photo credit: Neal.

You fear falling and failing, messing up, crashing the ship.

It would be all your fault.

You need to step back. Release that responsibility, sister. You’re important, but you’re not that important. The world keeps turning. One mistake from you will not wreck it all.

Isn’t that a relief?

You feel like if you don’t know enough, do enough, get it done, figure it out, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up! then everything might tumble down around you.

Try it. See what happens.

You don’t have to hold it all together. Most things hold together on their own, at least for a while.

Let go a little.

This is your life and you’re learning to be who you are,
to be the best version of who you are, to quit hiding and go ahead and make mistakes, to try, keep trying, keep learning, keep going, and most of all,
to laugh about the stuff you used to cry about.
That’s a big change.
Good job.
That’s called growth.

Right now, maybe, this day was a bad one, and you feel discouraged.

What’s that? You yelled at the kids? You didn’t return a phone call?  Oh, you were a little snappy with the husband? Dinner isn’t delicious and nutritious? Oh, worse yet, dinner is (gasp) nonexistent and fast food will suffice?

Shock. Horror.

How could you?

Go ahead, sink into that. Don’t avoid it. Let yourself think through all the failures of the day, and then take a good look around.

Hmmm, world still turning.

Kids still breathing. Husband still loving. House still standing. After all you’ve done wrong!
Interesting.

The morning keeps coming around, even after the worst nights.

Sometimes we live a bad version of life, but even then, the miracle is still as real.

We are alive together.

We love each other and we know it and that’s a miracle. We mess up and hurt each other, and then we fix things and forgive each other, and that’s a miracle.

Whether you believe in God or not, you can’t be alive and not believe in miracles.

photo credit: 50 Watts (formerly A Journey Round My Skull)

You’re actually very strong.

Kind of obnoxiously strong, like those puffed-up body builders. Like Schwarzenegger in his glory days.
Big bulging muscles. Wow. (Don’t get any ideas about wearing a speedo, though.)

You’re capable, and you’re strong.

And so smart.
You doubt yourself, but you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t listen to that negativity.
You can accomplish anything if you will quit listening to those discouraging words and just keep going for it.

Reject your own fears; they don’t even make sense.

If you stick to it, you’ll reach your goals. It’s a struggle. I know, I know. I hear you. It would be easier to settle for something less ambitious. Heck, some days you do settle.

And on the days you don’t settle, you still feel like you’re not even close to hitting the mark.
But you are.

Much closer than you think.

See, I’ve been watching you.

I’m your friend (colleague/acquaintance/coworker/spouse/parent/child/neighbor) and I’m trying to figure you out.

I don’t know why you work at life so hard. I don’t know why you keep choosing to do what isn’t easy. I don’t quite understand what makes you tick, but I’m fascinated by it, so I keep watching.

And I see that you don’t see yourself very well.

You’re doing a great job, you just don’t know it.

You’re holding things together. You’re making progress. You’re growing. You’re learning to appreciate the moment.

You’re living out something deep.

I guess it has to do with your heart, with what you believe, with your ambitions, maybe? I’m not sure. You don’t really talk about yourself that much. You listen. You choose to give yourself. You look past the short-term stress. You handle the tension. You have made it through one crisis after another, and you stayed gracious in the midst of it.

The only thing missing is to realize that you are, actually, succeeding at life. I hope you’ll see that soon, and relax a little. I hope you’ll doubt yourself less. I hope you’ll enjoy the journey more. You may not think you’re strong, but you’ve got strength coming from somewhere.

And it’s amazing to watch.

photo credit: Lauren Manning

How do you live without fear? How do you choose to love generously, unselfishly, freely?

Fearlessly?

You start by asking a few introspective, rhetorical questions, apparently… (at least that’s what I’m doing)

• What do I fear? That people will see me – small, hopeful, eager, unsure – and reject me?

• That I will provide only disappointment?

• That my dreams are too big for my britches?

• That I won’t measure up to some immeasurable standard?

You can’t be motivated by fear.

You can be bullied by fear, but not encouraged. Fear only pushes you into corners, closets, tight, dark, “safe” spaces. Fear inhibits.

