mom always dies and there’s an orphan having a coming of age adventure with lots of catchy songs that get stuck in your head.

For days, I kept thinking of the octopus laying there protecting her clutch of eggs while succumbing to starvation. I don’t know the biological reason for this. I just know that parenting in the later years feels like a separation comparable to death. And I apologize if that feels too dramatic for either a documentary or a Disney movie, but parenting during these years of increasing independence requires me to let go of all the details I have spent almost 20 years shaping. Having the privilege of being a mother has been the great honor of my life. As any mother knows, it requires stretching in ways that at times felt impossible. My role now is not so much to stretch but to contract, to loosen the grip on one of my greatest treasures so that the lull of life’s tide can carry him in a new direction. It feels counter to every instinct in my body. Yet, I understand that this has been my job all along – to give everything I could for him not because he is mine but so that the world can someday be his. Read more →

Mercy! Being Mama is Hard

lpatangan

When my children were young, as routine as saying my nightly prayers before bedtime, I would recount all the mistakes I had made with them that day.  Some failings felt so significant that I would measure them in how many extra years of therapy they would require.  While most people worry about saving for retirement, I worried about saving for my children’s counseling copays when they were grown and their mama-messed-me-up issues would manifest like a scary clown face popping out of a Jack-in-the-Box.

Motherhood was hard and it seemed like the harder I tried, the more aware I became of the spaghetti sauce dripping from the kitchen ceiling.  (Truthfully that scarlet drip would have been there regardless of my children because whenever I am in the kitchen catastrophic events occur.)

Now, a mother of teenage boys, I look back on those years and the litany of suffering I subjected myself to and I realize how little I knew God.  I couldn’t show myself any mercy because I had yet to know his.  God was this perfect being who couldn’t possibly understand the trials of being an imperfect parent.  He had never wrestled anyone with an arched back into a car seat or saw the need to abandon the baby’s stroller in the parking lot after realizing it was more likely that he would collapse from frustration than the too-complicated-to-fold buggy.  Of course, Jesus did wrestle demons and I am sure collapsing was a possibility when he endured 40 days without food or water in the desert.  Still, in those early days of motherhood, I relied more on parenting books than our perfect father. Read more →

Parenting: the Long Goodbye

lpatangan

I am in the “letting go” years of motherhood.   I know Alzheimer’s disease is considered the long-goodbye, but having teenagers feels as much so.  Except instead of forgetting precious memories, I am flooded with them: story times at the library, field trips to the zoo, class parties, countless baseball games, first dances, and ordinary moments that have aged into extraordinary memories.

It is often said of parenting that the days are long but the years are short.  I would only add that the years get successively faster like a racing heart sprinting toward the finish line.  The teenage years are propelled with a momentum that has little to do with parenting but is filled with our children’s pursuits.  We no longer set the pace of their days.  Instead, we race to keep up or merely watch their projection as they shoot off like a ball in a pinball machine: hither and yonder, to and fro, until they finally land in their beds at night.  Still.   Safe.  Ours.

But the truth is they were never ours to keep.  They were trusted to us by an ever-generous God for what suddenly feels like too little time.  Somehow, he put us together knowing that we will each learn from the other.   We are shown we could love more than seemed physically possible and that we can stretch beyond what we once considered strong to a surprisingly soft place of resilience.  I can’t think of anything else that compares to the ways it has broken me, built me anew, and taught lessons that only love could teach.

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In the Mess: Easy Like Sunday Morning

lpatangan

I know songs have been written about the ease of Sunday morning, but I wish someone would write one about the angst of a Sunday evening. That’s the twitchiest night of the week for me as I transition from the charms of the weekend to the schisms of the work week. I feel like the amiable comic book character, Pig Pen, created by Charles Shultz, traveling in my own dust storm with all the to-do’s swirling around me making a filthy mess of what was once a peaceful mind.  The more I do, the more I realize how far behind I really am and the dirt cakes on — further muddying my panic.

I sort through emails.  I make piles.  I do laundry.  I boss children — an echo of repetition.  I try to remember what I needed to talk to my husband about.  I usually can’t.  I make lists.  I pick up abandoned glasses and clip close half-eaten bags of chips laying carelessly on the counter.  In all my busying, I only seem to find more to do.  Each task leads to another – a maze in the making.  I scatter about in the dusty swirl of tedium past bedtime – past reason.  My son asks me to review his cover letter for an internship he is applying for and I stop.  In that instant, where I was given one more thing to do– when I was already so done, I would have envisioned being buried under the muck of a mudslide.  Instead, I felt the clarity of grace.  I felt its calm and its cleanse, as I realized I belong in the middle of the mess.  It’s there that my independent, almost adult child asked for my input.  It’s there that the mess suddenly stopped choking me and I breathed into the precious moment of mothering.

