Tomorrow morning my incredible friend Ashley is picking me up and we are going running.
Which would be awesome. Except I can only run for about twenty seconds at a time before I feel like my heart is going to explode and my lungs will stop working.
I am incredibly out of shape. I’ve been working hard on this. I’m currently 16 days into a 30 day workout challenge, and I’m more proud of myself than I can explain. I’m feeling much stronger, I have more muscle definition in my arms and legs, and my stamina in the workouts has improved tremendously.
But I’ve been doing this all in my air conditioned living room. With an unlimited supply of ice water. For only 15 minutes at a time. Being cheered on by my two kids who know just the right time to yell, “Good job, Mommy! You’re a super awesome rock star!”
It’s becoming a family motto. We are now saying “super awesome rock star” frequently.
Tomorrow I will be running. Outside in the Georgia heat and humidity. Will I cry? Maybe. Will I pass out? I hope not. Will I throw up? Jesus who loves me, please no.
I am nervous about tomorrow. So tonight I am reminding myself -Will I come out of it stronger? Yes. Is my body capable of more than my mind believes? Absolutely. Will I regret this in a few months when I’m able to run much longer than twenty seconds at a time? Not even a little bit.
My goal is consistency above all else. And I’m so thankful for the people in my life who are holding me accountable to take care of myself in all ways.
I’m sitting in Annabelle’s room. I should be doing dishes. I want to be doing dishes. The dishes have bred. They have become a horde taking over the kitchen. If I’m not careful they may rebel and try to take over the house using forks and knives as weapons.
So I really want to restore order to the chaos that is my filthy kitchen. But my daughter woke up halfway through her nap and was upset her daddy had left for work. So here I sit.
She has gone from sobbing to quietly dancing with her baby doll. At some point she spit in her hands and rubbed them together just to see what would happen. Now she is in the best of moods because her brother has snuck out of his quiet play time to make faces at her from the hallway and they are both giggling.
I should be doing dishes. Or getting her out of bed and finding an activity for the kids to do.
But instead I’m just going to sit here and bask in the giggles and the joy and the chaos for a few minutes.
Eight years ago we exchanged rings and vowed our vows. We washed each other’s feet while our friend played this song.
We wanted to remind ourselves & our friends and family of what God had done in our lives. Of how He brought us together. Of the grace and the love He had shown through our relationship.
How much more He has done in these eight years since that day.
He has given us joy. The sense of humor we share has been a precious gift through the years. The laughter and the choice to be positive has made the good times beautiful and the hard times even more beautiful.
He has given us grace. When we have chosen anger and yelling and bitterness, His grace has given healing to our marriage. When we have failed each other and fallen short, His grace has enabled us to love each other with selflessness and forgiveness.
He has given us faith. Oh how He has given us faith. Faith that we will still have a roof over our heads tomorrow. Faith that we will have food in our bellies. Faith that our circumstance does not define the character of our God. Faith that there is hope for our relationship despite our weaknesses and failures. Faith that allows us to humble ourselves and thank God for the many difficulties we have faced, knowing that “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” (2 Corinthians 4:17)
He has given us strength. We have had more than our share of hard times. And I thank God for each hard road we have walked. Through it all, as we learned the hard lessons and found what is truly important, as we struggled and cried and complained, as we chose to praise instead of curse, as we chose the road of faith and trust instead of fear and anger, He has given us His strength. He has developed our character and grown us into better people than we were eight years ago.
He has given us beauty. We see it in the faces of our kids. In the laughter in our home. In the antics of our silly pets over the years. In our tear filled eyes as we say the hard “sorries.” In the dance parties we are constantly having. In the story He is writing for us. We see it in the daily bread He never fails to provide. In the friends and family and church He has given. In the comfort of sleeping side by side. In every thread that is weaved into this rich tapestry that is our marriage. The better. The worse. The sickness. The health. The richer. The poorer. Til death do we part.
