Fear, foes and a fight to the death

It’s amazing to me how quickly a mother’s panic can change to drastic action when her child is in danger or hurt.    There is just something that rises up with a fierceness that you never knew was within you.

Today, as I loaded groceries into the trunk of my car, with my two year old sitting happily in the front of the cart, I had a moment of panic like never before.

I was aware that there was a young man out gathering up the shopping carts, but he was busy so I didn’t pay much attention to him.   That is, until I turned to see him, all within the blink of an eye, say to my daughter, “Let’s get you out of there” and  proceed to lift her out of the cart and into his arms.

In that split second, my Mama eyes did not see his store uniform, or the fact that he was a young guy with a baby face, or sadly even what I saw in hindsight, that I think he was mentally challenged.

All I know is that I went from one end of the cart to the other in single bound and snatched my baby from his arms, screaming at him the entire time.    Panic rose up, shock at what I was seeing, but then immediate action to save my daughter from any potential harm.

Fierceness I didn’t know I had in me.    As I yanked her from his arms and screamed at him to never ever touch someone’s child, and then marched back into the store to confront a manager as well, there was a blind fury that propelled me into action and I never once stopped to think about who I was dealing with.  

Later, after she was safe and I had calmed down, the natural fears set in again.  Would I have been so brave if it had been a big, burly man, or if someone had snatched her and ran?  The fear of seeing myself frozen in place sent shivers down my spine.    But, when I thought back on the actual moment that young man had her in his arms, I knew it didn’t matter who the would-be attacker was.   In that moment, all I had seen was a stranger taking my child, not the details of what innocent thoughts he “might” be thinking.   I jumped immediately to save her, not thinking of myself, or the weakness of my injured shoulder or what I was getting in to.   So, I’d like to think that if the situation had been worse, I would have reacted the exact same way.   Thankfully, this guy didn’t mean any harm and he was willingly handing her over, but I now know that I would be grabbing her with all my might and physically fending off the attacker if I had to.

I told my son later how the manager needed to be told because even if that young man didn’t understand how his actions appeared to others, he needed to be made aware because the next mother or father might knock him to the ground or punch him in the face to save their child.  I told him how, if I had to,  I’d dive at somebody’s feet to knock them down if they were running away with my kid.    My son remarked that then his sister would have fallen and gotten hurt.

But as I told him, a scraped up face or a broken bone can heal.   If a stranger got away with them, my heart never would.

It’s a scary world we live in, and it’s a shame we even have to be exposed to such fears, but thank God He jolted me into action and my baby girl was safe.

Someone you don’t want to be

There are moments in our Mommy lives that we wish we could take back.    Maybe you snapped at them a little too much.   Maybe you told them to shut up.   Or maybe it was worse.   Perhaps you let your pent up anger, rise to the surface and erupt toward the ones who didn’t deserve it.    Did you scream?  Did you scream into a little face?   Or maybe that little one wouldn’t look at you or cooperate or even ran away, so you pursued like some sort of deranged attacker, using your own superior strength to overtake them.  Maybe you weren’t even sorry … at first.

But those moments of ugliness have a way of seeping into our souls and tearing at our hearts.   The guilt is so great.  The empathy you suddenly feel when you see how frightened or sad your child must have been, is enough to drive you to your knees.   You are going along just fine, justified in your anger until you realize that if anyone else had witnessed your behavior, they would have had good reason to report you to the child welfare authorities.   The ugliness of your sin reaches up for a choke hold and digs its fingers into your conscience until you can’t breathe for all the remorse you feel.

You love those children like they are your oxygen.    And yet, they can provoke something in you that you aren’t even sure you wanted to know was in there.  Kids have a way of forcing us to face ourselves.  They remind us that even though we hold jobs, follow the law, lead the Girl Scout troop, bake brownies for the class, host the best birthday parties, give to charity and attend church regularly, we are still what God tells us we are, sinful in nature.

Not one of us can claim to have risen above, to be better than so and so who was in the news yesterday.  We are sinners.   Maybe some days we do better than others, but when our kids tap into that spot inside us that is raw, and we fill with rage before they can blink their eyes, we have to admit that there is something at the very core of our beings that is flawed.

For most of us, it doesn’t take much to become a little snippy.  Maybe it’s a computer that won’t cooperate and a child who has called your name 82 times since the last reboot.   Maybe it’s the hole forming in your pants leg where that little one has yanked at you the entire time you tried to make an important phone call.     But it usually takes a bit more than daily aggravations to really send us over the edge, into that darkest place where the fairly frustrated turns into Monster Mommy, some kind of thug with an arsenal of automatic weapons.

