someday you will miss that robe.

January 15, 2015January 15, 2015 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ 4 Comments

Dear Jessie,

Someday you will miss that robe at the end of your bed.

Someday you will miss that pink robe, the one draped over your bed covers. The one worn thin by round baby cheeks pressed against you in sleep. The one with the left shoulder constantly caked with spit up or animal cracker or drool, that left shoulder where so many nights and early mornings you invited a sleepy head to rest. You wear that robe like a cape some nights, tossing it on as you rush to save your crying baby. You are not even completely awake, but you know the tone of their cries, you know the sound of their breaths, you know something is wrong even through the walls of your house. You are not a hero, but to them? In those long and dark midnight hours of pushing through new teeth, waking up with painful coughs, or that restless newborn confusion: you are everything they ever wanted. You are mommy. In her pink robe. Warm and quiet and soft, swaying with that ancient dance of motherhood that has rocked civilizations to sleep since Eve held her boys to her breast. You are home, you and that robe.

Someday, I promise, you will miss feeling tiny hands climb over you and into your bed. You will be more rested, I think, when these days pass, but your bed might feel bigger than necessary without those warm, wiggling bodies twisting between their tired parents. You will miss her curls, his chubby feet, their dreaming fingers fluttering inches away from you in deep slumber.

I know you’re tired. I know you are so, so tired. It’s ok. These are hard nights. It’s hard to be woken up, it’s hard to always be a parent, even in the middle of the night, even when you are exhausted. It’s hard to be kind in the morning after you slept on the couch with a sick baby, or when two-year old molars were coming in all night, or when no one has slept well for a week. It’s hard to wake up and make breakfast and say “Good morning, babies,” and be patient when people are fussing on a really good day, much less on a really tired day. But you’re doing good. Good job for apologizing when you snapped at Clara for whining. Good job for knowing you needed to take the kids to see their cousins this morning when you couldn’t handle telling Sammy’s book-tearing hands “NO” one more time by 9 am. That’s good. You’re not a hero, remember. You wear a pink cape that rests on the edge of your bed and you pray all day long for more and more and more of whatever it is that makes God love you and your fussing so much, and that’s great. That’s it, that’s all you need. Because He knows. He sees you. He will bear with you, and teach you to bear with them, and He will show them love through you, at all hours of the day. That’s good.

And remember, ok, remember this when the days seem impossible, or you are almost afraid of how happy you are to be their mom, or you just can’t remember how to be a mom at all: remember that life is meant to be interrupted. Your broken sleep is merely a reflection of this breaking inside you, as your old way of life is interrupted and a new, thick thread weaves it way through your story. You won’t be the same anymore. You aren’t meant to be, after these babies come. This thread is pulling, tugging, changing your tapestry in ways you cannot imagine. It’s gonna hurt sometimes. It’ll feel too tight. It’ll feel wrong, this piercing, tugging thread of motherhood. But it’s just right. These minutes filled with the needs of others, filled with the clatter of disruption and disorder; they are the thread that is hemming in your story and creating the rest of you.

Because these precious, beloved children of yours? They won’t be here forever. In fact, they’ll leave soon. Someday they will sneak past your bedroom door instead of through it. Someday you will throw on that robe to answer midnight phone calls instead of cries, to whisper advice instead of lullabies. You will still be you, changed by their very heartbeats, and they will still be them, hearts beating outside of your grasp and in a world all their own. Don’t lose yourself in these tired nights. Don’t forget the astonishing joy of being their everything, nor the price you pay to raise someone well, nor the woman beneath the robe who exists beyond the nursery door, in a world all her own. Remember that the thread of motherhood is a part of your story; but not the very end. Remember that these babies and their needs are a gift, and will not last forever. Remember that the love in their eyes is saved for no one else.

Someday you will miss that pink robe on the edge of your bed. You won’t miss being woken up all night, or feeling hung over with exhaustion, or planning your sex life around a nap schedule. You won’t miss being thrown up on or changing wet pants or the onslaught of questions and requests that begins every morning at sunrise. But you will miss this simple kind of tired. The one that means you are doing your job well. The one that goes away with sleep. There will be new kinds of tired, you know? As these babies grow up, and hurt themselves or others, you will not be able to sleep away the pain you share with them. And when those days come; when you feel lost and hurt and wonder how on earth you can ever help them find their way again; remember that a long time ago, you held them tight and loved them well. You kept a robe waiting at the end of your bed so you could hurry to meet their needs, and that kind of love will dig into them. It will grow with them. It will teach them to love others and to love themselves.

These midnight hours matter. These tired days matter.

You and your babies are going to be ok.
Tomorrow morning,
and all the mornings after.

Sammy’s surgery (part 2)

January 9, 2015January 10, 2015 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ 2 Comments

Here’s Part One if you need to catch up.

When we landed in Boise, my sister Becca and her husband Mitch picked us up from the airport and took us directly to the emergency room. They were spending a “night out” in a hotel while my mom watched their kids, and chose to spend it carting me around and staying with me at the hospital until after midnight. It probably wasn’t as romantic as their abandoned night together would have been, but it meant the entire world to me.

