Delight

Posted on October 28, 2018 by alismithtx

Let me preface this by saying, today Emerson had a huge melt down in Whole Foods near the yogurt selection because she wasn’t getting what she wanted. A screaming-thrashing-on-the-floor kind of melt down. Once we were home, she started hanging on my neck which pulled my hair in a painful way multiple times while I was trying to help Holden with something. Both of us needed a time out following that encounter.

I’m in a Bible study right now where we are paying attention to our thought life. Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a few key places where my thoughts go. The first big category is the to do list. Who needs what and when. What meal we need to eat. What I need to do to prep it. When the laundry needs to be done for us to have the items we need clean by the time we’ll need it. When did I last clean the toilet? So when do I need to clean it again?

The next big category is things relating to YoungLives. My thoughts go to my volunteer leaders and what is going on in their lives and how I can serve them by praying for them. I think of the girls we work with who are teenage mothers and what resources they need. What do I need to research in order to direct them to the best places for them? How can we love them with more excellence and extravagance to model Christ? I think about their struggles and their heartaches and their children. Then there is the to do list for this ministry. The emails I’m behind (I am so so sorry people, I cannot for the life of me stay current on my inbox and currently owe about 100 responses). The talks and lessons to plan. The details for events. The arranging of rides. The planning of our camp trip. All of these things are good things; but for a part-time job, it feels like it takes up full-time brain space.

When I have idle seconds, those are the places my brain goes. What’s next to accomplish? My brain is 20 steps ahead of my actions.

But yesterday I reached the end of the day and realized I never thought. My brain never checked the status of the to do list. I noticed that I felt fully relaxed and that my heart and soul felt full. We had taken the kids to Mainstay farms (linking it here for anyone in the area because you need to take your little people) and we spent the day having a blast as a family. We put aside personal and professional to do lists and played for the day.

I spent the day delighting in my people and the building of shared experiences with them. There are times the world feels hard and heavy, the to do list feels never ending while being urgent and important, and the parenting feels unfruitful and frustrating. But even in the midst of all of those things, I’m realizing that I can pause and just enjoy my people and the life I’ve been given. Yesterday we celebrated the gift that it is to be together and made some memories that we hope will characterize fall.

When I fast forward 20 years and my kids are looking back on their childhood, I hope they remember their mom and dad delighting in them. I hope they remember that we enjoyed them as individuals and as family.

As the tantrums resumed today and the to do list came back to mind, I felt better equipped to take on both of them with an added dose of grace and love. It was an even deeper reminder of the need to be in a regular rhythm of deeply delighting in the gifts I have been given.

Who are your people you love to be with? Who is a gift in your life? What do you love to do? What feels like rest to your heart and soul?

I think it is entirely possible that I could blink and miss most of my life. It would all be swept away by notebooks full of crossed out tasks. However, days like yesterday feel like an anchor that reminds me of who I am and gifts I’ve been given. Spending time enjoying my children equipped me to parent them better in the harder moments today.

Don’t be afraid to cast aside the to do list and the preparing to spend some time delighting in the really great gifts in your life. With a heart full of thankfulness, you can better continue in the work you are doing.

The Fog – Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day

Posted on October 15, 2018 by alismithtx

This weekend, I stumbled upon a tedious project. I took all of our photos off icloud and organized them in Lightroom where I keep all the photos from my “real” camera. As I sorted through the last 4 years, a few things quickly stood out to me.

First, how everything tagged “Maizie” was different than pictures tagged for my other children. Her photos include some sonograms like the other kids, but everything else is different. While they have birth photos and monthly photo shoots and candid moments, she only has photos that are mementos. She has flower arrangements, Christmas ornaments, and photos from a trip JR and I took over her due date.

Next as I looked at photos from December 2016 till about July 2017, I realized that I vaguely remembered most of the moments. That whole period of time feels like a cloud. Was it my life I was living? Was I going to wake up from the nightmare? I think that’s what grief does: it clouds everything. I walked around for half a year in a complete fog. I was living, but not fully. I was physically there, but not really there.

I can’t pinpoint the moment that I woke up, it happened gradually. Life seem to come back to my bones. Joy became bigger than sorrow. Hope became bigger than despair. As I saw the pictures, I could actually remember the moment.

Today is pregnancy and infant loss awareness day, yet another one of those “made up” social media holidays. I much prefer margarita day and daughters day, personally because the feed is much happier those days. But, I know I have lots of friends still living in the fog of this loss. People who keep wondering if it’s their life, if it’s their nightmare. To my friends out there who can’t even post today because the pain feels so searing, you are not alone. The loss will never go away, but the way it hurts will change. The fog lifts. You will start fully living again. The sadness won’t always knock you down completely.

I’m thankful to live in a generation that has said it is ok to talk about feelings and hard things. We’re not the sweep it under the rug generation and in sharing we all find great freedom. By sharing the pain, I’m also able to testify to the power of the healing. I’m not better now because I have a healthy baby napping in the next room, my heart is healed in many ways because of the presence, comfort, and power of the Lord. As I look back, I’m able to count the ways God was faithful in my time of pain.

