Happy Monday, friends. Today my friend Lisa-Jo Baker is guest-posting in this space, to inspire us in our ordinary bravery. Read on, and be blessed….
Most of my days look the same as the day before.
And I wonder what to write about because, really, there’s nothing new.
The alarm goes off at 7:20 and I go into Micah’s room to rub his back and try to bring him awake on the right side of the bed. Jackson gropes for his glasses and walks through to use to the bathroom, never ever heeding my shrieks to, for goodness sakes close the door!
Zoe wakes up bright and chipper and her hair all standing haywire on end, straight up from her head.
Breakfast is bagels and cream cheese or toast or cereal or sometimes fried eggs and bacon if we have enough time.
And I have practiced, months and months of practice, of keeping my voice calm despite what my blood pressure is doing as the clock ticks toward the inevitable arrival of the school bus and the boys still don’t have their shoes and socks on.
But it’s ordinary. So very ordinary.
I have meetings and deadlines and I write blog posts if I’ve got one that climbs up out of my head and demands to be written down.
I wear make up even when I’m working from home because it helps me feel awake; present in my life. I sit at the kitchen table in the pool of sunlight that streams in through the huge windows and I’m grateful for these small moment of ordinary glory.
But 8 hours tick by like that. Zoe goes to preschool every other morning and I’m left with my house and the dishes I don’t feel like unloading from the dishwasher and so many moments are simply the choice to keep showing up.
Meeting the kids as they get off the bus, figuring out snacks and math homework and new ways to trick Jackson into finding his reading assignments interesting.
The world spins by so slowly outside our windows.
I wonder what I got done and I stay up too late because I don’t feel like doing it all over again tomorrow.
I wish for weekends away with just Peter.
I wish for movie nights out.
I wish for quiet conversations that don’t require kid-inserted subtitles.
That’s just the truth of it. That this season is very very slow and ordinary and I have to remind myself that this is what brave looks like for me. For us.
It doesn’t involve platforms or pulpits or speaking tours or social justice or passports.
It’s counting how many mornings this week I’ve held onto my temper and chosen to love my six-year-old toward a day of meaning for him. It’s showing up today and today and again today.
Because every day is building a lifetime of what they will remember about their mother and right now and here it’s OK to have late afternoons of lying under the grey blanket and simply stroking the hair of a boy who has outgrown his baby-skin by far. And still I pet his hair because he loves it. And me too.
And this? This is beautiful too. This is significant and necessary and real and I am loved not by the size of what I do but by the God who watches me do it. Today and today and again later today.
He makes all the things I do beautiful.
The ordinary glorious beautiful things.
{To see the video reminder of why ALL mothers are braver than they know, click here}.
This guest post comes with love from Lisa-Jo Baker to our community in celebration of Mother’s Day. If you haven’t already – treat yourself, your mom, your sister, your BFF or your grandma to a copy of her new book, Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected About Being a Mom. No matter what stage you’re in when it comes to motherhood, we promise it will encourage. And remind you that you are braver than you think.
LOVE this Lisa! I think about this a lot, the idea that “every day is building a lifetime of what they will remember about their mother.” So true. Thanks for cheering on moms!!