I’m so glad it’s you by my side. I’m so thankful for what He has done for me. What He has done for you. He has done for us.
Miss Priss wasn’t feeling so great today. She was becoming increasingly more fussy as the day wore on, and by the time nap time came around she was running a low grade fever.
None of this was very concerning considering she’s two. Viruses and bugs are a common occurrence.
But then I changed the mother of all nap time diapers and noticed something blue gleaming at me from her nostril.
My brain didn’t quite know what to do with this information. I was stuck on the thought, “Why is her snot blue?” for quite some time. And then I realized my child had pushed a blue craft bead up her nose.
After two seconds of trying to hold her down and get it out I made Anthony call the nearest urgent care to let them know we’d be there soon.
The entire family accompanied Annabelle to the doctor so mom and dad could assist in restraining her when the time came. Noah was very pleased to be visiting the doctor and couldn’t stop touching everything in sight. Annabelle was enjoying the experience until the evil nurse made her stand on a scale. From then on everything the poor man did was pure torture in the eyes of a toddler. Checking her blood oxygen? How dare he. Taking her temperature? Surely something the Geneva Convention should have addressed.
By the time she calmed down, it was clear she wasn’t feeling well at all. She was no longer smiling or laughing and just wanted to snuggle closely.
She gagged.
We panicked.
The nurse, God bless his soul, gave us a barf bag and promised we were the next to be seen by the doctor.
Everything was fine for the next five minutes.
Annabelle then violently threw up. Mercifully into the barf bag.
Unmercifully, she then decided to be mortal enemies with the bag and violently threw up again. On my shirt. On my pants. Puddles of vomit collecting in my lap. The stench left me unable to do anything other than clench my mouth and eyes shut and pretend I was absolutely anywhere but this hell.
Our friend the nurse, may he live a long and blessed life, sprang into action with gauze pads for clean up and brand new t-shirts for us to change into. Another nurse grabbed vomit covered Annabelle and cleaned her up.
She grabbed her. With no gloves on. She grabbed someone else’s vomit covered child with her bare hands. Mother Teresa has nothing on this woman.
Within five minutes Annabelle and I were in fresh clothes and the bead had been removed from her nose. It only took four adults to do it.
What was a nasty, smelly mess of a doctor’s visit was saved by the kindness and care of the doctors and nurses at our urgent care clinic.
And we got two free t-shirts out of the deal, so we’ve got that going for us.
If you come to my house, you’ll notice a haze on my windows that makes it difficult to see through. This is thanks to Bella, my three-legged dog.
Bella is a German Shorthair Pointer who lost her leg when she got stuck in a fence as a puppy. She’s gorgeous, too smart for her own good, and has puppy dog eyes for days.
She joined our family a little over a year ago after her previous family started looking for a new, less stressful home for this sweet girl. She was very anxious, so much so that she was eating six cups of food a day because her nervous energy was burning it all off.
Within ten minutes of being in our house for the first time, this dog fell asleep with all three legs in the air and turned into an extremely mellow dog. She loves our kids and lets them lay all over her and play with her. She adores snuggling on the couch. She loves to chew on bones and rub her back on the carpet while making ridiculous noises. She growls and barks when she’s happy and excited. She lives for the times we forget to close the pantry door and she can sneak food out of the trash. If there’s a pillow to be found, her head will be on it. If there’s a blanket around, she’ll be curled up underneath it. She’s extremely lazy.
Until we leave the house.
Bella has separation anxiety, which is very common for her breed and causes her to lose her mind when we leave. We quickly learned that crating her was a terrible idea after she escaped from and collapsed our metal dog crate and scraped up her nose doing it. So now we leave her in the living room with the curtains open so she can drool all over the windows and watch for our return.
I don’t clean the windows very often since the dog will just slobber all over them the next time we leave, but this crazy sweet dog is totally worth it.
