Missing.

Summer 2018

Paul and I were out on the patio having some beverages as the summer days faded into Fall, chatting about our memories through the years.  We were laughing about how carefree we were in our college days and young married-before-kids days, yet we didn't even realize how carefree we were!  

"I wish I could go back and tell myself the things I was missing!" we both agreed. 

So young and carefree!

I enjoyed our twenties immensely, but in hindsight I could have enjoyed it even more with all the benefits of the perspective I gained in my thirties!  The same goes for our days of littles - we agreed that when the boys were small we often missed out on how cute they were when we were feeling tired and worrying about all of the "have-to's" of parenting. . .baths and feeding and developmental milestones and potty training and sibling squabbles.  Now that I have the privilege of teaching preschool and I am so enamored with the cuties in my classroom, I realize that when my little guys were that age they were just as cute but I might have missed out on truly appreciating it while cleaning up the couch stuffing.  

Aren't we cute? ;)

I don't look back with regret, but I do look back with wisdom gained the hard way.  So, that had me wondering. . .

"OK, Paul. . ." I said.  "What am I missing RIGHT now?  RIGHT NOW- at 11, 10, 8 and 5. What am I going to look back in five years and say, I wish I would have known I was missing. . ."

Paul said, without skipping a beat, "Jen, you're missing how much they need you right now."

(insert imaginary mic drop and super long pause for this life-changing information)

Well, wouldn't you know it.  Paul was right.  That's exactly what I have been missing.  I mean, I knew that.  But I wasn't APPRECIATING it. I've been feeling burdened by how much they need me.  I will admit, I have even complained that as they have gotten older I feel they need me MORE.  They want to tell me everything.  They want my advice on everything.  They want to give me a recap of everything they played at recess, ate at lunch, talked about on the bus, built in Minecraft, read in their books.  They all want me to read to them, listen to their story, say a prayer with them, sit next to them, take them on a special outing, be the first one they see in the morning when they wake up, comb their hair for them because I do it better, fix their covers in the night, make them scrambled eggs in the morning or a bowl of ice cream after school.  And I, in my self-centered view, was only seeing how that was a little taxing on my mental space and personal time since there are FOUR of them.  As my friend Alyssa always helps me remember, it's not their fault there are four of them!  They didn't choose to have three brothers, they were born into this family.  It's my vocation to see each of them as individuals, while helping them live and thrive in a family.  It's my calling to be mindful and present to them NOW, so that in 5 years, or 10 years, or 20 years, everything we've laid in their hearts in our home will be with them as they go out into the world and create homes of their own.  And, so that in 5 years, or 10 years, or 20 years, I'll be looking back knowing I left it all out here on the field and I didn't hold anything back.

I'm reading a book called The Four Agreements, and in the book it teaches about how our words (or the words of others) can become our perception of reality.  I think enough people had told me  "You have your hands full" or "Wow, that's a lot of boys" or "Just wait until they're teenagers" or  "It must be crazy at your house" that I had really internalized those words.  They became my reality- that what I was doing right now was hard.  I was allowing my truth to be "I have four boys and my life is hectic and crazy."

In fact, it's just the other side of the same coin. I need to flip my words so I can flip that coin.

All of the little struggles (messes, fights, tears, endless dishes, people touching everything all the time and going every direction in every store. . ) are the other side of the coin of blessings I hold in my hand. . . four beautiful, healthy, sweet, ENERGETIC boys. Both sides are there, but I have to make the constant choice to look at the shiny side and not the messy one that makes me want to curl up in a ball. 

The sentence, "All of my children are here with me" can be read in two tones of voice. Not everyone has the privilege of saying it at all, so I'm trying to choose the grateful one. There is so much good to be uncovered when I choose to be grateful.  At the top of the trail of whining, there's a beautiful overlook.  ;)  And then, a downhill run!  It takes all of it to make a life.

"Mountaintop" moment!

Every day, I fall short of my own expectation of what I think the best mom would do.  But, every day that failure leaves room for growth and leaves room for grace.  Not I, but the grace of God in me.  If I made it look too easy, how would my children learn to handle their own struggles?  If I try to do it all perfectly and do it all myself, how will I learn and show my children how to accept our role as limited humans walking on this earth who are most definitely not God but need God a whole lot?

God, you are good.

You are You, and I am not.

But I am here.

Just trying to do the best I can

To love you

And serve you

By loving and serving your people

(Starting with the ones in my four walls- I'm going to admit, God, sometimes that's a little harder.)

May the love we share here

spill out into the world.

May I teach my children by example

To be fully human

Accepting your grace

Trying our best to do your will

And walking each other home.

Everyday.

Daddy and his boys.

My dear and faithful husband orders us pizza every. single. Friday and picks it up on his way home from work.  You could set your watch by this good man.  When he gets home at 6:15, he's greeted by four excited little boys in jammies who have picked a movie and are eagerly waiting to eat that pizza on their Angry Birds blanket in front of the basement TV.  It's our little Friday tradition, and the kids love it.

On a whim, I volunteered to pick the pizza up for the first time about a year ago.

