On Mother's Day

There is a wide range of emotions that go along with today. I know you feel it. I feel it too.
Maybe you know the ache of longing and waiting for a child that has not yet come. Maybe you feel the gut punch of the grief of pregnancy, infant, or child loss. Maybe your heart feels heavy longing for a mother that has passed. Maybe you grieve a relationship that is broken, or critical, or cold and distant. Maybe the task of motherhood has just made your heart weary and tired and… defeated.
There are also reasons you are celebrating today, aren’t there? The promise of a little one growing inside of you. A sweet warm little one in your arms. Chubby dimpled hands that pat your bum (because how else is your toddler going to get your attention?!). Seeing your sisters CRUSH IT as moms. Sharing moments of understanding, respect, and gratitude with your mom, or your ‘like a mom’. Celebrating amazing women who poured into your life and pour into your children’s life.
It’s all so complicated though, isn’t it? How do we even process it all? How do we approach this day, at all?
I’ve walked some of these roads in my journey—the lovely ones and the hard ones. Some of them so recently, I found myself approaching today with mixed emotions and… dread. I mean, love and joy and all that, but also DREAD. Because this day of celebrating mothers and women has so many things tied into it, doesn’t it?
Over the past year I have experienced some significant losses. How difficult it is to celebrate the children in your arms when you long for the ones in heaven! How humbling it is accepting the shower of love and ‘best mom ever’ cards from my sweet boys when I know what an imperfect, fumbling mom I truly am. How heavy my heart feels when I want more for strained and difficult relationships. How grieved I feel to want to revel in the good and lovely and joyous things today… but tears flow from hurt and loss and longing and weariness instead.
It’s so very, very complicated. It’s a paradox; that joy and grief can and exist simultaneously.  And they do so often in this beautiful and complicated task of motherhood.
I was thinking about this in the wee hours this morning dreading the fast approaching Mother’s Day… and I suddenly had a picture of a gentle shepherd. And I thought of the verse in Isaiah (40:11) where Christ is described as a shepherd.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in his arms, holding them close to his heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.
I love that the mother is specifically mentioned here. And that she is treated with care and gentleness. Gentleness seems like such a novelty to me—it doesn’t seem like a quality that is valued in our culture, does it? But it is so striking and so appealing to me in this context, on this day. On Mother’s Day that is so many things I am only feeling dread over how I will get through it, this Shepherd is offering gentleness.
He gently leads us through weariness and longing to grace and peace.  He gently leads us through grief and loss to joy and fulfilment. He gently leads mothers through the days we just close our eyes and try to get through, to the days where we live in the confidence and radiance of his love. He gently leads us from hurt and loneliness into his arms, into perfect relationship with Him. Our Father who created us with the capacity to experience all of these emotions that make Mother’s Day—and every day—so complicated, understands each of them (yes even the ugly ones) and cares for them—cares for US with gentleness and love.
I urge you today, dear friends, lean into that. How do we approach this day that is multi-faceted with complex emotions and experiences good and bad? We give ourselves over to the Gentle Shepherd and let him lead us through it. On Mother’s Day I wish you joy and love and blessings and sparkly things and chubby dimpled hands patting your bum and laughter and rest for your weary souls and hope. And I pray you experience the love, care, and gentle leading of your Heavenly Father to navigate all emotions and all parts of the day. <3 br="">

(Also here's a song that is filling my heart with truth today.)

This is an Intervention

Hello, my name is Valerie and I am a messy.
It's something I don't like to talk about publicly. Especially not on this blog. This blog is my creative space. My happy place. My place where I can forget about ugly, real parts of my life, and pretend like I didn't shove a huge pile of trash out of the way when I take a picture for the blog. But I need to talk about it now, and here's why:
It's ruining my life.

