family – Page 13 – Choosing Hope

This is a bunch of pictures… and would you believe this isn’t nearly all of them, AND there were some occasions I forgot to even take a snapshot?? Truly though, in this case a picture is a thousand words to see the joy and excitement these babes of mine got to experience.

. . .

We had an incredibly wonderful opportunity to visit our homeland over this past few weeks. When the hubs had to go back out to Colorado for work again and the kids realized they were out of school for this one, they started begging for all of us to come along. I honestly did not have high hopes that my energy levels would keep up, or that my pain and muscle spasms would survive the 18 hour car ride, but as time grew near it was obvious how much their little hearts needed the joy and sunshine this trip would bring, and I stopped seeing obstacles and decided it was absolutely worth digging my deepest to make it happen.

We had a outstanding time. While the man of the house worked and stayed up in Denver, the kids and I shacked up in a hotel (yay frequent travel points?) in Colorado Springs, and we packed as much as we possibly could into every day. We started with a trip to the grocery (hallelujah for actually knowing what aisle to find things on for the first time in a year!) and settled into our home base where we could easily retreat to cook, eat, rest, play games, and cool off in the sparkling outdoor pool.

It was glorious to actually be able to feel the sun on our skin again, and to breathe the thin, dry, mountain air. The brief rain showers were worth dancing in because they were fresh and actually cooled things down. Lightening bugs are cool, but my goodness how we’ve missed the sun and the beautiful mountain peaks.

We packed our days full of visits with friends from sunup to sundown, even having some camp out with us in our crowded hotel room to stretch out the hours spent together. It did my heart such good to see my little people squealing with treasured friends, young and old. We visited as many as we were able, and still felt like we needed another week or two to see everyone we wanted to! We did the best that we could, and resolved it would have to happen again some time.

We visited our favorite parks, restaurants, stores, friends’ houses, and met up with neighbors, teachers, therapists, and dear friends. We were so exhausted each night, but never enough to keep us from rising with the sun to do it again. Our friend tanks were filled, our smile muscles given an excellent workout, and our bodies kissed with new sprinkles of freckles.

We got to see some of my family on both ends of the trip, and meet up with some sweet friends from California. We worked in some epic favorites like Leon Gessi’s pizza, BJ’s ice cream, Lava Land, Casa Bonita, and Denver Biscuit Conpany.

It was a ton of work, and loads of fun, and not without pain and exhaustion and some pinching and poking in the car… but it was epic and amazing and worth every sacrifice. The car ride home was a little bit quieter; contentedly tuckered out little people dreaming of their adventures… in between waking up and breathing too close to each other’s space, but all in all it was good. So good.

Leave me a comment, it lets me know you’re listening!

No thing in life has ever made my heart beat so proud, so fierce, so gentle, so unequivocally bursting with the highest and lowest of all emotions as being a mother does.

It has made me so many things. I have been the young teenage mother, naive and unsuspecting. The energetic working mom, balancing a career while serving growing little hearts at home.

I have been the expecting mother, dancing over a positive pregnancy test, and the would-be mother staring in disbelief at an ultrasound screen that has gone silent. I have been the adoptive mother, gathering the seeming endless trail of papers required to welcome a lonely heart Home, and I have been the foster mom who had to say goodbye with a desperate prayer for a loving mother to come.

I have been the woman struggling with infertility and avoiding going out in public for the pain of seeing maternity clothes and new babies. I have been the mother of a perfect natural delivery and of an unplanned and frightening c-section.

I’ve been the mother pleading for a miracle over a quiet hospital bed, and the mother staring down a deep gash in the earth where my child would be buried.

I’ve been the homeschooling mom, and the mom that packs lunches before the early morning school bus. The mom who cheers and waves and beams with pride, and the mom who aches over the heart of a wayward child. I have been the mama supported by a loving husband, and the single mom trying to hold it all together through long deployments.

I have been the mother who delights in adventuring and the thrill of trying new things, and the mother who grieves over being too ill to make it out of bed.

I have been enough to know that there is no “right way” to mother, and that we are all just doing the best we know how, and that the one thread that runs common among all mothers and would-be, have-been, and almost-mothers is the unbreakable thread that formed when we realized we did or could or would or had to belong to something smaller but greater than ourselves. Something that held the power to provide us with our greatest, most intense moments of joy and fulfillment, and also the lowest depths of grief and insecurity.

If you are a mother, have a mother, know a mother, want to be a mother? That’s something. That is one ridiculously terrifying and exuberantly thrilling job description that no one really lets you in on until you’re in the thick of it. And this world needs you and your desperate love and reckless hope and selfless ambition to keep the heartbeats of all of us thrumming to find our places and our purpose in this crazy life.

I leave you with this…

We all have come across people in life that tend to make us feel better about ourselves and how we are doing. It’s human, it’s our nature to compare. So imma give you a free “feel pretty super good about yourself” right now, or at least next time you’re wondering if you’re the only mom who does these things you will know you’re not alone.

I have been at this mothering thing for 15 years and 11 months. I have most definitely done one and all of the following, some of them on more than one occasion:

1. I have *actually* pulled over and made a kid get out and walk the rest of the way home.

2. I have let (begged?) my children to stay home from school because I was too exhausted to drop them off and pick them up.

3. I have mistaken one of their adorable drawings of a person or a flower for something completely unrelated and crushed their little spirits.

4. I have let my children have cereal for dinner and dessert for breakfast.

5. I have pretended to make a call and given them the “oh sorry honey, they didn’t answer,” when I couldn’t fathom adding one more friend or activity to our day.

6. I’ve been distracted when I was supposed to be watching their super-coolest thing and missed it and told them how amazing and incredible they were anyway.

7. I have gone to bed before my children and told them to remember to tuck in the little one and then turn out the lights.

8. I have forgotten it was picture day at school and been reminded by a portrait of haphazard hair and a tacky two-years-outgrown T-shirt with an obnoxious graphic on the front.

9. I have spent endless time on meal plans and grocery shopping and stocking up on all the good stuff and then been so bone-weary I have ordered delivery or let them eat whatever they felt like anyway.

10. I’ve forgotten to replace pearly baby teeth with shiny quarters and blamed it on them for putting it too far under their pillows.

11. I’ve been late getting them places because I can’t decide on what to wear, and then let everyone assume we were late because of the kids.

12. I have secretly wished that for Mother’s Day I could have a small break from being a mom.

There you have it. Wherever you are in your motherhood, or desire for motherhood, hopefully that gives you a reason or two to feel better about your tireless efforts to safely and effectively grow your little people into productive, well-adjusted adults with very little scar tissue. Just remember, there is no one-size-fits-all-mothering, so keep doing the best you can with what you know. Warrior on mamas!

My kids; here and in Heaven, biological and not, have made me so much of who I am, and I am all the better for it. They challenge me, inspire me, forgive me, empower me, love and accept me in ways I never could have imagined, and I truly am the luckiest girl in the whole wide world for getting to be their mom.

Tag: family

Home Calls

For the Mamas. And everyone who ever came from one.