If you’re in the latter mindset, more than you care to admit, perhaps it’s time to deal with what is really bothering you, because you and I both know it isn’t the kids.

Is it the debt?  The constant pursuer who won’t slacken his pace for even a moment?  The rumors of job layoffs?    Is it the phone call from the doctor’s office that turned your world upside down?   Or maybe it’s the best friend, who turned out not to be such a good friend at all?   Is it the suspicious note you found in your husband’s briefcase or gym bag?  Or maybe your Other One just spat some words at you that cut you to the core, left you hyperventilating at the thought that it might be over between you?

Whatever it is, I know it’s tearing you up inside.  You feel like you can’t breathe.  You feel like you have a gaping hole in your stomach where your security used to be.   You don’t know what the future holds and you’d give anything to have more time to prepare, but life isn’t giving you a chance to get ready.  You’ve just been thrown in to the blender, blades chopping at you every which way until you’re too exhausted and scared and hurt to fight back.

And yet, you have to.   As you lay in bed in the morning just wanting to pull the covers over your face, you know that the kids will be up any minute.   You begin to cry and then shake, only to have to pull it together quickly when you hear the first pitter patter of the day.

The demands on a mother never stop.  You never get time to worry or grieve or just cry it out.   You have to take care of the kids, even when you’d rather lay down and die.   The pull of motherhood is so strong, that it lifts you from the darkest pit, even if sometimes the only motivation is a sense of duty or a fear that if you didn’t, someone would come and take the kids away from you.   But sometimes, it feels like you don’t even get to be human.

When the hurt becomes that strong, and the resentment starts to manifest, the kids are the easiest target for your anger.   But as soon as you blow up at them, you know.  You feel the tears from your pillow this morning starting to well up again because that hurt runs deep.  Much deeper than any minor irritation the kids provided.

As a mom, we have to make the hard choices.   So maybe, if more and more frequently, you’re turning into someone you don’t want to be, it’s time to make the hard choice.   Take that step to bring in more income and knock that debt down.   Get your resume in order.   Go see the doctor - again, and get those tests or procedures over with.   Tell your not-so-good friend how she made you feel or join a group and meet some new friends.  Confront that husband!   Trust God that if it’s over, there will be a new beginning.

Sometimes I think we become so paralyzed that we allow ourselves to wallow in the pain.  It’s easier not to make the hard choice.  That’s why it’s called a hard choice.   But you know what?  If you love your kids, and I know you do, it’s time to start thinking about how your avoidance will hurt them just as much as the circumstances themselves.   But then, you already knew that.   You just haven’t committed to making the hard choice yet.

But you can.  You are stronger than you know.  And even if you aren’t, there is one who is, and He will lead you if you let Him.

Open wounds

Sometimes somebody hurts us.  Sometimes it’s just a knick, sometimes it’s a flesh wound.  But other times, it’s a full fledged thrusting of the knife and twisting and tearing of muscle and tissue, slicing through arteries and leaving us to bleed out.  

No matter who the wound comes from, there is pain. But when the wound is a calculated knifing of vital organs from your Other One, you not only bleed out, but die with the taste of betrayal on your tongue.

Has your Other One hurt you today?   Has he become the menacing monster of your darkest nightmares, your deepest fears?  Are you left with such shock that you can not run from your place of victimizing?

When we are hurt by an enemy, we can shrug it off.  We expect those attacks to come.  When we are hurt by a friend, we wince for a while, but most of the time we move on and heal with a dainty little scar that’s barely noticeable.   But there is something about the wound of the Other One that will not, cannot heal, no matter how much you stitch it closed, smother it in ointment and bandage it.    It will inevitably break open again, each time with more depth, more blood until you realize that not even a tourniquet will stop the rush of life draining from your veins.

You have entrusted your heart to him.   You allowed your body to be taken over by uncontrollable forces so that human life could grow inside you, all to reproduce the intensity of love you felt for him.   You gave him the greatest gifts: children, a legacy, your unwavering devotion.

So when he takes that and dismisses it like it is meaningless, you feel the knife strike flesh.   When the demon menace takes over his soul and he attacks the very essence of who you are, a mother, the knife begins to twist inside you.

How could this man, whose love was once professed to such depths that you chose to bear his children, now take the very heart of you and use it for his personal poison?

It is a wound like no other.   You stare into the eyes of your attacker, knowing he will stop at nothing to take your last breath and you can do nothing to keep him from ripping the very heart right out of your chest.

