February 2018 – Glimpses of Joy

one week of Lent (or, what I can’t Instagram)

1. I CANNOT WAIT FOR WARM WEATHER. This impatience is manifesting itself in various ways, the primary ones in the past week: new, sudden interest in gardening, and online shopping for summer shoes.

2. I’m still trying to fully enter into Lent. Saw this quote and I don’t fully understand it, but it resonates. Giving up IG, I had hopes for using that time better, but it’s a strug fest. I find I keep checking my email compulsively, and no one emails me except Gap and J.Crew, so…. see point #1.

3. Fridays are the best. I finally figured out where to park for the free babysitting on campus. They only take kids two and older, but God sent another Adrianna into my life who loves my babies, so I am child free for 1-3 hours and it is glorious. I swipe my spouse ID and get in a work out at the brand new gym on campus (which is GINORMOUS) and feel like the red dress lady emoji. And I usually get to see Chris too, either for lunch or for mass, and that’s a nice treat in and of itself. La dee dee.

4. Knowing I’m going to exercise around undergrads has made me exercise more leading up to Fridays. Fitness Blender is my new jam. It’s free and easy! I can do a 15 minute HIIT in my tiny living room. No excuses. It is hilarious, though, when I try to do it with the girls awake. I wish I could video it somehow. I’m doing planks and push ups with Evange on my back and Zelie standing, holding onto my shoulders. And squats, onto Evange’s head. But, fitness!

5. Minerva, our amaryllis, gifted from Molly’s wonderful mother, Mary Jean, and the Dr. Burr Field Scholarship Fund, is a joy. We opened the box she came in on February 13, the day before Ash Wednesday, and I thought I had killed her by waiting too long to check the mail. She was all white and dead-ish looking. But she is thriving! Literally growing before our eyes. Every day one of us comments, “Look, Minerva is getting so tall!” Evangeline is very curious what color flower she will produce. It’s nice to have a living plant in the apartment in this eternal winter.

6. I finished The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott – enjoyed it. Good writing. Something slightly strange at the very end left me with weird feeling about it, but overall, good. I’ve been almost done with A Severe Mercy for several days, just need to finish it off. A good one, too. I recommend. Especially enjoyed getting to know C.S. Lewis better through the letter he exchanges with the author. And on that note, I read his essay, The Weight of Glory, this week. Chris read it for something and lent it to me. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal … Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.” Oh, Clive. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers is next on the list.

7. The other night, Evangeline organized a little dance party. She found a silly hat for each of us, including Zelie, and played music out of this toy barn she has. She is very particular and a bit bossy, and I love it. (Most of the time.) There’s been several moments lately when I’ve thought, “Wow, you can do that by yourself now?” She’s getting to be a big girl. Pancakes are her favorite food to make and eat, and she eats more of them than Chris does.

It was 60 degrees and we played in the pouring rain for an hour. (Pretending it’s spring). What a cutie bug.

7 Quick Takes (a Sunday edition)

I’ve seen some other bloggers do this quick takes thing and I like how it gives a little snapshot of someone’s week, what’s on her mind, (what’s on her shopping list). I think it’s supposed to be a Friday thing, but oh well. Right now Sunday is when I have the most time to reflect back on the week.

Lent starts this week (gah!) and while I am still considering what I will fast from (aka I know what I need to fast from but I don’t want to do it) I am v excited to start a new prayer rhythm with this Lenten journal from Blessed is She. Beautiful design, beautifully written reflections on women in the Bible. So much scripture, it seems like only a Protestant could have made it. JUST JOKES!

2. Zelie, Chris, and I got some kind of weird, subtly flu-like sickness two weeks ago, which we got over, only to wake up with bad colds this past week. That, plus v cold temperatures and then a snow storm, kept us home bound. So, I haven’t yet made it to the library in the month of February (what!) but I firmly intend to this week. Temps in the mid-30’s woot! I want to make Valentine’s with Evange there (so I don’t have to craft at home) and find as many of these books as I can.

