motherhood Archives - karin madden

October 21, 2014 by Karin 6 Comments

Why You Are Not A Rock Star

I can remember his baby face like it was yesterday. Only two years old.

He sat on my neighbor’s lap as she sighed,

His Daddy just passed away. A brain tumor.

I stared into his gentle face as he gazed up at the wind-blown trees. There was a serious look for such a young child. As if he knew his whole life had changed in this last breath of his father. And it had.

What I didn’t know is I would see his face again four years later.

He ran past me in the gym to join his team in basketball practice. My warrior was the coach. Our oldest son’s team.

I looked at the long six-year-old legs as they flew past me and noticed the glimmer in his eyes as he raced to the court. There was a lightness in his step.

That’s when I noticed her. She brushed past me with eyes focused on her boy. I watched her as I wondered,

How have you made it all on your own?

A few more years passed by until I found that tall boy grinning on the front step as he beckoned,

Can he come out to play?

My boy ran through the door and off they went. These friends like brothers. He came around almost every day. His eyes smiled as he told me,

My Mom had to go back to work full-time.

I smiled as I squeezed his shoulders,

We’d love to have you around here.

He spent his after-school days with my neighbor, but really he found his home-away-from-home in our home. And our hearts grew. This boy who became another one of our pack.

One afternoon he swung his shag hair from his eyes as he mused,

You don’t know my mom, do you?

I grinned into his sweet face,

No, not yet.

His eyes glimmered as he replied,

You should. You two would really like each other.

And he was right. What we didn’t know is she would become my soul sister. She, her daughter, and son would become family to us.

It didn’t take long. You know how it is when you meet your people. It just fits. No planning, or thinking, or long drawn out get-to-know-you. Family. Just like that. As though we’d been a part of the picture since the day their lives changed from four to three.

But we hadn’t. And I wondered,

How have you done this alone all these years?

And I’d like to say she’s a rock star because she looks like one. I’d like to say she’s a rock star because I don’t know if I’ve ever met kids quite like hers. I’d like to say she’s a rock star because she has mothered and fathered those kids for ten years – and has blown the single mom story out of the water.

And she would shake her head at all this and tell me she’s no rock star. Her eyes would fill as she tells me,

It’s been hard.

And ten years is a long time to do this parenting thing all on your own.

She has been my cheerleader during endless deployments and has asked me,

How do you do it?

All I can do is shake my head and whisper,

Because you do it.

But she’s no rock star. Because rock stars have an entourage. They have staff, assistants, planners, organizers, managers, and more go-to people than I can wrap my mind around. I like some rock stars. But my friend is no rock star.

Then, a few days ago, she sends me this message,

makes it all worth it… love this kid. xo

I scrolled down and wondered what made all these ten years of holding sick babies, cooking meal after meal, balancing tight budgets, carpooling, tears, stress, strain, loneliness, and every other day-in-day-out task of parenthood worth it – all alone.

Then this. A letter from her daughter. She was six-years-old when her mother held her next to her father and whispered,

Tell him goodbye.

I read the words from her daughter,

so we had to do a survey for this recommendation letter thing and one of the questions was like who’s the most influential person in your life in a positive way, and how has it made you different and I wanted to share my answer-

The person who has had the most impact on my life in a positive way is of course my mom. I wouldn’t be here without her…literally. But she has shown me what it means to be independent, hardworking, caring, and successful all at the same time. She has been a single parent since my brother and I were young and I can’t admire her more for it. She’s a rock star plain and simple. She has done everything for me in life and helped me grow into the young woman I am. She showed me how to care for myself and be independent. She taught me how to think for myself and taught me to always do my best no matter what, which I am sure everyone says, but it really stuck with me in my teenage years. She has never had to tell me to do my homework or schoolwork and it’s because of her example that I did everything on my own. She is always hard at work to make our lives better and it inspires me to do the same. She taught me that hard work pays off and not to take crap from anyone. She showed me that being caring and loving is just as important as being hardworking. She has made me who I am today and I can never thank her enough for it.

Being caring and loving is just as important as being hardworking. This from a sixteen-year-old girl. She made me who I am today…

This. This is what every mother wants to hear. And she did it by herself. This daughter of hers who is like a daughter to me just made every minute of these ten years worth it.

But she’s no rock star.

A rock star couldn’t hold a candle to her.

Proverbs 31:27-28

She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed…

May 7, 2014 by Karin 12 Comments

When You Don’t Know How To Forgive Yourself

The phone rang through the sizzle of the searing meat on the stove.