But there lies within you a super power that he knows nothing about.  Your children.   The very children that he implies you are not good enough to mother, are your Kryptonite.   For even though it is the very Other One that you entrusted everything to, now attacking you, and everything within you wants to lay down and die because you can’t stand the violent pain of betrayal, you rise up instead.    You think of the children.  You see their faces, their smiles. You hear their laughter.  You see their innocence and the dreams you have for their future, and something inside you fights back.   

Oh, you may be hurting, you may be bleeding, you may even be dragging a limb or two behind you, but when you think of the pain your children will suffer if you don’t get up, you suddenly just know that you can stand.

On a daily basis, we may rant and rave.  We may scream and even curse.  We may feel like these children are going to suck the very life out of us with their exhausting questions and bickering and disobedience.

But when push comes to shove and you’re the one being bullied, those kids become the very life in you.  They are your lifeblood. They are your heart beating.  They are the miraculous healing of tissue and muscle and bone.    

For when those children grew inside you, a melding began that can not be undone.   They are part of you and there is nothing you wouldn’t do, no attacker you wouldn’t fend off to save them from ever feeling a second of pain.

That Other One - don’t listen to him.   He doesn’t know you.   He may have known you before, but he doesn’t know you now.    He doesn’t understand the transformation that took place when you became a mom.    And he sure doesn’t know that using the kids or any hint of parenting imperfection against you will incur a wrath that he is powerless to overcome.  

Oh, you’ll still be wounded.  You’ll choke down his words until you finally get them shoved so far down they turn your tears to anger.   And he’ll think twice about ever uttering another word.

But be comforted, because I know your little secret.   Even long after you have risen up and fought back and made a safe haven for your kids, the wound is still there.   You loved him with everything you had.   How could he hurt you like this? 

I don’t know.    I just don’t know.

But God knows.

Trust Him.

Wasted words and worry warts

At my house, there are some days when listening to the children’s conversation is quite comical.   It’s very apparent that there is an age spread.

Big Kid, in all his seven year old wisdom, is forever trying to explain things that the two year old can not possibly comprehend.    For instance, the other day, I heard him trying to explain that her baby doll was not a real baby.   Although she already knew this, I’m sure she found his explanation of plastics quite fascinating.    After he assured her that her baby could not eat or breathe, he launched into a comparison between human skin and plastic, which of  course, her baby is made of.   By the time he finished, I thought I should enroll him in college and give her an entire gallon of ice cream, just for listening to him.

Then there are those moments, when he’s trying so hard to ward off trouble, so he thinks if he just calmly explains to her why she shouldn’t climb onto the rocking recliner and hop on one foot while juggling steak knives, she will surely see his logic and appreciate his concern.   I feel for him, I really do.   Because while he’s still talking, she’s already surveying the room for items to stack and climb, to give her access to the  knife block.  And the poor Big Kid, he’s just oblivious that there is about to be a catastrophic storm blowing through the living room in about 8.2 seconds.

Other times, he just wants to be funny. But a seven year old’s humor is quite different than a two year old’s capacity to decipher his strange code.   He thinks it’s just infinitely amusing to say, “Hey, Little Kid, do you want some candy?… Well, you can’t have any!” or “Hey, Little Kid, do you want to see my game? … Well, you can’t!”    And this will always, without fail, take place in a moving vehicle.   And every time I ask, why, why, WHY would you do this?  You know it’s going to make her scream.   We were five minutes from home.  We almost made it.    But now, rather than spend my last five minutes in peace, driving along happily and still possessing the ability to hear oncoming fire engines, I have to listen to this child wail.    What kind of warped sense of humor do you and your friends share all day in seven-year-old world? Because here in grown-up world, we do not find this funny one bit, Mister, and you are now going to pay for it by listening to my rant.   

Then, sometimes, the age spread grows by about thirty years when he tries to become the extra parent in the house.   He’s barking at her for every move she makes, either scolding her for stepping one toe outside his designated good behavior zone or trying to protect her from the terrible evils of carpet fuzz or fruit snacks.  The poor Little Kid can’t blink without him giving her a lecture on the proper way to flutter her eyelashes.   He’s a worrier, to a fault.  He thinks up ways in which she will get into trouble and acts as though she’s already committed the unpardonable.   She’s tried and sentenced before I’ve got a chance to make him see that he’s the one who gave her the idea which, up until his lecture, she hadn’t even thought of yet.   Or, he frets over every breath she takes until he’s dreaming up scenarios in which something that will barely fit into her mouth, will somehow become so lodged in her throat that it will take a team of surgeons fifteen hours to pull her through the tragedy.     I have honestly never seen a seven year old child who could work himself into a full blown ulcer in under 5 minutes the way this child does.  I’d like to have grandchildren some day, but at this rate, I’m not sure he - or they - would survive it.

