Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 303
May 11, 2012
Why We Honor You This Mother’s Day: Because You Really Mother Thousands
Because there’s something about the sound of opening up a bag of seeds in spring.
Something about holding a promise right there in the palm of your hand.
And the Farmer’s whole tilled field, she’s laid right open, expectant and waiting.
The Farmer’s got his Wranglers on and he’s got his hands into those seeds all like pearls and the man’s dirt etched and pretty happy.
He’s got these 50 pound bags of seeds sitting there open on the tailgate of his pickup, ready.
The whole truck sagging under the pregnant hope of these seeds, millions of near-weightless seeds.
He bends down to check the dirt he’s already planted. The Farmer’s kneeled like a prayer and he scrapes back the surface and he searches.
“Found one.” The wind carries his voice to us sitting in the ditch’s grass.
“We’ve got the right depth, the spacing. Looks good!”
Those hands of his, they wear dirt like plain honesty and he carefully folds that found seed back into the earth.
He’s planting 29 thousand seeds into every acre of this waiting earth.
And it all just looks like barren dirt out here.
My Dad planted this same field full of seeds when I was a little girl and I went out to the field and stood on this same dirt and believed the impossible of the impossibly small. One generation can yield promise from pain. And it’s the gritty and the grimy that can hide real yield.
I reach down and touch Shalom’s silken hair.
And I think of Abraham and Levi and seeds and all that I am planting that I don’t even see:
“For although Levi wasn’t born yet,
the seed from which he came was in Abraham’s body…” ~ Hebrews 7:10 (NLT)
Shalom looks up at me grinning. I look down into her —
For although there are generations not born yet, the seeds from which they’ll come are in the body of the child right here.
The wind blows and no child is just one child.
Every child carries generations of children inside.
Every child is like nestled dolls, all these generations nestled within — and mothering is a holy trust of whole entire eras.
Every day, every mother, she mothers thousands – all the children yet still to come.
I cup Shalom’s upturned face. She crinkles that freckled nose hers and laughs into the wind and who doesn’t laugh wild wonder that we get to be here like this?
I tremble this holy joy and a holy fear. And His grace is more than sufficient: it’s the soil that grows us all.
The Farmer drops the planter back down into the field.
He heads back out across that seedbed.
He waves back at us — this is it!
And the mother takes the child’s hand and a mother touches thousands and — this is it!
This is the time given. All the grit and the grime yields gifts….
The wind blows the child’s hair like a crowning.
Why the grace of all this?
And a woman wears motherhood like a plain honor, a hidden bestowing of a bit of eternity —
All the moments strung out like one pearled strand.
This strand of thousands and thousands of moment-like seeds….
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This post is part of The 1000 Moms Project:
Oh, do read the posts below for all the excitement about The 1000 Moms Project! Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
May 10, 2012
For the greatest gift is becoming a gift…
Mothering can spin you in these dizzy circles and who doesn’t need an encircling of grace?
Women could do this for each other.
Two years ago or so, I tell my firstborn of my crazy idea of this wooden wreath.
A wreath going round and round and round, to put on the table for advent with a silhouette of Mary, large with child and all this love, on a donkey, on her way to Bethlehem.
For the 24 days of advent, you’d light a candle and move the candle one day closer and one silhouette of a very pregnant woman would go around and around and closer to deliverance.
And then for Lent, the candle would move 40 days and her Son would carry a cross in the light, the Son of God on His way to deliver the world.
And what if for then — for 40 days of Easter, till Ascension, a paper butterfly made this soaring around of joy? New life could rise!
So my son dreams up something out of wood. He makes wreaths. He dreams of something even bigger.
He comes one night to our bedroom door, leans against the door frame, a silhouette of his own and he says, “What if I give it all away? Every wreath I sell this year, I want to give it all away.” I feel large with this child and all this love and only God alone could grow a seed like this.
Following in the footsteps of the mother who became the offering, the Son who laid Himself down, for months he makes this path of sawdust and wreaths and prayers.
