"Thin and separate. There should be two."

One piece of advice I got from a seasoned mom when I was just starting out was that it wasn't worth the energy and grief to worry about how irreparably scraggly I looked all the time. Instead, she counseled, I should pick one small thing about my appearance that was always well controlled. Hers was her nails. Even when she had a toddler and infant twins, she worked hard to make that sure her nails were done to her liking all the time.

I am very low maintenance in terms of personal grooming, which you know if you've seen me, but this still struck me as good advice. Nails aren't a huge concern to me, but eyebrows are. Or, more accurately, eyebrow is. Maintaining my eyebrow (hereinafter  "eyebrows") is not just a matter of personal dignity, but public courtesy. I have pallid skin and dark hair which is committed to concentrating its growth efforts just behind my glasses. If there were an eyebrow subsidiary to Locks of Love, I'd be their star donor. To give my eyebrows free rein is simply antisocial. So whenever I've got a crew in the bath, I clean the bathroom and then get those caterpillars under control. Voila! I've taken time for my appearance like an actual woman and made the world a better place.

Find a thing, girls. If it can help even a trainwreck of feminine aspect like me, it will surely be of value to you.

It just doesn't work for all of us.

She speaks as one with authority

The fabled Mrs. Preus is blogging for the Brothers of John the Steadfast, and it is now officially OK to put older kids on "don't let anybody drown" duty. YAY.

Earnesty and honestness

Thanks to Aubri for linking to this essay from the famous but not yet well known Dort Preus, mother of 12 and inspiration to us all (to all the people who probably already sent me this a million years ago--sorry, I was busy for the last million years). I particularly appreciated this:

I remember visiting with a vicar on our side porch in Racine . He was about 40 years old and single. He was asking me, with admiration in his eyes about different experiences as a mother of, I think at the time, 11 children. He had asked if I had to do it over again would I? I told him if I weren't a Christian I would not want to have any children. The vicar was shocked. "But why?" he asked. I answered with " Children cost money, give you grief, and break your heart, are ungrateful no matter how you try to care for them.” And I went on and on. Poor guy stared at me. The admiration in his eyes faded away. I was in a low mood and discouraged. I had about 3 or 5 teenage boys at the time. I went on to tell him, as a Christian I took great comfort that as I teach my children the forgiveness of sins that they will forgive me all my failings as a mother. I could have confidence in raising the children God blessed us with by teaching them the Gospel. It is a hard job to raise children and I don’t really think I'm very good at it.

Ha ha ha, Dort! We all know you've got it figured out and we're the poser screwups. Thanks for trying to make us feel better, though. ;)

(In addition to not understanding why non-Christians have kids, I've never known why non-Christians bother getting married.)

"Be thankful for what you have, Lucille."

Good times at the second annual CSPP conference. Seven moms, 16 shockingly dirty kids (and three in absentia and three in utero who whose dirtiness cannot be spoken to), two generous babysitters (they wouldn't let me pay them so I'm mailing it to their mothers), and one very dear guest speaker whose willingness to share so much of herself with some crazy strangers was deeply appreciated. Her advice to her former self gives this post its title, so anyone whose name isn't Lucille can make the appropriate substitution and gain the benefit her years have led her to perceive in it. Who knows, maybe in a few more years there will be a third annual CSPP conference (or find a Lucille in your locale and host your own!).

Me talk pretty one day, too

I’m not going to lie to you: this pregnancy has been my hardest yet. There were a couple of weeks in there where I wondered seriously if I might shrivel up and die.

But that’s all behind me now, thank God. New and different hardships lie on the horizon, and you know that I’m bursting with excitement to meet them. In the meantime, I’m really enjoying all the attention my (weirdly huge) bump is attracting.

Though this attention is not quite what you might think. While many people are being very kind to us about the existence of a new small person in our family, many people are also, like, “Five kids are so ‘yawn,’ dude. When you get to 19, give us a ring.” No, the attention I’m appreciating is far more favorable than the belly rubs and horror stories of bygone days, and far less jarring than the gawks and misguided criticisms of the birth control crowd. With this pregnancy, we’ve garnered the consideration of a generation of people for whom birth control consisted of something involving Epsom and somersaults—which is to say, a generation of people who birthed and raised lots of babies, and lived to tell about it.

