A Tasty Summer

We've had s'mores by the firepit.

 We've had crispy, fried shrimp while sitting on the bay at the beach.

 We've eaten melting popsicles in the sunshine after "swimming" in the kiddie-pool.

 We've made fresh salsa using the tomatoes and jalepenos we are growing in our backyard.

 We've grilled ribs and sausage and steak and fajitas.

We've consumed juicy, red watermelon.

 

So far, summer has been delicious.  And it's only just begun.

Eight Years

In a world where there are no guarantees, nothing certain, nothing lasting, I feel especially blessed to have celebrated eight years of marriage with my husband.

This year he brought me a small bouquet of flowers and two breakfast tacos at work.  His sweet and thoughtful gestures always leave me feeling loved and cared for and remembered.

We celebrated by going to our favorite steakhouse, Saltgrass and ended the night by seeing Godzilla at the movies.  Nothing says romance and anniversary celebration like Godzilla right?

This year was another low-key year as we have been tucking away what we can for our upcoming family vacation and Tommy's big 5th birthday party.  My heart is full of gratitude and love my for the man who continues to do life with me amidst all of the chaos, the ups and downs and the messy parts.  Happy eight years to us.

Youth Group

My high school years are full of memories I can vividly remember.  Like how I changed best friends eighteen times from Britney to Kelly to Courtney and then the Sarah’s.

There were a few Sarah's.

All of my time and babysitting money was spent on clunky shoes and bad chick-flicks and nights out at Chili’s where we pretended we were grown up and knew everything.  Those were the years I would obsess about guys and wonder what sex was like while sharing mozzarella sticks and Dr Peppers with my girlfriends.  I remember how Saturdays were devoted to shopping and scrapbooking, and the nights were for games of chicken feet and Ms. Senecal’s home-made popcorn and staying up late talking about God and theology and I would leave, head spinning.

High school was high school.  I was kind of a nobody and preferred it that way.  I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.  I wanted to be left alone and survive as I always seemed to find myself an easy target for the girl-bullies to pick on.  Every once in a while, the real me would peek outside of the shell I hid under - like when I wanted a role badly enough for a musical or when it felt safe to be me.   

And I always remember the disappointment that came when I wasn’t chosen to be Maria in West Side Story even though I’m still convinced to this day that Leonard Bernstein totally wrote that music just for me even though I’m in no way, shape or form Puerto Rican.

But most of my good memories from high school came from youth group.  It felt safe to be me there.  I could play games and sing on the worship team and be my loud, silly self.  I made girlfriends there who knew Jesus and encouraged me when I was hurting or down.  Our youth pastor was fun, and we always did fun things.  It kept me grounded when my world had been turned upside down.   

Youth group nights were my favorite nights of the week.  I couldn’t wait to get there and I didn’t want to leave.

Fifteen years later (for serious, how am I this old), I still go to youth group.  Granted, I’m a leader, and it’s a completely different church, but it’s still my favorite night of the week.  For the last year and a half I have been serving and ministering to and getting to know the teens of our church.  My friend Kat and I lead the junior/senior girls group and we’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve challenged them and they’ve challenged us. 

Every once in a while I catch my teenage self in one of them.  I find myself in their tears about how they feel ugly or fat or stupid.  I find myself in the boy crazy ones who you have to force out of the bathroom every week because they’re taking selfies and working up the guts to talk to so-and-so that night.  I find myself in the quiet ones, the ones who are ashamed and are hiding something.  Each and every one of them remind me of the me I was.  They invite me to remember what I was needing at their age.  And every week I show up to be an ear, to be a voice, to share a story, to give a hug, to play and laugh, to remind them that they matter and that they are fiercely loved by God.  

And that this loud and still silly 30-something woman thinks they rock.  

In the last couple of weeks we have been honoring our Seniors, celebrating accomplishments and savoring moments before life changes and they head out to greater adventures.  It’s been bittersweet for me as I have been preparing for goodbyes and reflecting on my time with these precious girls I have come to know and dearly love.  

Perhaps I show up every Wednesday night hoping that my presence or my voice or words will have an impact – that God will use me in some way to show them more of Himself.  Yet, every week without fail, I would always leave feeling like I was the changed one.  I’ve left feeling humbled, challenged, and convicted.  These girls, these relationships I’ve been building over the course of the last couple of years, has stirred something in my heart.  God has been calling me to more, calling me to something greater.  I don’t know exactly what it means or what it looks like yet, I just know that I want more of this.

