Take Care.

I recently recovered a picture from my not-so-distant past and posted it (click on picture to enlarge):

A friend of mine responded with this:

"So a dear friend of mine just found out she is having twins & she is freaking out!! If there is any words of encouragement or tips that helped you get though it....please pass it along! She already has one child (age 3)."

The truth is, the scene pictured above is now shrouded in fog. To answer the above question requires spending time sorting through my haphazardly arranged memory bank, where recollections lay scattered in no particular order. Goodness knows, I have no baby books to refer to. Even though five or six years isn't a "long time ago", the season of multiple babytoddlers was so intense that I ran out of it running after the five miniature main characters and haven't really had the chance to stop since.

As I layed in bed last night, unable to sleep for whatever reason (hello, cup of pick-me-up cup 'o coffee at 3pm!), I took some time to mill around and reconstruct my memories of that era. Seeing as though I recently enrolled myself for a parenting class, I do not see myself anything but a novice. Yet looking back, there are a two words which came to mind:

TAKE CARE

Take care of what, you ask?

*   Take care to SET BOUNDARIES: I borrowed Nancy Reagan's drug-fighting slogan "JUST SAY NO" as my mantra for that season in my fight against insanity. I evaluated every opportunity to get out of the house against the sheer amount of energy/patience/stress it would require to get there, manage the children there and then pack them up to head back home. For me, there were only a few situations in which I was willing to pay out what only I knew would be demanded from me...and with each passing month, saying "no thank you" became my ticket to continued sanity.  This included birthday parties (both hosting and hosted) and play dates, trips to the library and excursions to amusement parks or museums. In the book of Ecclesiastes, in the third chapter, it reads: "There is a time to keep your small children at home on a simple schedule and there is a time to explore more when they are older and less inclined to make you want a stiff drink when they are acting as though they belong in the wild animal display in the local Discovery Museum."...at least, I'm pretty sure I read that once.

I began to understand learn it should not be my concern what others thought of my decisions (I still struggle with this!). No matter how much they appeared to be able to handle, they weren't the ones running the particular household I was. This is not the season of life to participate in the "Who Can Post The Most Cool Things You Do With Your Children" contest! If you can do them unscathed, great! If you can't, great! Just be sure your boundaries aren't bigger than your ability to function as happy, sane person. We're all at different places with different family dynamics, all of which determine our boundaries.  Your children would rather have a regular routine overseen by a peaceful mama than a sophisticated schedule conducted by an uptight one. {Disclaimer: On the other side of this, make sure boundaries are in place so you CAN go out with just your husband, or just your closest girlfriends. Fill up the very small margins you have with quality, life-giving people who fill YOU in places with the least distraction}.

* Take care to BE PATIENT IN FRIENDSHIPS.  The season of early motherhood is not at all conducive to putting yourself in the running for "Friend of the Year". Take yourself out and while you're at it, make sure your good friends know they are off the hook too. You will cancel more than not, you will forget anniversaries and birthdays, you'll go for stretches where you don't even have the energy to answer the funny link she sent to you because you're just trying to do the next thing which is, namely, SURVIVING. There will be times you texted her and didn't hear back and find yourself obsessing over what you might have said wrong, when in reality, she's not responding because she's frantically swimming the waters of sanity herself. There are other seasons straight ahead where you will be more available to be the supportive, attentive friend you long to be and she deserves. She will be to you too. But for now, be sure there will be plenty of occasions for both of you when you need each other to err on the side of grace over offence.

*   Take care to REMEMBER THE IMPORTANCE OF "AND".  This is a season in which you will feel deep gratitude for a sweet smile in one moment and be repulsed by the grossness that is the stench seeping from your child's sagging diaper in the next. One day you will be desperately wanting a one-way ticket to Tahiti where you fantasize curling up in a ball in the corner of a thatched hut on stilts over the ocean and the next day you'll catch a sight of your tiny people actually playing together in a loving way and you will spill salty tears over the beautiful life you've been given. You will occasionally hear of tragedies and for all that day, you won't even think of complaining and you vow you've changed. As it tends to do, the next day comes and your dryer breaks, two children come down with the stomach bug, you get your period and your husband comes home late. You feel guilt for thinking "this is SO hard" when for someone else, it's so much harder.  We humans are imperfect, and therefore it is impossible for us to go through stretches of perfection of any great length. Life is beautiful and brutal. Joyful and heartbreaking. Marvelous and maddening. Sweet and sour. Rewarding and unfulfilled. Be aware that every day will have multiple moments where extremes are pitted against each other, and some days, it's just all hard. This is life on the side of Earth. Heaven is a different, and coming, story. Glory, hallelujah.


The most important thing to remember in whatever stage: there is no official guidebook to "Parenting". We are all novices and we are all in need of wisdom, grace, patience and every good and perfect gift that comes from above. Every day we get some things right and some things wrong. I know in the season I am in still walking on shaky legs, I lean heavy into God for all those humanly unattainable virtues and am pleasantly surprised when I catch myself reflecting Him. I also appreciate it when He brings along someone who has walked the road I am on and offers a little understanding and affirmation to keep moving forward, one imperfect step at a time.

Take Care, my friend!
J.