For You, And All The Ways You Love

Monday swoops in like a tantrumming toddler before I can gulp coffee fast enough. And those chores aren't going to do themselves and even the kids are trying to shake them off, ignoring the list on the fridge and thinking if we just pretend maybe they'll disappear.

Friday was a bad one and I worked through it over the weekend - how a family isn't unlike lined up dominoes, and once the Mama falls everyone behind her stumbles on down as well, taking out whoever comes next. I look at my lists and my expectations and my time management and wonder how we keep managing to get off track.

Spinning plates. That's what this life can feel like. Spinning plates on poles and dashing mad from one to the next to keep them all spinning. In this life of ours, there isn't one detail that doesn't have my thumbprint on it in one way or another. Not one job or problem that doesn't go through me at some point. This, I think, is important to remember. This is perhaps the key to "Mama-brain" and why I sometimes feel like it's all too much for my heart and head to hold.

So instead of doubt or guilt at not getting to all the things all the time, instead of paralyzing fear that we're getting this wrong - maybe it's time for a little refresher course on what exactly it is that we are, the Moms at the center of our families. This is for you, for me, for us.

For all the important things you keep in your head - where you last saw a wayward shoe, who hates lemon cake but loves chocolate, when the water bill is due, your father in law's favorite dinner, how your best friend takes her coffee and what size your preteen is wearing this week - that's love.

For all the important things you do - using your hand to shield their eyes from soap suds in the tub, untangling yarn in your discouraged daughter's knitting project, ignoring your arm falling asleep under the weight of a preschooler's head when he's cried himself to sleep in your arms, helping her in and out of a hundred different dress up options, reading the same book over and over again because that's the one he likes - that's love, too.

For every day that you're a mess by noon, convinced that you can't get anything right, can never finish a task or stay one step ahead of everything flying your way, for feeling like you spend your days churning your wheels and never really accomplishing anything, for the desperate prayers for more grace, more patience, more energy. That takes strength and courage to combat.

For the thousand tiny, invisible ways you serve that no one ever taught you, the actions sprung up like wildflowers that become the careworn rhythms of your life. For finding joy in the becoming less. For finding more of Him when faced with your own limitations.

For the constant pushing down of self, the tireless choosing of something better at the expense of previously held ideals. For the daring to call it good, holy even - the noise and the chaos and the mess and the mayhem.

For choosing the lens of love, and through it seeing the only hope left in this crazy world: the practice of being love from sunrise to sunset and all the moments in between.

Saluting you today, and all the ways you love. 


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