Author: Brittany

Pain in the Neck

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I’m standing in the changing room looking like a preschool craft of marshmallows and toothpicks. Stiff around the joints and ensconced in a white fluffy robe that looks comfy enough to eat.

It all started Saturday morning when I made a less than risky turn in my bed and found my neck was ablaze with pain. It began near the top of my spine and shot down to my elbows so that I moved with the grace and flexibility of an uncooked spaghetti noodle. And I kept forgetting.

“Mom, can we-”
“Gah! Sorry, what were you saying?”

“Babe, look at this hilarious-”
“Uh! What. Just, what is it?”

Trying to relax on the porch with a cup of coffee and never finding a comfortable position, I decided to call for a massage. That, my friends, is how I became part S’more, in a locker room, at a spa.

As stiff as my neck, I slid on the sandals they handed me and waited in the common area. It was all dark ambiance and artificial waterfalls and weird teas.
“Can I get you something hot to drink? Our signature recipe is delicious.” said the receptionist.
Yes and please sear it against my hairline. “That’d be great, thank you.”

I held the white ceramic mug between both hands and likely looked ridiculous trying to sit back.

“Brittany?”
Help. Me. “Hi.”

She introduced herself and her oils while I tried to explain the mess going on in my muscles. You know that movie Weekend at Bernie’s? I want to walk out of here like the dead guy.

I let the wave sounds wash over me and the vanilla aromatherapy soothe. She pressed her elbows to my back and I wasn’t sure if I was going to laugh or cry or pee myself. It was gloriously painful. And I was grateful she couldn’t see my face cringe.

Now weekend has weaved into the week, my desperate message to the chiropractor has been returned, and I’ve learned it’s likely a nasty virus I’m fighting. I’m still brittle around the edges and certain moves require a tenacious patience. But the big takeaway here is I will never, ever again, ever take for granted being able to look both ways at a crosswalk or down while I shave my underarms. Like, ever.

White Oak Camp

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There were nights as a kid when camp felt more like home than anywhere I’d ever been. In contrast my cousin would have to call his parents to come get him before the best of the fun started. I could never wrap my mind around why. Camp, with it’s mosquitoes and spiders, it’s silent dark nights, it’s lunchtime round-robin ballads. And we got to leave our parents. I guess all that was too much for him whereas I, thought it was magical.

We’d spend mornings in memorization, graduating to the next station whenever we’d recited our phrases perfectly. To this day I recall the words etched into my heart as I sat at picnic tables etched with Amanda+Sarah=BFF BFFF. (They probably even had the heart necklace that split like a lightening bolt down the middle and became whole only when each half was together. Yay 90’s.)

Down the line we would grab our trays in the Mess Hall, my friends giddy with anticipation that it might be the day they get three letters and have to tell a joke or sing a song. I dreaded the ritual. I just wanted to eat my mashed potatoes in peace, thank you very much.

After lunch we cleaned. I mostly remember the cement shower house where Jolene taught me to shave my toes. I thought, hairless. Yes, this is a good idea. (?) And so I tried the feel of a razor over my feet. But the Pine-Sol, the gloriously woodsy smell as we mopped the floors and gossiped about tightly folded notes from boys we liked.
“I’m going to try to find him at campfire.”
“Eee!”

Oh campfire, the warmth glowing on our faces while guitar strums bounced off the trees back to us. The hope that my sleeve would brush his sleeve, that my hands weren’t too sweaty or my breath too gross as I sang. The hope that I wasn’t off-key (treacherous). That he would have to, just have to ask me to sit by him in chapel for the rest of the week, or quite possibly, for as long as we both shall live.

The last night was always an epic duel of Capture the Flag. Two teams, two flags, one winner. We’d scramble between lightning bugs and army crawl over hills. We’d get caught, then escape, or maybe not if it was him.
I won once, you know. Finally, I can publicly announce my true identity as Capture the Flag victor. Whew, I’ve been holding that in for a while.

And the bunks, where light would ease over our bed posts, where we’d giggle for hours from sickly intoxication of Kit Kats and Mountain Dew (I tended to overdo it because it wasn’t allowed at home.) Where we’d hear our cabin mom’s voice, “Girls. Quiet Down.”

