Please Remember

stand

Hi girls,

Sometimes I must say I’m sorry.  Today is one of those days.  I want to take you aside and explain things to you and assure you I can do better and promise to do better.  But while you can understand a simple “I’m sorry” at this age, the explanations will soar thankfully over your head.  Because at this age, you don’t have to concern yourself with grown up things.

But one day you will understand, and as such here it is.

I am sorry that some days Mommy gets lost.

Some days the lack of a set schedule makes me feel out of control.

Some days the lack of adult conversation makes me feel like I’m invisible.

And some days the patience required to take proper care of the hearts of three little girls is beyond my reach.

I consider it the privilege of my life to get to spend these years with you.  To know that day in and day out, I will be here with you, the constant in your little lives.  There is not a single thing I would trade my life for.  Watching you grow and change and discover brings me more joy than you could fathom.  And being the one to always be here to wipe the tears and calm the fears is an honor and a privilege and a blessing and a gift.

But despite all of the blessings and the joys, the thing I struggle with the most as a stay at home mom is the big empty room.  To me, each day feels like a big empty, open, structure-less room.  And my job each day is to fill it up.  My job is to help you find your way through the room, to fill it with stimulating activities, to help you find ways to grow, to help you find meaning, and to help you find comfort within the walls.  In the room, there are no clocks.  There are no “must do” lists.  There is no structure and no plan and no starting or finish line.  The room just is.  It’s empty.  And the only thing that can fill it is what we create.

And sometimes that room is thrilling.  It’s liberating to be free from the clocks and expectations of the world.  I love the little life we have created within the room.  It’s my home.

But sometimes those large white walls can suffocate me.  The task of being the structure for you all when I, myself, feel like I’m spinning can seem monumental and impossible.  And sometimes the only way I know to cope can seem like withdrawal.

Some days, the endless hugs might feel a bit limited.  Sometimes the deep conversations can be lacking on my part.  Some days I leave you to fill up the room and to determine the structure and the depth.  Because quite honestly, some days I just don’t have it in me.

One day you will grow up, and you will realize that all people are fallible in very real ways.  And you will learn that one of my struggles is with this — this feeling that the world spins around me way too fast and that when my world is spinning, it gets overwhelming to correctly manage all the spinning worlds that reside within your hearts.

It doesn’t usually last long.  I fight desperately against it.  But every now and then, I fall.  And I pray you retain the patience to wait it out until I stand back up.

So in the barrage of all the memories you will surely have from your childhood, I don’t ask that you forget these moments when I fall down, when I get tired, when my patience seems to have run away.  Those are your memories, and you are entitled to them.  But I ask that please also remember the standing up.  Please remember that though I fell frequently, I kept my eyes set on you three and as such, I was always willing to fight the fight necessary to stand back up.  That’s all any of us can do.