five finds friday (but not really five, because it’s been a long week)
It IS Friday – right? I don’t even know. I for real don’t even know. It’s been such a busy week and I haven’t had any time to write any words anywhere. And I forgot how that usually affects me – the not writing words part. Choosing to write routinely is really a pretty vital part of my keeping the sanity in check.
So I’m feeling a lot off this week and it’s equal parts busy week and equal parts not writing.
Also, my neck is stiff and I’m really very tired. I’d pay good money for a neck and shoulder massage.
Anyway, it’s Friday and I honestly don’t know if I have anything to offer this week so we’ll all just proceed with caution and be surprised with what happens by the end – alright?
funny
Nope.
fashionable
Guess not.
Oh wait.
Maybe.
I had a conversation today with two friends. About eyelash extensions. (Among other things, alright?)
Has anyone tried them?
flavorful
Nothing.
faithful
I’ve read nothing by this author. I’m not even sure where I first heard her name. But this excerpt from Alli Worthington’s book Fierce Faith came across my screen recently and it felt spot on to my heart.
The fear that something will happen to our children, the worry that they will get hurt, and the anxiety that we can’t protect them from harm is enough to turn the most confident parent into a big, massive pile of raw nerves. We play out a million what-ifs in our head from the time we learn we are pregnant until the day they leave our home, and long after that, from what I’m told.
We live in a culture that tells us to be afraid for our children, that impending danger is around every corner.
I recently realized that the more TV news I watched, the more fearful I became about remote and disastrous scenarios happening to my children.
Brooding over what might happen, based on what I was seeing in the news, turned me into a crazy woman.
I obsessed about how to keep my kids from getting bit by mosquitoes, or abducted by strangers, or any of the other horrible things I saw on cable TV. While I wanted to be aware of what was happening in the world, I knew I could not continue to feed my parenting fears by watching the news.
I managed the input I gave my brain by reading news on an app once a day, quickly, instead of turning on cable news. This way I stayed informed, but I wasn’t “over-informed,” and I didn’t feed my fears.
Perhaps you feed your fears in other ways.
Maybe you:
* Obsessively Google every symptom or problem you observe in your child?
* Let yourself be influenced by the fears of anxious friends?
* Talk too much about your fears because it gets you sympathy and attention. (Not that I know anything about that. Ahem.)Learning to manage the flow of information and the behaviors that amplify your fears for your children is an important part of your battle plan to overcome the fear that something bad will happen to your child.
There comes a point in our lives when we are forced into that moment of surrender.
In that moment we have to say, “God, I know you love this child more than I do; it’s why I’m surrendering and trusting you with them.
feels
I took the kids and a friend to our local small zoo this week. We grabbed Maddox and he joined the fun too. “There’s a green iguana,” his cute tiny voice said. It’s fun to hear how he is learning to express himself. The kid loves snakes though and that’s gross. Glad my big kids were happy to carry him through all the snake options because I get out of that area as fast as possible.
It was surreal to visit the zoo. When the kids were younger we had a membership and would go frequently. We always took the same photo on the bear statue that every person who has ever visited this zoo has also taken. I made the kids climb on up and take the photo again and my heart felt wonky at the visual picture of how big my kids are and the reminder of how little they once were. (And if I was more dedicated to this moment, I’d scrounge up some of the earlier pictures just like this but that feels too hard.)
Sometimes I don’t know what to do with that.
I saw moms pushing strollers and nursing infants and chasing toddlers and providing snacks and carrying babies and I remember those days both distinctly and in a blur of sleep deprivation. I don’t want to be there again. But I loved being there too. Both.
Watching my people grow up is painful and beautiful and everything everyone says it will be.
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