In the wee hours of Mother’s Day, it happened again. My four year old had another accident. This time he slept through it, but his entire body and pjs were soaked and I needed to wake him so we could clean him up and change his sheets and pjs.
Which created a dilemma.
He’s not your average four year old. He’s strong willed. He’s difficult. He’s the most hard headed person on the planet. He’s a champion tantrumer, a professional screamer, a hard hitter. Things that are simple with other kids just aren’t with him. We saw a play therapist once, trying to get him all the help we can. She said she couldn’t help us because parenting-wise we were doing it right. Strangely, that broke my momma heart. Of course we all want to hear we are doing it right. But when doing it right means our child’s life is still so much harder than it should be, I think we’d rather hear, “You’re doing it all wrong. Here’s the right way. It will improve so fast if you do this.” We now see a counselor as a family to help us be proactive and deliberate with behavior modification and learning to work through emotions. It helps. But it’s a painfully slow help.
And now, two weeks after the emotional turmoil of a miter saw accident and my husband nearly amputating his thumb, two weeks after emergency surgery to reconstruct and reattach it, two weeks after finding out he hasn’t worked at his employer long enough to receive disability, two weeks after the church and family and my tribe of mama friends lavished love and support and groceries and prayers on my family, now this.
He’s having accidents every night after no night accidents for months and every single time they trigger a tantrum. Every time they wake his little sister in the next room. Every time his sleep deprived daddy and I do everything we can to be there for him and calm him down during the hour of screaming. We try to talk to him. We try to sit silently with him. We try to sing to him. We try to draw tic-tac-toe on the windows with dry erase markers with him. We pray and we cry and we struggle. We struggle with the questions and the fears and the anger and the mind-numbing exhaustion. And eventually, the screams turn into sobs and we know he’s no longer stuck in the turmoil of his anger and sadness. And we get to hold him and rock him and love on him. And we tell him it’s okay to be upset. But he can’t hit us. And we want to help him find a better way than the screaming. And we love him to the moon and back and that will never change.
And that night, in the wee hours of Mother’s Day after the screams melted into sobs and as tears ran down both our cheeks, I held my boy and I played him this song.
And my prayer was this,
“I am not enough for this beautiful boy who struggles. The song says ‘ready or not, you need me, so here I am.’ And it’s true. I’m not ready. I’m not ready to wonder if it’s time for the child psychiatrist and the Zoloft. I’m not ready or equipped to help a boy I don’t understand. I’m not ready for the sleepless nights and the worry that threatens to eat up every piece of me and the fear that God gave this kid to the wrong mom who isn’t strong enough to be a fortress of peace for her child.
But I know who is.
When I am weak, Jesus tells me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ (2 Corinthians 12:9)
When I am afraid, Jesus says, ‘Don’t be afraid; just believe.’ (Mark 5:36)
When I am weary, Jesus gives me strength. (Isaiah 40:29)
When my child’s screams are too loud and I want to give into my anger, He Himself is my peace. (Ephesians 2:14)
When I want to give in to my worry and my fears about the future, I hear Him remind me, ‘don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’ (Matthew 6:34)
So I pray that Jesus will fill my holes. That the rests in between the notes of the song my son and I are writing will be heavy with the presence of Jesus. That He will be what I cannot. That the God who created every piece of his body and brain, who knit him together so perfectly in the mystery and dark quiet of my womb, that He will give me wisdom beyond human comprehension to know how to help my son. That when I am too tired and too numb and too confused to know what to pray, that the Spirit would pray for me in my tears and groans. That as I surrender control to God, He will be the fortress I can run into when I’m not enough – so the holes in my roof and walls will be covered by the rock that is higher than I. That the wind and rain will never reach my child because his mama hides in Jesus.”
Noah bear, I pray when you are older that you will hear Jesus in this achingly beautiful song we are writing together.
You are the one who made me a mommy. Neither of us had any idea what we were getting into with each other.
But I would not trade one note of the song that is you.