To those walking along side people currently living in the fog, keep being gracious and forgiving. Your friend may be forgetful and spacey. They may seem distant and that’s because in their mind they are a world away. There are a few things I remember during those grief filled months, they are the things for which I really had to rally. I couldn’t rally every day, but the times I pushed for that, I was able to experience life – the food, the sounds, the feels. I actually remember a day at the zoo with some good friends where our kids got picked randomly to be a part of a special junior ranger program. It was such a good day that triggered so many senses. Give your friend some tangible things to hold onto, help some memories stick. Be patient and loving with them in the every day when most experiences will just be a part of the fog.

How to spend our time

Posted on July 3, 2018 by alismithtx

At our YoungLives post-camp party, I stood up front with a bible in my hand and shared about God’s desire to be in relationship with us. For girls who decided to begin a relationship with God while at camp, the next steps are to get to know Him. To learn to talk to Him in prayer and to study who He is in scripture. As I talked, Emerson walked around the room holding a Bible. When I pointed out that we would be giving the girls a devotional book to help their Bible study, Emerson grabbed one from the back of the room and went table to table showing people the pages. I didn’t notice any of this. At the end of the evening, several volunteers in the room told me that I may have a future preacher on my hands.

On the frequent days where I want to throw in the towel on coordinating a ministry because it’s too much and too time consuming, it’s moments like this that help to keep me going. Our family’s commitment to service is already impacting my three-year-old daughter. It places her around people from different backgrounds. It helps us engage in deeper conversation with her. and BONUS, both kids are having a lot of fun while we do it – I mean Holden went to Disney World on our camp trip #sufferingforJesus #ministryperks.

We all make decisions on how to spend our time. We say yes to some things, which force us to say no to others. For our family, our yes to serving (specifically with YoungLives currently) means no to other weekly commitments for our kids right now. This may not always be the case, but in this season with littles who have nap times and bed times, everything we want to say yes to just won’t fit in the time available. Quite frankly, these little people wear me out and I just don’t have the energy to do everything we’d like to do.

Some of the other things sound fun: dance, gymnastics, soccer, especially activities that would be with other friends. To be honest, I often want to drop YoungLives and give Emerson some of those things instead. I know she’d enjoy them and they would definitely be less for me. But, I can’t ignore the call of Jesus to make disciples. If I dropped YoungLives, the first thing to be added in would need to be where I’m going to serve and make disciples. Putting this in writing now so that all of you can hold me accountable when that day comes. That call isn’t just for me to disciple the little people in my home, while that is a part of it. I want people outside of my home who don’t know Jesus to meet Christ. At the same time, I want to teach my children to serve the lost outside of our home. To teach my little people that, I have to model that. All the other activities and options aren’t inherently bad, but I see that if I spent all my time saying yes to them I’d excuse myself from service because I didn’t have the time. In reality, that struggle wouldn’t be a time issue; it would be a priority issue.

Anyone close to me knows that I’m constantly wrestling with my YoungLives commitment. I’ve asked God over and over again to “send someone else,” while pledging to do my part until that happens. (I am not yet off the hook and I am developing a deeper appreciation daily for Jesus’s prayer in the Garden “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will”). I’d like a smaller commitment. The current one feels pretty costly some days. Additionally, I feel the pull to fill my kids days with activities like “everyone” else and I wonder if I’ve made the right choice dragging them along to meetings and events.

One of our babysitters is a teenage girl whom I babysat while in college. At that time, her dad was a pastor and her mom was always leading a bible study of some sort. With several kids, they had to say no to many extras. When I was driving our sitter home a few weeks ago, I asked her what she remembered from her toddler years, specifically from her parents commitment to serving in ministry. She talked about the warm feeling of their living room, how she always wanted to be with the people her parents were with because they loved her. She talked about how people always filled their home and that she saw her parents love them. She talked about the way she saw her parents model what it looks like to live for Jesus in their daily lives and not only be focused on their comfort. Those are the same things I’d love for Emerson and Holden to remember years from now – the warmth of the living room, love from the people, love for the people, and living for Jesus.

As we evaluate commitments for the next year, I want to keep these things in mind. Unfortunately as I look ahead to friends in the next stages of life, it seems to be even more difficult to make these family priority decisions. How do you serve? How do you have family dinner? How do you participate in sports? (Because they are fun and teach you valuable lessons and set you up to engage your neighbors). I want to avoid taking the “everyone else is doing it” road because my mom taught me in junior high that logic is useless. I’ve already failed at that once in parenting: we signed Emerson up for mother’s day out at a year and a half because that’s what everyone else was doing. Well I pulled her out after 3 weeks because I realized it wasn’t actually what was best for our family’s values and commitments. We spent lost some money on that, whoops.

In the next year, I want to see people around me who don’t know Jesus come to know Him. I want to serve the people in my community who are marginalized or easily overlooked. I want to call others who know Jesus to give their life away to Him. I want to model for my kids what it means to follow Christ, not just to know Him. I want to love my kids, enjoy them, and prepare their hearts to encounter the Savior, Lord, let my calendar reflect these desires.

How does your family make these decisions? How does your time spent reflect your family’s priorities? What do you wish you’d said yes to more often? What do you wish you’d said no to more often? How does your family serve? Where are you making disciples in addition to raising your children to know Jesus?