Our to-do’s will never be done and life will always be messy no matter how much tidying we do.  Serving others in the midst of it is the grace that makes life meaningful.  It gives order to chaos.  It realigns priorities and it reinvigorates efforts. “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need,” (Hebrews 4:16).

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The Meaning of Life: a letter to my son

lpatangan

Last year, seventh-grade parents were given the assignment to write their children a letter explaining the meaning of life.  Seriously?  Why not just write the cure for cancer?  Or, solve the problem of world peace?  Or do ninth-grade algebra? The meaning of life?! 

Of course, the best teachers challenge us.   As it turns out, the question is worth answering.  I am sharing my letter because at times I need to be reminded of its message.  Maybe you do too.  

Dear Alex,

I have been asked to write you a letter explaining the meaning of life.  But seeing that only moments ago I spilled hot coffee down the front of my shirt, I am not sure I feel qualified to answer such a poignant question.

When we are children, we see the world in solid colors.  There are no shades or variations of pigments.  We learn basic colors early and life seems pretty simple.   As we grow older, things get more complicated.  There is no longer just the color blue but countless shades of it.

We have a lot more choices, but the right ones aren’t always clear.  A spectrum of possibilities exists as to what one’s life may mean.  That’s the beauty of life and the mystery for you to uncover.  I can’t tell you what the answer will be for you, because I am still learning what it is for me.

In some ways, the answer seems obvious, and I am tempted to spell it out.  But I resist the urge to give you a one-word solution, to pick one color from the few that existed when we were younger, to oversimplify, give away the secret, the magic formula, the profundity of life’s meaning, because of that word itself, love.  Love would be the easy answer.  God’s love, family love, married love, love of others, merciful love, eternal love, and unconditional love will be the answer many times over if you live life well.

I could do this, and I wouldn’t be wrong.  After all, love is as true as the color red. But it would be too simplistic, and life is many things, yet I have never known it to be simple. Read more →

Parenting: Instructing Mama

lpatangan

The work of mercy that most embodies parenting is to instruct the uninformed.  Only it took me a while to figure out that maybe it was me, the mama, who needed the most instruction.

From the earliest days of motherhood, when I frantically thumbed through pages of parenting books in the dark of the night in a desperate attempt to find a way to coax my son to sleep, I felt more clueless than confident.

No matter how many books I read, I could never get my son on a nursing schedule, sleep schedule, or a mama-really-needs-a-shower schedule.  I had friends who were more successful with following the instructions, and, of course, I resented their efficiency and ease.

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Mothers: Strong as they are soft

lpatangan

I keep seeing ads for Mother’s Day with petal pink letters in frilly font and slight women wearing flowing flowering frocks.    It’s like advertisers think mothers dress in doilies, cover their heads in bonnets with perfectly tied grosgrain ribbon, and smile demurely all day wearing pink champagne tinted lip gloss.

I guess I should be glad they think that.  Maybe they don’t notice that my flowing hair is tied back in a rubber band because I haven’t washed it, the dew on my skin isn’t from sprinkles of rose water but the sheen of oil on my face that I didn’t have time to powder, and my tinted lips are from biting them in an effort to avoid saying something regrettable. Read more →

Teen Parenting– and a trashed manual

lpatangan

My son will become a teenager on Black Friday. Could there be a more ominous sign than that? While hoards of shoppers are waking up at 3 a.m. to suffer through lines and duke it out for deals, my sweet baby, ever so dear, will be entering the darkness that often accompanies the teen years.

As if he is already rehearsing for the big day of black, my house has recently been filled with a cacophony of slamming doors, woeful sighs and whispers under the breath that I am pretty sure do not include any sweet nothings. It sounds like a coarse symphony that does nothing to evoke my sympathies.

I called a friend a few weeks ago and in a prayerful plea, asked in the name of all that is holy, all that is sane, and all that is merciful, to lend me every parenting book she owns.

She brought me five.

The small stack of books sat in my office and my younger son asked me why I had so many teenager books. Before I could even formulate a response, he answered his own question — obviously remembering his brother’s upcoming birthday.   “Oh yeah, it’s going to be a long seven years…,” he said prophetically.

