The Night before College

I drank in the words on the page, “ Give ear to my words, O Lord, consider my meditation…..In the morning I will direct my prayers to you, and I will look up. (Ps. 5) It wasn’t morning, but afternoon. I looked up, I cried out, I even leaned down and gave a long affectionate sniff to my Bible. I love the way books smell, especially this one.

Evening was approaching, and I stopped in the middle of all the hub bub and knew I had to lean in. Thinking, praying, correcting myself…”Come onnnn, they’re healthy…get a grip. At the beginning of the week, I’d done what I’ve learned is one of the great keys to life: Release! I had released this whole week to God. I don’t need to see them every moment. I don’t need to call for a mandatory family dinner every night. No, I’ve kicked against the goads enough times. I’ve learned this great truth. Release! It was a great lifting off my shoulders, my heart. I wasn’t just ok, I was great. Until today…

 I looked out my window and in the background I saw two little eight year old girls getting off the bus, walking back-pack laden, home. In the foreground was one of my eighteen year old girls, loading her car for college, tomorrow morning making that three hour trek across the great divide.

The contrast is too much for me. I need a drink. I know I shouldn’t, know this shouldn’t call for such measures, but, I can’t help myself. I do something I’ve never done before. I go into the place where I hide my secret stash. Go for the one thing that can pull me out….why does it have this power over me… Right now, I’m just glad it can.

Normally I put the chocolate ice cream into a glass and add the coca-cola, stir vigorously, and voila! A Black Cow, they call it. Not this time. This time I go completely off the rails. I open the half-eaten carton and in a crazy out-of-the-box moment of desperation I pour the coke directly into the carton of ice cream! Oh the thrill! It’s amazing! Who knew it could take on an even greater zing when eaten in this way? I begin to laugh! I’m laughing at myself…who cares? I’m laughing! Yes! Desperate times call for desperate measures, everybody knows that! Have some more!

I’m so glad God decided to make chocolate. I’m so glad that I know He was laughing with me this afternoon. We both got a real kick out of it.  While I was pouring the coke into the carton it reminded me of another time when I did something I never thought I’d do. It was eighteen years ago after I had gotten my miracle babies…five months apart…and I was desperately sleep-deprived. They were about a year old and had woken up and were chattering their baby babble in their cribs. I knew it was time to rise and shine, but I just couldn’t. I wanted to get up and make them a delicious and nutricious breakfast like I always did, but that morning, like the walking dead, I made it into the kitchen, knowing I was about to do something I swore I’d never do. I picked up the box of cheerios and walked, zombie-like, into their bedroom and poured them each a little pile of those O’s into their cribs, and went back and layed down in my bed. I felt so bad at the time, but as the years past, I have laughed about it many times. Today, I was able to laugh about it right in the moment. And as I scooped each delightful mouthful out of the carton I thought about how I’m not the perfect Mother, and I laughed cause it’s the end of an era. The end of eighteen years of really needing an ever-present grace-filled God to do my job in the moments when I just couldn’t, and Him always being there. Just like He was today, understanding the roller-coaster of emotions, and understanding the need for a little chocolate

Girls Raised in the Hood

Have you heard the country song entitled “You’re gonna miss this”? It’s about life, and how it moves on, quickly, and enjoying the moment we’re in, and not wishing it away.

The voices of the “girls raised in (our) Hood” fill the house. The front door opens and closes a thousand times. The visa card is being pulled in and out of my wallet again and again.( I’m not looking forward to the day the bill comes in. ) They gather around my kitchen island like they have a thousand times. Stories about boys bring out sighs of empathy, peals of  laughter and sage teenage advice, actually filled with a lot of wisdom. Moms in our Hood, “you done good”. Our girls aren’t perfect but they’ve got wisdom beyond their years. Maybe they don’t use it for themselves all the time, but they’ve got it. Thank God. They’ve got it.

Up the stairs they go, taking their energy and their innocent, hopeful and expectant conversations into the teenage lair that is our upstairs. Their picnic lunch is packed. Time to lie around while they do their rendition of Project Runway, examining, critiquing, and trying on each others clothes and the plethora of styles in my girl’s closet. That closet represents all her tastes and moods, so many sales and “had-to-haves”, and lots and lots of her hard-earned baby-sitting money. That closet is one of the things she loves about life and sharing it with her fellow fashionista’s makes it all the sweeter.

I’m supposed to be listening to a podcast right now. Not really supposed to be, but wanta be. That’s a part of my day that I love, and I love that I can do it in the morning, or late at night when my early-to-bed- early-to-rise husband has gone on to dreamland, and I am waiting for one or both of my girls to walk through the door and flop down on the couch and start my very favorite part of my day…the download. All the details of their day, what someone said, how it made them feel, how they are processing just growing up.

But instead of listening to my podcast, I pull the ear plugs out, and just sit and listen to them. Does their conversation have the life-changing stuff this podcast contains? No, but when they all go off to college in three weeks I can listen to a million podcasts. I can sit and read my beloved books. My visa won’t be straining like it is now. But their voices, their laughter, their refreshing innocent outlook on life will be filling dorm rooms and hallways far away from here.

So for now I’m setting aside all the things I can do while they’re gone and just sitting and listening to that beloved sound, as if I were at a great  symphony. Because it is music to me. The best kind. Music that represents 18 years of physical, emotional and spiritual energy. Countless hours of prayer, meals and snacks and packed lunches. Rattles and push-toys and baby dolls and bikes and now, cars. And boys!  Oh the boys. Sweet little crushes that are since forgotten or bring belly laughs. Now the boy talk is more serious. Where does he stand with God? What does he want to do with his life? And for Momma, where does he want to live?

I need to get up from this spot, this vantage point and get on with my day. I strain and look at the clock. Gotta go. Come on, get up, get going. But this “music” is intoxicating…and fleeting.

I stand on the fringe of a new frontier. Motherhood is taking a new turn, changing. I look up at the framed chalkboard in my “coffice” and read the words I wrote, “EMBRACE CHANGE”. I don’t want to, Plain and Simple. I know the pain of “kicking against the goads”, I have done it, I am doing it. Although I see the joy college graduations and weddings and grandbabies have brought to my peers, right now, I don’t want to let go of this moment, this season. It took a whole lot to get to this sweet spot. The days of them rolling their eyes and then vehemently denying that they did it, are over. All that hard work and hope has paid off. Now its time to enjoy them as very young friends. Very fun friends. My favorite kind of friends.

And Voila’, they are good cooks! One of them just brought me a plate of the yummiest chicken salad ever, the other is making a delish gourmet supper tonight.

 Yes, bring on the long-awaited perks!!

 And Lord. Show me how to navigate from this sweet spot to the next one you have in store for me. “Cause you know I’m all about sweet spots!

 But more than that, show me what I can do for and with you. Let’s do a little Cosmic project together…that sounds like fun.