Mothers Day, Part II

(… continued from yesterday)

Although I’d forgotten to count my children, that eventually translated to a valuable parenting discovery: mothering is a marathon, not a sprint. Thankfully, my mistake didn’t disqualify me from the race.

The marathon principle is difficult to appropriate, since everyone around us seems to be sprinting. We’re all in a rush. Haven’t we stood in front of a microwave muttering, “C’mon… Hurry up!” I was raised watching parents heat leftover coffee in a sauce pan, but today 50 seconds is too long. Letters have picked up speed by morphing into email, which has condensed into Facebook, which has distilled into Twitter, symbols of life at zoom-speed.

So what’s a mother to do? She can’t run any faster or spread herself any thinner. She’s already meeting her husband’s needs, raising her children, serving in church, managing a home and going to work. Isn’t that enough?

Her question, born of frustration, can be answered with good news. She doesn’t have to get the motherhood project finished any time soon. What she says and does matters, but no single event is the end-all or be-all. Tomorrow will bring a new beginning, followed by another one after that. God’s mercies (and stores of endurance) are in fresh supply for moms, every single morning.

It’s comforting to know we don’t have to hurry up in our loving, serving or influencing of children. As in a marathon, we should pace ourselves for the long haul. Our finish line isn’t even in view. Actually, we can’t see it at all until we’re on our own death beds. We spend 8,760 hours raising a child to the age of 21, and though our hands-on care diminishes during those years, we’ll be mothers till the very end.

My own mom was still mothering her kids as she took her last breath, teaching us how to die without fear, and pointing us to “the bottom line,” her certainty about eternity. Minutes before she died, Mary was reading from a favorite Scripture passage, John 14. She paused at important words to see if Mom could fill in the blanks. By way of quiet whispers, she got them all. Although her body was lying in a bed, the rest of her was still running the mothering marathon.

It took me five children to learn (and be grateful for) the marathon truth, but in recent years I’ve made an additional discovery, that it’s pure delight to be the mom of adult children. As we fight against speed while raising kids through the growing-up years, we can take comfort in knowing the marathon continues, and the best is yet to come.

Granted, the job description changes radically after children leave home, but I had no idea that such satisfying friendships would be mine. Nate and I talked often about this phenomenon, marveling at the pleasure of being with our adult kids. And as he was approaching the parenting finish line before leaving this world, his children rushed to lavish love and care on their father, which he received with deep joy.

Nate isn’t marathon-ing next to me anymore, but I’m beginning to see there’s still more “best” to come as I mother my grands. Only 20 months into the grandmothering stretch of my marathon, I’ve already been amazed by the wonder of it all.

But better than all these mothering perks is the parenting promise the Lord has given directly to us ….

(… to be concluded tomorrow)

“Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom.” (Job 32:7)

Mother’s Day, Part I

It was November of 1982. Wrestling five children into winter wear for a trip to the park district had exhausted me, and no one was even in the car yet. As I was readying the last, the first was pulling off his coat. “I’m hot,” he said.

This was my first outing with all five since baby Hans had been born a month earlier. “Help me, Lord,” I breathed while strapping one year old Klaus into his car seat. “Poor kid,” I thought. “Still a baby, but he already has a baby brother.”

Once at the park district, I busied myself filling out paperwork for four year old Linnea’s gymnastics class, proud of myself for remembering the checkbook. Suddenly I went cold. Where was the new baby?

“Where’s Hans?” I screeched to no one in particular. Nelson and Lars stopped rough-housing and began looking all over the floor of the lobby. “Is he still in the car?” I asked.

Leaving my checkbook on the counter, I ran for the door. The children followed. Finding Hans’ car seat empty, I shouted, “Get in! Everybody in! Hurry up!”

My tires squealed as we flew out of the parking lot toward home. How could I be so irresponsible? I was this child’s mother, for goodness sake! As we raced home, that verse from Isaiah popped into my mind: “Even if a woman forgets her nursing child, I will not forget you.”

“You’re right,” I thought. “I forgot… What kind of a mother am I?”

Leaving the car running in the driveway (more incompetence), I took the porch steps two at a time. Where had I last seen him? When had I last touched him?

Zipping his snowsuit… in our bedroom… on our bed… and there he was, still sound asleep in the center of the mattress, unaware of the crisis. The older children rushed in behind me, relieved to see the lost baby had been found, and their mother had calmed down.