Why is it always we are always most filled when we pour ourselves out?
He stays up sanding, finishing, packing. I can see the light on out in the shop late at night.
He makes his life this torch.
Families all over the world order a wreath. They light their candles and who hides their light under a bowl when they could warm the whole house?
Compassion tells him there’s this Child Survival Program in Haiti that’s just a prayer. They need someone to fund the program.
The houses are small and the families are large and there isn’t enough to go around. The mothers can’t read. They work in fields for less than a dollar a day. The closest hospital is three hours away.
Vernicia’s a mama of 16 and she’s heavy with twins and she births one in the ditch — who dies. She says the other wee one, Phenita, “survived thanks to the intervention of the Child Survival Program.”
So our son, born in a valley of my own, he counts wreaths.
He gives to make his life count and God’s ridiculously given enough to give to those mamas in the hill country of Haiti to help them feed their babies — for a whole year.
A whole year of being taught how to read and how to care for their babies, a whole year of nurses and Gospel and Jesus and hymns and how Jesus gave Himself for them.
A torch lights in Haiti.
And come this July that son will fly with his Mama to Haiti, Lord willing.
The boy that made me a mama on the eve of Mother’s Day, he will go sit with those beautiful Haitian Mamas and he will hold the babies that those carved wreaths encircled with the love of Christ.
I will look over at him and wonder at only God miracles.
And anyone can feel large with love and when hands are delivered deliver up to Him, beauty is what’s birthed.
And when his wreaths have funded that project and those Mamas for the complete year this July?
He’s handing the torch to all of us.
To his mama and all the mamas of The 1000 Moms project who give thanks — -this one wild opportunity to have the blessing of becoming the blessing to these Haitian mamas and babies for a whole miraculous year! 1000 Moms and One Thousand Gifts could be the gift — for a string of 365 days of grace upon grace upon grace!
And from Father to Son, from mother to Son, from our son to this mama to all the grateful mamas — we could stand on a world right spun and we could go make our thanks and the blessings go right around and help hundreds of mamas and babies in Jesus’ name.
Caleb comes in from the barn this morning, comes find me, leans up against the window.
“Morning, mom.” Always the same every morning, first thing when he comes in from the barn. He turns 17 this weekend, that boy born on the eve of Mother’s Day.
His hands look so… not like that infant boy’s.
I didn’t know all those dizzying days would spin out a man.
“Just wanted to say … ”
He sticks his hands in his pockets….
“Just thanks for everything, Mom… ”
And he turns round at the door and one messy mom is undone at the miracle of grace.
And the Light of Christ, it can on and on and on — an encircling, a rising, an offering of ceaseless thanks….
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“Thanks-giving might literally become thanks-living.
Our lives can become the very blessings we have received…
A life contemplating the blessings of Christ becomes a life acting the love of Christ...”
This post is part of The 1000 Moms Project:
Oh, do read the posts below for all the excitement about The 1000 Moms Project!
Want to become part of The 1000 Moms?
Want the gift of becoming a gift?
Just thank your Mom publicly!
I thanked my mama here: What all the Mothers Need to Know
And if you thank your mama on your blog or on FB or on Twitter — you and your Mom will be one of the 1000 Moms who will help support this mothering educational project in Haiti.
Just publicly thank your Mom — and change a Mom’s life in Haiti! That’s all you have to do!
The 1000 Moms Project is about 1000 people standing up and thanking their mom publicly (what mom doesn’t want a gift like this for Mother’s Day?) – and we’ll match your honoring of mothers by funding a Maternity/Child Survival Program in Haiti for a whole year. (You can read more about it here)
Thank your mother publicly — & we’ll join you in honoring her by helping these Haitian mother in need!
It’s a way of passing on the loving legacy of your Mama — her sacrificial love going on and on and on… (and you can join us in live-posts when we go to Haiti with Compassion in July!)