You can be intimidated by fear. Out of fear, you want to please (who?), provide the right image, live the right kind of life. You get so busy trying to please others that you lose yourself. Fear clouds the clear vision. Fear confuses.

When you’re full of fear:

you don’t know what is important. You’re confused. Priorities? Uh… Your days are hit or miss. You’re running, scrambling, doing but never feeling like you’ve done enough.

You’re treating adults like children and children like potentates. You have a bad case of control-freak-itis. You’re envious and resentful, everybody has it better than you.

You’re tired but refusing to ask for or accept help. You can’t relax. You want your way or nothing. You’re not submitting, resting, growing, learning, enjoying. Instead, you’re resisting, defending, grabbing, creeping, scurrying from one day to the next.

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many might, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God. 1 Cor. 1

Why are we so susceptible to Fear?

We’re always trying to stabilize the transient things, solidify and structuralize these fluid circumstances and gatherings and moments and keep them untouched, unchanged, endlessly repeating. All because of fear.

We fear change, the unseen, unknown, unfamiliar. What if? What if?

What if we really held onto God as our safety? We would be able to accept change and still be safe.

We want safety.

We want stability.
We sacrifice so much for that feeling of safety, which in the end is still only a feeling, a sensation, a myth because the things of this world are passing away – all of them – no matter how solid and strong and sound and structured and stable they are.

(Still, she thinks, I wouldn’t mind just to experience that feeling for a while, even if it is just a feeling….)

The feeling of safety lures us, like a drug.

We see change as a precipice, we get near the edge and panic. Oh fear, my companion! Oh anxiety attack, my next of kin!

Quick, scuttle backward to some presumed safety net (a closed door, a steady paycheck, a smaller life, all the ruts of familiarity).
Feet on ground. Head in sand. We do not dare jump over that edge. It wouldn’t be smart. It wouldn’t be stable. It wouldn’t be safe.

Would it?

You can’t risk it.

Can you?

Or do you pull yourself out of the fog, the negative what if, and choose to see God everywhere (He is) and choose to know that He is faithful (He is) and jump – LEAP of faith! – (crazy, yes!) – into thin air over the edge?

Will you fall?  If you fall, a God you know also knows you. If the God you know is everpresent and evergood, He will be waiting and He will be willing and there is no fear, no fall, only freedom.

And then the what ifs starting ringing in your ears again, just when you’ve almost convinced yourself to DO IT, JUMP! GO! RISK! LEAP!

We whisper this to a friend, a brother, a sister, a spouse, a parent, and well-meaning, well-wishing, all sweetness and good intentions they say, Yes, but….
“Yes, but…”

“Yes, BUT…”

With God there is YES. Not “Yes, but…”

All the what ifs end with Him.

What if I stopped worrying  and simply did my work and trusted God?

What if I lived and moved and had my being in God’s economy and simply opted out of the world’s mess?
What if He did care?
What if even my mistakes in His hands bcame tools and steps that moved me to good?
What if I felt no fear?
What if I knew I would succeed?
What if every voice spoke truth, encouragement, and all doubt and pessimism and negativity was banished?
What if we believed in a God who is bigger wiser kinder more generous, more loyal, more exciting, more involved than we ever gave Him credit for being?
What if we are more than conquereors, really, a chosen generation, warriors, tribe of God, overcomers, victorious stewards, kings and queens, children of the Most High God?

Woudn’t that be something.

photo credit: kzamani

Thank you for not asking me “if I know what causes that” when eyeballing my four young children while I paid a hideous amount of money for groceries for our little family.

Thank you for telling me that my daughter was beautiful, and for handing me my receipt without further comment.

Your silence on the matter was a victory of self-restraint. (Yes, I could read in your eyes what you were thinking.) But you didn’t say it. You didn’t force me into answering it with some trite, Hahaha comment that I didn’t really mean.

(I come up with great answers, by the way, when I’m back in the car, but never in the moment. So you saved me from that.)

You made my shopping experience much better.

Sincerely,

A Happy-but-irritated-by-instrusive-comments-from-strangers Mom.