As summer is officially upon us, I am bracing for goodbyes and arranging the last of the get-togethers and game nights and hoping that they really believe I’m here if they need anyone to talk to.

I hope these girls can take away sweet memories of laughter and games and heartfelt teaching and remember their own youth group as fondly as I remember my own.  More than anything though, I hope that these graduated, now-adult people, will move on from high school youth group with a heart that wants to forever follow after Jesus.

Coming up for air

Life has been full lately.  I wouldn't say it's been busy, because busy implies that you aren't really enjoying anything.  Being busy implies that you have no time for others because you have so much else going on.  It's more than busy.  Life has been full of celebrations and planning for celebrations, birthday parties and birthday dinners and weddings and baby showers.  It's been full of ministry and Bible study and pouring into people and being poured back into and doing life with people and being called to more.

But I'm also reminded too where I still have to find rest in the midst of all of the fullness.  And this afternoon, I did just that.  Jacob went down for a late nap and Wednesday is my off-from-work-early-day.  So I seized the opportunity and got cozy in bed and knocked out for a whole hour.  An absolute treat in my world.

I should have been folding my laundry.  Or making dinner even.  But who needs clothes or food anyway?  Tonight, the laundry is wrinkled in my baskets and we had a hodge-podge of leftovers for dinner before heading out to church.  But my nap rocked and I don't feel the least bit guilty about it at all either.

Hopefully there will be more found moments for stillness, for writing and much needed rest.

Just a few things

Memorial Day usually marks the first real official day of summer and it's usually scorching hot and pushing 100 degrees by the end of May.  Today however, was cool and stormy.  Waves of rain and thunder came in all day long while I stayed home and washed tiny boy shorts and towels and underwear. 

While Jacob napped I managed to clean our bathroom and bring some order into our chaotic closet, where my plethora of blouses and scarves has come to be somewhat convicting because do I really "need" all of those clothes?

Over the weekend, I found out that my blog-friend Faith was in San Antonio for the weekend.  And thanks to the wonders of Instagram and the internets we got to meet up.  And to her delight, she didn't end up "in a ditch" like her husband feared she would.  We had a wonderful blate (blog-date) together and it felt like meeting up for dinner and a movie on a Sunday night was something we always did together.  I took her to my favorite Mexican restaurant for queso and margaritas, we did a bit of shopping and caught a chick-flick together.  Even though Sunday was the first time we had met in person, it was like we could pick up in the middle of a conversation we were already having thanks to the blogosphere.  She was just as fabulous and beautiful in person as she is on her blog and I was so excited that life and circumstance allowed our paths to cross for a brief Sunday evening.

I'm a bit hesitant to post this for fear that I'm flat wrong - but I think we may be turning a corner in the clinging-to-my-legs-in-the-kitchen phase with Jacob.  I was hoping that when he started walking and gained some more independence he might find something else to do rather than latch on to me while I attempted to cook dinner, and it seems as though my hopes and dreams in waiting for this to happen are coming to fruition.  Bits and pieces of motherhood and cooking dinner or just doing something else rather than being parked on the living room floor entertaining him is starting to feel easier and I'm grateful for the relief and the shift.  Though he has discovered shrieking and screaming when he even feels the most tad unpleasant about anything, so I've really just traded the clingy-ness for noise.  But you know what?  I'll take it. 

At the moment, I'm feeling like something new is brewing inside of my heart.  I don't know what exactly, but something is churning and mixing up inside of me and I feel like I'm on the verge of something big.  Maybe that sounds weird or vague or just plain stupid, but I can feel it in my bones.  God has been doing something in me for months.  Not that He hasn't been my whole life, but the last few months have felt big for my faith and my walk and my relationship with Jesus and there will definitely be more to come on this soon.....

Even though today was cool and stormy and the gray skies said spring, I know that summer is here already.  Graduations, weddings, new ministry opportunities, swim parties and barbecues, a Bible study, a Star Wars birthday party to plan, our summer beach vacation - so many things on the calendar to do and to be at and to look forward to.

I can't believe we're in the last of May already.  Time flies faster every year I think.  And I don't know about you, but I don't want to waste a minute of it.

A good-for-the-soul kind of day

This might sound silly, but I've always felt closest to God when I'm at the beach.  I've been that way ever since I was a little girl and when we would take family trips to the coast every summer.  It was as if I could reach out and touch the horizon and He was right there within my grasp.  As I got older, I would take my Bible out to the balcony of whatever hotel we stayed at and read and pray.  I would watch the sun rise and listen to the waves and feel the sea breeze in my hair and it felt as though God was right there - embracing me, surrounding me.  It's always been "the" place for me.  And not just for enjoyment, but for rejuvination and rest.

