Friends {Five Minute Friday}

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The best thing about my best friends is that we don’t talk much, and we’re okay with that

That sounds harsh or sarcastic but it’s not, it’s really what I appreciate at this stage in life. I appreciate that we are friends when we have time for coffee or time for praying together or time for a weekend away. And I appreciate that in all those in between times, the months where we don’t talk and lose track of each other’s lives, in those times we are still friends.

It can be months in between. There’s no hurt feelings and no pressure. No pouting or excuse making. Because Moms know this: that friendships change over the years and the ones that are meant to last are the ones that you don’t have to work hard at, the ones that step aside for your family, pray for your family, and pick up wherever they left off.

That’s the beauty of having friends in various seasons of life.

In high school there were unspoken rules about who you could really be friends with. Artificial friendships formed because you were all thrust into the same experiences and forced to endure them together – those aren’t typically enduring or endearing relationships.

But real life? Real friends who pray in the in-betweens and who’ve endured births and deaths and diapers and empty nests along side you – those friends are the real deal. 

Sharing five minutes on the writing prompt Friends (which is a ridiculously inadequate amount of time but I’m trying to follow the rules) and linking up with Lisa-Jo and others for Five Minute Friday.

If you’re still reading, let me just add that one thing I’ve learned over the years is that I don’t have to be just like my friends in order for our friendship to be true and lasting. Comparison kills, and I never loved a friend because they were just like me. Rather, I love them because they are different from me in ways that I can appreciate and grow from.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die. ~ Plato

Five Minute Friday: Bare

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It’s the way they come into the world, you and them both laid bare.

Vulnerable.

Dependent on so much more than yourself alone because your bare-ness is the kind that truly reveals…You need more of Him. Not more rules and law.

They need more, too, of Him and you and you think, in those early days, that they’ll soon need less from you.  But don’t believe it.

It’s they way they storm the kitchen and strip the fridge and fill the sink, like locusts at harvest. Insatiable appetites and bare cupboards are your reminder – fill them with good things.

It’s the way you start the day full and end it by a thread, barely hanging on to tattered shreds of sanity and resolve.

It’s the way seasons change and appearance changes but inside, the sap runs. Life, always ready for spring and anxious for the fruits of fall.

And we get spring and fall. Waiting for fruit, being stripped bare by the changes and stripped bare to produce more.

It’s the way you all change together and you can only trust, dependent and vulnerable still, that it’s enough. Trust that He clothes your bare-self with His righteousness after all and bare never has to mean empty.

{On Fridays, a group of us gather at Lisa Jo’s to write for 5 minutes, flat and fast, without worry or perfection. This week the prompt is BARE.}

Five Minute Friday: Cherished

Posted in Five Minute Friday, Parenting | 5 comments

For all the struggles and squabbles, there is a grace to keep going.

The moments when you play legos though you’re “too old” for that. The two, three, four of you down on the carpet, building your colony and being good neighbors.

The spontaneous moments a mom could never plan, when a tug on your sleeve from little brother or sister brings a softening and relenting, when you give in to the playing and the time is quality. Pure quality.

There is grace to keep on when I catch you snuggling during the movie, or when I peek in the door Saturday morning to see you all piled up and listening to Odyssey.

When you read that story together, when you share that memory, laugh at that joke, and even when you join sides in coercive plots against me.

Trust me, I see. Because I’m looking for it, looking and hoping and filling the ears of God with requests for this: that my children would be friends.

And you are.

Friends who live and work and play together almost 24/7 and yes, friends who rub on each other and annoy the heck out of one another sometimes. But friends, nevertheless.

I wonder, and I’m pretty sure, that God cherishes when His kids are friends, too. A mother’s heart comes from the Father.

For every disagreement and stomp of the foot, for every selfishness and self-will and Precious Self, there’s something in the memory to pull out and cherish. I forget a lot of things, but I remember the things I cherish.

And we’re all growing up together, making moments to forget and ones to remember. Here’s to remembering more.

Linking up with Lisa Jo and the Five Minute Friday community. Follow the link and write with us for five off-the-top-of-your-head minutes!

What Makes a Husband Great

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It’s your day and this space is for you. It’s my little quirky offering of love, and a very short list of why I love you…

You laugh at me and with me. One of the hallmarks of our marriage and one of the advices I give to newlyweds, to laugh together. Life is not always funny, but you can always make me smile.

Together we drive the kids crazy, or make them think we’re crazy, but we have enough inside jokes and random songs to whether any storm. All it takes is a raise of the eyebrow and we’re on the same page.

Scary sometimes, how you can read my mind.