1. There is no such thing as a short grocery list.

2. It will always take longer than I think to get out the door.

3. A simple yes or no works just as well as those overblown explanations I keep giving. Seriously, Annie? Quit talking.

4. When I am discouraged, depressed, unmotivated, and cranky, 9 times out of 10, it is because I need sleep. A 20-minute nap works wonders. A 2-hour nap is miraculous.

5. Speaking of naps, everyone who is not a parent undervalues the beauty and glory of sleep. But you can’t really convince them of that…

6. Every little thing I can do to make morning and bedtime and post-nap-grumpy-time and pre-dinnertime-witching-hour easier and simpler is a good idea.

A really good idea.

7. These kids are not deprived of anything, literally. Hello, richest country in the world. We live here. Our “poor” is still pretty darn good.

8. The day is hugely and disproportionately better when I get up before everybody else and get the day started calmly.

9. The day is hugely and disproportionately worse when I sleep until the last minute and get the day started in a grumpy funk of caffeine-deprived sleep haze.

10. I should have bought stock in a coffee company.

11. Schedules – realistic, flexible ones – help everybody.

12. Kids like routines.

13. Kids can live on an amazingly small amount of food.

14. If it can be spilled, it will be spilled. Put a lid on that freakin’ sippie cup. That’s why they have lids.

15. Any type of food, when eaten by a child in a car, will produce ten times its weight in crumbs.

16. I have to say no more than I get to say yes, but that’s okay. It’s simply a condition of our complex, overfilled world.

17. I will probably always be the Mom that the other Moms at the playground look at funny. That’s okay.

18. Comparisons to other Moms have absolutely no business influencing my life or standards. We’re all different, and that’s good.

19. If I can be one step ahead (of need, kids, deadlines), then everything works better.

20. I can never take too many photos. Or videos.

21. I should write down the funny things these kids say and do, because chances are I’ll forget by the end of the day if I don’t.

22. The days are long, but the years are short. Enjoy them.

photo credit: Camdiluv ♥ AmmyLynn

Above all, to be honest.

Above all, to __________. (Fill in the blank with yours. Mine is write.)

It is possible to learn something new, to reinvent, to break old and begin new, to be young and ready and earnest and eager no matter your age, to wake with a spring, with a jump, to run to each day and take it, seized, wring from it the drops of life eternal, ebullient, ethereal, endless.

We don’t have to settle.

Why then, oh why then, do we?

For in the dark, in the early morning, in the alone or in the fervor, possible is not a promise but a literal pain, a weight of obligation, a burden of our own inadequacy. Reality is tough, grim, cold, inviting us just roll over,

just roll over,

just a few more minutes,

just go back to sleep.

Fools. We drown ourselves in half-inch-deep puddles, flail, gasp, die. Done.

All the stories playing in my mind and what do I wait for? Why not stop for ten minutes and write a sketch, a scene, a plot, a word or paragraph or page, why not here a little and there a little, until little by little, line upon line, something builds, becomes more than the sum, exists, grows, is a work, is accomplished, rings, demands, takes a place of its own in the world?

Why wouldn’t I? Why wouldn’t you?

Why wouldn’t we create, do the work, focus, finish, do the thing we dream of doing?

Thoreau called it: Oh life, frittered away in details.

Diapers, dishes, duties done, sleep, and all this we have chosen. We love and embrace and accept the daily fixtures and needs of our life but not at the expense of, the nihilation of, something essential to self, something essential to who we are made to be.

That separate dream. That other desire. That longing that gnaws at the core, demands to be acknowledged. This, too, is part of me. This, too, is important.

No blame. No pointing fingers. No if-only list.

We must refuse to blame time or circumstance or other people for in laying blame, we give away the power to what we blame. Blame means responsibility. Responsibility means authority, power.

My life is my own responsibility, and if I do or do not it is because of what I choose or choose not.

I can get out of bed, I can write even if no one reads, I can write even when I am tired, I can write when it doesn’t make sense, I can write when I’m distracted, I can write for five minutes a day, I can focus, I can choose.

I can build my own life. I can set my house in order. I can make the time. I can push harder. I can let go of the details. I can release what isn’t mine to own. I can quit controlling everything and start controlling myself. I can make a rule, a goal, a priority, a routine, a ritual for what matters.  It is that important.

How?

Do.

