One More Truth

This post is featured on Ruminate Magazine.

Cruising into Manitou, the Incline comes into view. Once an old railroad, the narrow path is etched with more than 2700 railroad ties – an intimidating and seemingly endless stairway to heaven. It’s less than a mile to the top, but the distance isn’t the threat, it’s the steep and severe grades of incline.  We were three brave souls on our drive, but now, peering toward the sky, we begin doubting our readiness.

The August sun is menacing, but other adventurers march ahead and we take flight with them, making bets as to how long before we stand like kings at the top. We agree to one rule: we are here together, but we journey alone. I make a personal rule: no breaks, just constant motion. Slow and steady, or even slower and steady – but always steady.

Eight minutes in and I’m sweating as if the sun’s only target. Accustomed to running in the fire wind of a Phoenix July, I remind my screaming muscles they’ve felt worse. I keep climbing. Before long, it’s my lungs complaining, heaving in and out as if they’re being crushed, and in truth, they are. I want to breathe deeply, but the thin air burns my nose and insides, making me want to empty my lungs completely, but when I try, I choke. The elevation is a menacing resistance. I’ve no music on this trek and I’m forced to step in time with my own wheezing, and my lungs and legs find harmony in the rhythm…

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It’s Sunday morning and I’m in my closet, deciding if I’m changing my outfit or not. My husband and I are in casual conversation about the different people we were when newly married compared to who we are 17 years later. I used to drink sugary mochas with my carb-filled bagel and didn’t think twice. He used to view work as a specific place with specific hours, and now his weeks look like an endless string of tasks. And both of us seem to be wondering the same thing: How do we get back to that ‘Life is delicious, I can’t not do this fantastic thing, Whoa, what just happened to the time’ kind of life?

Our younger two barge in, holding ukuleles.

“Hey mom, look what we’re bringing back! We’ve been practicing.”

My kids know they’ve got an old school mom who loves watching them do awesome things – and yes, that includes playing ukulele. Not long ago, these two took ukulele lessons and the house was filled with singing and strumming, but the lessons ended and practicing dwindled, and the island sounds disappeared. Occasionally, I’d suggest they pick up their picks again, but I dropped it knowing music – true to its name – is a muse, and one day, it’d draw my children back.

This is that ‘one day’.

This also happens to be the day my son must finish reading the remaining 100 pages of his book, because the 24 hour countdown for the book report he was assigned last month is running out…and he’s playing ukulele.

This is the morning after a student election poster-making extravaganza, when my daughter promised to clean up the bottles of paint and layer of glitter strewn over my dining room floor…and she’s searching ukulele chords on YouTube.

I shake my head at my husband who’s smirking much like I am, because what else can we do? A procrastinating minstrel is smiling at us. They know they have deadlines, and we all know the clock is ticking, and it seems there will be rushing in the final minutes, but somehow, the important things will get done. My husband and I aren’t angry – proof we’re not the same people we were years ago. And yet simply by enjoying a ‘right now’ moment, without thinking any further than this minute we’re living, we’re assured that somewhere in these older bodies, we’re still the same people we were once.

I tell my kids I love hearing them make music and they nod, and I remind them there are only so many hours in a day and they pluck their way out the door, humming as they go.

By bedtime, the report is printed and the dining room looks less like a construction zone. I finish a few important things and push off the rest. They’ll get done. The sibling duet is camped on the landing, playing their newest favorite for the 67^th time, and I sit on the step next to them, not wishing to be anywhere else. ‘One last time’ turns into 12 more times, but eventually, they lay down their strings, promising to practice again in the morning.

It’s late and my husband’s in bed, but he smiles when I come in the room. Our morning conversation was never resumed, because in some strange way, music answered our question. There will always be plans and busyness, and the clock will continue counting the minutes until something, but those are precious minutes. We’ll just keep practicing the balance of important things for as many years as God allows, giving time an occasional glance, and giving more attention to the songs being played in between.

Jesus modeled a full life, not a busy life. Want to model that kind of balanced life? My guest blog on TheBetterMom.com may help!

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I wake up and immediately feel it – the emptiness of my daughter’s room.

I begin the morning routine of making sure teenagers and a preteen are getting ready for school, knocking on 3 bedroom doors, hearing 3 sleepy voices. When I walk past the empty room, I close the door.

I’d peeked in last night, just to face it. There are a few pieces of furniture she didn’t want, some things for her siblings to pick through, and her high school graduation gown hanging in the closet, but no bed, no clothes on the floor, no makeup on the dresser. And it isn’t just her empty room, it’s that her contacts are no longer on her bathroom sink. Her car keys aren’t on the foyer table, and when I pack lunches, I notice her prescriptions and vitamins are no longer in front of the peanut butter. Her shoes aren’t by the door, and I’m choking back tears because even though the pile of shoes used to drive me a bit crazy, I’ve been patiently reminding myself the past few months that seeing her shoes meant she still lived here.

I’d adjusted to sharing space and time with another adult to whom I’m not married, often postponing workouts to see her before she left for work and getting laundry done during the week so she could wash clothes on weekends. We had our rhythm. Sometimes our paths never crossed. She’d come home to a sleeping house and the rest of us would wake and leave before she got rolling, and this would go on several days in a row until she’d come through the door while we sat at dinner, and we’d all enjoy the surprise of eating together as 6. She’d grown into her own life more than her own rhythm, and all of us tried to believe it might not be so hard when she made a place of her own.

