Mommyhood Unrefined

I think we can all recall a moment, or several, that shifted the core of what we believe. I have had a few myself, but I remember this one clear as day. Eight years ago, I stood in my friend's kitchen bent over mangled Chick-Fil-A bags strewn across the counter. She thoughtfully asked how I was hanging in during one of Ryan's many chemo weeks. Waiting for the words to find me, I stared at the half eaten kids meals with my nerves feeling equally chewed up and spit out. As I gradually explained the daily challenges, I concluded with a thought I didn't want to admit having. "I never wanted this kind of story and I don't know what I did, or what turn I took for this to be our lot." She stared blankly at me for a moment, as if she saw the same admitted flaw in my statement as I did. I shrunk as my friend delivered a truth I desperately needed to hear. "You didn't do anything for this to be your lot, Renee, and it's a broken theology to even entertain t

I sat slouched with the car in park. Ryan sat quietly next to me in the passenger seat, watching an existential crisis unfold. I stared at an opportunistic seagull perched on a light post, that waited for another exhausted mom to drop something halfway edible while she loaded her trunk in the parking lot. With eyes fixated and blurred with tears, rhetorically, I asked, "How? How is this our life? I don't recognize anything here. What in the actual hell?" After a long pause, Ryan, in all his impaired emotional intuition, replied, "The Apache Persuasion Hold! That's the hell!" Tears erupted into laughter.  (If you haven't watched  The Office , move on) In the time since his prognosis, we have found, in the most harrowing way, that this ache is chronic. That unextraordinary moment in the parking lot sums up our grief quite well. It's unnervingly and, yet, unsurprisingly erratic. I may be baggy eyed, subdued, and my soul bone tired but, of all the things

The past seven months we have taken on the daunting task of helping move my parents out of my childhood home. Sorting through each box and drawer has been equally beautiful as it has been difficult. Nonetheless, it has inspired me and Ryan to thoroughly sort through our own home. Over the past six years we have accumulated more medical paperwork than I have the stomach for but, with a working shredder, we finally tackled it. All in all, we ended with eleven bags of shredded documentation. Eleven bags of mail that I didn't want to open when it arrived. I reread every word, each written proof of the mountains we have journeyed together as a family. It was strangely emotional seeing it all in such a massive pile. God's grace found us in every sigh of relief and in every tear cried over those pages. Getting it out of our home had all the hallmarks of closing a chapter of our life and declaring a victory over each of those mountains. Something else we found in all those papers w

"God has called me to courage, and that has not at all looked like what I thought. I thought it meant fighting harder upstream. Unfortunately, that path has lead me to deeper failure.  Courage has actually been taking the plunge to let go and submit my "normal" filter in exchange for an eternal one.  Courage has been taking the next step into the dark when every fiber in me is crying to turn around.  Courage has been choosing to float down the river of His raging grace, leaving my personal goals and dreams behind hoping that said grace would be enough to survive.  Courage has been admitting my limits, choosing what I have energy for, and realizing that the globe will still spin in spite of whatever my 100% measures up to that day.  Courage has been allowing others to stand in the gap and intercede for us when all I wanted was to cling to some shred of self sufficiency.  Courage has been sowing seeds of His peace and grace when all I want is to be a pud

"Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth!" Psalm 46:10 I watched my boys play with some of my old, antique dominoes last week. They meticulously stood each piece upright, laid the path in the kitchen, knocked down the first standing in line, and watched and listened for the rest to fall in rapid succession. They knew exactly where the last one would fall. They knew the outcome. I see the draw of a game's ending. It's black and white. Someone wins and someone loses. But life is not black and white. It holds twists and turns. The boys are learning that difficulty doesn't equate to losing in life. There is no losing with our Savior. Despite knowing this truth myself, when life doesn't fall in line, I want a sign. I want some sort of forecast to lessen the blow of being swept in an unforeseen direction. The truth is, some of the greatest, most God-orchestrated moments

Do you remember making plans as a child? Do you remember when surprises were something you looked forward to? Do you remember the day it all changed? I do. I remember the big fight me and Ryan had. I remember him being in my arms the next morning, drooling, talking incoherently, and staring at me like I was another stranger. I remember waiting in the hospital feeling so much at once that all I could do was sit, expressionless, as tears dried on my cheeks. I remember Christmas and decorations being an after thought at the close of that year. I remember dancing with Ryan at my brother's wedding wondering if he would be alive and walking the following week. I remember the dichotomy of him converting his temperature from Celsius to Fahrenheit in ICU yet being unable to read an analog clock anymore. My desires and my reality mixed like oil in water. People express their worries and concerns while I fondly remember and drift off to the days that those worries and concerns were min