(And you can print out a free Mother’s Day card for your Mother, sharing with her what’s been giving in her honor, in this post here. }
So — what important gift or sacrifice did your Mom make for you? Link up with your story/letter of thanks to your right here. Or thank your mom for one important gift on the One Thousand Gifts FB page (share her photo and we’ll honor by sharing her smile in The 1000 Moms Slideshow!)
Or just Tweet a thanks to your Mom with #1000gifts
(May we humbly ask you to please grab the button or the banner if you write a post to your Mom, and link back to The 1000 Moms Project? Thank you! We can’t wait to read your thanks to your Mom!)
P.S. Are you with us following the amazing Compassion Bloggers blogging live right now from Tanzania?
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-05-09 [del.icio.us]
@ The Gospel Coalition... "But the modern church has tended to define a disciple as a "doer" instead of as a "learner".... but we have so rarely been challenged to pursue the most fundamental element of discipleship---earnest study of the Word." Powerful.
What to Expect When You're Expecting
@ The High Calling ... The perfect little smile for this week...
What’s Your Plan for Tomorrow?
@ The Nester... the Farmer and I read this one together. Yes.
May 9, 2012
Because this is the Truth about the real “Mother’s Day Card Mothers”
I became a mother on the eve of Mother’s Day.
And when they placed that vernix-covered, wrinkled babe into my 21-year old arms that muggy Saturday evening in May, no wave of relief, or ecstasy washed over me.
Being the first to caress another human being’s cheek, I only felt raw, unadulterated, strangling terror.
If I could have ran?
I would have.
The newborn baby boy on my chest drowsily opened one eye.
That one eye of his looked into mine —- and I choked.
This baby — this human being – so helpless and fragile, was depending on me —- flawed, deficient, inexperienced me.
On Sunday, my husband would offer me my very first Mother’s Day card. We hadn’t been married 11 months.
I wasn’t ready for any of this.
I had never shaped another person before. Really, I hadn’t even taken care of a fish or a dog or a cat before. Didn’t someone at least need a license or something before taking home a swaddled — soul?
And I knew, far too personally, how the struggles of a Mother can affect a vulnerable child.
A mere seven days before birthing our firstborn, still lumbering under very pregnant, I had wandered down the hollow halls of a locked psychiatric ward.
Heavy steels doors had clanked shut behind me.
My mother was behind those steel doors.
I had left my mother behind those steel doors.
She’d voluntarily signed herself in for 72 hour lockdown behind those doors. I couldn’t have known that only 72 hours after those 72 hours — I’d go into labor to become a mother myself.
I had stood there on the far side of the those steel doors, one hand on my swollen belly, my other brushing away all this sadness and fear that brimmed, me right too full, and I’d prayed. Prayed that somehow her three days behind those doors might somehow bring peace.
Because my Mama hadn’t had much of that.
She’d been raised by an angry alcoholic.
She’d suffered the unimaginable at the hands of the unsympathetic — who should have undone themselves to protect her.
She’d survived the stuff of horror movies.
Then, in the autumn of her 26th year, with two freckled preschoolers and one 3 week-old baby in her arms, she’d seen it happen right in front of her — her white-blonde 18-month-old little girl fell under the crushing wheels of a delivery truck right in front of her eyes.
Worst nightmares can become your life and there is no waking up but only living through.
In one catastrophic, cosmic moment — the haunting of her past fused with the horrors of her present.
And the demons that seemed to descend took beautiful my Mama away from me, from us — to hospitals and psychiatric wards throughout my childhood.
Standing in front of those steel doors, I was about to embark on this rite of passage from needing a mother — to being a mother.
How in the world?
How in the world could I have the wherewithal to lead another human being in the right way —when I was just making my way myself?
How in the world can a woman become a Mother and rightly raise up a child — unless by a miracle of the Father?
And that’s what I felt.
Not just the heaviness of my baby-swollen side — but something more…
The mantle of motherhood can feel like the weight of a universe and raising a child is to be entrusted with a bit of eternity. Would I be fool enough to take the matter lightly? The charge of a small child is no small charge and you’ll have to charge the gates of heaven to hold back the forces of hell.