Seven years? Why do the terrible twos get all the notoriety? That’s one measly year and they are still small enough to be restrained.

As I read, I began strategizing, thinking of systems to implement and solutions to employ. I realized that, if necessary, doors could be unhinged. He would inevitably realize that not loading the dishwasher would be to his disadvantage.   And, I felt hopeful that discussions could be facilitated without anyone actually dying.

Ah, I was going to be the most brilliant teen mother ever.

I started writing a sort of manifesto for the teen years. I clicked away at the computer thinking to myself that I was doing the holy work of writing the instruction manual for parenting that I always wished I had.

Although my business interests have never evolved passed retail and at that, only on the paying side of the cash register, I had ultimately written my first business plan.

It read like a contract, with caveats and consequences included for clarity. It featured equations for various if/then scenarios and it clearly proved that my naiveté is boundless.

I actually believed that what I had written would be embraced – that is until I proudly emailed a trusted friend with the teen manual, which I intended to present to my son. She is tactful to a fault, so when she suggested that my glorious parenting plan would evoke a middle finger response I was stunned.

Really?

I reread my work. It was so beautiful. It had italics and bullet points and fancy words like parameters, privileges, outlined and occasionally.

I guess I could see where it was kind of bossy pants-ish, but it did include a smiley emoticon and an I love you.

I signed it not with the slang, Yo mama, but with the sincere, sweet, your mama that was so obviously me.

Later that night, with my two-page, single-spaced manifesto by my side I sat down and spoke with my son. Maybe it was because I was lulled by the soothing sound of the dishwasher that my tween ran without my mention, but I was uncannily calm. We talked about grades, basketball and ways he could earn extra money.

We didn’t hold hands, or hug or do anything that would invoke Norman Rockwell to paint us, but we talked. I didn’t boss or dictate either, yet I didn’t digress from making my expectations clear.

When we finished talking, he kissed me goodnight and there I sat – the manifesto, a mostly-read parenting book and myself.

I thought about ripping up my beautiful plan I had written about how the teen years would unfold in our home, but I didn’t have the energy to be so dramatic.   I simply folded it into a little square to put in the trash.

I guess what I realized is that maybe the reason children don’t come with instructions is because parenting isn’t meant to be precise. It might be insightful to read some books, or even to write your own plan about how you intend to parent, but often intentions and plans don’t really have much to do with raising children.

Like the rest of us, children are unique and, like it or not, have plans of their own. They will make their own path in the world and it’s our job to guide them as they do. It is a delicate balance between letting go and holding on. Sometimes it’s letting pieces fall where they may, and sometimes it means picking up the pieces and starting over again.

Maybe parenthood could best be described as prayer – a combination of something we hope for, ask of, praise, repent, and offer thanks. It is an active petition that is said every time we discipline, praise, share affection, or just sit and talk. The prayer does not end, like love, it endures time, tantrums and even teenagers. It is an offering of the best of ourselves so that someone we love can become the best of their selves. It is sacrifice, surrender, forgiveness, and humility.

Parenting may be described as more gut-wrenching than glorious, but it is no doubt the most Holy work we can do.

While my son may turn 13 on a day dubbed Black Friday, it’s no coincidence this falls the day after Thanksgiving. After all, he has been a blessing everyday of his life. He is a prayer and a gift.

Of course, I know the teen years won’t be easy, but I can’t help but feel excited about all that awaits.  The spectrum of joy, discovery and promise that lies ahead is sure to be anything but black.

 

Want more on parenting, you might like: http://larapatangan.com/2014/10/20/5-things-i-learn…ooler-about-life/

School Supplies: the 10th Circle of Hell

lpatangan

Hi all~ Today’s post originally appeared in some bygone year when I took my kids’ school supply shopping.  Now they are two towering 6-footers who only require supplies of money and food. Still, the message remains the same, summer is a sacred time in our family. The memories we make may not sound as idyllic as oodles of kittens and game nights but I’m just as grateful for them. I hope wherever you are in your journey you take a moment to remember your own summer memories and keep some of that ease with you in the days ahead. ~ love, Lara

Dante wrote about the nine circles of hell, but I discovered the 10th – school supplies shopping. I used to enjoy it. After all, the possibilities of a blank sheet of wide-ruled notebook paper are limitless. Still, there is a downside to the scavenger hunt to find plastic folders with prongs, binders by the inch, and a pencil bag for the 72 mechanical pencils on the list. Am I shopping for a small village or a 4th grader?

School supplies shopping means summer is over. Read more →