Posts Tagged "marriage"
How to Thrive From Failure
We rise most mornings at 5-ish. The first snooze alarm coincides with the beeping of the coffee pot, both of them annoying but necessary, and I’m usually in the kitchen with freakish hair and one eye open by the time he’s pouring his mini-wheats.
It’s a slow awakening, with the requisite silence of early morning.
But after I’ve made his millionth sandwich and he’s taken his vitamins with the milk from his millionth bowl of cereal, after the lunch box is packed and the coffee and cream have mixed to the perfect color, we sit together.
It’s routine, and we love it. Coffee time and the first thoughts of the day. We are fairly guaranteed that the phone won’t ring and the kids won’t wake and the only other one who greets us that early is the dog, waiting to go out.
So Monday, after the bowl was in the sink and both eyes were finally opened, the topic of discussion was failure. Specifically, the ways we’ve been failing in our parenting and our walks with the Lord and just life, in general.
This is the point in the conversation where I generally get hurt feelings. I have all the normal coping mechanisms when it comes to critique and I’ve probably added a few new ones to the list, namely, a dogged determination to prove you wrong by my sheer awesomeness.
But this was a different conversation with a different outcome. This was more of a here-we-are-how-do-we-get-back kind of mutual discussion. An assessment. A taking stock and evaluating the outcomes.
And the diagnosis was true. The cold, hard, and unemotional facts are that we are failing in areas.
We’re dealing with people and you don’t make charts evaluating successes and failures, like some business plan. But you do step back and look at fruit and relationships and you examine your days. You walk circumspectly and gain a heart of wisdom.
You guard against being marched around by your emotions, because there’s more at stake here than your ego.
And again on Monday night, again in quiet discussion but this time with several others involved, we are faced with failure. Our motives are checked by the Holy Spirit and isn’t that always the best confrontation? The one that comes between us and the Comforter?
The brokenness is a hopeful-cracking and we all know that we fall short.
It shouldn’t be such a shock to be faced with your own imperfection, but we often shield our Precious Selves and shy from it. We don’t let it have it’s perfect work in us.
But this is a different conversation with a different outcome. This is redemptive, because I’m determined to make the hard stop and look the ugly truth in the eye.
The ugly truth is that I fail daily.
The redemptive truth is that I am not doomed to string up failures for a lifetime of rotten days. It’s amazing, but I’m holy and blameless in the eyes of God, and I can choose to be grounded and steadfast in Him and to be unmoved from the hope of the gospel (Col. 1:21-23).
I can take stock and pray through changes and come back to Center.
I’m thriving from this failure because of hope for something better, and thankfulness for another chance, and the knowledge that He is shaping us. All of us and each of us.
Linking up with The Better Mom, Grace Laced Mondays, Playdates with God, and Titus 2sdays.
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What Makes a Husband Great
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.
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Too Much Mom
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.
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Welcome to the Day {How Grace Covers it All}
The alarm clock doesn’t buzz this morning but the internal one, praise God for it, it gets you up and racing. I wake to the light on in the bathroom and as I glance at the clock I freak a little.
“Do you know what time it is?”
No one likes to welcome the day this way, but you are gracious.
I make lunch and you pour coffee for two, eat your frosted minis as usual, and chat about the Bible. You say nothing about the reason why the alarm wasn’t set.
Out the door, freezing in the fall morning, to warm your pick-up and head out. You’ll drive an hour to work 10 more and I have to tell you that when you come home this evening, I won’t be here because there’s a volleyball game.
It pains me to welcome you to the rush of your day this way, behind already and a long weekend ahead.
It pains me that I won’t be here to welcome you home this evening. I know, you’re a big boy and you can handle it and the house will be quiet for you to study, but I like to be here for you.
Off in separate ways, but always one to welcome the other home. You’re pretty much awesome, honey.
{Welcome to Five Minute Friday, where we write on the given topic for just 5 minutes. The word of the day is: WELCOME! Click the link and follow along with us.}
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The Staged Life
I don’t always give my best.
Sometimes ‘my best’ is too much work and I settle for doing ‘just enough’ or even ‘maybe later’. I’ll go to bed with that sink-full of dishes and toppling pile of laundry, with no idea what’s for breakfast and with a lovely, crumb-crusted floor.
Once or twice, I’ve even fallen into bed fully clothed and with un-brushed teeth. Sorry, honey.
I just thought a little confession would be good.
As though someone really does have it all together, all the time.
But having it all together in real life is more illusive, more of a special occasion.
There are those days where everything clicks along, every meal is planned, the house is clean and I even see the bottom of the laundry baskets. School happens peacefully and the kids play a game together. My husband walks in to the smell of his favorite dinner, sits down to eat it with his favorite people, and we all have a lovely discussion that is relevant and fruitful.
The trouble is that I expect the days to always be that way. And what do expectations get me?
More often, those events don’t all line up on the same day. Monday I might have all our meals planned. Tuesday school might go peacefully and the kids might play a game. Wednesday may be a marathon laundry day, and Thursday we might have a really good discussion at dinner with no bathroom noises, no 5th grade humor, and no fighting over who-sits-where.
298. The full moon299. The fog clearing away in the morning300. Motivation!301. Bailey, thanking me for making her do hard things302. Bible discussions303. good friends at the river304. 3 things that were broken or lost, that are now found or fixed
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Let’s Connect
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