My body answered the timing of it’s Maker, and against my will, I went into labor four weeks early.
I went into labor and I trembled.
That first long night in the darkened hospital room, my hand traced the fingers and toes of this new little person.
How could I do this?
The lump in my throat grew.
Failure was certain.
I was going to let this little boy down. Parenting is an experiment in radical grace and the work of every parent is to fully give to the child. And it’s the work of every child to fully forgive the parents.
Would he?
I found it hard to breathe.
My Bible lay open on my side table.
I ran my hand over the crinkled page, knowing the words and the truth that whispered somewhere on that darkened leaf, the one I had left it open to.
… he gently leads those that have young… Isaiah 40:11
In the dark of that room and all the years that lay before me, that and only that was all I had to cling to:
The gracious Shepherd would have to lead this little babe and me on.
The weight can fall away if we keep our feet on The Way.
In Him, nothing stays heavy and in the Lord we might live light.
Could I stay in Him?
Could I count on Him to lead the way?
The next day dawned Sunday — Mother’s Day.
My own glorious Mama knocked gently at my door.
I smiled shyly as I pulled back the blankets to reveal her first grandchild.
We cried as she rocked him close.
“This is for you,” she quietly offered.
I took the bag from her outstretched arm.
Inside, an intricate, handmade cover for our hand-me-down car seat.
“Mama…you must have stayed up all night?!” I marveled. She had to have — no one was ready for this baby 4 weeks before his due date .
She nodded.
“Oh, Mom, you’ve got to be so tired. You shouldn’t have. Really, Mom.” I reached out to hug both her and our swaddled boy.
She pressed her cheek close to mine.
“Relationships cost,” she whispered.
In spite of her own past, Mama chose to pay the price of relationship.
Late nights, she’d poured over study notes with me, proof-reading essays, prepared me for university interviews. She’d driven me to piano lessons, cheered me through track meets, sat up with me through growing pains in my legs and heart and head. Mama had earnestly tried. She’d tried to lay aside self and invest into relationship with me.
I gently took our little boy from Mama’s arms and bundled him into Mama’s made-with-love car seat.
This little person wrapped in her selfless love.
Already the Shepherd was leading me—through the willingness of one broken, surrendered mama.
Turning to Mom, I managed a laugh, hoping levity would mask the doubts that had me in this choke hold.
“Think I can do this, Mama?”
She took my hand and squeezed, a woman who knew how to hold on.
“It’s not that you aren’t going to blow it. It’s what you do with it afterwards.”
Over the years, my Mama had often blown it. Though good intentioned, she had missed significant events, spoken harshly, been unavailable… disappointed me.
Yet my love for her was large and sure —- simply because she had listened to and heard my pain.
And she had humbly owned her failures, apologized for the disappointments, and fervently attempted to pay the cost of relationship.
Mama’s refrain massaged hope into my scared stiff heart:
Relationships cost.
It’s not that you aren’t going to blow it. It is what you do with it, when you do.
Perhaps there was something more powerful to experience than a perfect Mother: the wonder of a committed Mother who simply humbles herself.
Like that Shepherd who knew the cost of relationship, chose to pay the price, and, staggeringly, “humbled Himself… even to the point of death on a cross” (Phil 2:8).
Out of the ashes and brokenness of our sin, rises the breathtaking exquisiteness of humility and grace, the Cross.
And out of the anguish and woundedness of Mama’s life, surfaced a gentle humility and a dogged devotion to relationship.
Regardless.
I felt the strangling terror give way to realization.
No one gets it perfect.
And that’s exactly why we sing Amazing Grace — and it really is!
Motherhood does not require complete perfection and a Superman cape.
It simply requires an imperfect commitment and the surprising humility of Christ.
I took one last glance around that hospital room before stepping out that door and into motherhood.
My first Mother’s Day card was sitting on the windowsill.
I picked it up. Half-smiled.
Why feared I’d never be a Mother’s Day card Mother?
Hadn’t my own beautiful Mama shown me I didn’t need to be?