And tell about it they do. Oh, girls, the stories we’ve started hearing! There’s the dear, sweet shut-in, a mother of eight, who told us a tale of raising her children alone during the work week while her husband traveled with the railroad. She recalls being terribly ill (and before the days of Zofran!), throwing up all day long, throwing up in the sink over her right arm while her left arm stirred the pot that bubbled with that night’s supper. Most amazingly, she recalled this and other stories with a giggle; her memories tickled her in the telling.

And there are the grown children from a family of nine who told us of the many unconventional meals they were served when they were young. Their father was a farmer, and poor; their mother made their home and their clothes. They couldn’t afford beef, so they ate the squirrels, opossums, and coons their father or brothers shot in the woods behind their house. (Coon was the finest, they claimed.) These grown children didn’t feed such critters to their own children, but neither did they snarl at the memory of having eaten such wild fare. Rather, they laughed and smiled warmly at one another and tumbled into their shared childhood all over again.

And my family received a gift in the hearing.

On Sunday mornings, as my belly grows almost before my eyes and I manage the pew-pent energies of my other four children, the older ladies of my husband’s congregation watch with sympathetic smiles. Then, after the Benediction, they quietly approach to offer me their histories, those most beautifully adorned crutches of support. The tales these dear ladies tell differ sharply from the “they grow up so fast” platitudes that I’ve heretofore wondered about. These tales are an unselfish giving of hope, for these elderly mothers of many know very well that I am suffering now only to receive later a joy similar to that which they have received.

I accept their stories gladly, hungrily, not so much for the commiseration, but for the laughter that comes with the telling. That laughter is the final piece of punctuation on lives filled with the giving of life, and it buoys me up. I leave such conversations feeling soothed and better able to stand above the melee that is my sinful flesh to laugh even now at the cross I am, by the grace of God, bearing.

Sisters have walked this path before. I can walk it behind them. Thanks be to Christ for working in us the strength to love our neighbors as ourselves. I hope that one day I may share a scrap of laughter with one of your daughters, dear reader, and that you may do the same for one of mine.

CORRECTION: My husband read through this and informed me that I got a fact wrong. The family that ate varmint contains 15 grown children, not nine. Sorry about that, folks. You'd think I'd be able to remember something as remarkable as 15 kids, but it's easy to get tripped up in my own brain.

Spiritual mothers

All the seven of us were recently honored to be invited to dinner with the family of a couple from our church celebrating their SEVENTIETH [70th] wedding anniversary. And when I say "family," I mean this couple's nine children and the two additional generations they, um, generated.

The exalted mother of this family is always very kind to me, and has a worry I recognize behind her eyes when she asks me, "How are you doing?" She knows.

At this celebration, she sought me out (!) to thank us for coming and we stood there, two shy girls, not knowing what to say to each other despite our mutual affinity. But after we got through the requisite pleasantries of the day, she said to me, "I'm so happy now. But then, I just thought, 'Why, God?'"

"Why, God?" indeed. Why me when so many others are better suited, better hearted; and why can the weight of a blessing be so heavy in this broken world? Could it be that this gracious, humble, gentle, and longsuffering sister felt this way too? Strange words in which to find encouragement, but I did. No temptation has seized us except what is common to man, or even woman.

Shyness notwithstanding, the one thing this lady and say to each other whenever we cross paths is, "I think of you all the time." I know why I think of her: she is virtually the only real-life neighbor I have who can serve as a role model for my specific situation. I can watch her lean, pew by pew, up to our Lord's altar, and marvel at what this now bent and fragile person has borne. And although I do not think myself worthy of her thoughts, I think I know why she thinks of me anyway: the same reason I think of those at the very beginning of this road, of my own daughters, of all my younger sisters in this struggle. Their trials are precious to me.

At her party, she said another thing to me: "My cup runneth over." May the Lord deal with all of us so favorably.

This is Christian courage

One of my husband’s sheep—a retired teacher, unrelentingly kind—arrived at my door a few mornings ago. She came carrying a lunch casserole and games for the kids. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked. And as I could only stand around bug-eyed, she took the initiative, embraced the infant, and plunged with the older kids into her bag of tricks.