It’s the voice I used last week when my daughter was no longer my daughter but a cluster of heightened pitches that rose and fell with each inside joke. She and her sleepover friend couldn’t breathe through all the hilarity. On it went, even as I turned out my light for bed.

It’s the stuff of childhood. The memories that feel like home. And I’m so glad she has that friend.

 

Why My Daughter Got a Bob Cut

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It was the stack of mail- envelopes, flyers, dreadfully artificial campaign poses for the upcoming election- that made me relax. Because it looked exactly like the three piles I’d stuffed into the corners of my kitchen. I sort of wanted to shout in exuberance, “Your children run around in their underwear with Easter baskets on their heads while they’re supposed to be brushing their teeth and putting on their shoes for school, and this is why you don’t have time to scrub the grease out of your hair let alone open mail or pff, sort it into manila folders for proper bill paying…too?” But if I’d said it out loud she might have taken that horribly uncomfortable look of confusion which says, no, that’s just you. I couldn’t risk such vulnerability.

The three friends ran to us seconds later with princess dresses that needed zipping. “Can you help me?” they asked.
“Yes. I sure can.”
With giggles in their palms they scurried upstairs.

We chatted about the utterly exhausting nature of a motherhood while I watched her slice apples in a way that made me want one simply for the beauty of it. “Girls!” she yelled. “Come wash up for lunch.”
Hands behind my back, I scanned their pictures like I was putting together a puzzle. Sunshine and smiles, outings and events, the stages of their history as family. “Girls!,” she said again and turned to me. “What are they doing?”
I wasn’t concerned. I mean, three ladies of royalty were likely just having their pre-lunch tea. Right?

“I’m going to put this little one down for nap and tell them to head to the kitchen.”
“OK, sounds good,” I said and took a piece of cheese when she was out of sight. I pondered the flow of her hair, how thick and perfectly brown it looked. Perhaps I should stop searing mine into submission every day.

“What are you doing?!” she screamed.
With bite marks on the edges, I put the cheese on the counter like a guilty puppy. I was about to remind her she had invited us for lunch when I realized she wasn’t talking to me.
“How…why, did you think this was OK!”
Ahh, I thought. Another mom who loses her cool once in a while. Yes. Friends we are to be.
“What were you thinking?!”
OK, this is becoming a bit extreme. How bad could it be? Nail polish on the carpet? Paint on the bedspread? Laundry hanging from the ceiling fan? The girls hanging from the ceiling fan? Maybe she’s not used to having playdates.

I climbed the stairs, Monterey Jack still in the corners of my mouth, and said her name in sweet softness I hoped would mediate the tension. “Is everything all right? Can I help with something?”

She opened the second of her French doors. “No, everything is NOT all right! Look at them,” she said in a panic I wasn’t expecting. I started scanning them for missing limbs, blood spurting in the length of feet, lipstick gone wild across cheeks. There it was, two little tails of hair hanging where the rest of my daughter’s curls used to land. I sucked in air the way I do when I think my husband is about to get into a head-on collision. The gasp he hates. “Oh…honey,” I said touching her head. “What happened?”
“She cut our hair.”
Her other friend kept a finger to her lips like she was going to lose it, so I scooted her into an embrace and tried to give her the freedom it looked like she needed. “You can cry if you want.”
“I don’t want my hair short.”
“I’m sorry, Sweetheart.”

My friend sank to the floor in defeat. “What do you even do in this situation? I cannot believe this. Look, I’m shaking,” she said, fingers covering her eyes. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “It’s hair. A real problem is a cut-off ear, someone touching private parts that are too young to be touched. This, will grow back.”

The girls remained silent, except for her daughter who was on repeat saying, “I’m really sorry, Mommy.”

We tried to distract ourselves with lunch and after all that, God knows, we were hungry.

“I just, you guys are so put together, I’m…” she said of the other mother and I.
Hold it right there. “That’s a lie. No one is ‘put together.’ I got a call from the school last year because my son was dared to cut off another girls bangs. And he did it.” Good one. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?
“Yeah, but-”
“Listen, this is going to be the BEST story. You will probably tell it for years and even laugh about it.”
“Can I just say thank you for being you? You’re being so great about this.”
Um, you don’t need my permission for that. “Oh. You got it.”
“Want to see the bathroom floor?” she said with a smile.

