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everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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conversations with myself, 2:00 am & 8:00 am

21 Comments

2:00 am (after a night of naps):

My head is going to EXPLODE. How is that baby screaming again?

I cannot handle his yelling. I’m going to lose my mind.

Didn’t I JUST get up and feed him? Sigh.

I could sleep for weeks and still not get enough.

God as my witness, I am never going to have another baby.

How is his brother in the next room waking up, too? I wish they would grow out of this phase.

I can’t believe how this time drags on and on and on. These days are so dang long.

8:00 am (after a shower and a cup of tea)

My heart is going to explode! How can the baby be grinning like that?

I cannot handle his laughing. I am going to lose my mind!

Didn’t we just bring him home from the hospital? Sigh.

I could cuddle him for days and still not get enough.

God as my witness, I want to have a zillion babies.

How is his brother in the next room going to preschool soon? I wish they would stay little forever.

I can’t believe how the time flies. These years are so short.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. becomingcliche says

    26 January 2012 at 1:22 pm

    Pretty much sums it all up.

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      26 January 2012 at 9:42 pm

      Thanks. Love your blog, too.

      Reply
  2. Megg Donnelly Baade says

    26 January 2012 at 1:42 pm

    “Everyone should have kids. They’re the greatest joy in the world. But they’re also terrorists. You’ll realize this as soon as they’re born and they start using sleep deprivation to break you.” – Ray Romano

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      26 January 2012 at 1:55 pm

      This is an awesome quote! Today I would break and confess all my secrets if he would only go back to sleeping through the night. Really, I start thinking crazy, deranged thoughts about what I would give for 8 hours uninterrupted.

      Reply
  3. Laura M says

    26 January 2012 at 3:08 pm

    Laura,
    You hit the nail on the head with this one! I will admit last nights uninterrupted sleep was amazing! Especially, compared to the night before when G was up every 3ish hours. Mothers have to stick together for support!
    I am so thankful that you share your gift of beautiful writing through this blog! Lets us know there is someone going through the exact same things!
    Blessings! Laura M

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      27 January 2012 at 10:49 am

      Thank you, Laura! But you deserve to relish those nights of beautiful long sleep, too! They are what we spend weeks working towards and months dreaming of. So soak it up! 🙂 After all, if we didn’t get to the point where we slept normally again, there would never be 2nd babies. It’s like how we forget the pain of childbirth – nature’s way of making sure the human race keeps going!

      Reply
  4. Kansas Mom says

    26 January 2012 at 3:11 pm

    Oh, I’ve been there, too! Your little one is probably too big for a Woombie (oh, what a wonderful, glorious invention!) but take heart. I always tell myself it’s a growth spurt. Is there a patron saint of sleep? Maybe St. Nicolas would help.

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      26 January 2012 at 9:45 pm

      I hear you, Kansas Mom – I am accepting all intercessors. Maybe we can squeeze in another title for St. Gianna since she surely knew what work it was to coax babies to sleep? And our little one is addicted to his swaddler (much like a Woombie) although I’ve been second-guessing it lately since our first had already kicked the swaddler habit and was sleeping on his belly by now (shhh). It wouldn’t be a day of mothering without second-guessing myself though, would it?

      Reply
      • Kansas Mom says

        26 January 2012 at 10:49 pm

        Ah, St. Gianna is a good one to call on. Sometimes it seems to me the swaddling can cause frustration when baby is ready to give it up. And, yes, second-guessing comes with motherhood, especially now that we have that “helpful” thing called the Internet. We’re sleep trainers at six months on the Range (at least, we were by the time #4 hit six months old). He sleeps like a dream now and I don’t regret that week of hard work for a second!

        Reply
  5. Laura says

    26 January 2012 at 9:04 pm

    This is exactly my conversation!! I have two little girls…3 years and almost 8 months. You and I are having the same very conversation, down to the “didn’t I just feed her?!” and “waking up sister in the other room!” and “never doing this again” and “must have more babies” and “can’t believe we are signing up for preschool”. I connect with you deeply. Cheers to our motherhoods! (By the way, a friend turned me on to your blog and I have been thoroughly enjoying it. Thank you for sharing. Your writing is honest and faithful and lovely.)

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      26 January 2012 at 9:46 pm

      Thanks so much, Laura! Your words touch me, too. And “cheers to our motherhoods”, indeed! We don’t say it enough.

