Tag: Jen Hatmaker

Thank You Notes

Leave a comment

thank-you-letter

A couple of weeks ago in MOPS we had a fantastic speaker come and talk to our group about something I have totally not mastered: jealousy. And along with jealousy, comparison. I know that it’s hard to fathom, but from time to time I find myself longing for the green grass on the other side (Shoot, I would even settle for the grown children who can wipe their own bums on the other side of the bathroom stall.).

In her talk, however, the speaker gave us the solution to this particular problem of jealousy. Do you want to know what it is? What one quick fix will get you out of the comparison game faster than anything else? Drumroll, please…

Gratefulness!

Being thankful for what you have is the opposite reaction to comparison, and it really does work. So, in an attitude of true repentance and gratefulness, I have decided to pen my own thank you notes* to celebrate the many blessings of motherhood (*credit to Jimmy Fallon, Jen Hatmaker, and every other funny person who has already done this and who I am blatantly plagiarizing with this post).

They go something like this:

Thank you, playground sand, for staying with my children long after they leave the playground. My children had so much fun jumping off the swings into you and digging in you with their sand toys in you that we just couldn’t stand to leave that party. I count it all as joy when I walk into my living room and step into a pile of freshly-dumped-from-shoes playground sand. It’s such a fun reminder of the good times we had at that park and it does not stress me out at all. I love it when I’m about to get into bed at night, but I have to spend 20 minutes vacuuming the floor around my bed first because there is a fine sprinkling of playground sand scattered around my entire bedroom–it’s like camping at the beach!

Thank you, Moms Night Out, for an excuse to get out of dealing with BEDTIME. The friends and the night out are nice, too, but we all know the real reason we scheduled this little shin-dig from 7-9:00.

Thank you, Costco, for allowing me to still feel like a got a bargain at the end of the day because my hot dog + soda still only costs $1.50. I may have spent $400 on “essential” items, but you still know how to please the penny pinchers in all of us.

Thank you, doctors’ office stickers. You made my child feel proud and brave after he got his flu shot (even though he screamed like an attacking mountain lion and left claw marks in my arms from his attempted escape during the procedure). Not only do you change my child’s outlook on his day, but you also change his wardrobe. Thank you for sticking to his shirt all day and never falling off like a decent cheap sticker, so that I forget about you and throw his shirt-with-sticker in the washing machine the next morning. The sticky residue that you leave on his shirt is such a nice addition to the clothing–that shirt was so boring, so normal, before you left your gobs of goo permanently glued to the front right breast of that shirt.

Thank you, weekend mornings with children, for being exactly like every other morning of the week. I never really liked quiet or sleep or brunch anyway.

Thank you, “screen time”, giver of daily mini-vacations to moms everywhere.

Thank you, minivan. You are so much more than a vehicle. You are a storage closet, a kitchenette, a baby-changing station and a super-cush place to sneak in a nap between kindergarten drop-off and preschool pick-up. You have so many cubbies and cup holders that I hardly even notice the garbage my kids hoard in your dark recesses. I’m sorry I gave you so much crap before I had you–I was a different person then, and I just didn’t know you. Can we please be BFF’s now? xoxox

…and I could go on and on with these, but my baby just woke up from her nap. I’ve got to leave it here for now because real life is calling. There is a baby downstairs who needs me a and a house that (definitely) needs cleaning. There is a whole pile of people for me to love and who love me.

And for that, I truly am thankful.

 

Be Love

Leave a comment

img_6608When I was a child, I used to dream about lovely things like becoming a ballerina or being able to lick off BOTH beaters when my mom was baking a cake. As an adult, however, my dreams have changed somewhat (although I still lick off both beaters when my kids aren’t looking). As a grown-up, I’ve dreamed of more grand things. Like meeting Jen Hatmaker.

For those of you who may not know her already, you are about to, and you’re welcome. She’s only the most hilarious, genuine, kind, encouraging, inspirational author and speaker of our generation. Stop what you’re doing right now and go on Amazon to buy her books and listen to a few of her podcasts. You won’t be sorry.

Jen Hatmaker lives in Austin, and I’ve seriously contemplated moving to Texas just so we can “accidentally” become fast friends. As it turns out, though, Jen actually came to me! Last weekend she was in central California as part of the tour for her most recent book, For The Love. Obviously I had to go see her. So, I packed up myself and the baby, and drove for “what should have been 3- but turned into 6-hours” through the worst Bay Area Friday Afternoon Traffic ever (remind me again why we live here?). But in the end, we made it. And it was totally worth it.