We gasped together that time, marveling at how much was strung along the tile, and took pictures because, well, it was unbelievable.

“I guess we should make hair appointments,” she said.
And it’s like she’d turned to me in the deepest pit of parenting, put an arm around my shoulder and asked, “You too?”
“Yep, me too.”

At the Crossroads of Mistakes and Apologies

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Behind all those placid expressions, her eyes betray me to the truth. They are puffy in their corners, bloodshot, and spent. Each vessel webs together like a memoir of our war before dinner. How she snapped a blanket at her brother, stomped the hardwood before me, and eventually collided with her own humanity by crying on her bed. Well, wailing the injustices of the world.

“Come sit by me,” I say gently across the table. Spelling homework, her nemesis, a struggle so overwhelming that at times I see the way she gives up trying, is splayed in front of her. She moves without a fight in an outfit I am surprised to like. This alone tells me she’s growing older. It wasn’t so long ago I was explaining the crime of her tube socks and capris, while now I find that I say, “I really like what you put together this morning,” as she walks a little peppier.

It’s as if I see her for the first time in years. But when I look, I see failure. In me.

My oldest daughter, the one who made me a mother, half-child and half-grown, the girl I’ve let down. Maybe because sometimes parenting is a struggle so overwhelming that at times I see the way I give up trying.

I pull her into me and wrap my arms until she relaxes. “My girl,” I say, turning her shoulders square to mine. “I forget. You somehow get the most expectations, the most responsibility, I guess because you were here first. I forget  you are still my girl.”

Her mouth turns slightly, a smile that hesitates from the lessons of pain cautiously recalling that some things may be too good to be true. I have taught her that her innocent longings might be met with angry, worn out replies like, “Can you please, just, pick up!” That her need for security, her most basic questions of acceptance and worthiness of love could be answered by tense bursts of, “How many times have I told you to brush. Your. TEETH…return your library book…bring your homework?”
That mistakes are an opportunity for me to be exasperated instead of the part of life that teaches us.

She nods at what I’m saying and then a nervous giggle escapes through those adult teeth who are waiting to fit her mouth. My knuckles relax onto my temple and I settle into not hurrying anything. She writes with 4th grade sloppiness I find beautiful just because it’s hers.

We sit in the shadow of our conflicts, meeting at the intersection of mistakes and apologies, and I think that maybe this is the gift I have to offer. My parenting at its best, only when I’ve been at my worst. That like Spelling homework, life is full of disappointment as much as joy and promises pain as much as reward but also, failure as a way to something rich and real.

Children, What Say Ye?

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“Mom, um…um…what did I wear when I was a ballerina?”
“Oh this?” I ask, holding up what I think sparked this conversation.
“Uh huh.”
“A leotard.”
“What? A lenar?”
“Le-o-tar-D.”
“…I do NOT know what you just said.”  –my spunky 4 year old girl

“Say you could do anything you wanted today. Go-”
“Stay home.”
“-anywhere and it wouldn’t matter-”
“Home.”
“-how much things cost.”
“Play games on the Wii.”
“Really? Not Disney World or some wild adventure like hiking the tallest mountain in U.S.?”
“Actually, playing Wii all day with Tyler.”   –my introverted 7 year old boy

“I feel like a slave,” she says looking at the mound of crisp, flowery-smelling, perfectly folded clothes she must organize.
“Well, how should I feel then?” I smirk because I’m giving her the reality check of a lifetime.
“Like the King of slaves.”
Until she says that.   –my sassy 9 year old girl

 

Roll up them sleeves, Women

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5521102662_0f81745fca_oThe car moved with the highway, and I along with the car. My thoughts trailed like the curves and turns.

“Where’d you go?” Chase asked.
“Oh, I was just thinking about that woman’s boots. How they’re cute but not something I’d buy.”

My guess is this is when he started to second-guess his question.

“And I was thinking about how we passed each other a lot last year but she never talked to me. You know, when I was depressed and a good day was when I was wearing actual clothes instead of something suitable for crawling back to bed. She talked to me this morning. I wonder if it’s because I’m, well, more put together.”  Seemingly, anyway.

