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everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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the essay I never wrote

15 Comments

I plopped the baby on the ground beside me, mail already scattered across the grass like clumsy confetti. He lunged for the letters; I snatched them up and sighed. A long, muggy summer afternoon; too-hot kids whining about everything under the sultry sun and still hours to go before dinner.

The baby grabbed the envelopes again. I gave in. Junk mail; who cares; he was happy.

So I reached for the magazine instead, the one that made my heart skip whenever I saw its spine curved in the mailbox, the one my husband and I secretly race to read ahead of each other, leaving favorite pages folded open on the counter so the other doesn’t miss the good stuff.

I flipped to the back page. Always the prized place for the best essay.

And oh – a small glimmer on a dragging afternoon – a favorite author’s byline! This would be so good. This would be the cool breeze on the sweaty neck. This would be the moment’s peace in the feuding brothers’ backyard war. This would be my five-minute reward for making it through the longest hour before dinner.

I read the whole essay. Start to finish. Five minutes flat.

And it sucked.

It sucked? It was not supposed to suck! It was supposed to enlighten, escape, and enthrall. It was supposed to whisk me away for a moment and drop me lightly back to earth better for having read it.

But it sucked. It was just plain bad: unimaginative, predictable, boring, blah.

I closed the cover and frowned, tossing the disappointment to the grass-clipping strewn mess of a lawn. And I felt that rotten familiar swell within me.

I could have written something better than that, maybe. If only I would try.

If I only could sit down and finish that stupid essay, I could send it off somewhere.

If only I made the time. 

If only I didn’t waste so much time on stupid things.

If only I sat down and did the work that really mattered.

It’s been a whole stupid year since I started it. And I’ve barely touched it. It’ll never go anywhere. 

Stupid essay I never wrote. Mine probably sucks, too. At least he gets his published.

I heaved out the whole jagged breath I’d been holding, annoyed at everything. The baby stared up at me, wide-eyed, silently gumming a credit card bill. I turned and squinted up into the crab apple tree, shielding my eyes from the glaring sun.

And then I saw it.

A messy, muddy nest of dried grass and tiny twigs. Hidden high in the tree, thick and hidden in the dense tangle of branches and leaves. I had passed this tree ten times a day, all spring and summer, and never noticed it once.

Of course the lump formed in my throat, the metaphor hanging above my head. Of course the baby crawled over on cue, grabbed a fistful of my hair to pull himself up to my face, eye to eye. He grinned, drooling.

“Ma-ma!” he delighted. “Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma” babbling into my ear as he wobbled next to me.

Of course the throat lump swelled into tears. Of course it was a nest and a baby and a wry reminder from the universe. A mother bird swooping back home and a mama-babble in my ear and a clear quiet voice speaking see?

He is the essay you did not write.

They are the book you have only started.

This is the life you are already writing.

the nest of motherhood

There will always be all the un-dones before me: sparkling intentions paving the road, ideal habits waiting to be picked up, lofty goals reaching to be grabbed. The essay I never wrote. The workout routine I never started. The room I never painted. The discipline I never tried. The book I never finished.

And cruelest temptation of all, the mythical person I never became because of it.

But all the undones only blind me from the goodness of the dones. Like this small nest in a tangled world that I am helping to build day by day, mud by twig, for these children I love.

Lost in the brambled branches, I busy myself right around it, not noticing its sheer, silent, sacred existence. And like a predictable proverb, I miss the forest for the trees.

What I want to give my life to will never be flashy and sexy. It will never make anyone’s Top 30 under-30. It will never be a NYT Bestseller.

But it is a worthy enough love to fill every last one of my days.

It will be worth every essay I never write.

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Comments

  1. Laurel says

    17 July 2015 at 9:40 am

    Beautiful, Laura. I definitely needed those wise words this morning. It is so easy to get down on yourself for the things undone, but so hard to see all we’ve accomplished. But so much has been done!

    Reply
  2. Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde says

    17 July 2015 at 9:46 am

    Kitchen island. Coffee. Finished egg and toast. These words of yours. Tears.

    “He is the essay you did not write.

    They are the book you have only started.

    This is the life you are already writing.”