"I'm warning you, Jen, they might not know what to do when you walk in there," Paul said with a wink.  "They've usually got my pizza out by the time I've come through the door."

Sure enough, I walked into Marco's and asked for our pizza and the two kind folks behind the counter raised their eyebrows at me.

"Where's Mr. Paul?"
I laughed,  "I was told that you might not give me the pizza."
They grinned and we introduced ourselves.  They told me about how much they enjoy seeing Paul every week and they count on his visits.  We chatted for a while (and they did agree to give me the pizza.)
"It was nice to finally meet you! Tell Paul we say Hi!" they called as I walked out the door.
"You, too! I sure will!"

It got me grinning, and it got me thinking.  
1.  I love being Mrs. Paul (Zink)  
2. Then I got that song Bob sang on Sesame Street when we were little, "Ooooh, these are the people in your neighborhood, the people that you meet each day. . ." 
3.  Living an an ordinary, everyday life sure is a precious gift.

Our culture celebrates the mountaintop, but as our wise pastor Fr. Dan says, most of life is lived down here in the valley of the everyday.  

We can Instragram a moment. . .crop and filter and caption and share. . .but a moment is only as good as the life that surrounds it.   We may get to the mountaintop a few times, and that sure is sweet- but what about the rest? It seems the things that matter most may not get us "likes" or look like much on our resume or add anything to our bank account or even be very much fun, but that sure doesn't make those ordinary things any less important.

If you are a mom, you probably feel me here.  I have washed the same little IKEA cups and bowls and forks and spoons and plates over and over again every day for the better part of a decade.  There are apparently no awards for empty sinks (I've been waiting!) and no one notices a clean dish (although, they sure will notice a dirty one!). But I'm learning when we wipe the crumbs on the counter and wash the colorful little dishes piled up in our sink. . . even on the days we don't feel like it. . . even on the days we feel like that's all we did, we're being faithful in the small things.  I love what Mother Teresa said, "God hasn't called me to be successful, he has called me to be faithful."  Feeling a call to "success" can be a slippery slope in a long-term game like parenthood, and that simple call to faithfulness seems even more important in the perspective of the eternal.

I think about my husband, Paul, and his beautiful heart.  He is so faithful in the small things.  He has read to the kids every single night of their lives. He makes sure they brush their teeth and gives all the baths and unloads the dishwasher every night before bed.  He goes to mass and mows the lawn every week and scoops the litterbox and votes in every election and returns his library books on time and irons his no-iron shirts and uses his turn signal and fills his car up with gas every Thursday and says his grace at every meal.  He is an excellent adult, I really enjoy riding on his adulting coat tails. On top of that, he is totally the type of guy who scoops up a bug to put it outside and smiles at babies and shakes hands with strangers and listens patiently to others.

These things can't be measured and a snapshot couldn't really capture them.  But at the end of Paul's life, which I hope is a very long one, how good it will be to have been faithful.  To have been kind.  To have meant a lot to a few special people.  In this digital age, it can be tempting to try to mean a lot in the eyes of the big, wide world.  Tweet for a day and you can see that shiny prize out there to mean a little bit to a whole lot of people.  But the glory and the beauty and the lasting joy aren't in "hearts" or "likes", they are right there in our everyday interactions, all wrapped up in real hearts. . .in meaning a lot to a little.

Its the movie nights and the pew you sit in at church and the cashier that knows you by name and the postman that always gives you a wave.  It's the folks you see on your walk and the friends in your class at the gym and the place you always go for lunch on Friday and the neighbor who always looks out for you and the custodian that cleans your office that you stop and chat with and the preschool mom you always smile at during dropoff even though you don't know each other's names.  You bring joy and human connection to one another's world.

And then, there's your "people".  Your circle- your close friends, your siblings, your parents, your significant other, your kids, your fam. The whole world may never know you, but you are whole world in the eyes of someone special. Every day, day in and day out, you're faithful to that commitment to love your people well.  There's no major award for that on earth, but we can be sure in heaven the treasure is being stored.  And when we move over to the other side of the veil, those are the folks who will miss us the most.

My friend Charlie and I ate lunch together nearly every day of my teaching career.  Every day (unless it was fried chicken day in the cafeteria), he had a brown paper sack lunch with a bologna sandwich and a container of homemade Jell-O, packed by his loving wife.  When his wife passed away, I called Paul to tell him the sad news. All I could squeak out was, "Who will make his bologna sandwich?"

Those little everyday things you do for the people who love you?  They sure do matter.  A sandwich made every single day or a pizza ordered every Friday or a lawn mowed every Saturday or a basket of laundry folded every week or a story read every night might not look like a major accomplishment on paper, but I'd like to think it's the best kind of accomplishment we can have.

This past Friday, I went to pick up the pizza again.  This time they knew me when I walked in the door.
I was greeted with, "It's MRS. PAUL!" and they handed me the pizza with a smile so I could turn around and deliver it to four happy boys.





Here's to your everyday.
Keep on keepin' on.
What you do matters.
Keep being you.

"The connections we make in a lifetime- maybe that's what heaven is." - Fred Rogers