“Women are so good at relationships,” he says. “But there are times, when I’m around a lot of them, it’s also kind of scary.”

To be honest, I can feel the same. And why? It’s a question that plagues my journal. Here’s some of what I’ve wondered.

First, there’s immense pressure in our culture to possess several personalities. We must be Rosie the Riveter when taking care of our homes, flexing our biceps and waging war on dust and clutter.

We’re supposed to mimic June Cleaver for field trips, clad with gluten-free, soy-free, nut-free, good-for-you cookies and an adventurous yet sweet disposition, even while on the bus ride home. Five boys to one chaperone? Not. Happening.

When meeting the girls for dinner we have to be Carrie Bradshaw, steady in our high heals and up-to-date in fashion that looks effortless. Pa-lease. 

When our kids get home from school we are supposed to turn into Mary Poppins, complete with a British accent, powers for tea parties on the ceiling, and a song for practically any circumstance. Now that, would be cool.

By day’s end, we are to greet our husbands as they walk in the door like Kate Upton in an apron. He wishes. (eye roll)

All this to be pulled off without a drop of perspiration or frazzled behavior. Tough enough, smart enough, gentle enough, sexy enough without ever looking like we try. That’s a lot to carry, if you ask me.

Second, we mothers can be ruthless, making every method of parenting or choice for food an opportunity to cast a raised eyebrow.

We are afraid to vaccinate. We are afraid not to.
We are afraid of germs. We are afraid of chemicals, pesticides, and toxins.
We are afraid of public education, private education, the perfect charter school. We are afraid of homeschooling.
Essentially we are just afraid.
We stand in pick-up lines with moms who wear yoga pants. With moms who wear yoga pants and actually work out. I think it’s obvious how I know there are two categories.
Spanking or timeout or both?
Career or stay at home or both?

I think we are hard on each other because we are hard on ourselves. If we fail or think we aren’t meeting the bar of what we see, we feel shame. And since we all walk around like we just woke up with these black eyelashes, rosy cheeks, de-crusted watercress chicken salad sandwiches in our children’s lunchboxes, and marathon legs, that doesn’t take long. Funny thing is we are trying to keep up with each other so we feel like we’re good. Like we belong somewhere in this rat race of outrageous expectations. Like there’s someone out there who will say, “Me too.”
The truth is we have to make a lot of difficult decisions. Little lives have been put in our care and that is both exhilarating and terrifying.

What if we dropped our shoulders with unhinged vulnerability and just said, Yeah, these boots are adorably trendy but my socks have spit-up on them…from, yesterday?
If we knew that other moms let their kids O.D. on Pepsi and cotton candy once in a while, show up to volunteer in the kindergarten class on the wrong day. That some school years are rough and leave us unsure what it means for the future. That no mother, and I mean no mother has completely escaped the scars of pregnancy and birth. In the least we all threw up or had to use Tucks medicate wipes. Yes you did.
How the calendar has sex scheduled. AND a reminder. (Not that I personally know anyone who does that, of course.)

My youngest has been running a fever for the last two days. I’ve held her too-hot body, rubbed my fingers across her clammy forehead, and skipped sleeping. This is when I realize we parents want the same things, to teach well and love ferociously. Illness knows not suits or jammies. Coughs don’t distinguish between uniform vests and regular t-shirts, or yoga pants for shopping and yoga pants for yoga. Our sons and daughters don’t care if their muffin is made with cage-free eggs. They just want to know when they call our name in the middle of the night, we’ll raise the puke bowl and say, I’m here.

Roll up your sleeves and put on your polka dot bandanas, women. We’re in this together. And who we are is enough.

photo courtesy of http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=535413, Flickr

Daring Greatly by Brene Brown

Beuford the Skeleton

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They come off the bus like bouncy balls on stairs and I greet them with a smile that cannot contain the love I feel.

“Hey guys. How was school?”
“Amazing!” my daughter says. “We started our project on Ionic and Covalent Bonds and oh, Mom, it was so easy.”
“Whoa. Good, Sweetie.” I turn my attention to my son by wrapping my palm around the back of his neck. “How about you, Bud?”
“Recess was awesome! We played football in the open field and I threw the ball like, 25 yards or something and we scored right before the bell.” My eyebrows raise in awe. “The guys were freaking out and lifted me on their shoulders. They carried me all the way to the classroom, can you believe it?”
“That’s great!”

