On Perfectionism...Woe to the Imperfect

People often say that parenting brings out the best and the worst of the virtues and vices within. The little bundle of joy nestled so snug in the soft cotton blanket is still cuddly at 2 am, 3 am, 4 am…, but by 5 am the patience is somehow clouded by the blurry cotton balls that have lodged themselves between the eyelids. Frantic, we panic. Help! We think. This child is not sleeping! There is something wrong! A new blanket! A new crib! Something that vibrates, or hums, or whirrs…..yes! This must be the trick!  And so we race to the store the next day and stock up on something, anything that will result in a night of sleep. We have spent a boatload of money on each of our three children when we reach the two-week sleep deprivation stage. (Side note: this is the time to offer babysitting services to new families. One hour of sleep in the afternoon could save them $200 in impulse buys at Babies R Us the next day.)

 

I never considered myself a perfectionist. To me, perfectionists were people whose lives were perfect. These were my friends with perfectly ordered lockers in Middle School, with binders always impeccably arranged, with bedrooms always tidy, makeup always flawless, clothes never out of style, hair exactly the way it was supposed to stand up or curl or hang.  But having children has revealed that, Hello, I am…a Perfectionist. But even worse, I am a perfectionist who is woefully, absolutely, never ever perfect. Ever. I exist in a state of constant panic and frenzy, trying to create a perfect organic, loving, music-laden, natural-toy (but not too many toy) family environment amidst three budding, growing, exploring children; trying to create a perfect home to entertain family and friends that gives the illusion of order and serenity; trying to create a perfect veggie-laden, homemade, chemical-free lifestyle to nurture my family while adhering to a tight budget…. and for my efforts I reward myself with an inward grade of “FAIL” by the day, hour, minute. And so I run faster, sweeping, baking, wiping noses. Exhausting myself and bewildering my husband, who cannot understand why I burst into tears when the toddler spills his milk on my newly cleaned floors (shouldn’t it be the toddler who is crying?)

Just sit down and rest, he commands, and so I do, thinking inwardly about how while he’s bathing the children for me I’m going to “quickly” tidy up the living room, wash the dishes, throw in a load of laundry, fold some towels, and then hop back on the couch to exude a picture of peace and calm when the children return. I’m so tired, I say, and I am. Perfectionism for a perfect person must be hard. Perfectionism for an imperfect, striving mother or three small children… is going to lead me straight to loonyville.

So…what to do? I crave order. I read parenting books that tell me that my children crave order. AAAAAGGGH! What do I want for Christmas? Some order. Some consistency. Less running, less yelling, less pounding up and and down the stairs. Is this reasonable? Feasible? I read blogs by women with 10 children who insist that oh, yes, it is so feasible. I bake, I sew, I clean, and on the side I self-teach my children who are all on the verge of winning Nobel prizes for their absolute brilliance. Piece of cake! Just make a list or two.

In the meantime, for those of us who are mere mortals, I have decided on a few basic necessities that will, I hope, keep me from being admitted somewhere. First, I need quiet time. And more than five minutes. I need at least one hour a day of uninterrupted quiet. To make this work I coordinate naps to occur all at the same time, every day. And for those who insist they are too big for naps, they sit on their beds and read. And during this hour I’m implementing a new rule for myself: no cleaning, no cooking, no frantic running. Just…being. Writing, or reading, or sipping tea. STOP MOVING. (We’ll see how this works.)

Next, I need a place for everything, and everything in its little place. And then I need the little people around me to also do it. It sounds so much easier than it is. But we’re working on it.

Finally, I need grace. Grace for myself, grace for my children, grace for the women out there who really are perfect. (You are amazing!) I need to learn to exist in a house that might be slightly out of order, a kitchen that might still have breakfast dishes in the sink, and a day that might require boxed macaroni and cheese for lunch instead of a homemade hot dish every day at noon.

I don’t want to be a perfectionist, just a little more perfect. I want to be calmer; I want more order; I want organic, grass-fed beef dinners and natural play toys for my perpendicularly arranged living room. And I will achieve these things by surrendering the need for these things. Baby steps. Baby steps.

There is a reason that Grandparents laugh so much, I am convinced.

A special post for Grandpa

Dear Grandpa Lanier, Happy (belated) birthday!

We LOVE celebrating birthdays, especially yours! You asked for cookies, right?

Cookies it is! Actually, Grandpa, we LOVE cookies, so we were really glad you asked for them. We set out to make you the best cookies we could manage, all by ourselves (mostly).

And while we baked, we learned.

About math....

And science....

And teamwork.