After emerging from my shock, I got all my laundry folded and PUT AWAY. People, this is in so many ways weird, but I’ll take it.

I’ll also formally recommend to you that woman as a model of Christian bravery. Kindness is unsafe, and rarely practiced outside of our affirming social circles. It took guts for that blessed sheep to offer help, however humble, to someone she barely knows, and to do so out of love. It was good for me to humble myself, however nervously, to receive it. We both benefited, just as it was promised to us all.

Women of God, when you give of yourselves in even the meekest of ways to your sisters in Christ, what you give is good. Take courage and fight! We testify to the kingdom when we physically share the burden of another's blessings and sorrows, and the King is coming soon.

deeds carried as precious myrrh . . . *

*Cautiously: I've mentioned before how I feel about invoking the saints. Regardless, acknowledging them and looking to their example is a good given all Christians. Don't let the Orthodox have all the fun--be orthodox (and catholic)! But go ahead and skip the prayer in that link.

Out of context, Wilde sounds like a git*

Happy Mother's Day

I have my mother’s hands.

My mother married at age 18, fresh from high school. I was born nine months after the wedding. All the old ladies counted the days ‘til the bitter end; they were disappointed when I came late.

My father was a farmer by day, but worked a myriad of other, off-season jobs to pay the bills. He drove semi, worked the kill floor for the local butcher, repaired cars . . . When he was with us, home was pure. He was a good dad; he kept us in a house and brought food to the table. He worked hard. He couldn’t make the pure of home happen as much as he liked.

So, my mother worked, too. She cleaned my classmates’ toilets. She used the money she earned to buy my Dad new socks and my brothers and me Nesquik. She did not buy things for herself. Once, my Dad asked after the new pair of jeans she’d gotten. She told him she'd taken them back to the store, that having something new for herself made her stomach ache.

She cleaned other people’s houses, and made our house a home. Her hands were rough, red and gritty. She never complained. She was patient.

She knew why I hated school, why I came home with my throat knotted up. She knew why I loved Tennyson, why I loved the eggshell perfection of paper, the worn-flannel comfort of earth. She gave me everything she’d wanted when she was a child. She let me ride my red-headed pony away from the confusion of being young. She let me be private and small.

Now, I’m a mother. My husband is a pastor by day. When he is with us, home is pure. He works hard.

I work, too. I am not half the woman my mother was; I complain, parry, attack with the cowardice of venomous snakes. But God has been good to me, far better than I deserve.

I have my mother’s hands.

*"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his." Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.

Saints Perpetua and Felicity

To live is Christ and to die is gain, but it is more than life that the martyrs count as loss. God grant us and all Christian mothers the faithfulness of his saints Perpetua and Felicity.

All praise for Saint Felicity, whose pains the crowd distressed
Who trusted her sweet infant to her true Mother's breast
All praise for Saint Perpetua, who arrogated not
Her precious child, but clung to Christ and won the life He bought.

My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, nay more

I like Anne Bradstreet. When her husband felt called to do Stuff on the other side of the ocean, she packed up and went with the dude, exchanging a cozily predictable existence in England for adventures unknown in the Wild New World. She somehow managed to pull off being a genuine writer while also being the mother of eight.

There are in fact many reasons to like Anne Bradstreet, and one of my favorites is the way she flummoxes the feminist critics: She was the First Real American Poet! A Woman! Wo-man! HOOAH! But wait a minute…what’s this? She wrote all this stuff about her husband and her kids, like she was actually….fulfilled…by that slavish domestic stuff. Poor oppressed thing didn’t know any better! Sounds like she might’ve even believed her husband to be her head?! Oh! Now what do we do with her? Wait—look at this—I believe this here is subversive! Yes, subversive! One of our very favorite literary terms! In fact one of our only literary terms!

And so on, as they co-opt her for their cause. But I digress. Gauntlets’ Penelope post tangentially put me in mind of Bradstreet’s “A Letter to Her Husband, Absent Upon Public Employment.” So I thought I might as well put you in mind of it too. If freshman English is but a distant door down the crowded corridors of your mind, go read it again. You can even feel subversive if you want.