Reaching the house we all notice who is now up from nap. Behind folds of her blankie she runs to give them hugs. “I missed you,” she tells them.

“Okie dokie, let’s get your backpacks put away and have a snack. Do you want chocolate cake with Ganache frosting and a raspberry center or triple fudge mint ice cream? Because I made both today.”
“Mmm, Mom did you clean? The house looks fantastic.”

By now I hope you’re as annoyed with this story as me. Because it’s a load of bull.

I sit down to Pinterest or a Family Fun Magazine spread and this is the kind of scene I’m presented. Pictures of laughter and camaraderie. As though my kids will cheerfully, compliantly do the crafts I’ve so thoughtfully planned and paid for, sing songs about love, use their manners to pass the glue, and ask for extra hummus and carrot juice, if I will just follow these 27 1/2 simple rules of parenting.

Somehow in the distance between the accordion doors of the bus and our front porch, hell breaks loose in place of hand-holding skips.

They hit the pavement like trash bags. “The new driver is SO slow I want to tear out my eyeballs.”
So do I at your attitude. “I noticed you’ve gotten here a little late the last few days. How was school today?”
“Good.”
“Yeah? Why was it good?”
“I don’t know.”
How utterly thorough. “Well, what did you do?”
“Nothing really. Mom, can I play Wii?”
“No.”
“But why? I didn’t get to play at all yesterday and you said.”
“I said nothing. There was never such a conversation as this in the last 24 hours. I’ve seen your face all of a couple sec-” We hold our breath because somehow we just know we must. “Who, what…is that your sister?”
“That’s definitely her.” He says it without the urgency I think a statement in this situation deserves. Dare I say, he thinks it’s funny.

We reach her hysteria and I feel in my bones all the cracked blinds of neighbor’s windows. But since she’s my third child I’m not too concerned and figure they can thank me later for not leaving her in the yard to work it out on her own.
“You, lef, me, I, din’t, know, whe, you, were,” she says through hiccups. Well, Little One, if I can hear you through the house walls I think I’m close enough.

Scooping her, I smell the trash I won’t remember to take to the curb until I scramble in pajamas the next morning hoping beyond hope the garbage men will take a little longer at the next door.

Through the house is a swamp of backpacks, strewn shoes, papers about after school clubs and fundraisers.
“Excuse me, am I the only one living here? Pick up your stuff, please.” Actually, let me be honest. I didn’t say please. And I growled the other words.

There is fighting, sneering over snacks they claim to have forever hated, and despising of homework (and they don’t really like it either). There’s second grade football that is cancelled after we risk our lives in rain and lightening on the field. There is more fighting on the way home, not from the kids. There’s yelling to get ready for bed.

We’re so far from a Pinterest square that I’m ready to shove my computer somewhere a lady should never speak of. So I won’t.

Then I get an idea.

“Brush your teeth, grab a pillow and meet me back on the bed.”
“What are we doing?” they say suddenly interested.
“You’ll see.”

My youngest can’t keep still, my oldest is trying to wedge her skinny butt in the best seat, and if I don’t hurry we will have gained nothing.

“We’re going to build a story together. You get one sentence and then it’s the next person’s turn. You start,” I say to my son.

“Once upon a time there was a skeleton,” he says with a machine gun giggle.
“He loved eyeballs so much he wanted some.”
“Um, I um, I don’t know what to, umm. He had some eyeballs!” More laughter.
“His name was Beuford and one day he saw a beautiful girl skeleton named Susan.”
“He fell in love with Susan and grew a heart.”
“Oooo. Tee hee.”
“The end,” he says. And we all crack up.

Beuford, the skeleton who will never have craft instructions or make children content, but who one night made a family, a family again on a queen-sized bed.

 

Grass on the Heals

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Breathing echoes like a heartbeat in my ears. It is mine. And it is deafening.
Grass, cool and clumped from the mower, is sticking to my heals. I look right, left, my blinking as dramatic as a secret. The drum of my pulse beats heavy when I see my opponents, but deep inside I hear the driving build of Eminem’s Lose Yourself, and I do.

