... is the noise of me drowning in busy-ness. And ignoring this poor blog.
sigh. Poor little blog. It's always the first to go.
Relay for Life is quickly approaching, like scary footsteps rapidly coming up behind me. I know something is there, but I don't think I'm prepared to turn around and face it .... Coming up: a Karoake Fundraiser (I will so *not* be singing, but I so *will* be event coordinating); a carwash that I'm hoping our probation kids will put on and one teensy little fundraising lunch I need to cook.
misnomer that that is. I can't cook a teensy little lunch ~ undoubtedly it will be a very big lunch ~ but maybe that will raise more funds. Come, June 13th, please come! I'm ready for this year's event to be over already!
glug.
and I'm there with you ladies. I haven't escaped baby and wedding season and am busy making invitations, making wreaths and sewing little washcloth duckies. I'll be gone most weekends from here until July.
glug, glug.
this weekend I will be in town, but we're church conferencing with a Firestorm team from Bethel that's visit. I wouldn't miss that in the first place, but as well, most of my "family" from my little hometown are going to be up for it too. And they're bringing the kids! Hurray! I like the adult weekends, but I so seriously miss all of my little munchkins. {Groan. That reminds me that I still haven't prepared this week's Kids Church Lesson. Good thing I love those kids too. 5 year old random Jeremy told me last week that he accidentally ate dirt. Actually. He announced it during the teaching time. O, you have to love that, though.}
glug, glug, glug.
all right. Time to put on "South Pacific" and get to the rest of those baby shower invitations. And hopefully I'll have a minute to clean my poor little house {I cannot stand the clutter!} and balance my checkbook. And get some sleep.
Sidenote: Sierra and Aaron, I had no idea you guys had caught up with me here. It would be great to get an email address from you, but I guess I can contact you through Myspace as well. Be blessed!!
is in any way easy to explain ~ that between a mother and a daughter.
There is just one thing ~ one mantra ~ left over from my childhood that I can still literally hear my mom say: You choose what you want to do, Lisa, as long as it makes you happy. I hear that voice again and again, especially lately: The one thing I want for you is to be happy. What have I always told you, Lisa? You need to do what makes you happy.
I don't feel like I have a good handle on what that is. I don't know what makes me happy. I'm still in a state of ... transition. {What does it mean, Mom, to be happy? Does it disappoint you that I would rather follow a set of rules ~ of order and decorum ~ rather than seek happiness and joy with abandonment? It disappoints me a little.} She can't answer that for me. And if she had an idea, she wouldn't share it with me so that I could find it on my own. Today I'm left wondering what would happen if I truly pursued what made me happy.
What makes my mom happy? How does she know? What makes my sister happy? Is it the same as my own? Do my sister and my mom have the same relationship as my mom and I? Is it different? Did we become the type of women my mom had hoped?
What does that woman look like? What did my mom want for us when we were younger? Does my mom know how closely I hold her heart in mine? Do I tell her? Does she believe me when I do? Does she know I think about the days when my dad left and she was forced to pull it together and parent us on her own? Does she know I haven't forgotten? Does she know she's still, in so many ways, the gauge, the meter, the measurement of what's right, what's wrong?
Does she know she's the first person I call when things go right / go wrong / get confusing? Mom, I'm getting a second degree. Mom, I'm getting married. Mom, we're seeing a fertility doctor. Mom, I think something Very Wrong is going on.
How can we feel so different and then how can my heart be so inextricably wrapped up in hers?
Is my own relationship with my future daughter(s) going to look the same? {Are those daughters ever going to be here?} Am I going to want the same thing for them? Am I going to be able to raise them with tightly held values? Are they going to know and follow a God that loves them more deeply than I ever could? {Am I going to fail them?} Are they going to trust me? Be proud of me? Know that they're loved?
Did my mom think these same things before my sister and I were born?
A couple of years ago my mom shared that she wrote us poems while we were in her belly, waiting to meet the world. I've been praying for my children since I was 19 years old. So much faith resides in that place. Faith and love and fear and hope and anxiety.
All at once.
All true.
When my mom told me about the poem writing, I went home and wrote my own. One day I will tell my daughters that their poem is in every way entrusted to them my their grandmother. And it is only, simply, so deeply, a legacy of that love.
To My Daughter
When you are born I will
gaze at your soft, sleeping infant
body and praise.
You are a little girl.
If you are my first born rejoice
in the legacy you
are born in to fiercely silence
those who whisper what a shame
you were not a boy.
You are mine.
I'll teach you the joy
the courage it takes to
serve a God who so intimately
knows you and who so purposefully
made you female.
You will find your own
cost of your Alabaster box
and a God divinely male.
Your soul must find the God
also divinely female.
Please celebrate this.
I will introduce you to your
many grandmothers ~ our mothers and
the mothers sent to us ~
listen to them name each Wisdom's
origin and seek your own.
Seek the mothers
that are not me.
And if you are born only
into my conscious
I will not love you less.
You are mine.
{2005}
I hope I can make my mom as proud as she has made me.
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