Keeping Watch

I am currently weaning Samantha from the need to have me nearby as she goes to sleep.  Some days she needs physical contact to get to sleep, some days she just needs to peek up at me occasionally and know that I'm still there, watching over her.  At other times, all she needs is a kiss goodbye and she's content to drift off all alone in her room, fiddling with her pacifiers and birdie.  And then there are the days when nothing satisfies and she has to cry herself to sleep no matter what I do.

Today all she needed was to peek up at me occasionally to know that I was still there.  As I leaned over her crib a few minutes ago, waiting and watching, my mind wandered back to my own childhood.  I distinctly remember the warmth of knowing that as I went to sleep, there were lights on somewhere in the house and Mom was up doing things.  I relied on that comfort into my teens.  Now, at 34, I can't get to sleep unless I'm the last one to go to bed.  As much as I've tried, and no matter how tired I am, I can't get to sleep if I know my husband will be coming to bed later.  The knowledge that everything is not settled down for the night around me, the anticipation that something will be bustling about nearby, keeps me awake.

It made me wonder... when did I change?  When did I go from being the child that needed to know someone was still awake in the house keeping watch, to the adult who can't go to sleep if others are still up?  The mother who now keeps watch as her own little girl drifts off to sleep, comforted by my wakeful presence.

Deperate for Air

It's been six months and twelve days since Samantha was born.  In the last three weeks it has begun to seem as though the hardest part of motherhood is finally behind me.  I know that will probably change.  Another tough season will come.  But for now, she is sleeping a bit longer which means I'm getting enough sleep so I no longer hit a wall every 10 minutes, feeling like I've reached the end of my capacity.  I'm breathing again.  A little bit deeper every day.

But it's still tough.  I was reminded just how tough yesterday morning as I picked up a new book written for Moms.  You know you're still in the thick of it when the first few lines of the introduction have the power to make you well up with tears, relieved and grateful that someone else knows just exactly how you feel.

"I can't be a mother today, Lord, I'm just too tired," Sarah Mae recounted of her own feelings as a young Mom.  It's those first two words that got me.  "I can't."  The exact words I battle every few days.  I counter back with "I can. And I will," based on a phrase in II Timothy that tells me "God has not given me a spirit of timidity, but of power."  I'm battling and having success, but the battle itself can be tiring at times.

As I read Sarah Mae's words, I breathed the fresh air of another woman's understanding and I looked over at my baby and wondered how this small, sweet bundle of joy, deep in peaceful sleep, could cause these tears. 

How could her presence cause me to pick up a book called Desperate?

I suppose it is the very fact of her incredible sweetness and utter vulnerability that makes me desperate to do the best job caring for her.

I am reminded of a pivotal day in February, when she was only two months old and I wasn't getting enough sleep and I realized on an new, important and deep level that I needed the air and the food of God to make it through one more day as a mother.  For several weeks, I kept running into a wall, reaching the end of myself and getting angry.  I have never experienced anything more peculiar than the type of anger that rises up in me when I am pushed to the end of myself and am still being asked for more...  when I realize more is needed and WANT to give it!... but just have no more to give?  That is the most bizarre feeling I have ever felt.  Nothing in my life before has ever brought me to the true end of my own energy and pushed me for more.  Not like this.  I felt exhausted, claustrophobic, boxed in.  My husband endured several emotional meltdowns as I reached that wall over and over and every time sat down in despair and didn't know what to do. 

I kept turning to food and sleep and a one hour break from the baby while he took a turn watching her.  These things helped a little, but they were not enough.  It was not until I remembered that "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds from the mouth of God," that I was truly rescued.  Instead of taking a bath with the hour my husband gave me, I sat and read bits of Psalms and Proverbs and Philippians.  I drank and ate every word, transformed in 10 minutes from a woman who wasn't going to make it through one more day, to a woman who felt revived, happy and eager to go find her baby and kiss her again.  I had pushed through the wall and found the other side; the place where there is an endless supply of energy to do whatever is needed.

Southern Appalachia Homemaker

Last time we talked, Samantha and I were spending the day outside.  We are outside again today, but in a very different location.  A few days after my last post, I learned that Chris' company was asking us to move to Birmingham, Alabama.  Four weeks later, we are here, fully re-located in temporary housing while we house hunt.  A shock?  Maybe.  But I've come to expect sudden change.  Life can change in the blink of an eye, all of our plans re-arranged.  It's a lot more enjoyable to ride the wave than to fight it when it happens.

"The mind of a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps."  Proverbs 16:9

We still intend to buy a house, as planned, but instead of on a lake a mile down the road, we are now looking for a house in the southern Appalachian mountains of northern Alabama.  Without fail, God's re-directions are far more delightful than our plans, for those who have eyes to see.  I've always wanted to live in the Appalachian Mountains, but didn't think it was possible with Chris' job.  I was born in South Western Virginia, right in the middle of the Appalachian chain.  When I think about returning, I think of Virginia or North Carolina.  I've never been to Alabama until now and had no idea that the Appalachian chain extended this far south.  What an amazing surprise!  After only a few days, I already feel more at home here than any other place I've lived since getting married and following my husband on the job trail.  Colorado, Florida, Switzerland, they were all wonderful adventures, but this?  This feels like home.  This is where I belong.  At least for now.  Only God could coordinate my husband's job and my ideal location to be in the same place.

