A different perspective on Mother's Day

I spent a lengthy amount of time being a bitter woman this last week. Mother's Day loomed, and this would be the first Mother's Day I would be at the mercy of my ex-husband in terms of the kids. My kids had never really been given a great model of appreciation by either one of us in terms of Mother's or Father's Day or birthdays for that matter. They had become obligatory gift-giving days, and they were stressful for me because I always had to tell him what I wanted - and I always felt selfish asking for things. Then the stress of buying him a gift became what could I buy him that he wouldn't either just go out and buy for himself OR that I wouldn't screw up because it was the wrong one.

Last week, the anger grew, and I really wanted nothing to do with Mother's Day. It seemed pointless, and I expressed as much to my small group and to my boyfriend (who was trying so hard to say the right things). I finally had gotten myself so worked up about it, that I gave in (God wiped his brow at this point and said, "It's about time!") and we prayed about it together Wednesday night.

Thursday morning I woke up, and God's peace had enveloped me. I had clearly missed the point of Mother's Day. I got up, pulled out my journal, and wrote this:

Without God's grace, love, and compassion would I be a mother? Would I have the admiration and unconditional love from my babies? No. Mother's Day is not about honoring moms. It's for all of us to be thankful for the relationship between mom and child. For moms to praise God for the honor of raising sons and daughters of God, and for children to thank Him for the arms of their mothers. God is at the helm of every relationship, and it is our responsibility to keep Him there. Whoa. Praise be to the Living God.

I texted my mom and told her that whatever she needed me to do for her on Mother's Day, I would be there to do it after church. I knew that my Mother's Day wasn't about being honored as a mom but about serving and doing it with a joyful heart. God has gifted me the honor of motherhood.

Once I let go of the bitterness of the day, it became the best Mother's Day I had ever had. My sweet boyfriend stayed up past his bedtime (he works midnights) just so he could take me to church this morning. I got some of my own gardening done. And you know something? My kids came to me from their Dad's with a tiny rosebush and Reeces peanut butter cups. He modeled thoughtfulness to the kids, and that, in itself, is the best of all of the gifts I was given today. Knowing my babies are being taught to think about others. Somehow, in all of our fast-flowing, stuff-chasing life - we had missed the mark on this one, and now we are all learning how to treat others.

Happy Mother's Day, friends. Much love . . .

Before you can love others you must first . . .

love yourself, right? Well, that's that mantra I've been chanting to myself for years. In fact, after pretending to love myself for so long and then being told flat out yesterday at church that this thought is WRONG I spent a day back in that old familiar place of self-loathing. It wasn't a fun place. It never is, and yet I visit it on occasion still - for whatever reason.

In fact, yesterday's message at church did not set well with me at ALL. I think I may have even left the church pissed off. I brought a girlfriend with me who cried during the message because of some things that hit home for her, and honestly, after that introduction all I could do is pick the message apart.

But what really fired me up was Pastor MacDonald's report on self esteem in kids. He reported that kids' self esteem has never been better, and yet look how poorly kids are doing in school. I just about got up and walked out, I was so enraged. As a public educator in the middle school for eighteen years, his claim couldn't be further from the truth. It was an overgeneralized statement meant to make a point, but I had to wipe the anger off my face before I could spend the rest of the day stewing over all that he had said. I was hurt by the fact that yet one more person measured success of schools with test scores. It was just so frustrating to hear.

Twenty-one hours later I have finally been able to process and understand and even appreciate the message so much that I felt it was blog-worthy. I talked to my boyfriend, my mom, a former spiritual mentor, and my small group from my Bible study. I journaled twice and I prayed. I prayed that God would use this as a learning tool for me because otherwise - what was the point of this experience?

And he did.

Self-love is a mis-represented topic. To love oneself, in my opinion, is to respect oneself and be happy with one's circumstances without having to cope or pacify. Thing is, we don't even realize we are doing it. One example is my compulsive eating or my addiction to food. When things start to put me in a mood other than joyful I reach for a jar of peanut butter or a bag of chocolate chips or cold pizza and eat my way through it. I used to grab my phone and splatter my thoughts and feelings all over social media and then watch as the likes came through or wait for comments to validate my feelings in the experience. Thankfully, through the strength that Christ has given me, I have beaten the social media addiction, but the food? Well, let's just say God's still dealing with me on that one.

My boyfriend and I have talked so much about Satan's biggest tool to cut through us - fear. Fear of change, fear of not having enough, fear of committing, fear of not being accepted/loved, fear of abandonment. Fear, fear, fear. One of my favorite pieces of scripture is 1 John 4:18. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love."

