Hi. My name is Jaime and I am a tornado. I have only recently slowed down enough to painfully realize it. But it is true. Actually I consider myself a recovering tornado. And I am on a mission.
I am beginning the fourth quarter of a year spent in self-reflection. My quest is this: I'm trying to figure out how not to be a tornado. Actually my quest is trying to figure out the secret to being a better Wife and Mama. What is it? What's the secret? I don't know. I believe there are probably as many secrets as there are moms.
But I feel that my duty as a Wife and Mama is to be the best me I can be. I must unlock my own secrets to being the best Wife and Mama my family can have without trading me in! Not better than the next. Not worse than the next. Not better or worse than my own mom. Certainly not a perfect one. But a better one. One that can't be described using terms like "F4".
About those people that call me Wife and Mama. . .I am a lucky girl who gets to be called Wife by the love of my life and Mama by three little boys who are my sunshine. Sunshine includes Big C, who is six and a half, Little C who just turned five in August, and Love Bucket who is 20 months.
I had a birthday yesterday. As a result of said birthday, I am thirty four now, which means nothing, other than when I was little I would have thought I was an old person.
There is something nostalgic about birthdays and how they make one reflect. And given my three quarters of a year long state of reflection, I was even deeper in reflection on this birthday. Is this my marker, my new beginning, my clean slate? Is this where I turn the corner? What corner am I trying to turn, exactly? I don't know.
But I know I want to remember this birthday because it rocked. It did, my birthday rocked. My boys threw a "party" for me, decorated and reminded their daddy to bring the flowers and pizza. They worried when Nana was late with the cake. And their daddy remembered the wine on his own. There were handwritten love letters and pictures all over this house from my rays of sunshine. See? It rocked. And the baby was sick, and it still rocked. And I want to remember it. I want to process it from beginning to end and remember every second of it. Not because I got expensive presents. But because my family rocks.
In these months of reflection, I have encountered many moments when I have wanted to wave my white flag. I've fallen so far behind on _______ (fill in the blank with any household chore or motherly duty) that it seemed I could never catch up. There have been circumstances way beyond our control that have left our family in danger. We even evacuated our own home as a safety measure in response to some goings on at a neighbor's house. I have had aha moments. Big ones. And there have been moments when any given reality show could have swept in and done an entire season on us (think Supernanny, Clean Sweep, COPS, etc.) But I have refused to give up and I will continue on my quest to figure "it" out of the moment.
Now, I know I said the house is full of people I call love of my life and sunshine, but there was a time in the not so distant past that we were living in our own funnel cloud. And no matter that the intention of everything I was doing was to be a better Wife and Mama, I felt as though I was failing miserably. Now my love and my sunshines loved me, and I loved them, and they all loved each other, well, mostly. The reality is that nobody "likes" each other ALL the time. Our reality had become that there was not much "liking" going on at all. In my self-reflection, what I have realized is that it is hard to like much of anything if you are in the middle of a tornado.
Around Christmas time last year, 2009, I began to realize that I had too many things on my plate. And I had some plates up in the air. They had too much on them, as well. Heading towards this realization, I had just put my notice in at the Christian non-profit where I worked, a ministry I loved dearly. I felt miserably conflicted for months about leaving. Finally I felt I had become stagnant there, like I couldn't be productive because I had too much "life" going on.
At the time, Love Bucket would be turning one after the holiday. I think I can spare you from going into how a very active almost one year old with two big brothers behaves. You are all very familiar with "monkey see monkey do", now use your imagination.
And Little C had turned four in August and was having some trouble at school, but somehow those big brown eyes kept him out of a LOT of trouble, if you know what I mean. And his behavior at home made you want to call him things like "little s@#&". But worry not, what I would really call him is "future leader". (I had read in one of my books I had ordered while trying to deal with this sweet child that the two terms were interchangeable, but that the latter was the preferred replacement for the former. More "positive". Don't tell on me when you hear me call my children "future leaders".)
Big C would be having his sixth birthday very soon, and seemed to be doing better in Kindergarten. (We had gotten off to a rocky start, and for that I felt I had failed him. I'll explain that another day!) I know now that I should have been measuring his "doing better" using a different scale than "more smiley faces than sad faces in the planner". Because he certainly wasn't wearing a smiley face. He looked more like a scared, abused puppy, and always very frustrated. Breaks my heart when I think about it.
Then there is the house. Whoa. A wreck. No matter how hard I tried. There was no time to get organized. None. We had gone from four to five people in our three bedroom, one bath home, and had never had the time to really truly make the adjustments. Boxes, bins, piles. We didn't know where anything was.
Now don't picture dirty. Because I am truly fortunate to have a man who satisfies his OCD tendencies by pitching in. Actually, truth be known, HE kept this house clean while I was unknowingly swirling around in a funnel trying to figure out which way was up. Love him. For this reason, among others, (like his taste in music), he rocks.
And speaking of the Love and I? Well, we had all the love in the world, but not much like. I mean, how much would your husband like you if he felt like he was pulling your weight. We were goth too busy, spread too thin, felt like we couldn't ever take a breath, couldn't make headway on the house. Projects building up and nobody finishing them. There wasn't even enough function here to be called dysfunctional. We were like non-functional. What's to like about all that? Thank God for love, right?
On December 27, I wrote in my journal. Now, though I have always intended to journal daily, chronicle those little moments that make me smile, take pictures of my sunshine, write down all those moments that I want to remember just how I feel, work through my own stuff by writing it down, I never did it.
I can't say never, but pretty darn close to never. See I have lots of pretty notebooks scattered around the house that were meant to be my "journal". And once a year or so, when I'd buy a new journal because I lost my last one, I would have an unusually reflective moment and write something very heartfelt. Maybe an inspiring quote I found. A funny. A happy. Maybe an angry recount of something. Maybe a conversation with God. Maybe a note about sunshine. The point is, my random pretty notebooks laying around the house (that I could never find) with one journal entry in them do not become defined as a "journal".
But something had happened to me that day. It's like God had just spoken to me and I finally slowed down just long enough and listened. The voice was coming from within myself. It was saying, "I am going so fast and doing so many things and I can't take care of or get a handle on anything. I am neglecting my duties as Wife and Mama. I am going so fast that I don't even know what is going on."
Then, I remembered being told something by a man whom I greatly respect and consider to be very wise. A man of few words, but when he does speak, the words come booming ever so gently out of his mouth that it's almost like the words are coming from somewhere upstairs, you know what I mean? He said to me one day, "My wife reminded me long ago that the most important ministry is my family. And I have never forgotten that." I'll never forget it either.
I thought about how life had felt. I thought about how I felt. I cried and thought about how my sunshine must feel. How my love must feel. This moment could have been very sad. But it was quite the contrary. I was so happy because that night, I made a decision. Things were going to change around here.
I have always taken my duties as Wife and Mama seriously. Love both of those titles. Am honored to be called by them. But I, just like everyone else fail everyday. But for all of my failures, I know I have lots of little successes. And I'm never going to be the best, I try very hard not to fall into that contest.
But I am going to be better. That's the day I made the decision. That I am going to be better. Just better. Not perfect. Not #1. Just better. And I have been better. I've been worse, too, but that's how it goes, right?
Being a Wife and a Mama---this is a journey. Not a destination. How cliche', huh? But it is so true. Lord, help me if I ever think I know it all! And Lord, if you feel I'm not listening, please send someone to tell me very clearly how you feel. Thanks. Amen.