On the car ride home from church yesterday, I began to cry for maybe the umpteenth time that weekend.  My heart was aching and I had a lot on my mind and I blurted out to Todd how my soul was needing the beach.  I wished we could go, even if just for a little while.  And I tried to talk myself out of what I was needing.  Because how silly to need to run to the coast for a few hours just so I could get this invisible God-hug.  I told him I thought it was a dumb idea anyway and I went silent.

We got home and I crawled into bed for our usual Sunday afternoon nap.  Todd came in a few minutes later and told me to get ready.  His parents were coming over to stay with the boys and he was going to drive me to the beach for the day.  He knew it was what I was needing.  Before I knew it, we were on the road with our Icee's and beach towels, heading south.

The second I could see the Cos-Way, I quickened with excitement and anticipation knowing that the waves and the water and sand were within reach.  As a little girl, that was the sight I always waited for.  I knew we were getting close whenever the giant bridge came in to view.

The moment I saw the water and heard the waves and smelled the air, I was ready to run to it.  My tired, achy, sad heart ran to God.  As I stood there taking in some of my most favorite scenery in the world, I thought about all of the many moments and seasons of my life where I ran.  When I was angry or hurting or confused and would run from Him and run hard.  I ran away a million times.  And if He has been doing anything in my heart the last few years, it's been creating a heart in me that still runs.  But instead of running away from Him, I'm running to Him.

And that's exactly what I did yesterday.  I ran to Him.  

I walked and I put my toes in the sand and I took in every crashing wave, every hue of blue in the sky, every seagull's song and I let myself feel embraced by this God who meets me at the horizon and reminds me not only that I am loved, but reminds me of who I am.

I could have stayed for hours.  I could have stayed all week maybe.  But even though I knew it was for a short time, it was absolutely everything that I was needing.

Todd and I walked along the shore for a good hour searching for seashells.  The kid in both of us still surged with excitement when we spotted a piece of sand dollar or a unique colored shell.  We brought them home with us, these fragile pieces of spontaneity and adventure.  A reminder of our day, a reminder of God's faithfulness to show up.  And a reminder of the love Todd has for me.

Wave after crashing wave, sand on my shoes, sun-kissed on my shoulders, I didn't want to leave.  

But I knew we had to.  My heart had it's perfect fill of the ocean's tide and the sound of the waves.  And of my Jesus who was faithful to meet me there and fill me back up again with His peace.

Before we headed back home, we stopped for dinner at our favorite restaurant in Port Aransas.  A little shack of a restaurant called Snoopy's. Sand on the floor, seabreeze-only air conditioning and some of the best shrimp you could ever eat.

They have an incredible view right on the water and we ate and remembered the other times we had come here, some with friends, others on random, spontaneous day trips to the beach much like the one we were having now.  We talked about how much we were looking forward to our family vacation this summer, and how we'd come back again with our boys.

I'm overwhelmed sometimes at the love this man has for me.  He knew what I was needing yesterday and went out of his way to make it happen for me.  He knows my heart well enough to know that a couple of hours spent on the beach is worth the time it took it took to get there.  That a few hours spent in the car together by ourselves was even what we were both needing together too.

It was a good-for-the-soul kind of day.  And I'm beyond grateful for not only knowing that I have a God who sees me and knows what I need, but a husband who does too.

Mommy Blog Part 5: The Death of the IT Mom

There are some things that no one tells you about motherhood. 

No one tells you that it's actually possible for a four year old to ask exactly 74 question on a twenty-minute drive and around question 41, you'll want to bang your head against the window.

No one tells you that at some point, your child will throw something at you like strawberries.  Because heaven forbid you attempt to feed your child something healthy and abhorrent like a strawberry.

No one tells you that your child will be red in the face screaming at you because you had the nerve to get up and do something insane - like go to the bathroom and pee.

No one tells you about how about how relieved you'll be at bedtime or how much you'll cry from exhaustion or feeling like a failure.  No one tells you that you're house and your bathrooms and your carpets and your everything will never ever be the same again.

And probably because of this:

Because of how much joy and life and laughter and fullness that your children bring in to your home.  The home you thought was perfect because of your carefully selected throw pillows and designer paint colors.  But in actually, it's perfection comes with teethmarks on your coffee table and trucks strewn about your living room, and cans of green beans placed under the cabinets by your inventive boy.  A home is really made perfect with juice stains on those silly throw pillows and crumbs on the dining room floor and pictures colored outside the lines hanging from your refrigerator.

