Captive

I cup my hands as water sloshes. Hold it there, steady, steady. Not a drop wasted, squandered, lost. 

Take every thought captive, the Bible says. Make it obedient to Christ.

What if your thoughts are a flood, a torrent, a deluge? What if capturing thoughts is like trying to hold a gallon of water between leaky palms?

“Here, hold this,” I thought God said. “Here are your thoughts: keep them, cherish them, do not waste them, purify, and sanctify them. Hold this for me, I’ll be back in a minute.”

I took Him literally. Scared to waste, to drop, to move, to fail. Account for every droplet. Every minute. Every action until they submit to obedience.

I press my fingers together, but the tighter I grip, the faster the water spills out. Plip plop, plip plop. Failure drips through my fingers, cramped and frozen.

I can’t find the leak. 

No, I am the leak.

I press harder and harder, but the dripping speeds.

Until a therapist asks a question. What if it’s not God? What if it’s an Obsession? A Compulsion? Disorder? What if you stopped trying to hold it all? What if I taught you how?

Could I do that? Just. Let go?

I am learning. Re-wiring. Releasing my hands.

I am not holding the water. I let it hold me. I am floating on my back. Sun kissing freckles on my face. Cool water lapping at my ears. I glide my fingers across the water’s surface, imagine the ripples bubbling out of my wake. 

My favorite name

Aidan Mariano: I call him Bub, Bubs, Bubba, Bubby, Bubbalicious, Bubsicle, My Boy, Snugga Bugga, Boo, Boo Boo, Stinker, Stinky Dink, hey you stop that! Let’s go let’s go do you have to go potty? Yes, you! Only sometimes, his given name, Aidan. One half of a palindrome. One half of my children. Aidan Mariano, Mariano after his great Uncle Nong. He shares the thick, straight lashes, deep brown eyes, and Filipino last name: no, not Padres like the baseball team, Prah like bra (yes, I said bra) and dez like Pez dispenser, if those even still exist. Aidan Mariano Prades. My you-made-me-a-mom boy. My Bub.

Nadia Merrill: I call her Sis, Sass, Sissaman, Squisherman, Sass Patrol, Sassapants, Saskatchewan. Also Stinky Dink and Bugga Boo. Bugga boozle, snoozle, schnoozle, can I get a schnitzel with noodle? Rarely, rarely, the mirror image of Aidan: Nadia. Never Nadia Merrill. Merrill, the middle name I hated because the Joshes and the Kevins of elementary school thought I said Merle, rhymes with Earl, a man's name. No, two syllables, Mare-ull like Streep, but not with the Y. Like Mrs. Merrill my third grade teacher. Merrill like my mother and grandmother and great-grandmother and I've lost count of how many before. The first born daughters. I passed on the Merrill: family pride won out over childhood shame. Nadia like Comaneci. Nadia means hope. The first name we chose before her brother was born. We named him Aidan with hopes a Nadia would follow. We might end up with a Nadio, we joked. We didn't. He got a sister, and I got my Sis.

I call them every name under the sun except the names we gave them. They cry whine whisper yell, “mama.” Just mama. 

And it’s my favorite name. 

***

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “A Name”.

Target Practice

I am re-reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. I am highlighting everything, copying down her wisdom as I rock in my reading nook. My head nods in time with my rocking. 

“The real problem of life is never a lack of time. The real problem of life--in my life--is the lack of thanksgiving.”

“Thanks makes now a sanctuary.”

“I will not desecrate this moment with ignorant hurry or sordid ingratitude.” 

Yes yes yes. 

I have no trouble giving thanks for the beauty I see. 

Scooter rides under a bright October sky. 
Snuggles in bed. 
A sticky-sweet Cinnabon delivery on a sick day. 
Ryan up with the kids, a cat curled at my feet and a book in my hands. 

Even--even!--a kitchen to tidy, wide, white counters to clean, toys to pick up, piles of socks and masks to wash, lunches to pack. Everything echoes of Provision, proof our sweet life. 