3. I’ve been staying up too late watching Season 1 of The Crown. I got Chris to watch with me but I keep going ahead and then having to re-watch with him, and I’m not complaining about that.

4. Listening to this when I do the dishes/fold laundry/make dinner plus Chris going to a farmer’s co-op has made me all excited about local food. I’m even wanting to learn how to build some garden beds and grow some vegetables. And, my friend Anna, who is a profesh cheese maker, recommended this to me, which I promptly ordered. So I’m one step closer to an attempt at making my own cheese, which is something I never thought I’d say.

5. While I like the idea of having people over to dinner, Chris is much better at making it happen. We’ve hosted people three times in February so far. I’m getting better at cooking enough food (and learning to use my instant pot, woot!), getting the apartment somewhat clean, and being social. I actually really enjoy getting to practice hospitality (and I definitely need practice) and it’s become fun rather than humbling to invite friends into our tiny apartment. (We often borrow chairs from our neighbors, or have Chris and Evangeline sit on the coffee table pulled up to the dining table.) I decided to keep a log in the back of my planner of who we’ve had over (and what I cooked) just for fun and for my terrible memory.

6. I read through this essay over the course of several days (leaving it open on the table so anytime I sat down to eat with the girls I’d read a tiny bit more). Really enjoyed her writing and vulnerability and love for literature. If you read it, let me know what you think. (Shout out to Julian of Norwich in there, Mom!) Also really enjoying reading from physical books/magazines these days. I just get distracted reading on a screen and skim.

7. Hand lettering is a new hobby for me. I’m having fun practicing and improving. and I’m finding it fits with the season I’m in of collecting things. I can make a note of a quote that I like and then spend more time with it when I letter it out. This is Chris’s favorite, by far. LOL.

the monastic bell of motherhood

John of the Cross once described the inner essence of monasticism in these words: “But they, O my God and my life, will see and experience your mild touch, who withdraw from the world and become mild, bringing the mild into harmony with the mild, thus enabling themselves to experience and enjoy you.” What John suggests here is that two elements make for a monastery: withdrawal from the world and bringing oneself into harmony with the mild (Rolheiser).

I came across an article, “The Domestic Monastery,” a year or so ago, and it’s popped into my mind several times since then, usually when I’ve hit the killer combo of sleep deprivation + the girls both waking up many times in a night. Or when I have things I want to get done and Zelie is feeling sick and wants to be held all day, or Evange wants me to play with her (how dare she). Basically, the times when I really crave extended silence and solitude. Like being a monk in a monastery.

The thesis of this article is that the contemplative life can be lived in the domestic sphere. That a stay at home mom actually lives in a type of monastery, primed for deep experiences of God. “A monastery is not so much a place set apart for monks and nuns as it is a place set apart (period). It is also a place to learn the value of powerlessness and a place to learn that time is not ours” (Rolheiser). This notion intrigues me to no end because the contemplative life is the life I long to live. Me, on a mountain, praying and working in a garden. Me, in a cabin in the woods, reading my books. Me, living my best life as a monk.

Really, it’s me wanting what I want. It’s wanting control over my time, to do whatever I want for as long as I want. Which really isn’t how monks live at all.

All monasteries have a bell. Bernard … told his monks that whenever the monastic bell rang, they were to drop whatever they were doing and go immediately to the particular activity (prayer, meals, work, study, sleep) to which the bell was summoning them … The idea in his mind was that when the bell called, it called you to the next task and you were to respond immediately, not because you want to, but because it’s time for that task and time isn’t your time, it’s God’s time. For him, the monastic bell was intended as a discipline to stretch the heart by always taking you beyond your own agenda to God’s agenda” (Rolheiser).