As I write to you now, we're on the back patio and my baby sleeps in a pink stroller next to me and I look out over my laptop at the small woods behind our apartment that rest on a hill and separate our apartment buildings from another set of apartment buildings.  A breeze grazes us and I breathe fresh mountain air, daydreaming about what the rest of our new life in Alabama will bring.

The Best Things Found are Free

As mothers, I think most of us are looking for rhythms and routines to order our days. We crave flexible schedules to help us anticipate what is going to happen next. There is so much that is new and unsettling and unpredictable about life with a baby. Whether you are a rigid schedule maker or a loose schedule maker, we are all looking for stability and comfort from the routines and rhythms we create and find.  And most of us find ourselves in a constant state of tweaking and experimenting to perfect these daily schedules.

I am no exception.  In the past, I tended to seek constant variety with little repetition.  Life with a baby has found me groping for more consistency and evaluating everything I do more closely now that I have someone else to consider, not just myself.

On this intoxicatingly delicious Spring day in Virginia, as I strolled down the street, meandering away from my in-laws brick two story, wearing my baby in a front carrier, I was reminded how much happier and healthier I am when I'm outdoors.  My baby is happier and healthier too.  She sleeps better and eats better outside in the fresh air.  I resolved, today, to spend at least a few minutes every day outdoors with my child from now on, closer to the rhythms of nature.  This is, after all, one of the best ways to live the theme I already chose for raising this particular little girl.  When she was in the womb, I sang to her every day.  I sang various songs befitting the mood of the day, but there was one song I sang every day, a little didly I made up, adapted from a song I learned as a child, and it goes like this,

"Samantha, Samantha, look round and you will see,

God's treasure is everywhere,

the best things found are free."

I do love buying toys and new props for her education at each stage of development.  But my fondest wish is that her favorite toys will be the ones she discovers outdoors in God's great big beautiful creation.  Today I am reminded that I want to start cultivating this love in her now, even at four months old.  The weather does not always make it easy to be outside all day long, but on a day like today, it would be a great misfortune to be indoors.  So we're not.  Today, Samantha and I are eating and sleeping and playing outside all day long.

More Revelations from Samantha Grace

As I said, there were three particularly poignant moments in the first three months with my new baby.  The second two were revelations that hit me during conversations with her as she and I played together.

One day, as I cuddled her, I said, "Samantha, do you know your Daddy loves you?  Even though he is not around as much as I am, he loves you just as much as I do."  As those words left my mouth, it dawned on me that this is similar to the Holy Spirit telling us that the Father loves us just as much as the Spirit does.  The Spirit is WITH us, as our helper and our comforter.  The Father is in heaven preparing a place for us.

Samantha's Daddy works hard, preparing a place for her.  Which leads me to another topic... in a few months, if all goes according to plan, you will see photos of our new house, a house just down the road by the lake, a beautiful location to raise a beautiful daughter.  We plan to move in May.


The second revelation came as I played with Samantha on the bed a few days later.  I was overtaken by how wonderful she was and said, "Oh Samantha, you are SO cute and SO sweet, I can hardly bear it.  My heart can't take it.  My heart is aching from just looking at you.
That's when it hit me.  I gasped and exclaimed to her, "Samantha, if God is MORE sweet and MORE perfect than you, then NO WONDER no one can bear to look at Him!"

I've always wondered why people in the Old Testament kept dying just from catching a glimpse of God.  He was too Holy to look at?  I didn't understand it.

Now I think maybe I understand it at least a tiny bit better.

Lessons from Samantha Grace - Part One

So about that baby in this story...

After 10 years of waiting, praying and hoping, she arrived on December 8, 2012, cuter and more precious than any dream we ever conceived: Samantha Grace Sherman - which means "God hears."

I'm already dreaming of the things I want to teach her; the books I want to read to her and the places we'll go. But in these first few months of life, her presence has been teaching me far more than I've been teaching her.

There were three particularly poignant moments these first three months. Today I will tell you about the first.  It happened the first week home from the hospital. My husband and mother both left to run errands, leaving me alone with my baby for the first time ever. Before pregnancy, I prided myself on my vast experience with babies. Yet NOTHING could have prepared me for the weight of responsibility that came with the arrival of my very own baby. I was SO stressed. The delivery and c-section, left me weaker and more vulnerable than I have ever felt in my life. It baffles me, even now, to think that God entrusts a woman with the most precious task on earth, caring for a helpless newborn at the very time when we are at our weakest and most helpless ourselves. Mentally, emotionally, physically broken. I honestly don't know how I would have made it through those first six weeks without this promise from Isaiah.... "He (God) gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young."   I recited this to myself dozens and dozens of times those first weeks.