Through all of this though, without fail, there will be a moment when I’m busy doing some grown-up thing, and I’ll hear the unmistakable affection in his voice when he says to her, “You know what?  I like you.”

And it’s in that moment that I can let go of the breath I was holding while I waited for the next round of trouble to start, and believe that someday, this age spread thing won’t make a bit of difference.

It's only the beginning...

When you’re tired, stressed out, and pretty much to your breaking point, that’s the exact moment that some invisible force will flip a switch in your two year old and turn them into something between a rabid dog and a demon.

When the dishwasher is broken, the laundry is piled high, four bills you can’t pay arrived on the same day, your mother-in-law has made you crazy for the umpteenth time, you’ve popped sixty-three vitamin C’s trying to fight off the sore throat that you’re sure came from yelling at the kids to stop bickering, there are squirrels in your attic, the neighbor backed into your car, a huge tree limb is hanging precariously over your roof, it’s 104 degrees and you’re a/c is on the fritz, you spilled your twenty dollar bottle of hair color touch up, you’ve been diagnosed with something you can’t pronounce, your other half did something so stupid you can’t believe you ever found him intelligent in the first place, and you’re pretty sure when you looked in the mirror, you saw the beginning of a mustache forming - THAT is the day your previously angelic two year old will decide that compliance is for one year olds.    That is the day she will wage an all out war just to see what kind of ammunition you have.

Of course, since she’s had two whole years to observe how other kids do it, all the while quietly deceiving you, she’ll know that the best way to overtake the enemy (that would be you), is with a surprise attack at nightfall.     By then she will have already watched you clean up the dinner table, put in a load of laundry, wipe up the floor, help Big Kid with his homework, remove the mess the cat made, put away toys, school papers and clothing, prepare bags for the next morning, pop a few Excedrin, and collapse into a chair.   Oh she sees it, the exact moment of your vulnerability, and she knows just how to strike.

She’ll start with something small, letting you think it’s just an insignificant moment of weakness on her part.  Perhaps she’ll throw a toy or touch something she’s not supposed to be near.   Surely you’ll think a quick reprimand will distract her and she’ll go right back to merrily playing with her baby dolls.    But that’s where you’re wrong.

That statement which you thought was going to be a quick reprimand, was really you just taking her bait.    She’ll show you who’s boss, alright.   She’ll take your reprimand and hit you in the face.   When relegated to time-out, she will squirm and push past you with the might of a charging bull.    When you return her to her spot and hold her in place, you will swear she’s coated in baby oil because she’ll slip right through your hands again.   Determined to keep her in time out until she learns not to hit, you’ll hold her more firmly, to which she will respond with pushing back and throwing herself down with no fear of you letting go and letting her bash her head on the floor.   She knows you too well for that.

When your energy is spent, and you carry her off to a confined place for time-out, such as the crib or playpen, that’s when the real fun begins.   She’ll try to climb out, jump when you’ve told her to sit, and  promise to be good while still in the process of smacking you in the face again. 

Before you know it, you’ll have paragraphs of text from every internet page and baby book you’ve ever read, running through your head like a teleprompter, reminding you what you’re supposed to say.   But after another ten minutes of battling with her, you’ll start to hear the voices of news anchors, child psychologists, and your long-deceased Aunt Martha telling you to breathe deeply and count to ten before somebody gets seriously hurt.

After you’ve run the gamut of minor annoyance to thoughts you’d never admit to even your closest girlfriend, you start to pray, for your own soul and for her to be stricken with Narcolepsy.  Because if she does not have some physical ailment that makes her suddenly fall asleep, you realize that you may just have to shut her door and let her spin around like a wound-up top until she either passes out or declares defeat due to lack of audience. 

But then, you look at her and you see this evil little smile that matches the taunting twinkle in her eye and something in you rises up with a second wind.  You are the mother after all and you will NOT be defeated.  

You begin to craft an ingenious plan that will halt her canons on their axis and blow the match right off her next stick of dynamite.    You will so confuse the enemy that though she will flail around, trying to stick to her level of determination, ultimately she will wave the white flag.

And while she sits stewing in her place of confinement, you’ll pour yourself another handful of Excedrin and chase it down with something that will take the edge off, all the while giving the Big Kid a stare that says Don’t Even Try Me.

When they are both finally asleep, you lie in bed with a sense of dread.   For you know, you remember from the first kid, this is not the end.   This is only the beginning, and from here on out, it’s you against her.   You know that somewhere deep within you, you’ve got to pull out the Consistency Card, but with everything else in your life going wrong, you’re not even sure that card still exists.    You’re not playing with a full deck, and she knows it.  Oh, she knows it.   And it’s going to be a very long game.