Even amidst a season of discouragement, my heart has never been more full.  I've often wondered how that can be, but I suppose it's one of the many wonders of motherhood.

The moment Tommy came into my hospital room after Jacob was born and beheld his baby brother for the first time, I was almost certain my heart would burst from all of the beauty and glory in that moment.  Nobody ever tells you how much your heart will expand when you suddenly find yourself the mother of not one, but two.  And I can't even imagine the hearts of the mama's with three and four and five and so on. 

As I've written and shared this week, reflecting on my story and journey of motherhood in this last year, my heart has also thought of the other mothers reading this post.  The mothers that have no babies, that desperately want them, whose wombs are closed or are healing or are anxiously waiting a miracle. I have to wonder what it feels like to read of my stories and struggles as a mother when I know others would give anything for these struggles to be some of their own.  I have a handful of very close friends who find themselves here and my heart aches and hurts wanting so badly for them to know all of this.  For you my friends, and you know who you are, I so long for you to have strawberries thrown in your faces and diaper blow-outs at 2:00am and your very own seasons of struggling in this place.  For laughter and toys and glorious children chaos to fill your homes and beautifully destroy your pillows and coffee tables.  Oh my heart hurts and I weep as I wait with you.  Those of you who have walked with me in my struggle here as you've waited and are waiting still, I am humbled to be loved in this place by you.....

During this last year of life, all I kept hearing in my head were all of the people who have ever told me to enjoy EVERY moment, because before you know it they'll be smelly, back-talking teenagers with an attitude or they'll be gone and you will never hear from them.  That's what they say you know.  And then you see all those stupid pins on Pinterest about how they won't be small forever and the laundry can wait and don't miss a single moment!  And blah blah blah blah. 

And to all of these people that have told me this, I keep thinking, "You don't have my baby!  They're not your legs he's clinging to!  You probably get to pee in peace!  You can probably make dinner without crying your eyes out!" 

What I wish we could hear more of is, "I know it's hard.  Hang in there.  I felt that way too.  Stop beating yourself up.  Let me watch your kids so you can have an hour to yourself."  Because really, we try - we try and try to enjoy every moment, but some of those moments aren't always enjoyable.  Enjoying every moment doesn't always make a difference on how you're feeling.  Sometimes we just have to admit, "Wow, this is crappy and I'm tired and I need a friggin break because I'm not just a mama, I'm a woman and I have needs and limits just like anyone else."

I think I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not the "IT" mom I had originally set out to be.  I have boys instead of the daughters I imagined.  I work almost full-time outside the home, I'm overweight, my laundry is still in baskets waiting to be folded and put away and my husband didn't get a packed lunch from me and wore a wrinkled polo shirt to work today.  Tommy eats dry cereal for breakfast and I pray that you never have to see my disheveled closets because they are anything but organized.

But the mom I am now isn't so bad I think.  I can throw a stellar birthday party.  Tommy loves my homemade coffeecake when I treat him to it on a Saturday morning.  I teach them how to play and be loud.  I build Legos and play trucks and explain Star Wars.  I teach them about Jesus and we pray and talk about God.  I bathe and read to and snuggle and feed and play with. 

Of course, some days never go as planned.  And there aren't picture perfect moments or sparkly Hallmark movie worthy memories made.

 But I'm building a life and a family and a home.  I'm raising these precious boys with a man who loves me.

And some days it's exhausting and frustrating and I just want to be done. And others are so rewarding and full that my heart can't hardly bear the glory of it all.  But they teach me.  They are always teaching me.

Tommy reminds me to be thoughtful and careful with my words.  He encourages me to speak life and kindness and is quick to call me out when he hears otherwise.  He invites me to adventure and to play and he lets me know how he feels or if I've hurt him.  He shares my passion and love for music.  And his tender, compassionate and sensitive heart, reminds me of my own.

Jacob is passionate and full of emotion.  He invites me to remember that this life isn't about me.  He encourages me to give even when I don't think I can anymore.  He has taught me patience and selflessness.  His smile is so bright and vibrant that it fills our whole house with something special.  There is a light in that boy that feels extraordinary to me.

These boys have taught me that they really don't need the IT mom I thought I was supposed to be.  The only mom they really need.....is me.

To my precious boys Tommy and Jacob - I love you both more than you will ever know.  No matter how I've struggled or will struggle as we all grow up together, I will thank God every day for giving you both to your daddy and me.  I have never known a greater joy than getting to be your mama.  I love you both so, so very much.