To My Teddy Bear on Her Sixth Birthday

Dear Teddy Bear,

Tomorrow you will be six years old. It is hard to believe. Your baby sister is sitting next to me in the swing and as I look down at her I could swear it was only a few months ago that you were that size. All smiles and giggles and turning inside out with delight whenever anyone looked at you. 

Photo Credit Sarah Abbott Photography

Surely you are not really six. It’s just a trick of my imagination… it has to be… I can still see you standing tip toe in a black and pink tutu looking out the window at the winter beach. You felt so big that winter. You had just turned one and were running around the beach house talking your aunt’s ears off and stealing food from your cousins. 

Photo Credit Sarah Abbott Photography

And then your sister was born and we bought house and some where in the shuffle you lost your baby cheeks and tiny ringlets and shot up into this gangly little girl who is learning to read and rides a bus to school. And my mother was right… I miss those tiny little hands and you in a stroller. 

I look at you now and see so much of myself in you. Not me as a child… not that’s your middle sister full of over exuberant displays of affection and an inability to sit still. No that’s not you… you are far more independent than I was as a child. You are reserved with your physical displays of affection and only around those whom you are closest to do you really express yourself. But you are like me now. Full of opinion and restlessness. Full of creative ideas and frustration at your inability to express yourself accurately. There are moments when I look at your face and I know exactly what you are feeling because I have those same feelings. I see tears spring into your eyes and I know why they are there, because I have held those same tears back myself so many times.

You are so an amazing little girl. You feel deeply, are highly in tune to those around you, are smarter than I know what to do with, and have potential that, if I am being deeply honest, scares me some days. You are a perfectionist and unwaveringly confident in the things you know you excel at. You have all the makings of growing up to be a woman who could change the world. If only I don’t screw you up to badly in the process. 

You are looking to me more and more to discern what being a female means. What being a person means. How to be kind to others, how to handle disappointment, what faith in God looks like. We are at a crucial point you and I. I can feel it in my gut. How I handle these next few years will determine so much.  In this next few years so much of who you will become will be determined and together you and I will lay the ground work for what our relationship will look as you grow up.  We are in this together, you and me, we are both learning. I’m sorry you have to be the first pancake. I know it’s not an easy job.

Things have been turbulently lately.  I pray that years down the road when you finally read this you will look back and have no memory of that. But chances are you will. Your memory is one of our challenges.  Your father asked me this morning what I thought needed to be done, how we could best help you. And, for what felt like the hundredth time I admitted defeat… “if I knew, I would be doing it”. 

I have spent this morning thinking this over this question. Spending time with it, not running away simply because it felt hard. It has been my companion as I went to the store, as I brewed a cup of coffee, as I made granola for a special breakfast treat for your birthday (Don’t worry there will also be donuts).  And I have come to the conclusion that the best way to help you, is to deal with some things in myself. I can hardly help you to be content and happy in the every-dayness of life, until I first find some contentment  in it. I need to find ways to deal with my own feelings before I can guide you in expressing yours.

And so,
Dear Abi Bear,
my first born,
my miracle child,
the one who changed the game for me…
this is my promise to you this year… 

I promise to work on myself.

To attempt to deal with my own questions so I can better answer yours.

To strive to spend time at the feet of our Heavenly Father, so I can lead you there as well.

Have patience with me little girl, I’m still learning, but you are an excellent teacher. 

Photo Credit Sincerely Liz Inc

Living The Cluttered Life

“Many years ago, Sharon and I decided we would clutter our lives with people instead of things. Our most valuable possessions are relationships.” 

My dad shared many other sweet, tender, challenging thoughts in the letters he gave to my husband me on the day we got married seven years ago. He talked about prayers he had prayed and how I am so much like my mother when she was young. He gave advice and offered praise. While all of his thoughts are ones I will treasure… my parents’ philosophy on life is the sentiment that has stuck with me the most.