I had an amazing weekend and I met some amazing people. I even got a book signed by my new best bud, Jen. But the best part of the weekend? I left inspired. Inspired to change myself for the better, and hopefully better the world through that change.

The topic of the weekend was “Be Love(d)”. Jen spoke on how we are loved by God (“Be loved”), and how we can “Be love” for others through our life and our actions. The message totally hit home for me, and I’ve been thinking non-stop about the implications of being loved and being love.

There have been several times in the last week where I have literally shed tears over the brokenness around me. It seems like everywhere I look there is discord and fear and hate permeating our communities, our country, the whole world. Racism is rampant. Our political future is at an unnerving tipping point. Terrorism and violence have leaked into our very neighborhoods. People against people. Us against them. Each man for himself.

Yet I refuse to believe that it has to be this way. The brokenness that I feel is surely breaking God’s heart as well, and we can no longer afford to sit idly by and watch the world unravel before us. Action is required. And it begins with us. In fact, Jesus actually straight-up gives us the answer to our current predicament.

When Jesus was questioned about what was the greatest commandment, the most important rule to observe, he answered:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Matthew 22:37-39

Love! That’s it. The tool that will fix brokenness is love. And love, my friends, is something we can all afford to give.

I am a strong believer that lives are changed one at a time. That deep, meaningful connections–surrounded by love–are what change individuals. And when one life is changed for the better, that one life will influence their family, their community, and the world. It starts with one, but the effects are exponential.

This week I put into practice this idea of “being love”,  quite by accident, and I was blown away by the results. A woman had recently moved into our neighborhood, and she has a baby that is about the same age as Hannah. I’d seen her walking with her baby a few times and had exchanged smiles and waves from across the street, but I hadn’t really introduced myself or gotten to know her at all.

Anyway, on Wednesday afternoon I was baking muffins with the boys and the recipe made a lot more muffins than I was expecting. We had muffins covering every surface of our kitchen, and I was trying to figure out what to do with all of them. Then an idea struck me: maybe I should share some of these surplus muffins! (I know, sometimes it takes me awhile to come to realizations that should be quite obvious.).

So, I packed up a plate of muffins and wrote a quick note welcoming this new neighbor to the neighborhood, and we walked them over to her house. When my neighbor opened the door she was delighted and her eyes filled with tears.

“Nobody ever bakes for me!” She said, “I’m a pastry chef instructor, and I guess people don’t feel like they can bake for me! Thank you so much!”

My first thought was, “I sure hope I got out all of those egg shells from the 4-year old’s “help” in this little project”, but mostly I was just happy that she was happy.

The next day I was rushing to unload groceries from my car before I had to zip out again to pick up Jacob from preschool. I was kind of in the zone, running back and forth from the car and trying to make my deadline. As I was unloading the last bag from my trunk, however, I looked up and saw my new neighbor walking down the street. I glanced up, smiled and waved, ready to get back to the task at hand. But instead of continuing on her walk, my neighbor stopped in my driveway.

She asked if we could talk for a minute–I could tell something was bothering her, so I put down my grocery bag and listened. She went on to tell me her story, a story of brokenness and loneliness and a deep need for love. At the end of her story, she  said, “I don’t know why I just told you all of that, but I just needed to tell someone. And you seemed like someone who could listen.”

And in that moment, I knew exactly why she had just told me all of that. Love. I had done one small, simple, seemingly insignificant act of love, and it literally opened the door to this woman’s home and her heart. Love changes everything, and it does not have to be complicated. It can be as simple as sharing some muffins, putting down your grocery bag, and listening.

So that is my challenge to you, friends. Be love. Whether the world is falling apart around you, or everything is going along just fine, be love. Love is like a rain drop in a pond, and it sends ripples out into the world. Be the kind of love that sends out ripples of goodness and kindness and hope together.

Be.

Love.

 

 

The Beam

Leave a comment

11953226_10101447015406580_355199927160422586_n

So, there’s this book.

It’s called For the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards, and I’m so in love with it. If you haven’t read For the Love yet, then do yourself a favor and go out and buy it. Right now. (You can thank me later.) This book is so good that you’ll actually want to skip watching So You Think You Can Dance after the kids’ bedtime just so you can soak in more of those wonderful words. If For the Love were a food instead of a book, it would be dark chocolate cake smothered in cream cheese frosting. I dare you to take just a bite, but guaranteed you’ll devour the whole thing in one sitting.

I may be a bit biased because the book is written by my blogger idol, Jen Hatmaker. She is perhaps the wittiest, most honest writer/speaker/liver of life that I’ve ever met (ok, I haven’t actually met her…not in the physical sense…but I cyber-stalk her and kind of want to be her when I grow up and a friend of mine once sat by her on a plane …so that all has to count for something, right?).