We were really focused for a record amount of time.

The best part, of course, was adding the chocolate chips.

We might have tasted a few white chocolate chips -- just to make sure they were good for you, Grandpa.

 Yep, they're good.

So we entered the final stages of our multi-step cookie project, thinking about how much we wished we could be there to see you taste one.

But we'll have to wait for that. And in the meantime, we'll keep baking. Because we can. And because, really, we think we're good bakers.

We even helped clean up.



You can expect your goodies coming soon.

Love, a few of your biggest fans.

In which I find I am still a Dragon

It's been awhile since my last post. An entire Lenten season, in fact. And in that time I have passed, or am passing, through that narrow road. What is it about Lent that requires so much shedding of unwanted layers?

Here it is, friends, in all its glory, in C.S. Lewis form:

Then the lion said . . . "You will have to let me undress you." I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. . . .


Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt—and there it was, lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again.

 Oh Edmund, why did you have to be so stupid to thirst for gold and turn yourself into a Dragon? Oh Edmund, why did you have to be the boy who took the bait who passed from death to life and back to boy again? Oh, C.S. Lewis, why are so you right on... again? I don't think I'm back to the last layer yet. In fact, I think that God is still peeling, because I am still reeling. I find I am still asking: is this really what you have for me, Lord, to lay myself down for these three beautiful children and meet their every wish and demand RIGHT NOW and make toast, and bake muffins, and clean sheets, and wipe up milk and collapse into bed every night? Really? Me? Wouldn't it be nicer if I just rolled around in some shiny gold and silver and soared through the air, uninhibited, breathing fire through my nostrils so that no one would interfere with my plans?
 
 

 

So you see I am still growing. I will continue to look into that pool; I will continue to feel the layers, those wretched scales peeled away from my true nature. Oh how desperately I long for the removal of all these layers of selfishness, of grumpy, huffy, stomping, I-don't-want-to-clean-up-your-messes pettiness,...and see my true self, my truest created self...shining through. 

 

"And there was I as smooth and soft as I peeled switch and smaller than I had been."

 

So okay. Let's continue with the surgery. Dare I? 
 -- Let me decrease that He might increase.... I'll say it again.
 
Amen.
 
 

On sitting down.

"I'm coming!" I shout over my shoulder as I race up the stairs.
"I'm coming!" I call as I change the baby's diaper and hear their feet following me from below.
"I'm coming, right now!" I say, as I run to the bedroom to get the toddler a change of clothes, and then notice laundry that needs to be put away, and also quickly scrub the sink.

I've started to wonder why my three-year-old daughter follows me around the house when I tell her I'll be right back. I'm coming, I say. I'll be right there. Of course, I never do really make it "right there," at least not in the near term or without carrying a bushel of something that needs to be folded, washed, cooked, or itemized.

Finally, one day last week, she cornered me. "Mommy, stay right where you are."

Surprised, I lowered my foot that was raised mid-air. "What? Why?" I was poised to race through the house. "Stay right here?" I asked, pointing to the ground.

"Yes," she said. She handed me a crayon. "Color."

I looked nervously around the kitchen.

"Yellow," she clarified.

I saw a crumb on the floor and my hands began to twitch for the broom. I could hear the dryer timer beeping from the basement. I had no idea what we were going to have for dinner. I suddenly felt that I needed to go grab a cookbook and chop something. But she was resolute, her hands on her little hips. "Mommmmy!"

"Okay, okay." I grabbed the crayon and sat down. I started to color the mermaid's hair red. I stayed in the lines. That was fun -- so neat and tidy. I decided to blend the red with the orange to give the mermaid highlights, and I found that to be fun, too. We decided that the mermaid needed a blue fin, and my daughter wanted her to have purple arms. Why not? The toddler came downstairs and gave her a black mowhawk with his gigantic toddler crayons. I laughed. Out loud. It felt good. "See, Mommy!" My daughter looked at me approvingly. (Is she three, or fifteen?)

We talked, we laughed. She told me about her day. That crumb is still there, on the floor, right next to the chair. I've swept the kitchen four dozen times since then, but perhaps I feel I need to leave that crumb as a reminder of the Afternoon that Mommy Colored and Had Fun.

I'm reminded that I serve the God who came down, the God who got dirty. When Jesus tried to climb a mountain for solitude and the crowds came after Him, He didn't tell them to go back down. (AAAAGHH! Climb faster! I want to shout as I read the Gospel account. RUN!)  But He didn't tell them to go back down. And He didn't lock Himself in the bathroom in hopes that they would give up and go away (I might be guilty here). He turned around and taught them. I wonder if Jesus would like to see me color.