Taco Monday. Not nearly as clever as Taco Tuesday, as my girl pointed out, but it’s Cinco de Mayo. A day to celebrate our Mexican heritage – thought it’s only a fraction for this six pack of ours. A grandmother of a great-grandfather. Born and raised in a border town in the blazing Texas heat… a very long time ago.

I had a few conversations with this grandfather of my warrior. A brilliant man whose heart bloomed beautifully as his mind aged. I remember the stories that brought a twinkle to his eyes. The time he ran away when his parents adopted a little sister. He was ten-years-old and found this new sister an imposition. He laughed as a 95-year-old man recalling his childhood antics. His life stretched a full 98 years. Though my children had prayed for a full one hundred. Who gets to live that long? They wanted him to wear the badge of honor.

I wonder if his mother ever dreamed her boy would live to be on old man with grandchildren upon grandchildren. A man who touched the cheeks of his great-grandchildren.

I wonder if his mother thought that far ahead? It’s almost too far to look down the road. Besides, we are supposed to live right now, aren’t we?

The sound of the phone drilled through my thoughts of tacos and dinners and heritage and old age and mothers.

I scooped the phone to my ear,

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Her voice trembled through the line,

Hi Karin, how are you?

We can just tell, can’t we? We can hear in the tremor of one small syllable of a dear friend’s voice when the flood of salt is close to the rims of blurring eyes,

What’s wrong? Why do you sound so sad?

The barrier broke as she poured her aching mama worries through the line. The ebb and flow of her voice washed over us both as she described every fear, every worry, and every heartache her sinking soul couldn’t hold. We all end up here sometimes. Paddling upstream. Clamoring for air, and relief, and any reed we can hold on the shoreline. We all end up here – grasping at straws.

We talked like two oarsmen trying to find a rhythm we could both understand. Trying to make sense of the choppy waters we find ourselves paddling through furiously. And sometimes the rowing is so much easier with two. Sometimes we need to know someone is holding the other oar – praying to God we don’t sink under the weight of ourselves.

The words flowed on about motherhood and mess-ups and maternal mayhem, until she asked the question,

Karin, how do you forgive yourself?

How do you forgive yourself when you mess up?

There it was. The place our river turns to white water rapids. Guilt.

And we just drown under it.

Guilt. How do we forgive ourselves when we make the same mistakes over and over again?

How do we forgive ourselves when we lose tempers or sanity?

How do we forgive ourselves when we turn out to be less than the mothers we expected to be? When our ideas become vapor? When our plans wash down the stream far from view?

How do we forgive ourselves when who we are turns out to be less than whom we can accept?

I stammered over my reply. It’s not easy to explain the demon you battle yourself. It’s not easy to describe the end of the rapids when you are stuck in the middle of the water yourself,

Well, I guess, we have to remember that when we don’t forgive ourselves – we are sort of calling God a liar. He forgives us, but we are telling Him – He must be wrong.

She sighed,

I know. And that makes me feel even more guilty.

Yea, me too.

And I’m tired of this wasted emotion. I’m tired of it when I hear my son sink under the weight of the same snarling beast. Guilt. And I wonder if he learned it from me.

I’m tired of it. I’m tired of the emotion that lies to us and tells us we won’t get it right, and even when we do – it won’t let us forget the times we didn’t. The blade cuts to the soft white underbelly of a sinking soul.

So, my friend, this is the way I see it. Guilt is the part of the ride where the river forks.

You can keeping riding that dangerous wave as the current pulls you toward the cliff plummeting into the spray of murky depths. Or you can grab the oar and steer and paddle like hell – until you find yourself on smooth waters on the other side of that fork.

But, you are going to have to believe the One who forgave you first. And you are going to have to throw your sisters – the rest of us moms – an oar so we can help you steer. Because see, we were never supposed to raft down this journey alone.

And in this ever-changing current of motherhood… a river runs right through it.

John 7:37-38

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”

May 1, 2014 by Karin 2 Comments

The Only Way To Grow A Garden

He keeps jumping around me. He won’t stop asking for the Coke. But c’mon, it’s 9 pm. He knows better.

I only allow a little bit of the caffeinated poison, and only early in the day. And only when I’m feeling a little bit more gracious.

I remember wanting that stuff as a kid. My mom would only get it on holidays. Only one holiday, as I recall. It was a New Year’s Eve treat. That’s it.

He’s up late and he’s growing up fast. And they all said it would happen, but I didn’t really listen. I was too busy trying to figure out how to grow this little guy. How to start a garden and build it to flourishing.