I often wonder if I am living my life well, if I am making choices I can be proud of when I look back on my life. The answer isn’t always “yes” but as I look back over the past few months I see my husband and I taking steps to live a “cluttered” life.

The weeks have been filled but with things of value.

A visit from my mom.

A trip up to see my sister and do nothing really, other than curl up against the cold and the rain with the baby between us and watch countless hours of Once Upon a time. We visited and told stories and caught up. But mostly we just sat silently, taking turns bouncing the baby, watching TV, and just existing together the way only sisters sometimes can. 

A breakfast with one of my best friends. The one that moved out of town last March causing me to cry for days because she was the only one left in town who knew me before my husband and knew my history and where I was from and because of that understood where I was going.

A visit from a girl (woman really) who’s story is so wound up in mind it would take pages to explain. She may not be blood but she is family and the women in our families are now all tied up together in layers of loving and mentoring and doing life together for three generations and close to 40 years.  For a few short days she came and staid in our guest room and walked with us to the bus top, and played games with my girls and rocked them to sleep the way her mother once did for myself and my older sisters and I once did for her and her sister. 

And in between it all shared dinners with my brother and his family (they live in our basement) and getting to watch my nephew learn how to walk. 

An off the cuff get together with the neighbors when I forgot to get fever reducer after Tacy’s first shots and they brought some over.

A Halloween party with the people we do life with and sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by friends and kids and babies and the cat eating kit-kats and laughing and escaping from the frustrations we all have with trying to make ends meet these days. 

Living the cluttered life isn’t always easy. It can be costly. Love hurts and allowing your life to be filled with people means being surrounded by love but also being surrounded by a millions ways for your heart to be broken.

My wedding day wasn’t the first time I had my dad verbalized this concept of a cluttered life. My parents spoke and lived this ideal in front of me my entire life and continue to do so. 

This past weekend is a perfect example. In two short days they attended the funeral of a man who was taken from his family in his early forties. He and his siblings and mine had grown up together:  their stories intertwining in a way that changes lives and shapes who we become. He died to young and it has shaken my family deeply. 

The left strait from the funeral to attend a wedding of two young people who grew up in my father’s church. A young man and woman whom I grew up with, whom I baby sat at points in time, and who are now this amazing couple with their whole lives ahead of them.

The next day my parents drove four hours to attend a party celebrating my nephew’s first birthday. My girls and I were also able to be there so we had four out of the eight grandkids, and three out of the six siblings all in the same room so we laughed and talked and passed babies and gave hugs and kisses and told stories. 

It was a cluttered weekend to say the least… cluttered with people and memories and emotions and the things in life that we will look back on and say “those are moments when we were alive”.

Things To Do When You Are Lacking Inspiration....

*make a list*

of things that inspire you. of why you are doing whatever it is in the first place. of things you love. of things to try. Of things you hate. of things to do. of things to do never do again

*roast a chicken*

*bake cookies*

*help some one*

help some one else with something THEY love. being around people who are filled with passion will often trigger your own

*copy something*

don’t rip any one off, but find something you like and build on it. re-write the ending to your favorite story. print out a favorite picture and embellish it. find a sewing project online and see if you can reproduce it. keep copying until it takes on a life of it’s own.(be sure to share the source of inspiration if you share the finished project online)

*take a walk*

*work on an unfinished project*

even if only for ten minutes. clearing away clutter physically (a “work in progress” craft project) and mentally (a half-finished story) makes room for new things.

*try something a new*

a new technique, a new writing perspective, a new recipe.

*get back to the basics*

what inspired you in the first place? did you start a blog because you wanted to share pictures of your kids with family? did you start sewing because you wanted to make yourself table napkins? it’s easy to lose track of original inspiration and intent. try to find that again.

*just create*

sit down, put pen to paper, brush to canvas, knitting needles to yarn and just create for 15 minutes. let your mind wander. don’t worry about finishing anything just create for the sake of creating.