And so I put down my broom. Again, and again, and again.

Unless a crumb seed falls to the ground and dies, it will bear no fruit.

Happy Purim

Our family doesn't celebrate most Jewish festivals, which makes sense, since we are not Jewish. But we are Catholic, and as our former Archbishop once said, we stand on their shoulders. That is, we venerate God's chosen nation and the things now revealed that were so long ago prefigured: "The New is hidden in the Old, the Old is made manifest in the New," said Augustine of Hippo in 400 A.D. 

This year we are celebrating (in miniscule) the festival of Purim, which began on Saturday at sundown and will end today at sundown. Purim is special to us because it celebrates Queen Esther, who, as many know, was also named Hadassah, which as many know, is also the name of our daughter.

The event celebrates how Queen Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman living in Persia, and her cousin Mordecai defeated Haman in Persia, allowing the Jews to be saved from extermination.  The Jewish Virtual Library also provides a good account of the story.

One of our favorite verses is Esther 4:14: "Even if you now remain silent, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another source; but you and your father's house will perish. Who knows but that it was for a time like this that you obtained the royal dignity?"

Indeed, who knows? There are so many instances in which I might wonder: perhaps it was for such a time as this that I was put in this house, to care for this family, to minister to this child, to talk to this friend....

So on this day, we will celebrate. We made (and ate) Hamantaschen  - triangular filled pastries that symbolize the defeated enemy of the Jewish people.

We remember Esther and her courage and pray that we too would each be faithful to our "such a time as this" moments.

And we watch Esther as an Asparagus in Veggie Tales' Godfather-esque take on the story.

Yes, we adapt.

Another Go

Despite my dismal gardening record...we are giving it another go.

This time, with gusto.

Updates, hopefully positive, to follow.

I need....

"I need more milk. More milk."
"Scoot me in!"
"Waaaaaa!"
"Mama, may I have more milk?
"Chair! Scoot me in!"
"Waaaaaa!"
"Mama, may I please have more milk?
"Chair!"

Each request, on its face, is quite reasonable. The three-year-old needs more milk, and after several iterations she has asked for it nicely. The two-year-old is about to fall under the table unless someone scoots his chair closer to his food. And the baby... is a baby and simply needs something, most likely to be picked up out of his chair where he has been placed to wait for his turn at baby food, which he will receive in in between sprinting to the refrigerator for more milk and grabbing the two-year-old as he topples off his chair.

No, these requests are fine. But it is the immediacy of everybody's needs all at the same time that is my undoing. Every. Single. Morning. Predicably each day around 6:30 a.m. I am found in the kitchen, trying to reamin calm. I attend to each child individually, in turn, which inevitably this means that someone has to endure an additional five seconds of excrutiating pain.
"Milk! Milk!"
"Chair! Chair!"
WAAAAA!"

It is only when I step back and consider this moment, usually later during naps when they are all quiet and sleeping, that I am able to appreciate the validity of the needs expressed in this scene. After all, each of my children is an autonomous, beautiful human being. And in their world, each of them are the center of the universe around which the rest of us are to rotate, predicably, attending to their every need. I know that I act the same way. It's just that I'm not three, or two, or 8 months old, and so I've learned to couch my selfishness in other, socially acceptable ways.  And most of this surfaces during Lent, the time when we give up the things that we typically turn to when we are pressed and tightened and should turn to God but instead eat a bite of chocolate. Okay, maybe we eat the whole package of chocolates. The point is that I wonder at the supreme patience of God, our common Father, as I continue to pray, day after day:
"I need..." "I ask for..." I want..."

I considered this today as I warmed my undrunk, lukewarm coffee in the microwave for the third time. On mornings like these I want to shout to the pint-sized trio sitting acoss from me: "What about MY needs! What about my coffee!"  But God, our merciful, loving, and longsuffering Father, does not rebuke us for our requests about ourselves. He lets us pray about our needs until we are done, and then, gently, He will nudge us. There are others out there, you know, the Holy Spirit prods.

And so this morning as I reflected on my earlier prayers of the day I found that they were not all that unlike my children's morning song. My prayerful requests reflect genuine needs, faithful wants, and heartfelt desires. But they are first about me. Is this how the Lord has taught me that I am to pray? Is it not first about His Kingdom, and second about my daily bread? I am not an infant any longer. I am not a toddler; nor am I three. And so it is with quiet conviction that I return to my prayer chamber. Humbled. Start over, I think. This world, in fact, does not revolve around me.