Scanning the line-up for my one year old, in an instant I felt nauseous. “Where’s Klaus?” I asked. “Is he still in the car?”

“No,” said the six year old. “He never got in the car.”

“What?”

“You left him at the park district.”

“Back in the car!” I was screeching again. “Hurry! Hurry!” Soon we were squealing tires again. And sure enough, there was Klaus, sitting on the park district counter next to my checkbook, securely encircled by the arms of the office secretary. He hadn’t even missed us.

“I knew you’d be back,” she grinned.

“Oh God,” I said out loud. “Please make me count my children!”

Sadly, that’s just one of many such incidents in my mothering past, but raising young children is difficult. The days are micro-chopped into minute-long pieces, punctuated by one interruption after another. At any one of those junctures, sanity is uncertain.

Thankfully, no single event defines a mother or shapes a childhood. The day of my park district debacle I didn’t receive a brand on my forehead that said “Bad Mother.” But I did realize something very important that day….

(to be continued)

“Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I, the Lord, will not forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15)

Mom never worried.

My mother was a yes-mom who loved trying new things and taking risks. She especially loved children and thought every idea that came from the mind of a child was a good one. As a matter of fact, many of her adult ideas were childlike. For example, she used to have us collect rocks in a bucket then climb in the car. She’d drive us around Wilmette with the windows down telling us to throw rocks at stop signs to see if we could hit the middle and make a “ping”. To her it was good clean fun. Today she’d probably be behind bars. But being raised by a mom who never worried about the what-ifs made for a delightful childhood.

Actually, mom never worried about a thing. She used to tell us, “I have nothing to worry about; your father does enough for both of us.” That was accurate.

As we move farther into the new year, my mind wants to wander forward through the months, wondering what will happen. All of us look back to last year at this time when 2009 was stretched out in front of us and shake our heads remembering how little we knew. Here we are at another January, and after looking back, today we worry forward.

Worrying comes naturally to most of us. Last January we had no concerns about pancreatic cancer, yet it came. So our brains follow that with, “You’d better worry about that and lots of other things for this year,” as if fretting about the unknown could possibly help.

As Nate’s illness progressed, I worried about quite a few things. What if he fell again? What if he broke a bone and landed in the hospital? What if we couldn’t get him home again? What if I got the meds mixed up? What if he got out the front door and walked away without us knowing? What if he cried out in pain as he died or left us with an expression of agony on his face?

What if, what if, what if. Not one of these things happened. In essence, I worried for nothing. That’s one reason why worry isn’t good. A second and more important reason is that stressing about the future betrays a lack of trust in God to care for it. Scripture tells us worrying never helps a thing. (Luke 12:25) And more serious than that, it chokes out God’s efforts to guide us while we’re trying to be our own guides. (Matthew 13:22)

All of us have enough to do living one day at a time. We don’t need to mentally travel into the future putting down roots of worry there, wasting time and energy on unfruitful thinking while eroding our relationship with the Lord. He’s watching and making a continual assessment of what we need. Better than that, he’s the only one able to satisfy those needs.

I believe God is constantly preparing to take care of our basic needs ahead of our arrival to the future. We saw it happen again and again with Nate’s cancer and related needs, sometimes in dramatic ways. I’m ashamed to say I was often surprised when the needs were met, considering it a rare gift each time rather than the fulfillment of what God said he was going to do all along. Didn’t I believe him? Apparently not.

I hope to do better on that score in 2010, expecting my basic needs to be met through God’s provision, then responding with gratitude. That is precisely what Jesus was describing when he told us to “have the faith of a little child.” Children have faith that their parents will care for them and don’t wrestle with the what ifs. When parents do meet their needs, security and trust are built into their lives and they can transfer that kind of faith-in-parents to faith-in-God without too much trouble. We could take a lesson.

Maybe that’s what mom found so attractive in kids, their complete abandon of worry. As she spent more and more time with them, she became like them in that way. Once again, we could take a lesson.

There’s only one thing to be worried about: buckets of rocks in the back seat of a car.

“For all these things [food, clothing, shelter, goods, possessions] the nations of the world eagerly seek; but your Father knows that you need these things. [You won’t be] forgotten before God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are…  valuable.” (Luke 12:30, 6b-7)