Anthony and I have been married for (almost) eight years. He’s got an incredible sense of humor and an infectious laugh.
Anthony lets me sleep in on a regular basis and takes far more than his fair share of night wake ups with the kids. He loves to serve. The kids live for living room wrestling sessions with daddy.
My husband didn’t know what a bagel was until he was 21. He’s an incredibly hard worker. He’s also pretty clumsy. Keep wine glasses and power tools away from this stud.
Our sad and pitiful vehicles over the years (and a healthy dose of Google) have turned Anthony into a pretty decent home mechanic.
After our first kiss, I temporarily lost my mind and said, “You make my heart go pitter patter.” And he didn’t run away from me in terror.
He loves soccer. And cricket. And curling. And sports radio. At one point he called into our ESPN radio station so often they all knew him by the sound of his voice. And if you want someone to win a radio contest for you, he’s your man. He’s won us hundreds of dollars in restaurant gift cards. And once he sang “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?” on the radio to win us Elton John tickets. That’s romance, ladies.
I love this man. And for the record, he still makes my heart go pitter patter.
After eight years of talking about it, I finally planted a vegetable garden this year.
I’ve been amazed by the miracle of sprouts, by how quickly peas and beans grow, by the daily change in these plants as I water them and pull the occasional weed. I’m fascinated by the feathery tops of carrots and the crunchy, hairy leaves of cucumber plants. My potato plants are growing by inches daily. Our strawberry plants are bursting with green buds that will soon be ripe fruit. And tonight I picked a handful of green beans.
As someone who has always had a black thumb, I’d call this a success.
Four weeks ago, my husband had a run-in with a miter saw, resulting in a nearly amputated thumb, reconstructive surgery, a hospital stay, and a lot of time on his hands (pun intended) while he heals before returning to work.
So he’s started watching cricket.
Maybe it’s because I refuse to spend any time learning about this sport, but y’all. This sport makes no sense. It’s like baseball on drugs.
I went for a run (*cough*walk*cough*) last night and when I got back to the house he was watching cricket and excitedly telling me all about bowlers and wickets and aerodynamics. Bless his heart – all I could think was, “When will this be over?”
And then he told me. IN EIGHT HOURS.
I thought he stuttered. I was wrong.
Next thing I know he’s telling me he’s over two hours into this particular game (match? exhibition? who knows?) and they are about to break for lunch.
That’s right. Lunch. They have lunch breaks in the middle of the game because they are endlessly long.
As a mama of two little whirlwinds my lunch usually consists of the scraps left on their plates and sneak-eating Smarties while hiding in the pantry.
Don’t get me wrong. I love these babies. But a lunch break in the middle of a sports game? These guys are completely spoiled. Dear husband, I am ready for you to explain cricket to me now that I will be returning to the workforce as a professional cricket player.
I’ve got a lot of potty related things going on these days. Today we officially began potty training Miss Priss. So far, nothing (other than an unwanted banana) has made it into the potty. She is ecstatic – new underwear and extra attention.
I am miserable.
There is something about potty training that makes me want to die. The constant laundry, the accidents, the cleaning, the frustration.
God help me.
On top of all of this, Mr. Strong Will Himself had an epic tantrum yesterday in which he yelled the word “damn” 30 times. THIRTY TIMES. I was almost impressed but instead I had to be responsible and teach the kid. So he did 30 chores and picked out 30 toys to give away. I’m hoping going hard core on him will nip this cursing in the bud so we don’t get a call from his teacher every single day next year regarding his potty mouth.
Did I mention I’m currently taking wine and chocolate donations to get me through this tough time?
Tomorrow morning my incredible friend Ashley is picking me up and we are going running. 
Four weeks ago, my husband had a run-in with a miter saw, resulting in a nearly amputated thumb, reconstructive surgery, a hospital stay, and a lot of time on his hands (pun intended) while he heals before returning to work.
One Hot (mess) Mama 