Now go back to the idea of kids' self esteem. I worked in a public middle school for eighteen long years. I learned a lot about how adolescents see themselves, and it ain't pretty. Overall, one of the fears I encountered with many of them is not being accepted. The boys dealt with it by being snarky and sarcastic, swearing, and bullying each other. The girls dealt with it by wearing clothing that just crossed the line in terms of appropriateness and by hugging everything that crossed their paths. And they were all attached to their devices. Almost one hundred percent of them had them; many carried them with them during the day (even though it was against the rules) like toddlers with security blankets, teddy bears, or a binkies.

Now, I'm overgeneralizing obviously. But hopefully you're seeing the point. We have a lot of kids out there who are not comfortable in their own skins. Many hate themselves - the way they look or how they are perceived or their abilities. Most don't know that hard work usually helps because they've been taught to pacify to feel good. Like Pastor MacDonald said in yesterday's message - they get trophies for not winning and they are praised for doing what they're supposed to do. Without those "stamps of approval" we have stolen their ability to feel good about themselves when the rewards stop.

We have stolen their ability to be independent and given them coping mechanisms in the forms of food, social  media, video games, drugs, personal intimacy. Now they can make themselves feel good without us, but at what cost?

They, just like us, need God's perfect love to make them whole and take away that need to fill their lives with idols and addictions. Their brains are starved for the connections that God's love fills them with, and so they turn elsewhere because, honestly, the Christian walk is not a piece of cake, and society has created a stigma about Christianity. It's hard, and we've stolen the lessons of hard work away from them also. To work hard at something it so uncommon nowadays because most things are instantaneous and at our disposal. I used to work for a company that sold term papers to students under the guise of selling them to teachers as "examples". I know how easy it is to get what you need without working for it. How many times have my kids said, "Can't you just order it on Amazon?" They have no idea that the $130 that it costs to purchase that thing they want me to order is equivalent to five piano students for me. What am I doing to my children?

My current study in the Boundaries book (this is my third time through this book) has led to me to Boundaries for Kids, and boy oh boy, do we need that here! My job now, though, seems to be a little more than just drawing boundaries and open communication. It's to hit my kids in a place where they are going to need to stop relying on those pacifiers, addictions, and coping skills and be open to receiving the perfect love of God. His mercy and grace can eventually dissolve the fears my kiddos have.

What an amazing almost-twenty-four-hours of learning! I'm so blessed by His teaching, the people in my life willing to listen as I process, and the means to write this blog post. So instead of saying Before you can love others, you must first love yourself, perhaps we should be saying Before you can love others, you must first accept God's perfect love.

Much love.

I am kintsugi

Last summer I heard a message at church that introduced to me the word kintsugi. I had been unfamiliar with he word, as I am not an artist, not really an appreciator of fine art, nor am I huge into Japanese culture. In fact, it's funny how things stand out to me in a church message that may or may not have anything to do with what the message was really about, but that's what I took from it. I love hearing others' take on messages that we hear together, and what spoke to them and what didn't.

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/05/kintsugi-the-art-of-broken-pieces/

Kintsugi is a Japanese method of repairing pottery with an adhesive or laquer mixed with gold powder. Instead of hiding the cracks, the cracks are enhanced with gold lines. The idea is to bring out the breakage as a part of the piece's history but to create a more beautiful piece than how it began.

Today I was reading in Colossians 3:14. The verse says, "But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection." Since hearing the message last summer, I've always believed that I could relate easily to kintsugi, but what I see this morning is exactly what finally made me who I am today. For my entire life, I put on things that I thought were love. I filled my piece of pottery with lust, success, acceptance, temporary happiness, material things, people, food, money, vacations, my children, social media, etc. It was like I was filling it with things that rotted, got old, got eaten by the dog or my kids, or shattered when the piece finally broke from too much careless use.

It wasn't until I either had to toss the piece in the trash, thus destroying myself completely, or put it back together that I realized that something needed to change. I'd never be the same anyway because I was broken, and for whatever reason, God found me shortly after I had been lying on the floor in pieces trying to pull myself together enough to decide on the next steps.

So little-by-little, step-by-step, piece-by-piece - when I finally conceded to bend to His will, His perfect love, the bond that can never be broken, began sealing gaps and putting the pieces back together. Pottery cannot fix itself after it is broken. Just like we cannot fix ourselves after we are broken. Without the help of the one true God, I was looking at either trying to do it myself (which happens to those of us who are ashamed and do not want to bring our faults to light) or relying on our support people. Friends, I don't care how many amazing support people I had, it was not going to work until I allowed God to do His work and mix that cement with the gold dust of His love.

So I did.

And here I am. Kintsugi.