I was too busy trying to live on no sleep, no sanity, and no idea what the next stage would bring. I was too busy trying to figure out the rules to this game. No one gives us the perfect gardening book when we plant the first seed. We have to learn by shoving our hands right into the dirt. We dig in and get our head into the task; but, really, it’s the heart that goes first.

I can still see his face the moment he breathed his first breath. I see the bow of his lips and the blue of his eyes. I looked into his face as his heart beat rapidly against my sweat-soaked chest. Our hearts beating separately for the first time. I remember looking into his expectant eyes as motherhood grabbed hold of my soul,

I’ll show you how to live.

The rules we grow up with – they root in our minds and plant themselves firmly in our plans.

It’s where we learn how we are going to do this whole thing. We have nothing else to go on. Just the patterns set before us and the familiar footsteps in the garden. We follow the steps and know they’ll take us somewhere we know by heart.

We follow the places our own moms and dads have gone. We follow because we trust they knew what they were doing. We keep tiptoeing along and watch the garden of our youth grow into a forest.

The forest out there sometimes overwhelms us and we wonder if mom and dad actually had any idea, or is it just us who have not one clue. I’m pretty sure we all get lost in the weeds here and there.

Some of us get tangled up and choked in the weeds for a good long time.

Then, one day, a Gardener comes along and cuts the thorny and wilting places from us. We breathe deep and find we are free.

We run past the places we grew up and high-five a few lifted hands along the way. We run and think we just might have an idea what this whole thing is about.

Then. We become parents.

Now we find ourselves tending our own garden and we see all the mistakes our parents made – the same ones we find pouring from our own lips, the things we judged with our I-am-so-going-to-do-better-than-that attitude, and the know-it-all smirk fades from our sun-parched lips.

We never knew gardening was so… hard.

Ours are now the footsteps being traced and followed and watched and studied and criticized and analyzed.

Ours are the steps these young trusting ones put more stock in than the sun itself. They just trust.

And we wonder if we have what it takes.

We keep walking. We keep weeding. We keep pruning and nourishing and trimming and watering. We keep on trying.

And if we have figured anything out, we know the only way to garden… the only way to grow something right… no matter what our footsteps may have looked like…

The only way to grow our garden well – is on our knees.

Matthew 13:31-32

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

April 24, 2014 by Karin 10 Comments

Why You Are Just A Mom

I stared into the midnight sky.
My warrior sat down beside me and the warm Vegas breezed washed over us.
The silence we had been waiting for. The house after dinner is the kind of wild rumpus that can drive you to the brink of madness – or to the back patio.

At this point, though, we are usually too tired to put up much of a battle. The kids race like madmen in circles from room to room. Funny how we have always lived in a house with some sort of racetrack. It’s like God knew we’d need a nice wide circle for them to burn any excess energy at the end of the day. And where they get it, I’ll never know. Because if I did, I’d buy stock in it… or hoard it for myself.

But it was our time. For a few minutes anyway – until the first pair of scurrying feet would show up and ask for an extended bedtime.

What do you think we are tapped for?

My warrior had mentioned a book he heard about. A successful businessman who said the key to life is finding what God has tapped you to do. We let the thought marinate for the day.

What do you think it is for us?

He smiled into the darkness, took a sip from his birthday beer, and answered,

Six kids. He has tapped us for six kids.

Well there it is. I don’t know why, but we get caught up in looking for some kind of cataclysmic event. We wait and wonder what the big AH-HA of our lifetime will be. Like there is some seismic occurrence or some paramount moment that will take place. We wait for the BIG one – the reason for it all. Now, I know walking into heaven will be much like that, but I’m talking about here. We wait for it and wonder what we are tapped for – when what we are tapped for is right under our noses.

The mystery of God is not in what is going to be, it is now; we look for it presently, in come cataclysmic event… We look for God to manifest Himself to His children: God only manifests Himself in His children. ~ Oswald Chambers

Just hearing those words come out of my husband’s mouth lifted a restless fog from my heart and folded me in peace. That’s it. That’s what I’m tapped for. Right now.

I am a mom. I am a wife. I am amazed.

Yea, I am just a mom. And, maybe you are, too. We are just parents.
And, maybe you wonder how you will make it through the next hour with a crying newborn.
Or maybe you wonder how on God’s earth you will raise those kids alone – and, why does it have to be that way.
Maybe you think there has to be more. And sometimes you are afraid of the day when the more in your house will become less.
Maybe you are tired, and burned out, and borrowing sanity from the moments you have stored up in the laundry room alone.

And, maybe you are just tapped out on what you were tapped for.

Yes, you are most definitely grateful, even when you sink into your bed at night too late knowing you will rise too early.
At the beginning and end of each day – you are just a mom.
Just. A. Mom.