The Shepherd leads those with young not to be Hallmark versions of perfection — but rather persevering versions of humility.
Grace stands in the gaps.
Mama, she held open the door with a brave smile.
And I nodded sure and I carried our son out into the world.
And I could feel the carrying — how underneath us all are His everlasting arms…
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edited from the archives
This post is part of The 1000 Moms Project:
Oh, do read the posts below for all the excitement about The 1000 Moms Project!
Thank your Mom for her sacrifice?
And if you thank your mama on your blog and link up here — you will help support a mothering educational project in Haiti just through your gratitude.
The 1000 Moms Project is about 1000 people standing up and thanking their mom publicly (what mom doesn’t want a gift like this for Mother’s Day?) – and we’ll match your honoring of mothers by funding a Maternity/Child Survival Program in Haiti for a whole year. (You can read all about it here)
Thank your mother publicly — & we’ll join you in honoring her by helping a Haitian mother in need!
It’s a way of passing on the loving legacy of your Mama — her sacrificial love going on and on and on
(And you can print out a free Mother’s Day card for your Mother, sharing with her what’s been giving in her honor, in this post here. }
So — what important gift or sacrifice did your Mom make for you? Link up with your story/letter of thanks to your right here.(May we humbly ask you to please grab the button or the banner for your post, and link back to The 1000 Moms Project? Thank you! We can’t wait to read your thanks to your Mom!)
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-05-08 [del.icio.us]
I've ever watched... @Desiring God. The Story of Ian & Larissa... and when the footage gets to their gratefulness board? I'm a mess. If you have 5 minutes for the internet today, use them all on this video.
when you are looking to see more of God...
Ian and Larissa? Whose video is linked below and touched nearly 100,000 peoples lives just yesterday through Desiring God...I spent time reading their blog last night, reading Larissa's word and her journey and her love for Jesus and Ian -- and this laid me low, because it's *their* surrendered story that I think is perfect for anyone looking to see more of God. Please -- click on the blog header & read through their blog and be profoundly moved by lives of faithfulness...
Free Book on Marriage...
Ian and Larissa were reading a book on marriage in the video linked? Well, that book, by John Piper, "This Momentary Marriage A Parable of Permanence" is now generously being made free by Desiring God... Simply: for every couple (and happily just made free! Who doesn't want free encouragement!?)
May 8, 2012
The Habit of a Mother Who Changes The World
Houses may be bought, built, or borrowed.
But homes can only be made.
And only with bits of ourselves.
The kids and I sit together close in a house with dishes on the counter and read about painters and artists and look at a flock of ducks, preened and nestled, a painting, oil on canvas.
The children press in close for a better look at the open book, at Alexander Koester’s “Ducks“
, and I read aloud the caption under the painting.
“Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests to line their nests.”
I look around at the house. I pause.
And the children gaze thoughtfully at a clutch of plump white, blizzard of feathers fallen down.
But it’s those words that mesmerize me: “Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests, to line their nests.”
I lay my hand on the page, on a duck breast puffed, mother plunging beak in deep, and I say it out loud: “How else did you think nests were lined?”
With leftovers.
That’s what I thought.
With feathers discarded, the molted, the not-so-necessary feathers.
I thought mother ducks picked feathers up from what was laying about, scraps, lining nests with what simply could be mustered after the fact.
But no. No, a mother duck plucks each feather out from the heart of her bosom.
She lines the nest with bits of herself — the best of herself.
A mother cups her brood not with leftovers — but with her own sacrifice.
The kids pull at the corner of the page, anxious to see the next painting.
Reluctantly, I turn the page. But for weeks, I’m the one turned.
For weeks, part of me lives among Koester’s ducks.
I scrub out the arches of muffin tins after breakfast on a misty morning, the clock ticking insufferably loud in my ears, time running down.
Children need books and learning, and I’m tuned for the expected chime of the doorbell, a service personnel’s scheduled visit.
And the words rise like this lava, “I don’t have time for this! No muffins tomorrow morning!”