“Hut,” I say with a pause. “Hibbity-hut. Hike!”

Suddenly the only music I hear is “The Circus Song”. My hands release the football to my oldest daughter. It bounces off her fingers and boinks her nose while our third teammate is doing running somersaults and headstands. This, I do not think, is the best plan of attack, nor anything we discussed in our huddle. Alas, I charge at Chase with bear-hug aggression. He is quick, faster than me in his distracting neon shirt but I stay focused. However, I am too late. It is finished. And in our bloody fight we have lost the play.

“The plan was that I would kiss you,” I tell him.

“Oh I thought, Wow she’s really upping her defense and getting in my face.”
He bobs his head the way that’s made me laugh for 14 years. Still out of breath, I bend with laughter.

Our son is recapping every move, his oversized Manning jersey hanging loose around his arms while his words whistle through the gap in his teeth. “I was like, rauogh!” He twists with a funny face so his sister will laugh. She’s too busy twirling.

“One more and then it’s bath time,” I say.
“Noooo!” They howl not because we are almost going inside, but because they hate to smell good. Apparently.

The sky grabs me, its pinks and oranges mimicking all the beauty I feel in this fenced yard. Overwhelming. Alive. Fulfilled. Fiercely in love.

The girls are ready. I have them both agree to take a break from cartwheels long enough to beat the boys. I hush my voice to block out the enemy.

“All right, I’ll pass it to you and then you hand it to her. Help me guard them.”
They nod, smiling at my seriousness. I pretend they are really in it with me, that we flex our girly muscles and shout, Break!

“Hut. Hibbity-hut. Hike!”

I toss. She hands it off. Little one has the ball and is making a run for it. My best efforts to man-handle my husband are seemingly working now that he knows he might get a smooch out of all this chaos. Wait, there’s…there’s crying. Who’s crying?

“Ohh, sweetheart,” he says. Not to me. He rushes to her as she wails.
“What happened?” I ask.
“He tagged her but kinda pushed.”
“I see. Not ready for football?”

I scoop her into giggles. “Baths!”
“Uuuuugh.”

Oh yes. If not for you then for me.

We gather sandals rubbed thin from long days and dusty camping trips. Put away camo and Tinker Bell chairs alike. Our garage door descends with the sun and I hear squeals upstairs.

“Start the water!” I yell. As in, quit racing around naked.

It’s when I start stacking clean plates, drips sneaking to my wrists from the dishwasher, that I say, “This was the best night of my summer.”
“Mine too.”

 

Pink Bows Under Dirty Chins

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“If I have to do one more thing by myself up there I’m going to turn into a really ugly parent,” I tell him in a voice that is not mine.
“What are you doing?”
“Everything.”
“Then don’t do it.”
“They won’t let me not do it.”

“Mom,” says a monster from upstairs. It is innocently sweet but enters my ears like a constant, sour dripping.

“Just stay down here, I’ll take care of them,” he says. “Kids, if you need anything, ask Dad.”

“Mom,” the little one says again. 

In my haste to relax, Pinterest is checked, I deflect every request, they writhe on the floor because they must, and I have the school bells all but timed to the millisecond. One. More. Day. 

Finally as my mom-joints ache with the last goodnight and I grab my pile of books that promise to calm, images far more real than uncomfortable disturb me. I don’t want to see them, yet what am I saying if I turn away? 

A pink bow under her dirty chin wasn’t enough to erase the atrocity of the gun barrel lying just beside her lips. Her head was tilted back in submission and so I wonder if her terrified mother reached instinctively in that moment to keep her neck supported, the way we moms do a hundred times a day when they are new. Do the memories come, of the wobbly sway of her daughter just born, those momentous steps when she learned to walk, how she mimicked a clap? Do the memories come only to end in this, a horrendous execution?

Boys, gathered together like they’re taking a midday nap, dust in the creases of their clothes- only they will never get up. Women, stripped, shamed, and God knows what else before they are bled out as an example to all who will be forced to choose. A father, holding his daughter up under the arms when she has no face.