When we got to the hospital, it took seven minutes from the time I checked in until Sammy was seen by a doctor. His fever still hovered above 103, he was lethargic and fussy, and the mass seemed to be growing hourly. After a blood draw and an examination, they quickly and efficiently started him on IV antibiotics, alarmed at his incredibly high white blood cell count. He was clearly fighting something very bad in his body, and needed the strongest help with whatever it was. The pediatric ER nurses and doctors seemed more worried than I was, which was frightening, but their calm and fast care made me feel more secure about Sammy’s well-being than I had at any other point in the last few days.

The doctor ordered an ultrasound of Sammy’s neck, to find out what was happening inside the spreading mass. If it was just a swollen gland, he said, then we would continue the IV for a day or two to kill the bacteria in his body. If it was full of fluid, however, that meant it was infected, he would need surgery, and it would need to be done as soon as possible so the infection wouldn’t get anywhere else in his body or cause the mass (sorry, so graphic) to burst open on his neck. Sammy was feeling a little better at this point, with antibiotics and Motrin in him, but I felt nauseous with all of the scenarios racing through my brain, and the fact that Sam was still a 5 hour drive away in Washington with Clara.

We took the elevator down to the ultrasound lab, I pinned the crying baby down in my arms for what I had no idea would be the first of many, many times in the next few days, and got some images of the lump. The results were in our ER room before we even got back, and the doctor walked in with a surgeon on the phone. The mass was, indeed, pockets of infection multiplying in his lymph node, and the only way to get him better was to cut open the infected area on his neck, clean it out, insert a drain, and pump antibiotics through his body to try to kill whatever other bacteria was lurking and making him sick in the first place. They scheduled the surgery for first thing in the morning and sent us upstairs to the pediatric floor.

So, ok, to explain better: Whatever was making Sammy sick in the first place, whatever bacteria in his body was causing the upper respiratory illness, his congestion and cough and fever, that bacteria had somehow slipped into his blood stream. Maybe through his gums because he’s been cutting teeth, which leaves an open wound in his mouth? We don’t know HOW it got in there, only that it DID get in there, like some sort of freak mistake in his body. Once the bacteria hit his blood stream, it settled into a lymph node and began building an evil bacteria city in his neck. And once this happens, once bacteria begins to wall itself off from the rest of the body, there is NO way to cure it except to cut it open and dig it out. Normally this isn’t a huge deal. If it happened to you or me, if we had an abscess of infection on our back or arm or something, they would just cut it open right there in the emergency room and send us home with some medicine. But because he is a baby, and especially because it was on his neck, next to his airway and his throat and his tongue and a million other dangerous areas of his body, it was a big deal and required careful and delicate surgery as soon as possible.

I called Sam and we decided to leave Clara in Washington with his parents, who would drive her home to us that weekend. Sam left immediately and drove through mountain snow storms to arrive at the hospital at 5:30 the next morning, just in time for the surgery. The night had not gone well. After the IV from the ER got kinked on our way up to our room, it took five different nurses five different tries to insert another IV. This episode from hell was an hour and a half of Sammy screaming and crying while I cried and held him down, sensing the frustration from the nurses as they worked intensely to find a vein and thread their needle into it. He still has little bruises all over his hands and feet from that night, charcoal shaded traumas from what felt like a nightmare. I know that sounds dramatic! I know it. But it was sad, so sad, and I don’t know how moms and dads with really sick kids handle all this business so constantly. It takes something from you, it really does.

By six that morning we were down in the operating preparation room, meeting lots of different doctors and nurses and holding our baby close before they took him away to surgery. Our wonderful pastor stopped by to give us a hug and pray over the baby. Becca and Mitch brought us coffee. The ENT surgeon was an older man with a kind face and gentle voice, who smiled a lot while he talked to us about the procedure and lightly touched Sammy’s arm before leaving to scrub in. The pediatric anesthesiologist took a long time to talk with us as well, explaining some of the risks involved with putting Sammy under. I had asked a few times if I could please stay with him in the operating room until he fell asleep, so I would be the last person he saw before it all kicked in. But she strongly urged against it. Normally they would never do surgery on someone as sick as he was, she told us. They would send him home for a few weeks and try again when he was well. But this was an emergency and they didn’t have a choice. She told us that his respiratory illness, whatever it was, meant he would for sure have trouble breathing once they started to put him under. It would be an “act now and act fast” situation that they were very prepared to address, but she emphasized that it would not be something any mom should have to see. This was terrifying to hear and later to imagine in the waiting room, but I trusted her advice and kissed him goodbye before they carried him out.

The surgery itself took less than an hour. Becca and Mitch waited with me and Sam and bought us breakfast from the cafeteria, but we had both been up for over 24 hours at that point and were mostly buzzing on fear and adrenaline. I watched every minute tick by on the oversized clocks in the waiting room, wondering what was happening to my son. Finally, though in reality it had only been an hour, the surgeon came out and knelt beside our chairs, smiling again as he told us that everything had gone well. He found at least two different pockets of infection within the larger mass, cleaned them out, and the drain he’d inserted should help finish the job over the next few days.

