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everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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there is another way

6 Comments

All these things are in the way, I sigh. Shuffle and shove to make space again.

I am tired of working like this, I mutter.

I want to sweep everything aside – the papers and the clutter and the laundry and the bills and the books and the toys and the shoes – and stare at a vacant desk. A spotless office. A shining house of sparkling minimalism.

It will never be.

Call it the sacrifice of the mess. Call it the holy beautiful of right now. Call it life with kids. Call it our tired thirties.

Whatever you call it, call yourself to look upon it again.

I look again.

All the things cluttering my view? They accompany a full life. Piles of doctors’ bills. Art keepsakes from two more years of school. Photos of loved ones to frame. Books to read. Seedlings to plant. Work to finish. Newspapers to recycle. Bank statements to file.

It will never be done. It will never be clean. And this is okay.

This is another way.

image

Somewhere between the trend to accumulate (more and more, bigger and better) and the trend to purge (less and less, sparser and lighter), there emerges a third way: finding peace in the chaos.

The way that says we do not need more; we need to care for what we have.

The way that accepts how a life lived with people will always be full – of clutter and conflict, yes, but also comfort and companionship.

The way that knows if cleanliness stands next to godliness, then messiness shrugs and smiles to take its place on the other side. God in the middle. All the rest, all around.

Because God is not found only in peace, quiet, polished, decluttered, 10 easy steps to simplify. God is also found in mess, chaos, muddle, question, oh help me everything is a disaster.

God is not confined to clean, sparse monastic cells. If God is present everywhere and always, then God is also present in a life lived in places, with things, among people.

This is another Way.

image

Three months from now looks wide open on my calendar. It is an illusion.

The chore chart, the labeled bins, the meal plan, the synchronized schedules – they promise perfection. It is a lie.

Life will fill up then just as it fills up today. Love and work expand within whatever space we offer them.

And despite our best efforts, we continue to be mere mortals. We walk through grassy dirt, we cry hot tears, we breathe dusty air. Crumbs fall from our lips while we chew. The dog never stops shedding, no matter the season.

So we need this third way, the stumbling path that trips over sneakers on the floor and mountains of unfolded laundry. The way that invites us to see the miracle, not the drudgery, of sharing our lives with real, messy people.

(Even small people who leave push carts – a lawn mower? – on top of the sofa. I promise you this photo was utterly unstaged.)

image

The same themes surface whenever I write these days. Letting go. Looking up. Learning to embrace the ordinary and the imperfect.

For a long time now I have felt a turning, and I can finally name it as the settling into mid-life.

My tired husband and I laugh about this a lot. We collapse into bed, and one of us mumbles back in college, we wouldn’t even be going out for another 3 hours. But we are happy here. A deep and satisfying joy, albeit exhausted and cluttered. I wish I could tell my younger, anxious, ambitious self that life could be this good while being so far from smooth.

This settling joy is what I wanted all along, and I only found it in the middle of the mess.

Bump, blemish, brokenness – we know ourselves by the edges of what we brush up against. We learn the limits of our being.

And a full life – bursting with people to love and things to do – it is a marvel even as it overflows. A to-do list that never shrinks. Work that keeps going. Children who arrive and grow and explore. A world that keeps needing our attention and compassion.

It will never be done. It will never be clean or easy. And this is another Way.

The way of peace and patience. The way of realism and release. The way of laughter and letting go.

(The way of remembering that we cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.)

And the way of gratitude to God right in the messy middle: of each day, of this life, of what we are becoming on the way.

. . .

If you want a deeper theological reflection on life with kids, check out Bonnie Miller-McLemore’s In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice. I can never bring myself to put Bonnie’s book back on the shelf, so I keep it bed-side during these wonderful, wiped-out years of so many small children. With three boys of her own, she makes this way through chaos seem possible and wonderful to me.

(This post contains Amazon affiliate links.)

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Comments

  1. Abbey @ Surviving Our Blessings says

    10 June 2015 at 6:13 am

    This so perfectly met me in my messy living room this morning, where I’m trying to cram in a little writing and a lot of coffee before people “wake up” even though I can hear them already banging around in the back of the house. Thank you for this timely reminder that we aren’t living for some future day when it’s all done, but for this day, right now, when we are actually doing it. I love this.

    Also, I’ve never heard of that book, but I’m going to go check it out now…because I obviously have lots of time to read another book right now!

    Reply
    • Laura says

      10 June 2015 at 9:38 am

      Abbey, you would love Bonnie’s book. It’s such a rich reflection on how this work of caring for kids is a spiritual practice that shapes parents.

      Reply
  2. nellkalt says

    10 June 2015 at 6:29 am

    Yes!! And Henry’s mention is awesome!!!

    >

    Reply
    • Laura says

      10 June 2015 at 9:39 am

      HA! That beagle is either the bane of my existence or the best path to sanctity, depending on the hour. Maybe both?

      Reply
  3. Claire says

    10 June 2015 at 7:36 am

    All I can say is that if I had a white tile floor, my grout would never look as good as yours! I’m impressed!

    Reply
    • Laura says

      10 June 2015 at 9:40 am

      Oh Claire, do not be fooled. 😉 That is on the porch where no one eats food. If you could see a close-up of the tile/grout by the kitchen sink? You might never come over for dinner. Total disaster. Oh well!

      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
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. 
 
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Rules: Open to the U.S. only. Entries will be accepted until 6/11/22 at 11:59 pm CT. The 2 winners will be chosen at random and announced on 6/12/22. Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram's terms of use.
“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.
I am writing this to us next week. When our right I am writing this to us next week.

When our righteous anger will have quieted down. When the white-hot fury pulsing through our veins will have subsided. When the news cycle will have moved on.

Do not forget how we felt tonight.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

We cannot live like this. Literally—our children are dying. Our elders are being murdered. We have accepted violence as—a way of life? An unfortunate side effect of freedom? A helpless shrug?

No. I am not resigned.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

Remember how it felt today to hear the news and feel the world crack open—again, for we have heard it a hundred times now. Remember how you felt sick to your stomach. How the children around you glowed, alive and fragile, miraculous and vulnerable.

Remember how you wanted to do something, anything, how you wanted to act, how you wanted to stop and scream for it to end, how every cell in your body cried out that this was evil and unjust and horrific and cannot continue.

Press into that memory like a bruise.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

The only way anything changes is if we change. Change what we believe. Change who we support. Change how we vote. Change where we give. Change how we act. Change how we speak. Change how we pray.

There are no easy answers to terrible, complex problems—which is what gun violence in the US has become. But the lack of easy answers makes it all the more urgent and vital that we press into our righteous anger and say NO MORE.

Stay angry. Flip tables.

I am writing this for us, for tonight, for next week. And I never want to write it again.
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