I yelled at my children today. I texted to a friend: “I’m burned out from the craziness of summer. School starts this week…yippie!” There were minutes I didn’t want to be a mom, and my kids probably wished the same. How can every store be out of protractors, I say in a huff. A doctor’s signature here, breaking up sibling rivalry there, and then it all climaxes to, “You- on that bed, You- over there, and You- had better not say another nasty thing.”

While on the other side of the world a man would do anything to hear one more sassy remark from his child.

I pull myself out of the media hype for a minute, float above the frenzy like I’m in a good dream. This isn’t new. The cruelty of humankind has been happening for centuries. Brothers murdering, women being sacrificed, Jews hated, black men ostracized, babies dismembered and labeled “a choice.” I feel myself getting caught between overwhelming outrage, and complacency over a political issue that has taken out every scrap of the value of life and sectioned it into two parties. I cry out, “God, what are you doing? How can this be?”

Guilt seems useless. Sadness overwhelms. Anger accompanies helplessness. And then it comes to me.

A bedtime story, or two, wrapped in feet that run sidewalks ragged. Extra hugs and lots of wonderings. Their smell of sun and sweat and naiveté. Forgotten piles of dishes, ignored clutter in the hall and a “yes” to what’s in front of me. I open to what’s good, what’s here, what’s difficult that now seems to pale in the glow of foreign bloodshed. More “I love you’s” and longer lingering. Kneeling without names but only faces in a swell of compassion. A plea, a petition to the One who can save us all even as I struggle to understand the story He’s writing.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. 

Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”  -Martin Luther King Jr.   

   Am I still burned out? Yeah. I get to be burned out. (Kids, feel free to still make all requests known to your father. P.S. I will forever and fiercely love you.)

When Screams Cease

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I was scrunched into that position I find when I can no longer keep my lids open. When I’ve read enough words and my muscles jerk belligerently at me that it’s time to just call it a night already. 
That’s when I heard the shredding screams from somewhere close. The street maybe, or a neighbor’s house. Neither Chase nor I could be sure. Over and over, a small someone’s voice pierced through our window screens and I thought, Even if I have to use these pillows as nunchucks, I will defend this child.  

But then came other young voices, ones like siblings fighting or sleepover friends annoyed that they invited the one kid who can’t keep it down. “Stop it!” 
Without filter I started speaking octaves lower than my normal voice. “Punk kids. It’s 12:45 a.m., where in heaven’s name are their parents? I’m going to karate chop their twerpy little heads.”

I sank back into my spot with clenched teeth, my own internal screaming of the last few days beginning again. The thoughts seemed to come faster in the suddenly hushed darkness of our bedroom.

God, you don’t make sense right now. I am weary of this story and frankly, I don’t want to do it anymore because, well, I don’t know if I can. It’s all just so…hard.

Grooves in the plastic guard on my lower molars grew deeper as I wrestled with my list of injustices. Shut up, you wind. Still yourself, rattling door. Eventually, I fell asleep grateful for the escape.

Now in the brightness of 7 a.m., with the fog of my daughter’s morning breath clouding me, I am frantic for coffee. Sugar hits ceramic, half and half makes all things creamy, and I know where I will go when cartoons and cereal bowls ease demands.

I go to the front porch where the breeze muffles fake laughter on the screen and real laughter from my three. Where I can imagine His knuckle under my chin so that my only choice is to hold my head a little higher into the safety of His face. Where my temper tantrum calms and all the pain I’ve ever known shows up in His own eyes. I heal as He gently asks,

“Have you ever in your life commanded the morning,
And caused the dawn to know its place,
that it might take hold of the end of the earth…?”

Have you entered into the springs of the sea
Or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
Or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
Have you understood the expanse of the earth?”   -Job 38:12-13a; 16-17

It is with the man covered in sores and constant pain, whose voice echoes in the voids of lost children and empty bank accounts, that I declare a repentance deep enough to find a well of trust.
If the I AM of the galaxies can tell waves as they reach for beaches,

“Thus far you shall come, but no farther;”  -Job 38:11

put His Own in front of betrayal and loneliness and unparalleled suffering so I don’t have to, and promise to never leave me, then all right. I can do another day.

“And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes;
and there will no longer be any death;
there will no longer be any mourning, or crying or pain…”  -Revelation 21:4

And our screaming will cease.