What 10 Looks Like

10 years ago today at 8:15 a.m. this kid made me a mother for the first time

Delivering him was hard. But even harder was the realization that I was taking this little baby home with no instruction manual.

How could I possibly be equipped to be responsible for such a little life?

It's been 10 years of trial and error.

10 years of crying and praying.

10 years of calling my mother for advice.

10 years of firsts and celebrations and triumphs.

10 years of hoping that I'm getting it right.

Sometimes I don't. But most times I do, and that's only by God's grace.

10 is a hard age. It sits at the intersection of childhood and independence.

10 looks like me standing back and watching as he happily runs off alone to his class after drop offs at school. He no longer wants me to walk him.

10 looks like hours with his nose buried in book.

10 looks like headphones on enjoying his own world.

10 looks like understanding more how the world works and answering real life questions.

10 looks like teaching him to be his own person.

10 looks like taking out the trash but still having to be reminded to do so. 

10 looks like letting go more than holding on.

These past 10 years have flown by. Ten more and he'll be an adult.

But for right now I'll cherish these last few days of childhood with my first born.

Happy birthday!

Wise Words For My Younger Self

Lately I've been struck with how fast time flies.

And how I don't look as young as I used to.

Care-free and 20-something 

The other  night our little family watched old videos. Little snippets of all our lives flashed before my eyes. Our engagement. Wedding day. Birth of our first born, second and then third. Smiles. Tears. And every thing in between. 

All of those moments of our lives make up the dash. That small piece of punctuation that is put on funeral programs and headstones to mark the time between our birth and death. 

Looking back, the dash goes by fast. 

Seems like my 20s were just a few years ago. But they stretch back farther than I care to admit. It was 12 years ago that I said "I do" and joined my life up with the man who would become the father of our three children. Everything was shiny and new. Coffee maker, sheets and furniture purchased to complete our home together were all unused and pristine.

Today, most of those items need to be replaced or have been replaced. We blinked and time sped by. In 10 more years, our oldest child will be the age that I thought was just  few years ago.

This dash I'm living is moving faster than I'm comfortable with and I think about what I would tell my younger self if I could.

I'd tell her: Do it!

Do every single thing you want to do. The thing you're fearful of. The thing you think you aren't equipped to do.

Just do it.

Do it afraid.

Do it even though you aren't as well-versed as you want to be.

Do it when you think there's not enough money.

Do it when you think you're not pretty enough....

or smart enough....

or wise enough.

Just do it.

Tell that girl or that guy that you like them. Or love them. Do the thing that's been stirring in your heart for years.

Do it alone if you have to.

But just do it.

These are the same words that I'll pass along to my children.

Life is too short to play it safe.

What's the one thing that you need to just do?

When Hurts Happen....

Yesterday baby girl come home with a scratch on her eye from another child accidentally scratching her. The whole incident was explained by the daycare and handled well. But I still was upset. First, I wanted to be mad at the daycare or the caregiver or the other child. Then I realized I was mad because I wasn't there to protect my baby.

Isn't that what most parents want to do? To shield their kids from every single hurt and all harm.

But it's not possible. And even if it was, what good would it do for our children?

Even in childhood, they need to learn now to deal with pain and disappointment. This year, there's a girl in my son's 4th grade class who cried every morning at drop off for the first two months. I kept wondering why a 9-year-old child would still be crying over something as mundane as school drop off. That's the kind of behavior you'd expect from a baby. Then, it made me wonder if her parents haven't equipped her to deal with hard situations or painful stuff. Makes me wonder if I'm crippling my children in any way.

My hope for my children is for them to be resilient and able to bounce back. Set backs in life can knock the wind out of you, but you don't have to let them keep you down and I surely hope that's mirrored in our home for these little ones we are raising.

Earlier this month, I had an incident with a co-worker where work I needed wasn't delivered on time because they were dealing with some personal issues. Very weighty personal issues. We all have had them or will have them if we haven't already.  

To see her buckle under the weight of it all and not even be able to perform at a standard she's used to was heartbreaking. Whatever is hurting her is so debilitating that she can't find the strength to fight back and keep her life in motion. 

Now don't get me wrong. We all need a time and place to sit and cry it out or scream it out or whatever the case. We need time to grieve whatever pain we've been through. Then comes the time when you dust yourself off and try again.  You CAN dust yourself off and try again.

