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End-of-year
July – a new month. The unbearable passage of time. It’s been a month since I took these end-of-school-year pictures. There’s so much to say, such sweetness in this season of slowness, watching the kids grow in stature and in personhood. Over the last months, they’ve learned to help make meals, slicing cucumbers and fruit, making rice, assembling sandwiches. They’ve learned hymns and parts of the New City Catechism. They’ve read hundreds of books. Zeke honed his skills with a new club soccer team, helped direct a musical at school. He was a leader at school, known for his kindness and his helpfulness and his loyalty to his friends. He…
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Bereaved Mother’s Day
I learned from social media a couple weeks ago that today is International Bereaved Mother’s Day. I wouldn’t have known to check, but the algorithms know me now. It feels comforting – to know such a day exists. I look ahead at next Sunday with immense dread. I don’t know how I will face Mother’s Day. But I will just face today. I have lived 255 days without Zuri. Two more months than I had with her. It’s been enough time for the habits of my mind to be rewritten. After all, the grooves were not too deep – I had lived that way for just six months. Six months…
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192 days
This past Saturday marked 192 days that we’ve lived without Zuri. The same amount of time as we had with her outside the womb. I’ve marked these days out one by one in my journal, like a shipwrecked sailor marooned on an island, a castaway losing her mind, etching out the tallies on rock for no clear purpose. Waiting. Waiting for an unknown amount of time. Six months and some. She is really, really gone. The physical traces of her living in our home dwindles. Bottle warmer, high chair, baby snacks, all tucked away, replaced by framed photos. Static mementos rather than things lived in and used. All the other…
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50 Days
Day 50. Fifty days without our beautiful Zuri. Fifty days not hearing her giggle, or whine, or sneeze, or sigh in her sleep. Fifty days at the dinner table, without her yelling at her high chair for the next bite of food, without us eating with one arm, without us taking turns to hold her. Fifty days without ducking away for a quiet moment to nurse. Fifty days without her biting me while nursing. Fifty days without getting up in the middle of the night to feed her. Fifty days not waking up to her babbling coos. Fifty days without the older Zs tromping down the stairs first thing when…
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A new season
All three kids are at school this morning and I’m not working today. The stars are aligning for the first time in perhaps a year, perhaps more. I look at their desks in different nooks of the house, sitting still and vacant, and I feel both wistful and relieved. With a rare morning of quiet, I puttered about this house this morning, cleaning a little, doing assorted tasks, reading a bit, never settling down. The same restlessness I’ve often felt in my life, driven by a niggling goad – “don’t waste your time.” Don’t waste your time. You only have this fragment or that – while a child’s napping, in…
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A swing, an a/c unit, and six stone jars of wine
We’ve lived in San Francisco for almost three years now. It’s definitely easier to live here now than it was in May of 2016, when all our stuff was in (mixed-up) boxes stacked along the walls, and we were sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and all four of us got food poisoning the second day we slept in the new house and the kids projectile-vomited all over the mattresses on the floor. We have our familiar and comfortable rhythms now: school days when the boys come into our room and cuddle or snooze for a minute before we all pack up and go, home days when we have long breakfasts and…
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One more brush stroke
In early 2018, when I started this blog, I decided to name it “Naptime Musings,” because at that time, I was mainly writing during Zoe’s naps. They were not very predictable at that point, and there was always a far too long list of things I wanted to get done in those 45-90 minutes. There were several clear calls in 2018. The centerpiece call was to learn humility in motherhood. But I also felt a call to minister through the written word. So I resolved to be more intentional about writing, and to create a blog. There were bigger and smaller scraps of time throughout the year to write – some were…
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Coming back to light
Moments of joy on dark days I believe it was postpartum depression. It lasted about 7 weeks, ebbing and flowing. Some days the gloom is not there at all, and my heart is light, my energy full. Some days the dark thoughts start the moment my brain moves from sleep to consciousness, and I feel fragile, and raw. As I come back into the light again now, I look back and am grateful for Ryan, for family, for friends, and for the Word that reminded me of unchanging truths when my emotions swirled. I can’t add anything to the wealth of wisdom and deep, deep faith of the spiritual giants who…
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Lessons from fasting from media
It was a few days before Valentine’s Day/Ash Wednesday. I found myself harried and impatient as I herded the boys along to make Valentines for their friends. And when I paused, I realized that at least part of the stress came from wanting to capture an Instagram-worthy moment of cute boys with their appropriately childishly handmade hearts. Two days till the beginning of Lent, a season to practice humility, suffering, surrender, and repentance, and I was intent on being seen. Something needed to change. Even before this moment, I was aware of an addiction. When I started feeling a little stressed, when I didn’t want to engage with the kids,…
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Embracing seasons
This is a season of interruptions. This is a season when the needs and the good of three children fills our heads and time and house. A season when the three adults hand the kindergartener, the toddler, and the baby back and forth so we can love on them and also pursue God and love other people. A season when solitude and hobbies and leisure take a back seat sometimes, so that someone we're called to love can be seen, be heard, receive kindness, or maybe so another exhausted caregiver can rest, or do the Lord's bidding, whatever form that may take.