Well, THAT was dramatic. Let's get a little background and perspective before we continue on with this story.
I have been a creative, sentimental, messy person my entire life. As a child I drove my parents nuts with my messy room and unfinished projects and short attention span. My parents are and always have been very tidy, organized people. And I grew up in a mostly tidy organized home. So my chronic messiness and disorganization was always baffling and frustrating to them.
As I got older, it became baffling and frustrating to me. In college my dorm was a train wreck. When I moved to my own place I took mountains and mountains of stuff with me... and then again when I moved into a duplex with my bestie. The amount of stuff I had acquired and held onto is really kind of incredible. But even more incredible was I didn't know how to MANAGE all this stuff I had acquired.
And then I met my husband. A fellow messy. He would probably balk if I said he was 'sentimental' but he sure does have a TON of stuff that he wanted to hold on to-- even if it was serving us no purpose. So TWO sentimental messies married and moved in together, and the mess didn't double, it quadrupled. I still didn't know how to manage it. But we were both working full time and so that seemed a good excuse, and we could fake it pretty well.
Then we started adding kids in the mix... and with each new kid the amount of stuff multiplies exponentially. And we moved to a new (bigger) house and it was going to be awesome and more space and easier to clean and manage our stuff-- but that didn't happen. Our stuff quickly filled the space and took over. It just got out of hand.
Does this story sound familiar to anyone? Please tell me I am not the only person out there who stood in their living room one day in tears because the gravity of their mess was all of a sudden suffocating them!! Tell me I am not alone!
Here's the deal though. I am a reasonably intelligent, able bodied person. And it is not that I don't know HOW to clean. I know how to wash a dish, do a load of laundry, fold a bed sheet, pick up trash, scrub a toilet... I know HOW to do those things. But I didn't DO them. I didn't do them until the mess became so overwhelming that my brain would crash. And then I would attempt to do it all at once and fail miserably to even make a dent. I felt crushed by my failure, frustrated with myself for letting things get so far... I felt ineffective. I felt like a failure. I felt like, I hated being in my own house.
I couldn't have people over without a two day warning, I panicked if the doorbell rang. I apologized and cried every night when my husband came over. My tidy parents would come over and try to help clean my house, or they would make little jokes about what a slob I am-- I guess because it made them feel less uncomfortable??-- and I would cry when the left because people couldn't stand to be in my house. I didn't want to be this way. I wished every day I could change this about myself because I felt so inferior, so abnormal, so small. I felt RUINED.

Going through an intervention, trying to change yourself, get yourself healthy, you often here-- Admitting you have a problem is the first step.
Guess what. I have known my whole life I that I am a messy. I have never NOT known that. I've been admitting that forever. This admittance was getting me no where. It was not until recently, however, that I realized being a creative, sentimental, messy person is not the problem. The problem is not that I should be someone different. The problem is not that I don't know how to do the things I wish I would do.
The problem is I have never developed the right habits.I don't need to change who I am, I need to change how I act.

It was literally just a few days ago I reached a big dramatic breaking point.
I had an intervention for myself. I cried for a little while. I told myself how my actions were affecting me; and how they were affecting my loved ones. I told myself it was time for change. I admitted my problem. I reached out for help. I bought a book and looked up some resources.
I wrote this blog post.
...because that's helpful, right?
Well, actually, it is helpful. This blog, you readers (all three of you), are going to be a part of this journey with me. You get to be the processing and accountability part of this journey with me. I know I am going to need space for both of those things if I am to be successful in this endeavor to control my mess...
So this is the story of my intervention, the story of my mess, the beginning of my journey, and the start of better habits and better life. Because I am done living in the bondage of my mess and fear that someone might find out about it.
In the months to come I'll be sharing about what I am doing, how things are going, maybe some failed attempts, definitly a lot of honesty. Ah, yes, brutally terrifying honesty about my life... about my mess. I'm calling this new phase in my life...
(because every blogger on a mission needs an official title for that mission, or blog series, or whathaveyou...)
Undoing the Messy.

Undoing the Messy, Step One: Big fat emotional self imposed intervention with accompanying blog post. CHECK!


We'll talk more about this soon... I promise.