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everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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when we all add up

4 Comments

31 + 31 + 3 + 1 IMG_8848

He’s obsessed with numbers now. All he wants to do is stand at his easel and scribble numerals in chalky pastel, then furrow his brow and punch the digits into his cash register.

Adding and subtracting have transformed his small world into an explosion of equations. He begs us to fill up the chalkboard or the paper with long strings of numbers he can add together. Then he greets the familiar ones as old friends.

70…that’s Papa’s age. 22 is my favorite song on the CD. 50 is for 50 states. 28 is the date.

This is how the world makes sense to him right now, at the still-small stage of 3.5. Neatly ordered by numbers, waiting to be added or subtracted at the touch of his fingers pounding the calculator keys.

It’s not my language – I love words and art and music – but I try to meet him there. (And try to remind myself as I struggle to scrape together interesting-enough equations to delight him dawn till dusk, that words and art and music sing with numbers all their own.)

But when he tires of adding up all the units of measurement I know and the phone numbers I can remember and the street numbers of family addresses and the birth dates of old friends, I always default to this one:

31 + 31 + 3 + 1

All the ages under this roof. Two parents, two kids. Added up together.

For a brief moment in time, our ages are caught up in a numerical anagram: they in us and we in them.

Back when my boy started this obsession with numbers, I realized for the first time that our ages would be patterned like this for a few short months. I’m no math whiz myself, so when I tried to calculate if and when this might happen again in our lifetimes, my brain got bored and slipped into pondering the grocery list. Suffice it to say, it seems a rare occurrence. (The left-brained engineer at my elbow agrees.)

But the rarity seems right for now – this slender sliver of a season when our lives are so intimately, bodily, exhaustingly bound up with each other. These months (because we still measure in months) when we’re still a clump of a family unit, not yet stretched by the sprawl of adolescents who strain to pull as far away as they can, or redefined by a Rolodex with separate entries for every adult child’s address.

Right now we’re all bound up together. 31 + 31 + 3 + 1.

Our two boys are their own selves, to be sure. But they are still so wrapped up in us, and we in them. Sometimes when these two squirmy worms are wriggling all over the couch and each other and my lap and the book we’re trying to read, I find myself wondering where each of us starts and the other ends.

Parenting brings about a strange and profound redefinition of self. You are at once the same person you always were and a new creation, birthed by the child before you. Magazines warn you not to lose yourself in the exhaustion of new motherhood, yet you can’t help but stare at the bleary-eyed stranger in the mirror and wonder what happened to the girl you once were.

And yet there is something of you in them, something of your younger self that glimmers back in their eyes or frown or laughter. You see your spouse in their smile, too, and bits of others in the shimmering hologram that is a child: the spitting image of grandma in this light, an uncle’s twin in that photo.

You catch your breath when you see it, and then it’s gone.

31 + 31 + 3 + 1. Scribbled on his dusty chalkboard, these numbers speak truth of this fleeting stage when we are so easily glimpsed in one another. When we are so closely linked to those who surround us.

When we all add up together.

IMG_8847

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ginny Kubitz Moyer says

    1 March 2013 at 9:20 pm

    Beautiful! Isn’t it amazing how our kids gravitate towards “languages” that we don’t naturally speak? (like numbers, science, and, in my case, sports); I love what you write about this sliver of time when you are all so connected. Savor it! I am learning how quickly it passes…..

    By the way, today’s date is a palindrome! Something for your numbers guy to love.

    Reply
    • Laura says

      6 March 2013 at 10:58 pm

      Ginny – I didn’t even realize I had posted this on a palindrome day with the very numbers I was writing about! *facepalm* See, numbers really aren’t my thing. 😉

      Reply
  2. amanday@q.com says

    5 March 2013 at 12:50 pm

    I love your writing, Laura!  Amanda Ylvisaker

    Reply
    • Laura says

      5 March 2013 at 1:15 pm

      Thank you so much, Amanda!

      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

Mother, writer, wonderer.
Seeker of God in chaos & life with kids.
Author of Everyday Sacrament & Grieving Together.
Glimpses of grace & gratitude.

