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.
The Friend in the Mirror
“Stop! Don’t go near the road!” I yell after my three-year-old who darts across the grassy area of the park toward the car-filled road. She doesn’t slow until she’s within inches of the asphalt, her Cheetah sneakers skidding to a stop. Then she turns and gives me the “see I listened” smirk.
“JJ!” she shrieks, “No! Stop!” as my two-year-old nephew follows her toward the street.
“You don’t go in the road,” she chides him as she grabs his wrist and drags him back to our picnic area.
***
“Get back from the water!” I shout at my almost five-year-old son. “Just throw the duck food from the grass!” Instead of stopping, he takes three more full speed steps toward the edge of the lake and my heart stutter steps as he shuffle-stops while hurling a handful of nuts and seeds (and miraculously not himself) into the murky water.
He turns and gives the same “whatcha gonna do about it” face as his sister.
Not even a minute later, he’s blocking my nephew from the edge.
“Mom said don’t go near the edge!” he barks in my nephew’s face. My son juts out his chin in an expression of self-righteousness I can only assume he learned directly from me.
“Do as I say, not as I do” starts young, y’all.
***
I am sure I dabble in hypocrisy of all stripes, but today I want to talk about grace. As an Enneagram One, I am quick to extend grace and kindness to my friends, but view that same grace as weakness in myself.
My husband gifted me a two-night solo staycation at a beach cottage in my favorite neighborhood last week for my birthday.
It was as dreamy as it sounds. I woke up to the sound of waves instead of squabbling children. I walked on the beach and scootered around the harbor and treated myself to my favorite restaurants and finished a book I’d been meaning to finish for months (maybe a year?).
The book: “The Lazy Genius Way” by Kendra Adachi. I highly recommend the whole book for life hacks with no pressure and echoes of grace. The chapter that stood out the most to me was titled, “Be kind to yourself.”
Yeah, right. I agree with this in principle but it’s a tall order, indeed. I (often) get told that I should talk to myself like I would talk to a friend (where my Enneagram Ones at?).
I understand, in theory, that I am harder on myself than I would ever be on anyone else. My inner critic is a LOUD and bossy B.
In her chapter, Kendra took the advice a step further. She encourages readers not to treat themselves like a friend, but to remember you are your own friend.
“The Lazy Genius Golden Rule says that you are your own friend.
You’re not a project.
You’re not something to be fixed and sculpted and assessed on a daily basis.
You’re a person of value as you are right now, and that person deserves your kindness because she is your friend.”
For some people, the distinction between “like a friend” and “you are a friend” may be unnecessary, but for me, the difference is critical.
When I try to treat myself like a friend, my inner critic doth protest. “But you know better...But you should have…But you could have...” too many big Buts.
It’s harder to argue with a truth. I am human; therefore, I am my own friend.
Now what does that look like in practice?
I don’t know about you, but I have trouble sitting in silence. The silence is where my inner critic's voice can roar. So I fill the silence with Insta-stories and scrolling and writing to do lists on Post-its and Podcasts and Polos. Anything to fill the space.
Not that any of these are inherently bad. Yet I don’t want to consume or connect as a means of avoidance. I want to be able to leave my phone in the other room. To sit in silence. To pray. To reflect. To just be.
Here’s where the friend metaphor comes in handy. How would I fill the silence with a friend?
I think of those moments during playdates, when the kids are busy scooping sand “ice cream” into leftover cardboard coffee cups or traversing up the slide with gripper shoes. We have a few moments of relative silence as my friend thinks through an answer to a question I just asked.
I think of those lulls in the conversation as a friend sips a cold brew or pinches sushi with chopsticks.
In the silence is kindness, anticipation, not ridicule or critiques. I am quick to
- Assume the best
- Delight in their presence
- Let them be human
What if I did this with myself? What if I could cultivate the comfortable silence of a close friendship?
The silence doesn’t need to be filled with “yeah, but did you think of X” or “what about those errands you still need to run?” Or “Eek, have you thought about those texts you never replied to or the state of your kids’ bathroom, (or bedroom or play area or or or)?”