      Reply
  6. Ginny at Random Acts of Momness says

    26 January 2012 at 11:36 pm

    So very honest and true! Thank God for those little shifts in perspective. (And thank God for caffeine — sometimes the one brings about the other.) 🙂

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      27 January 2012 at 10:50 am

      My mothering should be corporate-sponsored by caffeine. I have no shame about that.

      Reply
  7. Second Chances says

    27 January 2012 at 10:46 am

    Oh gosh, so true! The swing of emotions with these little ones is almost laughable! Almost. Or tear jerking. Haha!

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      27 January 2012 at 12:18 pm

      Thanks, SC! Indeed. And though Blogger is not letting me post this on your birth story for some reason (grrr), I wanted to say: what a story! Filled with divine intervention, indeed. And a strong and loving mama who thinks of (all!) her children first. This will be a blessing of a story to share with your son when he is older. Praying for you all in the recovery and transition period.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. How to Parent Joyfully: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb « Whole Parenting says:
    8 February 2012 at 8:05 am

    […] friend’s blog said it perfectly the other day: Mothering Spirit “Conversations with Myself at 2am & 8am.” How do we come to more fully embrace the low lows and not just yearn for the perfect days? […]

    Reply
  2. How to Parent Joyfully: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb | Whole Parenting Family says:
    25 February 2012 at 11:22 am

    […] friend’s blog said it perfectly the other day: Mothering Spirit “Conversations with Myself at 2am & 8am.” How do we come to more fully embrace the low lows and not just yearn for the perfect days? […]

    Reply
  3. book, bath, table & time: teaching at home « mothering spirit says:
    25 March 2012 at 2:33 pm

    […] paradox of time is how endless it feels in the moment and how fleeting it finally proves. I hope that as the seasons slide by, our family will create our […]

    Reply
  4. an (un)surprising end to an (un)surprising year « mothering spirit says:
    31 December 2012 at 4:09 pm

    […] weekend wasn’t perfect. There were tantrums and squabbles and interrupted sleep and heaps of housework – the usual ups and downs of life with littles. But there were also quiet […]

    Reply
  5. take two: working (and praying) | mothering spirit says:
    30 July 2013 at 1:25 pm

    […] Whenever I’m pulled from warm bed and soft sleep by a boy with soaked sheets or a hacking cough, our trip to the bathroom is bathed in more than the nightlight’s glow if I glance at the kindred spirit on the counter. I remember all the nights that my parents sat up with me when I was sick and surely rocked me back to sleep a thousand times before my memory sealed it to heart. And I wipe my boy’s nose or bottom or feverish forehead with more compassion and less impatience at my own rest lost. […]

    Reply
  6. How to Parent Joyfully: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb | Whole Parenting Family says:
    2 October 2013 at 11:15 am

    […] friend’s blog said it perfectly the other day: Mothering Spirit “Conversations with Myself at 2am & 8am.” How do we come to more fully embrace the low lows and not just yearn for the perfect days? […]

    Reply

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I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

thismessygrace
If our daughters had lived, we never would have pl If our daughters had lived, we never would have planted this garden. 

There are pockets of beauty in my life today that could not have existed if they had survived.

Acknowledging this does not mean I accept their loss. Or that I wouldn’t trade it all to have them here instead.

But the grieving know this strange, stubborn, saving truth: that goodness can grow in the gaping holes left by the ones we love.

I don’t know any simple ways to make sense of the hard times in which we’re living. As a porous soul, I feel it all and it breaks my heart, even as I cling to what I know is true.

But loving and losing my girls has taught me that life is both heart-breaking and resilient, that surviving is more complicated than we suspect, that most people are walking around shattered beneath the surface.

Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of it, searing as sunlight: the grief in someone’s eyes behind their anger, the burden sagging their shoulders, the past that’s poisoning their present. Few things have transformed my life more than learning to recognize pain in others.

Grief is a long letting go of a life you thought you’d have. Most of us are carrying more of it than we realize—or remember when we’re dealing with each other (especially when we’re tearing each other down).

Go gentle today. Practicing compassion and generosity of spirit will crack open more of the world and its confounding struggles. You might lose the satisfying clarity you clung to before life broke your heart in complicated ways, but you will find more of God in the messy, maddening middle.

I have learned this much from the garden I never planned to plant, from a version of life I never dreamed.
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
Since June is a month for graduations & celebrations, I’m delighted to help you celebrate with @grottonetwork .

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“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
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