While I love my babies, I certainly don't want to cripple them by over-sheltering them to the point where they can't cope when life is hard or something hurts them.  

What are some ways you are helping your kids to be resilient? 

Let's Get In A Hurry...To Slow Down

When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to be a teenager, I just thought that stage of life was the coolest. Then when I became a teen, I wanted to be college-aged. When I was in college, I dreamed about how awesome it would be to be living on my own and making all my own decisions.

By the time, I'd hit those 20-something years where I was living on my own and making my own decision, those childhood years started looking pretty good. 

Crazy how we always want to be at the stage of life that we are not.

I find myself doing that in parenting.

This morning, we ran into a few hiccups that got me behind schedule and I mumbled under my breath, "I can't wait til these kids grow up." 

Then I thought about it. Is that what I really want? 

Lots of parents say they can't wait til their kids get out of diapers. They can't wait til they get out of kindergarten so they'll be more independent. Then they rush the college years along so they won't have a young adult in their pocket anymore.  They long for the day when they are out of the house so they can enjoy their own life.

Parenthood stages change so quickly. It's really a shame that us parents start to want to rush stages along. My oldest will be 10 next month, I so clearly remember him being a toddler. Time flies and so does our children's growth. 

What's the sense in wanting our children to hurry up and grow up so we can get on with our lives? To me, this is my life: mommyhood and the angst, anger and frustration that goes along with it. 

But I do sometimes find myself wishing for the next stage for the kids. It would be so awesome if the 10 year old was a teen and could drive. However, I know there are parenting woes that go along with that stage as well. 

Sometimes I want to zip past this stage where the five year old is drawing mustaches on his face and getting frustrated because he can't keep up with his big brother. But I know that when he's a tween his friends will become more important than me and I'll have another set of parenting issues to deal with. 

Five year old with his drawn on mustache

In wanting them to hurry to the next stage, lately I'm been finding myself telling them to hurry up in every little task. "Hurry up and brush your teeth." "Quickly finish your dinner." "Get in the car NOW."

What's my rush? I better let these little ones savor their childhood..it's the only one they get. And I certainly won't get a second chance at parenting them as kids either.

So I'm making a concerted effort to slow down. How about you? 

Makes Me Happy Monday (number 6)

Autumn is finally making its appearance here in Southern California. Today, it's expected only to reach a high of 75 degrees...I know East Coasters are shaking their hands at us on the left coast.

A Few Links That Made Me Smile...

 In my last Makes Me Happy Monday post, I shared a link to one of my favorite blogs where the writer shared her engagement story. She got married and shared her wedding photos here...just as sweet as the engagement. I'm a sucker for marriages and love. 

Two hundred and ninety one is a beautiful and heart wrenching post by Pastor Levi Lusko on the loss of his young daughter. 

Seven Things To Pray For Your Kids: I love every single one of these.  

"I honestly never thought I’d see the day when Christians would justify swearing. " Why I Don't Use the F-Word by J. Lee Grady. An older article that's worth sharing again. 

Iron Man Helps the Homeless Smile. My husband thought this was corny but it tugged at my girlie heart strings. 

Business Matters...

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How My Bad Sight Had Led To Increased Vision

I'm still a little heartbroken.

An eye exam from a few months ago revealed that I need bifocals. BIFOCALS? I thought they were for elderly people on canes. Thankfully, I have a husband who rescued me from having to actually wear bifocals with the little magnifying boxes on each lens and paid the extra for me to get progressive lenses. 

My eye doctor said I was showing the classic signs of needing them: taking off my glasses to read items up close or small print. Ugh. I'm way too young for bifocals. Plus, how can that make sense when my regular prescription is actually a tad too strong for my nearsighted eyes now?

Sportin' my bifocals

So I'm now sporting progressive lenses. The eye doctor said the older I get the worse my near vision is while my long range vision is slightly more clear. Turns out some people who have myopia (nearsightedness) see their eyesight improve naturally with age.

 The older I get the worse my near vision is while my long range vision is slightly more clear.

In my 20s, all I cared about was my "near vision" what was happening in the here and now. I wasn't concerned with the future so much. It was about hanging out with friends. Traveling. Buying clothes. Enjoying the moment. Having fun.

I tried to remember the last time I thought like that. Truly, it's been a while. My concern these days is the bigger picture and long range such as: the legacy I'm leaving my children,  preparing these little lives for life outside of the nest and working on nailing down a secure future.