Last night, we did what families do and helped her situate, feeling happy for her and happy for a chance to be depended on. We waved from the foot of her stairs and she smiled behind her new door – proud, happy, ready – and we drove home, where only 5 people live.

Her shoes are no doubt sitting by her new door, where her dream of independence is being fulfilled. And I’m happy and I’m sad, and I’ve got plenty of happy-sad moments under my belt already, but I didn’t cry on first days of kindergarten. I didn’t cry when toys were willingly stuffed into donation bags, when I was no longer needed or wanted for reading books aloud, or when I could no longer help with math homework surpassing my intellect. I didn’t cry at elementary, middle, or high school graduations. And even this morning, when I carried my youngest and laid her in bed because she was too stuffy for school and too dizzy for stairs, I didn’t cry that my baby is nowhere near the size of a baby.

I’ve sent children off to camp and watched them disappear down airport hallways for their first flight alone. I raised them to grow, want more, and need me less, so they could dream and try and become. I’m raising them to fly, but it feels different when they do, and I realize the choosing of motherhood and extravagant love is also the choosing of inevitable empty places. This is life – mine, theirs, hers – and life feels different when it’s no longer neatly framed in the ‘ours’ of the same house. Love feels different. That’s reason to cry, I suppose.

A friend asks how I’m doing and since she knows about empty rooms, I tell her I usually know little about feelings, but I can’t unfeel the empty places, I can’t make sense of an emptier house when my heart is so absolutely full. And I know it will be ok, just not today.

“Yep,” she answers back. And that’s good enough for me.

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March is here, and with it, the happy promise of spring. Wearing the same rotation of sweaters for a few months is what desert dwellers refer to as ‘winter’, and while I know this version is desperately distorted compared to many places in the world, it still requires great personal discipline not to grumble about the cold come the end of February. Most of the Phoenix calendar is varying degrees of summer – July’s variation being very close to hell – so when I’m tempted to complain about space heaters and heavy coats, I remind myself summer will be here soon enough and will stay for a very long time. Then I pull on a hoodie and snuggle into happy memories of the beach.

I think I was made for the beach. The waves, salt air, people watching, and swimming with creatures I cannot see – I love it all. But beach trips cost money and when the warm waters of the Atlantic are all you’ve ever known, it’s a struggle to accept California’s hotel prices knowing the best they can offer is the chilly Pacific. This reasoning kept our family from the beach for 6 years, but last summer, about the time temperatures peak and the city goes post-apocalyptically desolate, we booked a spontaneous weekend getaway.

We had the best time. Sure, the six of us uncomfortably filled every square inch of our tiny hotel room, but I rather enjoyed waking to the sight of my sprawling, slumbering children. We tripped over each other, ate more junk food than necessary, and regardless of how well we hung our wet bathing suits from every bathroom fixture, we never had a dry suit by morning. But did it matter? We were at the beach, scooping up buckets of sand dollars, basking in sunshine, and mellowing with the sound of the surf.

But there was another sound crashing with the waves. It was a grumbling sound, the noise of complaining. The affliction wasn’t the cramped room or the wiggling into damp suits – it was the sand. Specifically sand’s shocking ability to radiate fire on bare feet, its persistence in discovering every nook and cranny of a person’s being, and its endless victories in making a person look and feel like the slowest, clumsiest walker in the world. Sand was an insufferable tragedy and the laments surged in eulogy of all things wonderful. My children hung their heads above sandy towels, preparing to forfeit all happiness to the perils of sand, and I had no solution for ridding the beach of innumerable tiny grains, but I knew sand wasn’t the problem. The problem was discontent and its pervasive way of creeping into soul nooks, sucking every cranny clean of joy, and ridding the heart of thankfulness. I had a solution – an honest redirect.

“There are seagulls flapping, foamy tides pounding, and treasures being washed into salty pools. Babies’ toes are being kissed by the ocean for the very first time and their laughter is floating through swaying palms. The sun feels 30 degrees cooler here than at home, and its rays are rousing a shimmer from the shoreline as if it’s covered in diamonds. There’s nothing but brilliance and blue as far as the eye can see, and you’re telling me the luxury of enjoying all this isn’t worth the troubling cost of little sand? A day at the beach has its sand, but it’s still a day at the beach. Be thankful, and make the most of it.”

No indignation, no disdain, just a matter-of-fact reality check, not to silence or shame my children, but to redirect them from the miserable path of grumbling toward the better way of gratitude.

Truth is, sometimes I’m the kid on the beach, glaring away at small problems while missing the bigger joy all around me. Sometimes a loved one offers wisdom that redirects me from lifeless discontent. Sometimes my complaints are secrets of the heart and God’s Spirit nudges me with truth, back to the path of full life. But here’s what I’m learning every time I’m pointed back to Jesus: only a thankful heart can follow Him.

Thankfulness is the real and sobering difference between life and death.

The sun set behind the water and each of us gathered our things and trudged through sandy heaps. Smaller heaps of sand were shifting in our suits, causing some to stride longer while the short-legged fell behind. I heard a little voice behind me. “Mom, I found a better way through the sand. I’m stepping in your footprints.”

Lord Jesus, help me. May I always follow You with a thankful heart, leading others in finding their way closer to You.

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