If I am thinking about follow up questions for a friend, they would be more in the vein of “How did that make you feel?” or “How can I support you?” Most often, I’m thinking something like, “Wow, so-and-so is pretty awesome.”
What would it look like to fill the silence with kindness for myself?
Short answer: I don’t know yet. But I want to try.
Kendra recommends practicing daily acts of kindness. I went to a favorite local shop with hipstery cards and macrame and air plants in glass orbs and monochromatic artisan pots in the trendiest of colors: terracotta, almond, dusty pink. I found a pair of dainty earrings (thanks for the birthday money, Mom!) with five sparkling stones.
I can’t explain why I love them, but I just do. They will add a wholly unnecessary but happy sparkle to my days of school drop offs and lesson planning. I am hoping that when I catch a glimpse of their shine, I will be reminded that I am a friend. Fully worthy of love and delight and joy and grace in this moment. Not when I arrive at _____. Not when I complete my to do list. Not when I (finally) live up to my potential.
As I put on my earrings, I pray to Love:
Please create in me a clean heart, bring me rest, help me to release resentment and shame, make room for joy and wonder and surprise. Delight and whimsy.
Help me cultivate an openness to being still, to listen, to not fill the void or the anxiety or the anger with more stimulation to drown out the hurt or the questions or the Inner Critic. Help me to reach out to You, to seek Your presence instead of likes and instagram updates.
***
I look out over the lake as my kids and nephew scream “DUCKS!” scaring away the birds they hope to feed as they fling seeds into the water. My kids are slow to follow life-giving (and saving!) instructions yet quick to impart their wisdom on their younger cousins.
I am the bossy cousin, I know. I am learning to be a friend.
Simone and Swim Lessons
Self-care. Mental health. Setting limits. How do we know when to push through and when to stop? Which choice is braver? How do we decide?
Like many this week, I've been thinking a lot about these ideas.
As a former gymnast, I know both the mental toll and the danger of the sport (although I was never even close to Simone's level or even good at my low level). I know what it's like to form your self-worth and identity around your sport. I know what it's like to get in your head and be unable to perform skills I used to be able to do in my sleep. I experienced mental blocks on every event and my last couple years I competed watered down routines choreographed around the landmines of my fears.
I always thought I was a failure, and my gut response to Simone's withdrawal was that she was a failure as well.
I have spent the week examining my own misbeliefs about self-care and mental health, especially because I consider myself to be a mental health advocate. The last decade I have been learning to discern when my anxiety and depression is lying to me about my limitations and learning when to trust my body cues to rest, recharge, say no.
It’s even more complicated as a parent.
This week my kids started swim lessons. My four-year-old, who previously screamed every time he was splashed in the face, has surprised me with his tenacity and perseverance. With a clenched jaw and squinted eyes, he has let his swim instructor drop him into the pool. He has learned to VOLUNTARILY put his face in the water while humming Paw Patrol. The smile and pride on his face when he reaches the wall has filled my mama heart to bursting.
I was relieved, well actually, shocked, that the first lesson didn’t come with tears or resistance. I’ve been wondering how I as a parent should respond if it did. How do I know how much to push him to face his fears? How can I teach him to listen to his own intuition while forcing him to do something that scares the bejeezus out of him?
How do I balance the competing ideas I want him to learn: he can do hard things, but also to trust his intuition? How can I teach this when I haven’t learned it for myself?
I know this: I am delighted to see him trying, persevering, pushing through, but I would love him just as much if he didn't, if the breakthrough never came. And I’ve told him so, over and over.
And maybe that is what is so radical about Simone's decision (and was so initially grating to me). She modeled the hardest part of self-care, silencing the outside voices and listening to yourSELF, and being okay with the outcome.
Thank you, Simone, for showing that real strength is not in performing “no matter what,” but in choosing to believe your worth is not defined by any external outcome.
It’s a lesson I hope to learn and model as I continue this dance of boundaries and encouragement, prodding and unconditional love, with my kids--and with myself.