But back to that first poignant episode during week one: First, you have to know that my greatest fear that week was Samantha choking.  In the hospital there was a moment in the middle of the night when she silently started vomiting and choking on amniotic fluid and I was unprepared for it.  I happened to turn at exactly the right moment to see her choking, but I had no idea what to do and she started turning blue.  I turned her over and somehow she got through it, but I came away from the episode thoroughly traumatized and gravely afraid of being left alone with her.  Nonetheless, the moment came later that week when everyone left the house and I was alone with my baby.  I had just finished feeding her.  I sat her up to burp her and I said aloud, "Jesus, please help us not to be scared by ANYTHING."  What I meant to say, was, "Please don't let anything scary happen."  But that's not what I accidentally said.  I said, "please help us not to be scared by anything."  So what did He do?  He expertly allowed the thing for which I was most afraid to happen at that very moment.  Literally, as the last word left my mouth, Samantha projectile vomited for the first time, splashing the bassinet, two feet away.  Milk came out of her mouth AND NOSE!

We lived through it and I smiled.  He could not have more clearly spoken into my life to say, "We are not going to avoid all scary situations.  Instead, I will be WITH you and you do not need to be scared by ANYTHING.

For those of you who think a baby vomiting is not a scary thing, it is humbling to share this story with you.  Indeed, it does seem a bit silly to me, looking back on it now.  But we all have fears.  Insert a different fear and maybe you can relate.  What fear do you carry that you can let Jesus be WITH you to overcome?

Homemaking - My Choice

As I said, there is a baby in this story...

Two nights before her delivery, I was awake at 4 am, sitting on a big blue exercise ball, trying to stay comfortable through contractions.  The following journal entry is what poured forth from my pen that night. This was the night I re-connected with my life as a homemaker in a deep way.

December 5, 2012 – 4:30 am

It’s in a moment like this that it becomes crystal clear to me that the life I have chosen for myself is exactly the one I believe is my personal calling.

The countercultural nature of my lifestyle has tempted me to insecurity many, many times.  I defend myself, I hide myself, or I try to compete with other people by rules that don’t apply to me, rules set by a very different lifestyle choice.

Tonight I am proud of my decisions and I vow never again to apologize for them or hide them.  I will celebrate this life.

I was a single woman with no job outside the home.  I was provided for financially by my father.  I learned the art of homemaking from my mother and I learned to care for children.  My time was free to pursue any project inside or outside the home to be productive.  Work was a value and laziness was not excused.  Yet this type of work was flexible.  I could put down a current project at a moment’s notice to serve other people, especially other women.  At 17 I spent 5 weeks in the home of a woman who just gave birth and was unusually sick.  Her husband was also sick and she had 6 children to manage.  I went to her side to help her for over a month.  This is only one example out of dozens where I was free to serve when others were tied down by careers.

If society does not create at least a certain percentage of women, like me, to do this type of work, who will do it?  A paid nanny or paid companion?  Few can financially afford such a luxury.  And will a nanny or companion, trained only in a classroom, be as good as a woman who lived and breathed this lifestyle from girlhood?

I’m married now.  I’ve been married for 12 years without children.  Part of the philosophy behind a life of homemaking and serving during my single years was to prepare me to be a wife and mother.  When I didn’t become a mother soon after marriage, I often lost perspective and wondered if I should have pursued a career to “stay busy.”  I could have had any job I wanted.  I was a smart child.  I could have gone to college to be a lawyer or a nurse or a business owner.  I had the brains for any of those options.  But that is not the life I chose.  At a young age, I saw the value of a homemaker and I embraced the training my parents and others were willing to give me.  I could blame my parents for “pushing me into this lifestyle,” but I can’t do that.  Plenty of other girls were encouraged by their parents to live the life of homemaking I was living and many girls chose not to go this route.  The choice was mine. 

I could have pursued a career and I might have enjoyed it very much.  But if I had pursued a career, I would not have been free to serve the people I have served as a married woman without children these last 12 years.  Tonight, my only regret is that I didn’t serve more people and make the most of the time.  I regret the times I spent feeling lost and useless and paralyzed.

I am about to have a baby.  I will still be able to live this life of homemaking and serving other women, but my time will be more limited than before.  I am now the woman in need rather than the woman who is free to go.

Tonight I am lonely.  I'm wishing there was a single woman in my community who would come and sit by my side as I go through the days and days and night after long night of childbirth pains that lead up to final labor… or even a married woman to at least sit with me during the day while our husbands are at work. 

Where are these women?

Our society has eliminated most of them.

Let me say that I fully support and applaud women who's heart's desire is to work outside the home with a vibrant career. I'm grateful we live in a day and age when women are respected and free to do so.  At this point, the problem isn't that women who want a career can't have one.  At this point, our challenge, as a culture, is to make sure women who chose homemaking feel equally productive and respected even though their productivity is measured differently than in the corporate world.

I want to end by saying thank you to Jaime and Amanda; two women who were there for me at the hospital during the most challenging moments of my entire life.  Jaime is a homemaker with 4 children.  Amanda is currently staying home with a 7 month old baby boy.  That night, these women embodied the true spirit of homemaking and women helping women.