Category: Family

Just Around the Riverbend

Published on by KateLeave a comment

I hope you all, whoever you all are =) , haven’t felt too neglected the past week or so. I had some family visiting and decided to take a little break to spend good quality time that I don’t often get with them. But, they are home now and we are re-finding our routines. It was a lovely visit and we all were sorry it was over. I know that my family will miss us as much as we will miss them, though there are probably a few things they are happy to be leaving behind them as they board their plane to head home.

One thing that they are likely happy to leave behind are all the movie soundtracks we listen to. All, day, long. Really, we have music playing pretty consistently during the day, periodically breaking out into song and dance to go with it. John has a sensitive side and is very drawn to visuals, so he loves movies and TV. However, he becomes overly committed emotionally to pretty much every character he encounters, good or bad. One way we are helping ease him into stories and plots is through the music. We can play a soundtrack and talk about who the characters are, what is happening, who is a “good guy” and who is a “bad guy.” We are also doing some music appreciation by letting the soundtracks play when it is only instrumental music so John and Rosie can try to figure out if it’s a happy song, a sad song, an angry song, etc.

Our current obsession just switched from Tarzan to Pocahontas, in case disney-pocahontasyou didn’t catch the reference in the title. I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head! Due to the fact that it’s on repeat, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Just before the song officially starts, Pocahontas’ father, Powhatan, has a few lines of song/dialogue. They are:

As the river cuts his path
Though the river’s proud and strong
He will choose the smoothest course
That’s why rivers live so long

They’re steady …
As the steady beating drum

Then the song starts:

What I love most about rivers is:
You can’t step in the same river twice
The water’s always changing, always flowing
But people, I guess, can’t live like that
We all must pay a price
To be safe, we lose our chance of ever knowing
What’s around the riverbend
Waiting just around the riverbend

(lyrics from http://www.fpx.de/fp/Disney/Lyrics/Pocahontas.html)

And so on. I was thinking about their two different perspectives on rivers. Chief Powhatan sees them as steady, constant and unchanging. Yet his daughter has a completely different take on it. I found myself thinking about how these two views of the river can be applied to life. In some ways, our lives are steady and constant. We have routine and ritual. We wake up, we live our day, we go to sleep, we do it all over again. But our lives are always constantly changing and evolving. I am seeing it every day as Clare grows. Just 10 days ago she was starting to cruise around on furniture, holding on with two hands and taking tentative steps. Today, literally 10 minutes ago as I type this, she was walking along a wall, got to the end, looked at me across the room, let go and took about 5 solo steps before falling. Incredible! What a change.

Sometimes change is hard. In life, there are always unknowns and uncertainty. We all have our own riverbends. We can’t quite see around them. As we get closer, we might get a bit of a glimpse, but we won’t see the full picture until we round that corner. Maybe there will be a calm stream. Perhaps a swift current or even some rapids. It’s difficult to anticipate what is unknown.

It is easy to be paralyzed by this unknowing. There is a lot of risk turning that corner. It may feel like the unknown is too big to risk the safety of our current spot on the river. This has been a challenge for me for a long time. I like to plan and as I’ve shared before, I am an excellent worrier. But God has been working on me, giving me lots of opportunities in this Air Force life to let go of the worry and the long-term plan in favor of His plan, both for me and for my family.

As I’ve let go, I think I’m starting to understand something about the riverbends in life. If I believe that God’s love and grace has been with me up until now, then I should logically believe that His love and grace is waiting for me around that riverbend. If His love and grace are waiting for me, then what’s around the riverbend isn’t necessarily unknown. Yes, I don’t know the exact situations or circumstances that I will be facing, but I do know where God will be, and isn’t that the most important thing? There is a great prayer that expresses this. It is part of a much longer prayer by St. Patrick.

St_Patrick1

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

(For full prayer, click here)

I just love the concrete imagery. Now, as I wonder about what will happen next for our family, especially if and when we will be moving to a new duty station, I can slow myself down and think of this prayer. I can even add to it.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ even beyond my sight.

Mamma duck and her ducklings

Published on by KateLeave a comment

When we walk through parking lots, we tend to get a couple stares from passersby. Typically, I am holding the baby in one arm and holding the hand of one child with the other. This leaves one free toddler, so we all link up. Usually I hold Rosie’s hand and she holds John’s. It’s a rather comical train, trying to find the right pace for everyone’s different size legs. Then John will try to run and poor Rosie will be stretched between. Or Rosie will run and John will get swung out on the end. It’s a sight, I’m sure.

Mamma duckAt some point, I started telling the kids that I was the Mamma duck and they were the ducklings. The ducklings all have to follow their Mamma duck just like they do in a pond near our house. They love it. Rosie enjoys rattling off “You are the Mamma duck, I am the girl duck, John is the boy duck, Daddy is the Daddy duck and Clare is the baby duck!”

We had a new iteration of Mamma duck and her ducklings the other day. I mentioned in another post that I am not a super disciplined person. Working out/exercise has never been high on my priority list and the few occasions it has risen the ranks, I haven’t been disciplined enough to actually stick with it.

My husband recently found a new exercise app. He is starting to train for a 100 mile bike ride in the fall and I think was looking for a new way to structure and regiment his work outs. He was saying this app was good because you told it your goals (weight loss, general fitness, build muscle, etc.) and it tailored work outs to that goal. Every day you say how you are feeling (sore, fine, great) and it will increase or decrease the difficulty level. I had to admit, it sounded good.