The book covers the hilarious (there’s a whole chapter on the appropriate-ness of leggings, tights, and yoga pants. She speaks straight to my heart.) to the more practical issues we all deal with in life. One topic in the book really got under my skin, in a good way. It made me take a critical look at my own life and make some actual changes. So what is this powerful topic of personal change? A gymnastics balance beam.

The balance beam is a metaphor for the balance in our own lives–particularly the lives of busy modern-day moms. As Hatmaker observes:

Here is the problem, girls: we’ve been sold a bill of goods. Back in the day, women didn’t run themselves ragged trying to achieve some impressively developed life in eight different categories. No one constructed fairy-tale childhoods for their spawn, developed an innate set of personal talents, fostered a stimulating and world-changing career, created stunning homes and yardscapes, provided homemade food for every meal (locally sourced, of course), kept all marriage fires burning, sustained meaningful relationships in various environments, carved out plenty of time for “self-care”, served neighbors/church/world, and maintained a fulfilling, active relationship with Jesus our Lord and Savior.

You can’t balance that job description.

Amen! Hallelujah! It’s so true. We are constantly shown the best side of people–on social media (When’s the last time you updated your profile picture to how you look RIGHT NOW? ), on TV (I’m pretty sure most celebrities don’t forget to take a shower for 3 or 4 days in a row), and even face to face (I put on “real clothes” and “makeup” when I know I’m going somewhere where people might recognize me).

What we don’t see is the other 99% of peoples’ lives that are happening outside of the glimpses we catch of their highlight reel. Those times when they lose it with their kids and/or spouse. Those times when they stuffed a Lunchable into their kid’s lunchbox and called it a day. That week when she didn’t touch a broom or a vaccuum or a toilet bowl brush because she just didn’t care. That time she looked jealously at the working mom and felt she wasn’t doing enough. That time she looked at the stay at home mom and felt she wasn’t doing enough.

And isn’t that the truth? We set expectations for ourselves based on what we think the perfect life should be, and we see how much other people are just killing it…and it’s slowly killing us. We often see the best in people but fail to see that perfection simply doesn’t exist. We are striving toward a goal that is unreachable, and we are destined to fail. You can’t be the Pinterest mom AND the CEO mom AND the Martha Stewart mom AND the PTA mom AND the marathon mom AND the…you get the picture. You can’t and I can’t and nobody is.

So where do we go from here?

The balance beam! As Hatmaker points out, “We need to quit trying to be awesome and instead be wise.” Just as you can’t possibly make it across a balance beam if it’s too crowded with STUFF, we can’t possibly make it through life if it’s too overrun by the unnecessary (I was in gymnastics for 6 years and I could hardly make it across that dang beam with NOTHING in my way). Some things we do for all of the wrong reasons–they need to go off the beam. In some areas we are sacrificing a Good for a Best–they need to find room on the beam.

Wow. Seriously, easier said than done. This idea of taking things on and off my beam got me thinking. I looked at my own crowded beam and I knew that there were some things that had to change. Here are a few of the things I pushed off my beam, and some that I pulled back on:

Off the beam: 
-Extra volunteering/leadership. I’m usually one of the first to raise my hand when they need someone to help out and, honestly, I love doing it. But I can’t do it all. And maybe someone else can even do it better. I’ve chosen a few areas where I will consistently serve, and I’m saying no to the rest.
-Late nights. As much as I love the moments in my day that are just my own, and even though my husband is the living definition of a night owl, Mama needs her sleep.
-The kids’ school. This was absolutely my hardest off the beam decision, and it took us nearly a year to make it. Traditional school wasn’t working well for David or our family during this season, and we had to take it off the beam (Goodbye mornings to myself! Goodbye lovely teachers whom we adore! Goodbye “normal”). Which brings me to…

On the beam:
-Homeschool. Hands-down the most rewarding–and exhausting–thing we’ve put on the beam this year. A total lifestyle switch, and it’s taking up a lot of room on my beam.
-The gym. I hadn’t joined a gym in about 6 years, but I needed some scheduled exercise breaks during the week…without my kids. The gym gives me 90 minutes of kid-free exercise every day I can manage to drag us out the door–enough time for a barre class and a solo shower: win-win!
-Writing. I enjoy writing, both here on the blog and for my own self, so I’m carving out specific time during the week where I can make that happen.

There are other things I’m still working on moving on or off my beam, but change takes time. One step at a time, I will make it across this balance beam called life. Even if I do fall every now and then.

Now it’s your turn, friend–what are you pulling on or pushing off your beam?