Pluck.
It’s like I can feel it.
Like I can feel this tugging.
The service man meets me with muffin tins still in the sink. He meets happy kids. Could I meet needs with a bit more of me?
There are times, too many, when they call, “Read me a story?” “Wanna play a game with me?” “Can you come help me?”
And this mother refuses to pluck.
Something, some task, someone (me?), rates as more pressing, more important. I deem our nest acceptable just as it is. I don’t want to sacrifice more of me.
Then it comes: the pecking, the scratching, the squawking. When the feather lining of the nest wears thin, the nest chafes hard. We feel it. We hurt. Life gets hard.
Nests need feathers deep.
Someone must pluck.
When will I learn: The down we sacrifice from ourselves — this is what settles and soothes.
Scraps won’t suffice.
Not mere snippets of time, leftover me, a trinket, a diversion, tossed.
Mother ducks don’t line nests with feathers, dirty and trampled, the molted and unnecessary. Why would I? Nests need feathers fresh, warm with mother’s life.
The pain of the plucking can linger long.
The parts of oneself sacrificed, this can hurt.
But was it really sacrifice? Or was my skin just too tender? It’s done, it was necessary, and it was for something better.
Some nights, when all sleep, I feel along the hidden bald patches.
Come evening, I ask a boy to vacuum up popcorn and paper remnants and bits of the day.
Dinner needs making, laundry needs rescuing, math needs marking. My head aches. Popcorn crunches under the feet.
The boy hauls the vacuum cleaner out of the front closet. I should have noticed how his eyes had this glint. He plugs in the machine and it grumbles loud and he recalibrates that vacuum cleaner —- to fire socks.
He’s firing sock cannons across the kitchen.
His brothers dive in. Socks fly. Brothers howl and whip and it gets loud.
Caught in the cross-fire with a pot in hand – a mother can either erupt. Or Pluck.
This old mother, she tosses the pot and chases down future men, wrestles them down and pins them in tickles. It feels good, wild and alive.
We warm here in laughter.
Us close, one atop the other, nesting down into sacrifices, soft and small, a solace.
Night descends. Kids crawl into beds. I read stories, stroke hair, say prayers.
Prayers to Him who plucked hard from His own heart.
A sacrifice, staggering and true, for love of His very own.
We learn love from His laid down.
Tired heads nestle into pillows, into these pillows of down.
We rest on all these feathers plucked…
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::
edited from the archives
This post is part of The 1000 Moms Project:
Oh, do read the posts below for all the excitement about The 1000 Moms Project!
Thank your Mom for her sacrifice?
And if you thank your mama on your blog and link up here — you will help support a mothering educational project in Haiti just through your gratitude.
The 1000 Moms Project is about 1000 people standing up and thanking their mom publicly (what mom doesn’t want a gift like this for Mother’s Day?) – and we’ll match your honoring of mothers by funding a Maternity/Child Survival Program in Haiti for a whole year. (You can read all about it here)
Thank your mother publicly — & we’ll join you in honoring her by helping a Haitian mother in need!
It’s a way of passing on the loving legacy of your Mama — her sacrificial love going on and on and on
(And you can print out a free Mother’s Day card for your Mother, sharing with her what’s been giving in her honor, in this post here. }
So — what important gift or sacrifice did your Mom make for you? Link up with your story/letter of thanks (May we humbly ask you to please grab the button or the banner for your post, and link back to The 1000 Moms Project? Thank you! We can’t wait to read your thanks to your Mom!):
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
Links for 2012-05-07 [del.icio.us]
these 15 Spectacular Libraries in Europe will have you breathing deep & peaceful...
15 Tips on Blogging from John Newton
@ Tony Reinke ... If you blog, this is one very powerful read...
Incredibly Beautiful Women!
... Oh my -- have you seen this? We'd love to see a face from your place!
He Sings Over Us Til We See Beauty
@ - Desiring God... "He sings over those who have every reason to fear the face of God, not desire it." The joy of this!
