When Our Feelings Are Hard to Live With: Angie's Story

Today is Hearts at Home's monthly blog hop. If you'd like to know about Hearts at Home (it's a great organization with a life-changing yearly conference), go here.

Take part in today's blog hop by checking out the other blogs involved! Today's theme is Love Your Feelings. This is a reflection of the 2014 conference theme Love Your Life. Moms, you have one more day to sign up to get the discounted registration price. If you've never been before, I highly recommend it. You can read more about why I love Hearts if you click here.

Love your feelings?

Ugh.  So often I don’t.  

But I feel like due to today’s Hearts at Home Blog theme, I have to tell you about a time when I listened to my feelings.  I respected my feelings.  And eventually I came to love the whole mess of it. 

I was pregnant with our second.  Less than 6 months along, when I started feeling a certain way. 

Panic.  Desperate.  Anxious.  Laying awake wondering.  

How was I going to do this?  

How was I going to maintain my full-time job and also have 2 little ones at home?  

How was I going to keep it all going?  I was barely doing it with just one. 

I knew it was possible.  Lots of women were doing it.  My friends.  My co-workers.  Women I respected.  How did it work for them?  It was not working for me. 

But there was no way I could quit my job.  I had to keep working.  There was no way we could afford the house with only one paycheck.  Brad had only been self-employed now for a couple years and we were still a little nervous about steady work (even though he had stayed busy so far).  What was I thinking?  This was just crazy. 

But one day when we were driving somewhere - it’s always easier to have these difficult conversations in the car, right? - I just broke down.  I fell apart.  Sobbing I said to him, “I can’t do this.  I can’t go back to work after this baby is born.”

I’ll never forget that moment.  It was so clear to me that something had to change.  I didn’t know how it would possibly work.  I had no idea how we could make this happen.  But I had to be honest about the way I felt.  

My husband was sympathetic, but probably mostly because I was super-hormonal-pregnant-lady.  He really thought I was nuts.  He had no idea how this could possibly be a realistic conversation.  But clearly we were having it anyway. 

I started looking into taking a leave of absence at work.  I started searching for options.  We bounced ideas off each other.  

Then one day he called on his way home and was telling me about Grandma and Grandpa moving to the nursing home.  And what would become of their house?   Their kids didn’t really want to sell it right now.  Would it just sit empty?

Without thinking, I joked we should move into it.  He was working nearby there so often.  We could just move home.  

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.  And then he said thoughtfully, “Yeah…..?  Hmmm, that could work.”

I was floored.  He had always been so committed to the house we were in.  It was our dream home.  A big four-square fixer-upper in the country.  What we’d always wanted.  We loved it.  But now he was opening up to the idea of moving… so I could stay home with our kids?  It was the craziest thing I’d ever heard.  And it felt like a miracle. 

As plans started to unfold, the picture got clearer.  My feelings were being heard.  I had the clarity I had been praying for.  

Clare Elizabeth was born in May.  While I was delivering, the couple interested in our house called again.  They wanted to come back for a second visit.  

We sold for a profit in July of 2007.  3 months before the housing market crashed.  Before the economy fell apart.  Before things got scary.  We used the money to pay off our debts.  And we moved into a tiny house way too close to family.  (That’s another story.)  

Now, there are some more great elements to the story that follows.  But I don’t want to mislead you.  It wasn’t ideal really.  The house was super little.  The transition was brutal.  The rest of the story is actually crazy and it has been a roller-coaster ride.  Much of it has been recorded on the pages of this blog.  But those feelings that I listened to - they ended up giving me a clarity I had never had.  They were there for a reason.  God was constructing a path for me to do something I had never thought was possible.  It was opening up in front of me, and responding to it was one of the best decisions I have ever made.  Rarely does a day pass when I don’t think of the emotions that led me to become a more available mom to my kiddos.  

That day - those months - I did NOT love my feelings.  I loathed them.  They haunted me.  I fought with them.  They persisted.  I stared blankly at the ceiling wondering if there was any escaping the feelings that gripped my heart… or the tough decisions that would have to be made. 