Funny how things change when you're in a different decade of your life.  I have to chuckle at the 20-something girl I once was. So care-free. Nothing wrong with that at all. But that attitude towards life doesn't work now that I'm a mom of three.

I need to help cast a vision for our little family. I need to have eyes of faith that see that which doesn't exist in the physical realm. I need to be able to see who my children are and raise them according to their natural strengths.  

While I can't always see the small print that the kids shove in front of my face to read, I can see that: 

my oldest has a sensitive and tender heart towards the things of God and that I shouldn't quench that in him. 

my second son is a carefree spirit who resists being put in a box and I have to learn how to not suppress that while also giving him boundaries. 

my baby girl is strong and sure and confident in what she wants...already. 

I hope that as I get older my long-range vision continues to sharpen.  And that I'll be prayerful and proactive in guiding these little lives and covering them in prayer.

Seasons....and Falling Behind...and Being Right on Schedule

Lately, I've been discovering that more and more of my friends are now becoming grandparents.

Crazy...especially since I don't think we are old enough to even be grandparents but also because all of my kids are younger than 10 years old and my youngest is 15 months. It's going to be a good little while before I'm a grandparent. 

Sometimes I look at my friends' stage of life and think: I'm way behind schedule. 

And then I look at my life and everything starts to feel late. 

I'm behind on my cleaning schedule.  

Behind at work.

Behind on teaching the 5 year old to tie his shoe. 

Late on getting the baby dedicated at church. 

Seems like I'm just behind on dang near everything.

Then I think about my post-high school years and my 20s. I was nowhere near ready for a child in my teens or even my 20s for that matter. I'd planned my life out. College at Howard University straight out of high school to get my journalism degree. While some of the people I know were getting married in their early 20s, I was moving to Los Angeles and enjoying living single and traveling and meeting new people and just being a young adult.

Interesting how back then I never thought I was off schedule. 

So why do I think that now? 

Perhaps I've forgotten about seasons. And that we all have our own appointed ones.

Psalm 1:3 "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,

That brings forth its fruit in ITS season,

Whose leaf also shall not wither;  And whatever he does shall prosper."

Every tree brings forth fruit in its own season. We don't expect peaches to be plentiful in winter because it's a summer fruit. We know this and wait patiently until summer when peaches are ripe, juicy and sweet. Different kinds of fruits ripen at different times of the year. 

So it is with our lives. While some are planting, others are flourishing. That's just the way life goes.  Even when it's not our season to bear fruit, we can rest assured that our leaf will not wither.

It's so easy to feel like we are withered up when fruit isn't hanging heavy from our limbs. But when we are planted by living waters, we are always being sustained and fed. Work is always being done....sometimes it's just underground.  

I'm taking comfort that seeds in my life are being nurtured underground right now and are taking root--even in the midst of what looks like unfruitfulness. 

"You’re blessed when you stay on course, walking steadily on the road revealed by God. " Psalm 119:1 

I'm going to stay the course, despite feeling behind. 

It's often when we feel of course and fruitless that we are right on schedule. 

"To see things in the seed, that is genius." -Lao Tzu 

That Time My Husband Had A Gun Held To His Head..

This is the little boy who grew up to be the man I married.

After 12 years of marriage and 16 years of knowing him, there is still lots about this man that I don’t know.

Just this week, I found out about the time he when he was 13 years old and got a gun held to his head by a grown man.

How could I not know this piece of information about the father of my children?

We all have parts of our lives that make up who we are and color how we react to those we are in relationship with. There are also pockets of our experience that rarely see the day of light but play a huge part in our interaction with people

Rewind back to 1981. Long Beach, California: where my husband was born and bred.

He was a junior high school student who happened upon an exchange between a new girl at school and a male student. The male student came up from behind and hit her in the back of the head. Her reaction to this unprovoked attacked was to cover her head and cower. My husband saw this and punched the much larger student and a scuffle ensued. Later, the student tracked him down with two friends and pummeled him in the back of a classroom—all while a teacher was in the class. He says he came to her rescue because he saw that she needed help. He even offered to walk her home to ensure her further safety. He says he wasn’t doing it to win her affection, but simply to help a new student as he had been the new student many times over. As he walked her home, they got egged by angry white boys yelling out "nigger lover."

Grateful for his help, the girl (who was white) invited him over for dinner as a kind gesture. He reluctantly accepted. When he arrived for dinner, he could see that the girl’s parents had no idea he was black. Dinner skipped along nicely, until it was over. That’s when the father asked the girl to help her mother clean up in the kitchen.