If you want to Make Your life Yield Good things...
@ Zondervan... "Humility is that good humus that grows gratitude that yields abundant joy." This.
May 7, 2012
What Every Mother has to Know …. {Before Mother’s Day}
Everything beautiful thing always begins with a willingness to suffer.
Just ask any mother.
When you’d bake up raspberry kuchen for Sunday afternoon dinner, you’d make two pans and you’d make more of who we are.
You made double batches and you made beds and you made more of heaven on earth and a mother can do that with just two hands.
I saw how you folded yours.
A wise mother knows what powerful men can forget — that the way to move heaven and earth isn’t with a strong arm but with a bowed head.
I saw how you learned to pray. Us kids were helpful that way.
We stayed out too late at Gilley’s Pit and you stayed in knots too long and we put you down and somehow you put up with us. And we were wild and you showed us how grace can be wilder still.
When I lost your diamond wedding ring, we went around for days on our knees patting the carpet and you undid the vacuum’s pot belly and sifted through all the sediment we’d left behind and you’d gathered up– praying to find just that one gleam of diamond-hard promise. When you came up right empty-handed, I could see it in your eyes.
How much of you did you lose to make all of us?
You still kept the vow to love when all the starriness was lost and you’ll never know how I sorry I am and how glorious you are.
How many windows and lamps and dishes and gizmos did we break and how many times does a mother’s heart break to fix a world and I heard you cry sometimes behind the hollow panel door.
How many times did you-know-who get in trouble and you got the call from the school and you stood there listening and nodding to the whole embarrassing thing that involved your bloodlines and some strange warping of your DNA in a child who was all obviously like his father and that’s the story you stuck to. And mothers, they never stop believing in the miracle of metamorphosis.
Because believing in the miracle of metamorphosis is the sum total of a mother’s job. The theological term for that is faith.
To have faith that the baby in arms will become the toddler toilet trained before 18, that the cocky juvenile hipster with the big attitude will become the concerned citizen with a baby on the hip and a big heart on the sleeve, and that kid who can never find his shoes or matching socks or math homework will be able to find a girlfriend, job and Jesus.
To have faith that what’s nearly expired in the fridge at 5:30 can do wonders with the last can of diced tomatoes in the pantry at 5:47 to astonishingly become dinner by 6:00. (And the miracle would have happened even sooner but there were those 17 minutes in between that had a telemarketer, a bandage and tourniquet application, and 2 and 3/4 fights, catastrophes and middle east (of the living room) crises to negotiate.)
It’s always the mothers, preachers and prophets who doggedly believed that leopards can lose spots and grace and angels can make pigs fly.
Mothers were made to have faith.
I don’t want to imagine if you hadn’t.
If you hadn’t heaved desperate through the contractions over a belly swollen as tight as a basketball, if you hadn’t sacrificed sleep, comfort and pride to keep me alive, diapered and fed, if you hadn’t made me take that miserable typing class with Mr. Biesel when I wanted a spare with Melanie and Dana and Sibille Menzi.
Thank you. Mothers give up much and never give up.
Thank you. Mothers never stop being with child. You always make a space for me within you.
Thank you. Mothers do hard things when the kids are hard: The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach — because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace?
Thank you for brushing yourself off and the tears back and always opening the hollow panel door again. Mothers can be more courageous than entire military squadrons.
A mother’s labor and delivery never ends and for years she has to remember to just take a deep breath. Whole battles can be won by one breath and a prayer at a time.
I can close my eyes and see your hands. I can smell your baking and taste that last spoonful and how sweet it is going down. I can remember how you wore Chanel No. 5 on Friday evenings and planted double impatiens and ivy in big baskets for the front porch and when I couldn’t sleep at night, how you’d sing me “Mama’s going to buy me a mocking bird.”
The stars always sing.
The real stars are always so small and so large.
You lit my whole life.
So how could I let the sun set today without thanking you — for my beginning and your endurance, and for all the thousand ways you shaped me, and for being a one in a million because you were mine, and my today is in part because of all of your faithful yesterdays.