Instagram post 2196944524877817946_1468989992 Beauty from brokenness.

At the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, there’s a mosaic tucked back in concourse F, hidden by the bathrooms. I notice it now because it’s the work of a kindred spirit.

A grieving mother.

By chance I read her story when the mosaic was installed. How her second child was stillborn and her world shattered and after months of wondering how on earth to create again, butterflies became a symbol of hope rising from ashes.

I remember her whenever I pass these restrooms, usually dragging a small child of my own behind me before a flight. Today I walked in with a pregnant belly, looking for all the world like a simple story: woman having baby.

My story is not simple. Neither is hers.

We are among you, the bereaved. Walking by you every day. Daring to keep going instead of giving up. Creating beauty from brokenness. 
You might miss it. We learn not to shout. But when we get space to share our stories, strange and sparkling beauty can be found.

Mary Shelley wrote her masterpiece Frankenstein while she was grieving the death of her baby. Prince had an infant son who lived only a few days. I collect these stories now—the artists who created out of their pain.

When something is shattered—a bone, a bowl, a dream—it can never be put back together in exactly the same way again. Cracks, jagged edges, trauma’s hard memory persists.

But an artist catches the glint of hope under the rubble and refuses to let destruction have the final word. Every creation is a mosaic, built from brokenness.

MSP Airport, gate F4. Check it out next time you’re here.

Thank you, @josielewisart 🦋
Instagram post 2195334718010341825_1468989992 You don’t have to apologize for staying in the slow lane.

Took two snowy hours creeping to the airport before dawn to remember this truth. Impatient trucks on my tail, angry red lights for miles.

Feel free to pass, as I fought off the urge of irritation at their too-close-for-comfort. I’m staying right here. Slow and safe.

Call it the Advent lane. The choice to slow down when the world speeds up.

Liturgical living isn’t about doing more, adding extras or achieving. It’s often about doing less. Living at a slower, sacred pace. Letting the world’s frenzy pass you by. Listening in the quiet for the still, small voice of God.

And here’s the secret you learn after years and years: it’s delicious, this discipline of living differently.

You gain time where others lose it: a full season of Christmas instead of one fleeting day. You feel time where others forget it: the weight of weeks before Easter. You notice how nature lives by the same cycles: waxing and waning, dying and rising.

Years ago our pastor preached about stopping at yellow lights as an Advent practice. One simple act, a few times a day, to remind you to wait.

Wait.

Slow down. Take a moment to breathe. Slip back into the living pace where you are no more important or urgent than anyone around you.

In a culture obsessed with success, speed, and endless upward mobility, it can seem crazy to take the slow lane—or the off ramp.

But you can stay here, slow and steady. Peace was never found by speeding up.
Instagram post 2192445717293184648_1468989992 “What if God were helpless?” Her question shook me.

We had sat together for an hour, wrestling with the biggest, hardest questions—suffering and death and grief and trust. But even from where she sat in her rocking chair, hair white with wisdom, eyes searching up at the ceiling for answers that don’t exist, her words shook me.

No, I wanted to leap to protest. God has to be Helper, not helpless. Powerful, not powerless.

Otherwise everything unravels, right? Otherwise what is solid ground? Otherwise who can I trust?

But I caught my own words. It’s Advent, after all. What we celebrate at Christmas is exactly this: God becoming helpless.

A newborn baby: nothing more helpless among us. Born into poverty. Vulnerable among animals. Away from his community. Unable to walk or talk or feed himself. Helplessness Incarnate.

And this was what God chose, the ultimate Power that set the stars spinning. Incarnation was the vulnerable, unexpected, scandalous, unbelievable way that Love took flesh and came to stumble in dirt beside us.

What if God were helpless?

What if it’s not a hypothetical question, but a theological paradox? What does it mean for my life?

It shakes me, as it should.

If you have understood, wrote Augustine, what you have understood is not God.

Advent is not a simple season, chocolate calendars and Christmas countdowns.

This is a time to remember that Jesus’ story is radical, upsetting every neat category and tidy expectation.

It would be easier if God stayed powerful: distant, removed, almighty. The shock is that Jesus becomes powerless, too: intimate, humble, among-us.