You lead with conviction and humility. The kids and I are a wayward bunch, but you are always on the watch for our souls and it’s no easy task. You are our scout and our trusty guide, bringing us back when we get off-track and leading us on according to the Lord’s direction. I trust you because you trust Him.

You shoot straight. Too straight, sometimes, and the girls and I try to point out the error of your ways. The boys shift slowly to your side of the kitchen, not knowing why the females in the room are all ruffled and steaming.

You smooth things over and back track a little, for our sakes, but “the dress comment” will live in infamy. You never had sisters and you didn’t learn about sensitive clothing-hair-and-make-up issues, and now you have us. Two daughters and a wife, each of us a little sensitive at times. We forgive you, though.

And we will still ask you if we look okay, because we know you’ll tell the truth.

You can fix anything. Really. With a wrench or a chainsaw or a hammer or your bare hands, with words or prayers or twinkly-eyed smiles. And when everything is going wrong, you come in with wisdom or wit, or chocolate, and make my cares melt away.

You love Jesus more than you love me. And you love me more than I could have ever hoped for, because you love Him.

I love you to the moon and back and I’ve never had a better friend here on this earth. For so many reasons, you are the man of my dreams. And I dream, now more than ever, because you inspire me and give me room to dream big.

Happiest of birthdays, my dear husband-friend. You are the best for me.

Too Much Mom

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Sometimes, I’m too much mom and not enough wife.

What I mean is, I am immersed in mothering all day long. My thoughts are about kids and school and meals and sibling relationships, and when my husband comes home I don’t want to just throw him in the mix.

But sometimes I do.

There isn’t a switch I can turn off to mothering. It is my always-occupation and preoccupation and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, not for more “me time” or money or fancier clothes or recognition. There’s just this balancing act between always-mothering and not mothering my husband, not making him feel like one more thing on my list.

We’ve been married sixteen years and there’s not one of them that I regret, not one that I wouldn’t want to re-live. We are blessed by the overwhelming grace of God, but once in awhile things that are familiar get taken for granted.

I don’t meet him at the door like I used to. I stopped putting love notes in his lunch box, and sometimes I’m in my yoga pants when he gets home and all I can manage for a greeting is some complaint about where his shoes are placed, and would he please referee the children for a minute.

He would say he understands, that it’s ok and he knows I’ve worked hard all day, and he might even pretend he likes my yoga pants. But it’s not the way we planned for things to be, back when we were newly-wed and we agreed that I wouldn’t greet him with the ends of my day, the leftover crusts of spent energy.

The people in my life are not on my to-do list, not burdens to be carried. I can bring my leftover energy to the laundry or the dusty floor or the bills waiting to be paid, but not to the people made in His image.

People need spoiling from time to time. Everyday, maybe. And that requires energy.

The first 9 years of our marriage he worked in the woods, and he used to bring me home wildflower bouquets with a grin. He would see beauty in his day and stop to bring me some, just because.

He builds houses now, and there are bits of 2 x 4′s and screws and nails all around him at the end of the day, not wildflowers. So he had to go out of his way to buy me flowers, to hand-pick fancy artisan chocolates. Me, in my yoga pants and bad attitude. It was the same week I posted this, if that’s any indication.

I ask him why he went to all the extravagance.

I love you becomes empty and hollow, he says, if there’s not some action to it, something out of the ordinary.

Like how we always answer the how-are-you? question with fine, just an automated response with little thought.  The verb part of the word, the doing and showing and not just saying it, requires us to go out of our way sometimes.

This guy  knows me and knows the way to my heart, he does. Knows how I value quietness and peace and chocolate.

And the flowers? What I loved the most, aside from the sweet words on the card and the thought that went into the gift, is that the sunflowers looked wild and there were sticks, real sticks with moss on them, in the vase. Beauty and wild and love, all mixed in and spoiling me.

He treats me like  I’m special. And it reminds me that before I was Mom, I was Wife. Girlfriend. The one for him, and he for me.

I love my children and I try to make things special for them, to create good memories and pray away bad ones. At the exhausted end of my day, the one where I greet my husband and welcome him home, I want to have something left for him. Something special, something more than how-was-your-day, let-me-tell-you-about-mine. I want home to be his place of refuge and spoiling.

So I’m going back to those first things. The love-notes and make-up and drop-everything-daddy’s-home. There will be days of ugly and tired and could-you-please-put-your-shoes-away, but I want that to be the exception, not the rule. Because my husband already has a great mom and she trained him up right, and I’m so thankful for that. He has a great dad, too, who still brings his wife flowers.

I’m the wife, and I think great wives make the best mothers. But sometimes good moms forget the wife-part and so I’m reminding us all.

Be the wife, sisters, be the best wife.