    Amen.

    Reply
  3. Becca says

    17 July 2015 at 9:53 am

    Thank you for expressing what I was feeling this week. I may never know about the what ifs but right now I’m their mom and I have to see all the things I’ve done with them and for them.

    Reply
  4. Joseph says

    17 July 2015 at 11:33 am

    nailed it!! I love this post. Good work!

    Reply
  5. Liz says

    17 July 2015 at 11:41 am

    This has been a big frustration – the personal goals that I am too worn out to work on once the baby is asleep and dishes are put away. Thank you for putting it in perspective. She is my most important work and no amount of productivity is worth more than wasting time together.

    Reply
  6. Nancy says

    17 July 2015 at 2:11 pm

    Thank you for hitting publish. Just thank you.

    Reply
  7. Elizabeth says

    17 July 2015 at 2:37 pm

    Yes, thank you for this post! I too have trouble living in the moment sometimes. I fully identify with that loud aggravated sigh. I love a good, honest, heartfelt post.

    Reply
  8. Lulu says

    17 July 2015 at 5:04 pm

    Laura, your essay IS “the cool breeze on the sweaty neck, the moment’s peace, the five-minute reward that never disappoints.”
    I felt inspired to share your post on my own blog here: http://unchartedgroundblog.com/2015/07/17/the-siren-song
    where I wrote of your writing:
    “She has a way – needless to say, a gift – of speaking the crux of things that I haven’t yet found the right words for and when I see them typed out my heart cries silently “YES! Yes, That’s exactly it!” Like a string of pearls she’s dropped into my hand, like precious gemstones I roll over in my palm to carry with me for strength, are Laura’s words.”

    Reply
  9. Christie says

    17 July 2015 at 5:26 pm

    For everything there is a season; when our birds leave the nest, maybe we can write then, and be all the better for it. 🙂

    Reply
  10. Alana says

    17 July 2015 at 10:39 pm

    My goodness your have writian my private thoughts !!
    Thank you !

    Reply
  11. Laura says

    18 July 2015 at 7:50 am

    Wonderful piece! Thank you for putting into words exactly how I have felt for a long time!

    Reply
  12. Danielle W Kelleher says

    21 July 2015 at 8:11 am

    Laura,
    Thank you! I was introduced to your writing through a piece you wrote for the Notre Dame Gospel Reflections about when you were young. It was so beautiful, sad, real, hopeful.
    This post was so beautiful as well. Yesterday evening my 2 year old said, ‘Look! A wish in the window!’ which I took to mean a lettter of some sort, but she was pointing to a dandelion, which we then went to pick so she could make a wish. Moments like these are so rich and disarming! Thank you for sharing yours!
    My moms’ book group will start reading your book this fall, and we’re excited!

    Reply
  13. Jill says

    22 July 2015 at 8:46 pm

    This was so beautiful and so fitting for me right now. I struggle so much in finding the balance between writing/work and motherhood as a SAHM and I get bitter about what I could be doing if I didn’t have a munchkin to chase sometimes. This helped rein me in tonight. Thank you.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. The Siren Song. | uncharted ground says:
    17 July 2015 at 4:45 pm

    […] I opened my inbox this morning and saw one of my favorite blog authors, Laura Kelly Fanucci: the essay I never wrote. Laura’s essay is “the cool breeze on the sweaty neck, the moment’s peace, the […]

    Reply
  2. The Scrawl Vol. 1, No. 6 | #1 Bagshot Row says:
    20 July 2015 at 1:24 pm

    […] This made me cry. In a good way. […]

    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 .

Grotto Network shares stories about life, work, faith, relationships, and more. Check out their videos, podcast, and articles to help you reflect on where you are in your journey.
 
Grotto Network has generously given 2-$100 gift cards to Bloomin’ Brands Restaurants (Outback, Carrabba’s, Bonefish Grill & more) to help you celebrate this month with friends & family! It’s a huge giveaway, because we all need to savor and celebrate whatever joy we can find these days.
 
To enter the giveaway, follow @grottonetwork and @thismessygrace and leave a comment below about what you’re celebrating this month. Tag a friend for extra entries (up to 3).
 
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.

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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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