And I see it again in the dark and in the valleys and in the mirror….
You a star and your light going on and on and on.
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This post is part of the:
You’ve got to read the post directly below for all the excitement about The 1000 Moms Project!
We want you to join in too for your Mom!
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
The One Thousand Moms Project ……. Make a Mother’s Day Difference!
The 1000 Moms ProjectThank Your Mother — and Bless Another!
In a Haitian community where a the average family lives on only $37 a month, a Child Survival Program, founded by Compassion International through a local church, offers mothers and little ones pre-natal and post-natal care and education.
Here the Mamas will learn to care for their little ones, learn to read, and be supported to raise up a healthy, Jesus-loving, hopeful generation.
And all you have to do help these beautiful mothers and babies?
Just publicly thank your Mom!
We’ll do the rest!
Just share the most important gift your Mom gave you — on either Twitter (use the #1000gifts #moms hashtag) or in the Facebook Gratitude Community, or write a letter of thanks to your Mom on your own blog (I’ll post a linky tomorrow, so you can link up with your thanks too!).
And we’ll join you in honoring her by giving a much-needed gift to a Mom and baby in Haiti.
And if 1000 Moms are thanked either on Twitter, individual blogs, or on the One Thousand Gifts FB page —- we’ll match your thanksgiving & sponsor a Maternity/Child Survival Center in Haiti for a whole year!
Because when we count our gifts — we realize how gifted we are and we pray to become the gift! It’s our joy to become the gift with you in Haiti!Together we change the lives of hundreds of kids and mamas! Isn’t this exciting?
Let’s all publicly honor & thank our Mothers! 1000 Moms can make a Mother’s Day Difference!
{And coming this week: I’ll share how we have an opportunity to actually visit this Child Survival Center in Haiti and see how we all together can love on a whole center of these Mamas and children for a whole year!}
Let’s do this thing and thank our Mamas!
{As an added bonus to honor your Mother:Wouldn’t it be great if you would share a picture of your mother on the One Thousand Gifts Facebook page and perhaps include the most important gift she gave you as part of your post?
Just click “Photo/Video” on the page and then click “upload,” pick your favorite picture of your mom, share the gift and click “post” to share it with the whole radical gratitude community over there!
It’d be an honor to include your mom in a slideshow of photos when we celebrate the 1000 Moms Project and how you and your Mom made a Mother’s Day Difference for a Mom in need!}
Free Printable Mother’s Day Postcard for Your Mom
Thank your Mom in The 1000 Gifts Mom Project?
Then let her know on Mother’s Day what a gift she’s been to you and what has been given in her honor to Haiti with this free printable Mother’s Day Postcard
Two versions of the postcard are available: one with a nest here and one with birds here
And you could always give these free printables to give her own joy-in-a-box?
{Entirely optional: You could tie it all up for your mama with One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
– or the photographic Gift Book: Selections from One Thousand Gifts: Finding Joy in What Really Matters ….You can read here how One Thousand Gifts is building an Educational Center in Guatemala…
And there’s a sweet little sale of 50% off at Family Christian Thousand Gifts and there’s 50% off at Lifeway too? if that helps anyone? Thank you for grace.}
And if you are following along with Compassion Bloggers blogging live right now from Tanzania?
Thanking your Mom publicly in The 1000 Moms Project is another free, easy, God-glorifying way to join in Compassion this week leading up to Mother’s Day — and make a difference.
A difference made just by thanking.
A difference made Right Where You Are.
“And when we take your gifts to those who need them, they will thank God…
And they will pray for you with deep affection because of the overflowing grace God has given to you.
Thank God for this gift too wonderful for words!” – 2 Corinthians 9:11-15
{See you thanking #1000gifts #mom on Twitter or over on the Facebook page page! Or, if honoring your mom on your blog, linky tomorrow! Let’s do it!}
Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}
May 6, 2012
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@ Martha Stewart ... there are some wonderful ideas here (the Gazette idea!)... fun!
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