Yea, let’s remember this today,

Jesus picked
U to
Shepherd
These souls

Just moms. Just about the most seismic, paramount, cataclysmic event of our lives.

And we are hand-picked. Just for this season. Just for these young souls.

Just where we are supposed to be.

Psalm 116:16-17

Truly I am your servant, Lord; I serve you just as my mother did; you have freed me from my chains. I will sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the Lord.

December 10, 2013 by Karin 6 Comments

What To Do When The Guide Gets Lost

He looked up at me with those big blue innocent eyes.

We had travelled for weeks. Traveling can do a number on your digestive system. Especially when you are prone to allergies. Especially when you are six.

He didn’t want to go alone. They never do. The bathroom still ranks in the top three for most popular mama dates.

We were visiting friends. Friends we miss. Friends who have captured and taken hostage pieces of our hearts.

We condensed ten years of life into two weeks. It seemed more like 43 years of life, to tell you the truth. That whole thing about uncovering your roots.

I primped in the mirror as he contemplated 6-year-old life.

Mama, you know what I am most afraid of?

Examining my wrinkles and tired eyes in the mirror, I murmured,

Hm, what’s that, sweetie?

His face formed that thoughtful look he gets when he purses his lips and the one darling dimple in his right cheek burrows and begs a mama kiss.

I’m afraid of when you and Daddy die.

Who will guide us?

My eyes blurred in the mirror. Where do they come up with this stuff? Who knows the depth of a human heart? No matter the age.

Oh baby, don’t be afraid.

Do you trust me?

He nodded his blonde head vigorously, still perched on his throne.

To infinity and back, Mama.

I kneeled before him and took his soft young chin in my hand,

Well, you can trust God even more than that.

He’s the one guiding Mama and Daddy.

Even when we go, He will keep guiding all of you.

You will never… never… be alone.

He looked into my eyes with a seriousness beyond his young years. He paused just to take it all in.

Then with a twinkle, he replied,

Ok, mommy.

His face went from contemplative stare to a childish grin.

I’m done.

His question caught me off guard. I don’t know why I am ever surprised anymore. Sometimes we find our deepest fears in our most vulnerable positions. We find surprises and depth in the most ordinary of places. Even the potty.

The next day was the end of this whirlwind tour. We flew with the six pack for endless hours which seemed to multiply with each impatient shriek from the two-year-old.

Finally, home. The for-now home.

Elated to be back in our own beds no matter the zip code.

There’s just something about Christmas time that brings all our memories and emotions to a volcanic crescendo. Good… and not so good.

Another trip for my warrior left me solo with the littles for a short stretch of time.

The doing, and buying, and decorating, and preparing can just about do you in. It can just about snuff out the joy… and gratitude.

The words of a new friend lingered in my thoughts… center and savor. Amy spoke truth when she reminded me to center and savor this season. The drive to perfection just gets in the way. Perfection today could have just been called minimal madness.

And it got the best… rather, the worst, of me. A complete mama-meltdown. When in the world will I learn? How many years does it take to become that wise, calm, peaceful mother who looks knowingly across her room to see that the little things truly are the big things? The tiny pieces of this puzzle are what make the whole tapestry beautiful. Not a piece can be replaced.

But, me, I had a hissy fit. A snarling, self-centered pity party. Invites were sent to all my kids. They were thrilled.

The tears flowed and doors slammed. All me. The prettiest pictures can’t avoid the truth of our natures. Not so pretty.

Forgiving arms wrapped around mama’s neck. Cheeks were dried and kisses lavished.

That whole guiding thing? Don’t follow me today. It’s a rocky road.

Decorations resumed and moods improved. It wasn’t until hours later that I found her note. My little girl who watched the lava flow from her frazzled mom.

Dear Mom, I’m sorry your upset. I just wanted to say, I love you.

How in the world do they get it? When a mother just breaks right down and loses her way.

How in the world do the stay on the path? When mama gets lost in the woods.

How in the world do they know the words? When mom spews anger from her mouth.

Unless, they have found the better guide. The only Guide.

The One who shows them just where to go… and what to say. The One who whispers the truth when human words confuse the vocabulary.

Children. They really get it so much more than we do. God takes our best effort at mothering… at parenting… and turns it into something unimaginable.

A journey to His heart.

Deuteronomy 4:39

Acknowledge and take to heart this day that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth below. There is no other.

Why You Are Not A Rock Star

When You Don’t Know How To Forgive Yourself

The Only Way To Grow A Garden

Why You Are Just A Mom

What To Do When The Guide Gets Lost

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