you are welcome

Feeling grateful my little guy is finally comfortable again.

It's been awhile since I've updated.  Sick bugs have been traveling our house for the last three weeks.  I've held out, nursing everyone else to health, until now.  It seems my body knows that the worst of the kids' sickness is over, so now it's my turn. My head is foggy. I feel like I'm moving through soup. But it's been long enough.  And I have a little time.

Even when they're sick and dripping their noses on all the furniture, it's never hard for me to love my children.  Mother love comes naturally at some level.  Because they are a part of me, I love my kids as much as I love myself.  And because I feel loved as a wife, daughter, and friend it is easy for me to love in return.

But the new question brewing in my mind is this: I love my children, but have I welcomed them?

The two are not the same, though until recently, I thought they were. I assumed that because I love my children, I have also accepted them as they are.  Now, as I navigate the complexities of my love for my newborn son, I realize that I have not unconditionally welcomed any of my children into my home, my life.

Boundless energy

This is not so much confessional as it is fact. I find myself keeping company with thoughts like, "If E would only ______, If A would just stop ________, If K could simply do _________, then.... Then what?  Can the quality of my life really be measured in such statements? Are my actions dependent on what my kids do for me? for my ego?

We are all of us strangers in this world, strangers even to our most cherished little ones and they to us.  But I am growing more convinced that we could know one another more fully if we welcomed with more abandon, loved without condition.  The way God does.  The way he invites us to sit as his table no matter how disobedient or disheveled or grouchy we've been.

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Hospitality begins in one's own family; it begins with the people we live with. These are the people we are most often the least hospitable to.

So, my hope is this--that I will both LOVE AND WELCOME my little ones into my life.  E and her emotional intensity, A and her strong will, K and Down syndrome.

Great strides!

I want my kids to know in their deepest core you are loved. You are welcome. Every bit of you--perfect and imperfect--the whole package. That kind of love is vulnerable and risky and beautiful. It is the image of the father in Jesus' parable of the prodigal son lifting his robes and running to greet his wayward child on a dusty road.  As Tim Keller writes in The Prodigal God, a dignified Jewish man of considerable means would never dream of lifting up his robes and running, and certainly not to a child who has disgraced him as this son has.  But the father cares little about making a complete fool of himself; he has eyes only for his wildly imperfect son.

The perfectionist in me makes this laying down of self at any cost a spiritual discipline requiring more than I house naturally in my heart. And yet I wish it to be the great theme of my life as a parent.  To endeavor to love my children as God loves his. 

Every swing needs such a girl.

To show them in word and deed and touch You are loved , you are loved, and you are welcome.