That’s when my husband says he felt steel on his temple. With a gun pressed to my husband’s head, the dad leaned in close and said, “Don’t come around my daughter ever again.” The father then told my husband to get up and leave the house. When he got back to school, the girl didn’t exist to him anymore—even when her friends came up to him and said he was wrong for “dissing” her after she extended an invitation to her home. My husband never spoke of what happened and the girl moved away shortly after that.

I could hardly believe that a grown man would do something like this to a child. My husband was 13 years old. Just a boy. Did the father know what deep scars he’d etched onto the soul of my husband and how that would play out in his life? Was he just trying to scare him off from his daughter or all white women? Did he even care that more than three decades later, this is something the little boy inside would still carry in pain?

"The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." Proverbs 12:18

That man’s words and actions still pierce like a sword.

Just a day before he told me about this incident, a family member called and shared with me how she’d been told that we’d verbally scarred another family member when we were children. I was not only shocked to hear that we’d both hurt another family member—but it was so deep that they are still wary when in our company—even after all these years. Sometimes we scar others willfully and sometimes unintentionally.

We are all broken people living in a broken world. We’ve all inflicted hurt and been hurt. It’s part of living. Some scars we carry bring back a laugh—like the time I was seven years old and my cousin threw a rock through a tree hitting me square in the forehead. There was blood all over my face and he lied and said a group of kids had done it. We laugh about it now and I still have a small scar on my hairline from where the rock knicked me.

"I think scars are like battle wounds - beautiful, in a way. They show what you've been through and how strong you are for coming out of it." - Demi Lovato

We scar and are scarred. We hold guns to other's heads and hearts with our words and actions. Yet we still survive. Thank God for the built in resilience that rises to the surface.

 I’m sure they’ll be a host of other things I’ll discover about my husband as the years roll on. He'll reveal more scars and bruises that I never knew existed. In the meantime, I'll celebrate the fact that he's come through to the other side. That I've come through and that eventually some of these scars will become strengths.

"So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation." I Peter 5:10

Every Suffering Can Be Blessed...

Grief is a crazy thing. 

It creeps up out of nowhere and takes a hold of you when you thought you had a handle on it. It's like a wild animal. Unpredictable. Untamed. 

As I write this it’s been exactly 3 years, 10 months, and 4 days since my father passed away. 

1,404 days.

200 weeks and 4 days.

33,696 hours.

2,021,760 minutes.

However I count it up, it feels like a lifetime ago.

But some days it feels like just yesterday. 

A 1970s era photo of me and my Daddy. 

The other day I thought of him and felt tears starting to build up. The simple truth is I'm just a little girl missing her daddy. And I got angry that he's not here to see his grandchildren grow up. Mad that he never got to meet his granddaughter. He would have loved her. He was a big baby lover and loved being Papi. I was upset that I can't pick up the phone and chat with him about everything and nothing. 

Last night I walked in the boys’ room at bedtime and my oldest son was looking at a photo of he and my dad. He said he’d had a dream about him the night before. He was six years old when my father died, but his memories stretch beyond the six years they spent together.

And then the five year old said, “Papi never got to hear my words. The words I have now.” He was only a year and a half when my dad left.

Sigh.

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. ” Matthew 5:4 

“Every suffering can be blessed because it hollows out a place in us for God and his comfort, which is infinite joy.” -Peter Kreeft, Back to Virtue

While I miss my father immensely, that hollowed out place is no longer tender. I handed over the pain, and God in turn carefully bandaged it up and healed it.

This counts for every hurt we face: loss of a relationship, brokenness over the past, sorrow over our sin and painful regrets.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3

While my broken heart is mended and my wound has shed its bandages, there will always be a part of me that misses my father. Always. But the hollowed out place of losing him is now filled with precious memories. God is just good like that.

And I can now use my healing to help someone else. 

"All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! Father of all mercy! God of all healing counsel! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us. We have plenty of hard times that come from following the Messiah, but no more so than the good times of his healing comfort—we get a full measure of that, too." 2 Corinthians 1:3-5

Might there be a big loss in your life today? One that makes your eyes well up with tears when you think about it? Don’t allow grief and pain to wallow there. Instead, give it up to God and let him bless the empty space like only He can.

Every suffering can indeed be blessed.