What if God were helpless? What would it mean for my life, my faith, my need for surety and solid foundation?

If God can be both—Helper and Helpless—what else might turn upside down? What grace might be waiting in the wreckage of our expectations?
Instagram post 2191564285632887396_1468989992 Anna Quindlen wrote that hidden within each of her grown children is the baby they once were, like the toy duck in the bathroom soap.

I feel the same way about infertility.

Yesterday I curved my sore back over the baby huddled inside, bent and swayed by the bathroom sink, seeking any relief. Nausea, sciatica, normal aches and pains—all of it daily burden, barely worth mentioning after all these years.

But I felt her rise up within me, the one who wanted Exactly This. All of This. Nothing But This.

She is the me inside me, the former and forever.

I see her in crowds, the one in ten walking brave each day through a world that flaunts what she wants (as the world does when we are wanting, filling our longing view with happy couples or pregnant bellies or warm homes or good jobs while we lust for the same). I carry her with me as I have carried each child, the ones whose hands I held and the ones I had to let go.

She taught me what it meant to crave control and to discover that I have none. She gave me the language of lament and the songs of sorrow.

I left her behind eleven years ago, on a cold winter morning like today, when a thin plastic test blurred to two lines for the first time.

I burst through the bathroom door as someone new, someone pregnant, someone’s mother.

I have never been the same.

But she is still me, and I am still her. Every day she prays me back to the place of all who are still waiting and weeping.

I could never call infertility a gift. But her companionship is.

When she whispers, it is louder than any stranger’s sneer, the judgement heaped upon four kids running ahead and a waddling mother trailing behind.

This, she reminds me.

You wanted exactly This.
Instagram post 2191077565846125357_1468989992 Advent is waiting to be discovered.

By those of us who have lived it for a lifetime. By those of us who have found it brand new.

Advent is quiet and calm when the world is anything but.

For those of us who delight in stillness and silence. For those of us who struggle to slow down.

Advent is the antidote we seek.

For those of us who crave radical challenge. For those of us who love ancient comfort.

Advent is never what we expect and always what we need.

The shortest season for the longest wait.

The perfect paradox for the God of surprises.

Advent is already the gift.

You can dip into this current any time, running strong and steady beneath the chaos of December above.

Any Advent moment will bring you peace and joy, which is already Love Incarnate, which is already Emmanuel, which is God among us.

A miracle. Don’t miss it.
Instagram post 2186625723368059660_1468989992 When I was pregnant with the twins, a strange thing happened.

As we started to share the news—in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving—people reacted in a way I never expected.

Instead of raising eyebrows or laughing out loud, they would get this wistful look in their eyes, offer a longing “oh...” and pronounce the strangest blessing. “Your holidays are going to be so wonderful.” I thought they were insane. I could not understand. What on earth did Thanksgiving have to do with it? Didn’t they see that all my plans had been dumped in a blender and set to Purée? That I never wanted twins, or five children under six, or any of the current complications life was hurling my way?

But over and over, friends and strangers looked at me with wistful, longing faces, saying so many times I lost count in my bewilderment:

Your holidays will be so wonderful.

Imagine all of them around the table.

You’re going to have so much fun when they’re all at home.

I am not in the habit of judging family size. Infertility, loss, first-hand heartache of the complexities and complications of childbearing have ripped back the stories beneath the surface. I know there are a thousand reasons why one might choose (or not) to have any number of children—or none at all.

But what I learned from countless unexpected reactions to my own unexpected news was this surprise. Sometimes we see only scarcity or overload where others are able to see fullness.

You might think your life is too much or not enough. But outside perspectives catch angles you can’t glimpse from where you stand. Goodness might hide where you see only hard.

Now I remember those voices every Thanksgiving. In years when holidays felt painfully lacking and in years when they brim to bursting, I remind myself how many saw fullness I couldn’t see.

Whether dreaming of the future or longing for the past—from countless friends who whispered they wanted one more or the stranger who told me she would have had ten if she could have had one—what they taught me was the beauty of here and now. The goodness before my eyes, even if it was never what I would have chosen.

We believe we see our whole story. Thank God we don’t.
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