So, I downloaded it too. I don’t know why, I get so embarrassed, anxious, and silly about exercising. The first day, it’s funny to say now that I waited until he went to work to even open the app. The app had me do some stretching and then it wanted me to walk for 15 minutes. Well, I knew if I took all the kids for a 15 minute walk we would barely make it around the block, probably not the heart rate target the app had in mind. I decided to just walk around the house. I could keep up a decent pace and even had the added “bonus” of carrying Clare for 10 of the 15 minutes (someone should really create a work out plan/app for moms with children under 18 months to do at home, but take into account the fact that they will be carrying said child. It would be awesome, someone please do it. I might even try it out. But I;m starting to digress).

There I was, attempting to walk at a decent pace through my house and both John and Rosie start to follow me. Mamma duck was back with her ducklings trotting (swimming?) along behind her.

These kids want so much to be like me and my husband. It’s what kids do, it’s how they learn – imitation. They observe my reaction to a situation and try to emulate it in their own lives, for better or worse. Even if you don’t have any children, people are watching you, observing your behavior, wondering about your thoughts and reasons for acting as you do. I don’t mean that people are judging you, but we are naturally a curious species. We are inquisitive, we wonder, we ask questions, we try to understand. We all have people we look up to, those we wish to be more like. God made us this way and it is a beautiful thing because it allows us to learn from each other.

This all gets me thinking about who my role models are. Who has been a role model and ceases to be – why? Who are my present role models – why? Who else could be a role model – why?

I’ll share a couple with you:

I am inspired fashion-wise by Joanna Gaines from DIY Network’s Fixer Upper show. I like her simple style of dressing, nothing flashy, simple color palette and strategic use of jewelry.

I am inspired as a parent by a good friend who always to remain rational with her children, even when they are acting and talking in highly irrational ways. She usually maintains a calm, steady voice, and tries to see things from their perspective. She is respectful of their irrationality until they are able to calm themselves to a more rational state of being.

I am inspired as a mother by Chiara Lubich, the founder of a movement in the Catholic Church called the Focolare. Chiara writes about a universal motherhood, based on imitating Mary, the mother of Jesus. Chiara challenges: “In practice we have to …behave toward every neighbor I meet, or for whom I shall be working, as if I were their mother…A mother is always welcoming, always helpful, always hopeful, and covers up everything. She forgives everything in her children.”

I am inspired as a wife by a woman in a small group I am in. She and her husband retired to our area after 30 years in the Air Force. Military life for them involved deployments and separations as you might guess. I have always thought about how wonderful life after the Air Force will be some day, to be able to leave all the separations behind. For this couple, life and job had other plans. Presently, her husband is working 7 hours away from her and a job he loves and they both agree is the best situation for him. They see each other on the weekends. They will continue like this for at least another year. Her poise, confidence, loyalty and faith are contagious.

Who inspires you most today? Who do you hope is inspired by you?

Extended Family – Extra Grandmas

Published on by KateLeave a comment

We are a military family and are stationed far from any family. With the type of work my husband does in the Air Force, it will be difficult for us to ever be stationed by either set of our parents. This is a hard fact of our life. It is something that we chose, each in our own way. Ben was committed to the Air Force before we got married and I knew (as best as I was able at the time) what type of life I was committing myself to.

So far we have been stationed at two bases in the U.S. and are starting to mentally prepare for another move, probably in the next year. Where to, you might ask? Not a clue. But we’ll leave that for another post (think TRUST and PATIENCE – not exactly easy or particularly pleasant most of the time but so necessary for every life, military or not).

As I said, we don’t have any family close by us. Since we don’t have any blood family in reasonable distance, we have had to make a family, an extended family so to speak. A key part of our extended family are our relationships at church. There is one special relationship I’d like to share with you.

There is a woman at our church that loves our family. She is a lector (reader) at Mass and her husband plays guitar for the choir. They are an older couple and have been at the parish as long as we have and probably longer. When Ben is away on a trip or deployed, going to Mass can sometimes feel like I’m climbing a mountain that has no peak. The kids are everywhere, no one is listening, goldfish are being crushed with each step into the carpet and no one in at least a 10 foot circle around us is praying in peace, though they might be praying for some peace and quiet!

We were having one of those Sundays when Miss Judy sat down with us. It was during the homily and I was already exhausted. She joined us in the pew and took John in her lap. John is a super friendly kid and as soon as he saw that he was staying in the pew with us he had no issue hanging out with Judy. John has some great hair – it’s thick and curly and goes everywhere. Judy sat with him and played with his hair, listened to his stories, helped him keep relatively quiet, gave him his snack, everything. For that half hour she could have been his grandma.

Judy has helped me a number of times since this first instance. She knows all the kids and they love to see her. When we get to Mass they ask me, “Mommy, is Miss Judy reading today?” or “Mommy, where is Miss Judy sitting? Can we talk to her?” It is so sweet. She gets right down to their level and gives them all the love and attention that they want.

I feel so blessed that she is a part of our life. And Judy isn’t the only person like this in our lives. I have had a number of parishioners help me chase kids, do bathroom runs, walk to communion, and hold hands in the parking lot. Our family has been enveloped my our community in such a loving embrace. Each time someone holds open the door or helps one of my little ones put on their coat I feel God’s presence with us.

Sundays when Ben is gone are difficult. In some ways I dread the day, knowing what a challenge Mass will potentially be. But at the time time, every Sunday is an opportunity for me to humble myself and accept the help and support my community wants to offer me. This community is family. They have seen us at our worst and our best and still they come to check up on us, help us and love us.