Hi, friend! I am so glad you have stopped by my little corner of the internet. I hope you’ll take some time to look around and join our wonderful community of moms here as we learn to be better moms together!
“The heartbeat is fast—166 beats per minute,” the technician told me a week ago in the blue hush of the ultrasound room.
“Is that good?” I said.
“Oh yes, that’s very good—very strong.”
Then he told me to hold my breath and I did, and then released as he played back the sound he’d just recorded—the beautiful “ba-boom, ba-boom” of life, its fluid line sketched across the screen and the baby’s arms and legs kicking like tiny sticks on a peanut.
My husband and I had been wrestling with the idea for over a year and I had been reading “Educating the Whole Hearted Child” by Clay and Sally Clarkson with a group of close friends. What I read stirred my heart, but I had never seen it in action! I couldn’t escape an image of of a mom wearing a gingham jumper, with exceptionally polite children, who somehow already knew how to read, bake bread and tend chickens by the time they were four years old. Back then I had a shag haircut and a nose ring, and I was lucky if we made it through dinner without one of my children sticking food up their nose. Being from a family of teachers and public school administrators, a classroom was also the only form of school I could wrap my brain around. I didn’t know how to create a learning environment at home and I didn’t know how I would “fit” into my perceived ideas about this educational choice.
Family hikes have been our thing this summer. Every weekend we’ve sought out a new trail to hike with our three boys. And can I just tell you, it has been glorious, though it doesn’t always begin that way.
Before we leave for hiking we get the usual pushback:
“Dad, no!”
“I’m so tired from baseball. Can’t we just rest at home?”
“Another hike! What?”
When I was seventeen, my best friend, Tania, and I jumped into my white Plymouth Duster and drove from State College, Pennsylvania, to Atlanta, Georgia—straight through in thirteen hours. We drove ninety miles an hour nearly the whole trip. We were reckless and young and crazy. But, oh, did we have fun. Singing at the top of our lungs, windows down, not a care in the world.
Most of us enter into parenthood desiring to be the best parents in the world! We have pre-determined expectations we lay on ourselves based upon what we experienced personally and what we witnessed in friends homes. The moment we enter motherhood we want to be the better mom.
It feels like there is nothing left in me to give.
Have you ever spoken those words out loud or whispered them to God in desperation?
On any normal day, do you feel like there’s not enough of you to meet the needs pressing in?
What happens when normal turns into a string of chaos? Then how do you manage?