But now when I look back?  I love those feelings.  I love that they stalked me day and night and wouldn’t be ignored.  I love that God placed them on my heart and gave me sound wisdom from wise women I cried to.  I am thankful for the feelings that changed my life.  For the whirlwind of emotions that birthed clarity when the clouds parted and the wind died down.  These days, I love the whole mess of it.  

Why does loving our feelings always seem to be messy business that isn’t that fun and requires admitting hard things or change?!  If you know the answer, please share!

Different Kids, Same Mom

A couple of weeks ago I was really struggling with my oldest.  While we have a lot in common, she is still very different from me.  She communicates a lot like her dad – a code I’ve still not cracked.  It’s much easier for me to plow through things with Clare.  Somehow it seems like when the dust settles, we are on the same team.  Not the case with me and Soph.

Monday's Mom Moment

Clare is not the queen of going to bed. She is the queen of stalling. :) Tonight I was laying down with her for a couple minutes and she wouldn't stop talking.

"Clare, be quiet, honey. It's time to stop talking and rest."

"Ok, Mama," she whispers. "Just one more thing..."

"What."

"Mama, Mama..." she pauses for dramatic effect and slowly says...

"Mama, why is in 'Chihuahua' is there a 'wha' sound?"

Swallow the laugh...

"Clare. I have no idea. Go to sleep."

Love you, Clare.

Love you, Sophie.

Go to sleep, please.

Clare on Camera

Here is a LINK to a video that Aunt Alicia made. It's suppose to be of Chloe reading a book, but Clare (and Aubrey) decide they should be in on it too. It's cute.

Fun with Clare

In case you haven't seen her in action, Clare's favorite thing - for a few months now - has been buttons. Yep, buttons. She has added loose change and stamps to this collection, but the buttons are the key element. It started one day when I was scrapping. She had started a habit of opening small containers of tiny things like brads and eyelets or flowers, and dumping them and moving them from one container to another. The day she found the buttons I was thrilled, because I'd much rather help her pick up buttons than these other tiny things. She piled them into a small purse and off she went.

Since then she moves them in and out of whatever small containers she can find. Sometimes it's toy kitchen dishes, sometimes it's purses, and other times it is socks or mittens. One night she moved her pile into at least 6 different vessels. She spends a lot of focused time doing this. While my 6 year old can't seem to do anything without me for more than 10 minutes, Clare can be found playing with her buttons for 30 minutes at a time.

I'm glad I finally got some pictures of it. I've been wanting to make sure I recorded this funny little fixation she has. My sweet funny Clare!

Clare + Camera = Ham

These pictures of Clare are hilarious so I'm sharing. When there is a camera around she thinks it's fun to make a series of funny faces for the pictures and then look at the camera to see herself. :) It always includes a fish face, tongue-sticking-out, a kissy face, and other various looks she can come up with before the camera disappears again. She does this with pretend cameras also, AND will request that I make these faces for pictures she takes of me with her "camera" as well. :) quite amusing.

Brilliant

I’m sure I’m not the only one here that thinks my kids are geniuses. :) I mean, we all think that about our kids, right? Actually, geniuses might be a strong word. ;) But I am enamored with the talents and skills that they reveal. Sophie’s observations are impressive (“It’s hard to tell what stars look like, isn’t it mom?”) and Clare is so good with patterns. The other day she was playing with an old TROUBLE game at mom and dad’s. She started placing the colored game pieces on the matching sections of color on the game board! :) I was amazed. Her ability to match what matches, making connections, exceeds that of some adults I know.

Then the other night the girls were painting with watercolors. Clare’s looked about right for a 22 month old. It was all over the place, but she was having a good time. Cool. Then she carefully adds the color brown to all four corners of her paper – just in the corners, like photograph corners.. or the corners of a frame. This floored me! What in the world? Such precision! The planning! Here was that pattern-making again. Amazing.

So of course I’m watching her carefully and telling Brad and wandering around the house feeling so proud of my baby girl. What a brain she must have. When I wandered back into the kitchen, Clare turned to look at me and now she was not holding the paintbrush in her hand.. but in her mouth. Across, like a dog holding a bone. .with a big grin at me, knowing she was being silly. The next thing I know she has paint on her face and is sucking on the end of the brush.

Oh my brilliant baby girl, you are so good for my soul.