For all the imperfect mothers out there...

Do you ever feel like a failure? I am definitely feeling that way today; the heavy-hearted,lingering ache that tells me I have hurt someone I love. It's a little thing, really, that started it, but doesn't it always start out that way? I forgot the tooth my nine-year-old daughter left under her pillow. She told me last night that she didn't think she believed in the tooth fairy anymore, that she thought it was me all along, and I told her that kids who don't believe might not get anything under their pillow. Why did I say that? I wanted her to keep believing, to stay little for just a little while longer, even though I can tell from everything else about her that she is growing up. I said that unnecessary (and, let's face it, kind of mean)thing, and then when there was nothing under her pillow, her world of belief and trust crumbled. She was so brokenhearted and angry. I am sure she felt betrayed. I took her aside, closing the door so my seven-year old would not overhear us, and I said, "You are right; there is no tooth fairy. It was always me. I wanted losing teeth to be fun and exciting, not scary or gross. I'm sorry." She then told me she was angry at being lied to. She was angry that she was right about the tooth fairy. She wanted Daddy. The tears kept on coming all the way to school. We did have a later conversation about how we know God is real, and she knows that in her heart. But I still feel like I handled it all poorly: I forgot her, I tried to make her feel like the failure was because of her unbelief. Ugh. If I could do it all over again, I tell myself, I would be better. It's times like these that I feel like a failure. Like when I have dinner ready on time and I'm so proud of myself, only to serve my family dry chicken and find out for the seventeenth time that they all hate rosemary. Or when my younger daughter just wants a snuggle from me without the baby, but I just have to put a load of laundry in, and when I finally sit down with her, the baby wakes up from his nap. Or when I forget to put a love note in my daughter's lunch but the one I wrote for her sister made it off the counter and into the lunchbox. God, please turn my meager, measly fish and dry loaves of bread into a feast for my family. I know I am precious, loved, redeemed by you. Why does it not gush out onto my loved ones all day, every day? As I drove home today, I forgot to look up at the mountains. I always look up at them, the morning fog that swirls around them in the fall too stunning to miss, but today I was lost in my thoughts of the morning I had ruined, my child's broken heart, my inadequacies as a parent. The mountains were still there, but I failed to look up. The analogy to my faith today is too obvious to miss. I feel like a failure because I'm too caught up in my inadequacies to see the One who made me, who sustains me, who cares when I am brokenhearted, who can make me enough for my family if only I will ask. Psalm 121:1-4 was written for a day like today: "I lift my eyes up to the hills--where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip--he who watches over you will not slumber. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep." In my Bible, right under the heading "Psalm 121" are the words "a song of ascents." Let my heavy heart ascend today, let my eyes look to the mountains. Let me remember that the One who shaped them in his hands also shaped me and gave me this family to raise and love. Let me love them out of His grace and mercy, and let my trust and joy in Him be what shows them that, beyond any doubt, He is real.

An Anxious Mind and a Sleeping Cat

I have done it again. I seem to be unable to learn my lesson and I find myself again in a tangled heap of overwhelmed, disorganized, thrown-together chaos. Even people who know me well believe me to be a fairly pulled-together person. They would laugh at me if they could see this mess inside my head, this eye-of-the-hurricane moment I'm in. I am typing this post one-handed, slowly, picking at the keys, as I hold a nursing baby on the other arm. I have tried to use one of those nursing pillows to prop him against me so I can use both hands to type, but even in my desperation I can feel how ridiculous that is and I gave it up. It's okay; this gives me time to choose my words carefully and think out how to explain myself. There is a pile of bills I've just paid on one side of me, a hamper of clean laundry on the floor in front of me awaiting folding, and a sleeping cat curled behind my head on the back of our couch. It is quiet and peaceful in the house, a contrast to the whirlwind in my head. It was not enough to have a new baby, or to work on finishing the last touches of my book (my other baby!), or to try to begin a career as a freelance writer. We had to go and buy a house, too. Now there are documents to sign, giant, scary checks to write, deadlines to meet, and the lingering fear that this is too good to be true and something will fall through, leaving our sweet little family with no place to live (did I mention that we told our landlord to go ahead and rent out our house on May 1st?). And this last thing is just dumb, but it is the straw that is breaking my back: I finally bought this lovely home office machine that copies, prints, scans, and faxes, and where is it? In its lovely box, because the thought of getting it out and setting it up in the ten minutes of baby happiness that I can get at one time is overwhelming. Hence the whirlwind. I often feel like Alice in Wonderland, cards and the Queen and everything all spinning around out of control, except that she gets to wake up. What do I do? In the middle of my self-induced chaos, when I am calm on the outside but frantic on the inside, there is another sound, so quiet that I have to actually lean forward to catch it. It is the faintest whisper of a sound; I turn down the volume of my panic because I need to hear what it is. I catch it again, and it is words that were written so long ago but today are just for me. I feel the words I know, that I have read over and over in times just like these, when I have added too much to my plate and have erased the margins of my life, and God reaches in, offering peace and rest to draw my frantic, harried soul back to Him. His words resonate through my tired bones, my spinning head, and pull every part of me together with this one thought: "You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you." God, while holding together the whole universe, is concerned with keeping me at peace. I just have to trust that He is there. I have to tether my mind to Him like a horse to a hitching post, like a ship to an anchor, to attach myself to Him in his unmoving, all-pervading peace, and that peace will seep into me and fill me again like it has in the past. My problem was not that He stopped being enough, it was that I had let go of my anchor in the storm. God, help me. Calm me. Anchor me. This mess is temporary, passing, fleeting; You are eternal. The baby is now sleeping soundly against me, as is the cat. The house is still quiet. The bills, the laundry, the loan documents and deadlines, all of it is just external. Inside, the storm has passed and there is also quiet. Isaiah 26:3, etched on my soul in divine penmanship, is a reminder to be quiet and trust.