I resent the student emails asking for extensions. The online modules to prepare. The grading the grading the grading. 

I struggle to find gratitude for my tasks. The daily work of my current season as mom of two, part-time professor, full-time over-thinker. 

I resent the 6am alarm to start our morning routine: potty, breakfast, get dressed, shoes, hair, sunscreen, backpack, snack, water bottle, mask and out the door before 7:30. 

I resent the requests to play, “you da mama and I’m da baby,” to do another puzzle, watch another episode of Paw Patrol.

I resent the unending messes. Never feeling caught up. I resent a life humming with overwhelm, dread burning in my chest, simmering deep between my ribs. 

Anxiety gives way to ingratitude.

I have desecrated the moment--many moments--with “ignorant hurry and sordid ingratitude.” 

I know, I know. 

Yet there is hope: “Eucharisteo--thanksgiving--always precedes the miracle.” 

I try to give thanks first; let the feelings come later. 

For student emails: Thank you for the opportunity to connect with my students, to show compassion and care. 

For frantic morning routines: Thank you for the gift of in-person school. For Aidan’s joy, his new friends, all that he is learning. Thank you for the (many) opportunities to ask forgiveness and seek repair for my tone, my hurry, my pre-coffee rage.  

I try to reframe, but the feelings don’t come. I write down the words and they stare back at me, foreign. 

God is stirring something deeper in me. Why is it so hard to be grateful for these tasks, this work, this life? 

If I look deeper, I believe my current work is less-than. Less important than the work I’ve done in the past. Less important than the work I used to do with Plant With Purpose alleviating poverty. Less important than serving refugee students with San Diego Refugee tutoring. Less important than helping people become citizens with Jewish Family Service.

I believe my current mothering is less meaningful than our future plans to welcome foster children into our homes. 

I’m almost embarrassed to write it. I have devalued my work with international college students because they aren’t poor. I’ve discredited my own parenting journey because my kids were born into privilege and resources. They aren’t my “target audience.” Or is it that I don’t believe they are God’s target audience? 

I am still wrestling with the tenets of liberation theology and God’s “preferential option for the poor.” I believe God feels strongly that we protect and walk with poor, fight against injustice. But where does that leave me? And now, by default, where does that leave my students, my children?  

Is God so small that He can’t use everything? Does God waste anything? Any moment? Any experience? Are any people beyond His reach, outside His target? 

I think back to what I would say to a friend. I would validate her feelings, but also say that this belief is ridiculous, harmful. 

I cannot base my self-worth on my ability to serve the poor. Yes, God calls us to serve the poor. But I also know God calls us to find our identity and worth in one thing only: His love. 

I cannot fill this ache to do good with a foster child or a new job with a better “target audience.” This is a reckoning between me and God. 

I know the work is learning to love the people in front of me. Stewarding my current job, my current stage well. I have not been faithful in the small things which are actually the big things. 

How have I dared call this work meaningless? 

I am in the now and the not yet of my own life. I want to be more intentional in serving the poor, in expanding my circle, in building a longer table. My fear of being complacent has sowed discontent. If I become too grateful, too comfortable, I will become stuck, my faulty thinking reasons. I know the opposite is true:  gratefulness, joy, love, are what move us to sacrifice, to serve. 

I am being called to be faithful in the now while working toward the not yet. 

If I can’t surrender my own comfort for the sake of my children, my students, my husband..how do I expect to do that for “the poor”? 

If I can’t find gratitude for my current sphere of influence, how will this circle ever ripple out? 

I believe in Jesus the Emmanuel. The God-with-us. God, give me eyes to see your movement, where you’re already moving. Help me to give thanks for these opportunities to be your love, your compassion, your connection. Opportunities to bring wholeness. To sit with the broken hearted. To comfort. To rejoice. To enter in to the present moment and step out of myself. 

Help me to show up in my work and my mothering like it matters, like they matter. Because it does. Because they do. Because no one is outside your target audience.