For me, sit and write. For you… what?

Planning is too often a downfall. Action is the antidote to it all: procrastination, fear, doubt, confusion, hopelessness, lack, questions, uncertainty, self-incrimination, inadequacy, guilt, worry.

Act, act in the living present.

photo credit: angelocesare

I’ll just up and say it, because I hate those posts that build up a huuuuuge secret (to $1000 a month! to work-at-home secrets! to twice the productivity for half the effort! for perfect children! for great summer hair!) and then just let you down with something lame after you’ve made it through the whole-entire-not-really-worth-reading post.

The Big Secret to Getting Things Done as a Busy Mama

<drum roll>

People can wait.

People can wait without damage to their eternal well-being, developing psyches, or sense of relational importance.

Things can wait.

Things can wait without much damage at all to um, anything, including their non-eternal well-being.

The Right-Now Fallacy

Does Junior need his sippy cup right now? Does your best friend need you to return her call this very instant? Will the laundry disintegrate if it is not folded and put away immediately? (Regular scientific studies performed at my house say No, so you can breathe a sigh of relief on that one.)

The Right-Now Fallacy says

• if you don’t do it right now, it doesn’t count.
• if you don’t do it right now, the world will end.
• if you don’t do it right now, it means you don’t care.
• if you don’t do it right now, you’ll forget and never do it.

That little tyrannical monster looms big in our lives because we let it.

My husband will ask me to do something minor: return a call, schedule a get-together, sew on a button, pay a bill. And I think, for some reason, that I have to drop everything and do it right now. Which isn’t, as it turns out, what he means at all (most of the time).

My children will ask for a thousand hundred things in the course of a single moment, and they do mean right now.

Hold me, look at me, watch me, listen to me, help me, read to me, be with me, snuggle with me, get me a snack, get me a drink, get me some lunch, get me a treat, wash my hands, comb my hair, I need a ponytail, I need help with my shoes, I need to reach that toy on that high shelf that I will forget about approximately 20 seconds after you get it down for me, and so on.

Valid needs.

Who am I to discount the need to hold the tantalizing toy for 20 seconds? (Um, I”m the MOM, that’s who. But never mind. That’s not the point here.)

The point is, even very valid and real and important needs (snuggle! read! help! change diaper!) can wait for a little while without causing any major catastrophe. (IMPORTANT EXCEPTION: exploding diapers should be dealt with immediately or dire consequences will result. I am warning you, straight up, don’t wait around on those. IT GETS UGLY.)

The reason this is important…

(because I hear you, you’re probably all like Ummmmkay, how is this helping me to get things done?)

…well it’s like this.

Much of our frustration as busy mamas is due to the continual interrupting that is part of life with children (and, ahem, husband).

Now interruptions are not necessarily evil (that point could be argued), but the result is that we wander off to meet urgently expressed need without finishing or even wrapping up our current thing-in-progress, and by the end of the day we wander dazed through the house and see about fifteen dozen things-in-progress that we were never able to get back to doing all the way, and it is frustrating, disheartening, and overwhelming.

And we begin to resent those interruptions, and it is our own fault because, darn it ladies, we take them too seriously. And that is our own fault.

Try this and see how it effects your ability to get things done.

Next time you are interrupted, answer courteously with a “Yes, sure, I will be happy to take care of/help you with/draw twenty-seven blueredandpurplerainbows for/etc as soon as I finish this thing.”
Then: finish it.
THEN, and only then, go take care of the request-in-queue.

You already know the outcome, don’t you?

If you took the extra five or ten minutes to finish emptying the dishwasher, paying the bills, writing the article, playing the song on the piano, putting away the baby’s clothes, having the conversation with your sister, writing the note, mopping under the table, reading the chapter, editing the draft, or whatever it is, you wouldn’t have fifteen-leventy-dozen unfinished things at the end of the day.

And probably, nobody will be worse off for it.

Yes, of course there are exceptions. And yes, of course there is one valid danger that I admit to, the danger that you will completely and totally forget the request-in-queue while you are finishing the task at hand.
A real danger.
I have a solution for that, too, which I was going to write down as soon as I finished writing this… and, um, I forgot it…

Get back to you on that.