Ah, the monastic bell of motherhood. For me, this articulates the first and most painful lesson I learned upon becoming a mom. Time isn’t your time. My memories of the first few weeks of Evangeline’s life are sitting on the couch ALL DAY, nursing her ALL DAY, and accomplishing very little other than keeping us both alive (and I had a lot of help). I remember thinking, wow, somehow, for my whole life up until now, I really thought I was in control. HA HA HA. Motherhood from Day 1 has been poking holes into the understanding I have of who I am and what gives me value. In those first months, it was a triumph to get out of the house and go somewhere, once each day. Grocery shopping took a herculean effort. Dinner was pasta, pasta, and more pasta. (When I really stretched myself, I’d sauté some vegetables on the side. We walked to the taqueria a lot.) I had never thought of myself as achievement oriented, but when I could not point to one single thing I had done that day (outside of keeping me and E alive), it really started to frustrate me. What is this?? I’m a competent person! Who am I if I can’t do anything??

I’ve come a long way in the two and half years since then, but the monastic bell imagery is still super helpful. It reminds me that it is actually reality that time is not my own and that I don’t have control. That I can lean into that reality and trust, instead of fighting it. It reorients me back towards my girls and their demands. It helps me find meaning in all the small, daily sacrifices. The nighttime wakings become a call to prayer (like a real live monk!) even if the prayer is, “Help me, Jesus.” The interminable bedtime routine – read this book one more time, I have to pee one more time – where I most tangibly feel the discomfort of my heart being stretched because this is definitely not my agenda for the evening can become a discipline, a place for me to practice patience. (Currently, I am terrible at this. Bedtime is where the most ugly parts of me are revealed.)

The domestic monastery somehow came up in one of Chris’s classes and he was trying to explain the idea to his classmates, some of whom are seminarians (studying/training to be celibate priests). I told him he could share my example of the bell for that day. I was interrupted from reading emails by Evangeline yelling from her room, where she was supposed to be napping, “MAMA, I NEED HELP! I DID A POOP!!”

The bell indeed doth toll.

pretty sure the feat of that day was tying the moby wrap.

the glimpses

There was a day back in December when I got out of the apartment for a run (in sunshine, hallelujah!) and as I was running along the walking path toward campus, I saw a woman with a basket. She was off the path a ways, standing at the edge of a field that was filled with yellow flowers when we moved here in July, but now is brown. I had just registered that the field had died and never looked at it again, really. But she was standing there with a basket, picking what I now saw were thistles. Still brown and dead, but she had noticed them for some reason, and her attention turned mine. I kept running but on my way back, when I passed that spot again, I decided to take a closer look. They were definitely dead. Pointy thistles on the end of dry, pointy stalks. But they were pretty, in a way, and there were small, brittle flowers among them. And I was struck mostly that I had never seen them before in all my times walking/jogging past. So I copied the basket lady and broke off several stalks, walking the rest of the way home.

It was a strange, reflective moment, where I was very aware that I had done something I hadn’t planned to do (step off the path, stop my run, bring home dead flowers) and I was super elated by it. Like, weirdly so. Chris had taken the girls somewhere so I had the apartment to myself for a few minutes, and I spent the time carefully arranging the thistles in a glass. And it was so great. And they were just dead flowers.

***

I think I’m entering a season of collecting things like this. Not always dead thistles, sometimes a line from a poem, a writing by a saint, or an old photograph from a thrift store. Things or words that set my soul humming. It only now occurs to me that this quiet, small activity fits well with winter. I’ve been turning inward as the days have shortened, the leaves have let go and fallen, and the bitter cold is now setting in. I am watching the sun rise and set each day now, and it has set me to paying attention to more of the little things that fill that time in between.

This quote by Henri Nouwen that I found in this book is something I keep returning to, lately. “My deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch.” Seeing these things I’m collecting as glimpses – of God, of beauty, of joy – and savoring them. I’m wondering how to be a witness to them. And how being a witness can be my vocation, within my other vocations (wife, mother). It’s all wrapped up in the question I continue to have: What do I do as a stay at home mom? But I think this sort of vocational lens is more helpful to me. It’s not fully formed and I’m still figuring it out, but I know I want to keep catching those glimpses.