“We’ll take his blood again tomorrow morning and make sure his white count has dropped significantly, and then we’ll know for sure if we got everything out.” He shook our hands and said that someone would come get us as soon we could go to Sammy.

When Sam and I got back to the recovery room, the baby was crying and straining to get out of the nurse’s arms. He was so swollen from the trauma of the surgery and all the fluids pumped into him, and his face was sort of scary. Even his eyelids were plump with fluid, the flesh all over his body tight and a faint shade of green. I started crying. The weird thing was that he only wanted his dad. That has never happened since he was born- he’s a mama’s boy through and through. But it was like I was a stranger, he wouldn’t even let me touch him unless he was nursing.

It took us over three hours to get out of recovery with him, rather than the 30 minutes they had guessed. He was still upset, and having a lot of trouble breathing, which required constant observation from several nurses. Then, right when they released him to his room on the Pediatric floor, his DAMN IV CAME OUT AGAIN. The recovery nurses didn’t want to try and get another one in him, because none of them work on babies often enough. So they found a doctor to come in with an ultrasound machine and find a vein, and then it took four adults to hold him down while the doctor slowly inserted the tubing into a vein on his ankle and started the IV again.

It was truly, truly awful. I hope he doesn’t remember one tiny moment of this entire ordeal.

We spent the day in his room, getting his vital signs checked every 30 minutes, trying to keep him still so the IV would stay put, and just generally feeling miserable and exhausted. Sam and I had been awake for over 36 hours at that point and traded the baby back and forth, fighting his thrashing and crying until we were too tired to hold him anymore and passed him off to each other’s weary arms.

But, thanks to the crazy power of social media, several friends stopped by with food and love for us, and we were shocked over and over again at how many people cared about and were worried over our son. It was such a shot of energy whenever someone would text or message and ask how we were and tell us that they were praying for Sammy. From Becca and Mitch freely abandoning their night in a nice hotel room to take me to the hospital and take care of us all weekend, to our neighbors driving all the way from Nampa just to bring Sam lunch, to our friend Marti packing up a homemade dinner for us, to the worried Pelton brothers delivering froyo and hugs, to my friend Heather bringing her entire family all the way to the hospital just to “See if you guys are ok. We heard the word surgery and got in the car,”:

We were humbled and so thankful for our community. It was a reminder of what we belong to, and what a gift we have. Makes me tear up just remembering all of you and your reassurances. Thank you, all our dear friends. We love you so.

Late that night, I tried to lay Sammy down in his crib/cage to go to sleep. He crawled away from me and whaddya know: his *&#*$ (insert a bunch of curse words I don’t want my mother in law to read) IV popped out of his ankle. His incredible nurses did everything they could to save the line, but it was too far out to slide back in. They did not want to put another one in him, his fourth in 24 hours, mostly because every easily accessible vein was already bruised, blown, or had already proved useless, and their next options were not nice ones (his head, the crooks of his elbows, etc. All bad ideas for babies who can move.) They called our surgeon and decided to start him on oral antibiotics and see how he did overnight, and try at all costs to avoid another terrible needle episode.

After a short night of deep, heavy sleep (I’m not being sarcastic, all three of us slept like a coma. We were beyond words tired) they drew his blood and we waited the rest of the morning to see the doctors and hear if we could go home. His white count wasn’t great- still over 24, 000- and the nurses told us not to get our hopes up, because that was really high to send a kid home. But! His surgeon came in that afternoon and checked the wound, changed the dressing, and said that because they really didn’t want to subject him to another IV, we could take him home on the oral antibiotics. We were shocked, elated, and a little worried. His neck wound looked awful and we knew he was still very sick- could we take good enough care of him at home? We were told to keep a close eye on his facial swelling and his fever, and if it went above 100.5 to bring him right back in.

After several early morning visits to the surgeon’s office and getting his drain and stitches removed, Sammy is starting to look like his old self. His neck and cheek are still swollen and the surgery site is red and irritated, but it seems like all of the infection is gone. Thank you JESUS! We seem to be past this nightmare, and I still can’t believe it even happened. This morning he threw a huge fit when I took my phone away from him, and I couldn’t have been happier to hear his angry yelling. Our boy is going to be ok. This was a bizarre emergency, a freak accident, and will probably never happen again. The bacteria cultured from his neck showed up as either staph or strep, and we are 99.9% sure that he had some residual, undiagnosed strep floating around his body and that is what infected him.

Did you know he turned one year old this Wednesday? January 7. The day was quiet. He can’t be around any people or germs until his face is completely healed, and he can’t have any cake or frosting on his wound, so we’ll do a party in a few weeks. But the day also felt reverent. Like, here we are. At home. With our precious little boy, with his precious heart beating away beneath his pajama top, with two puncture holes in his neck turning slowly to scars which will always remind us to say thank you for his life, thank you for the healthy blood beating through his body, thank you for the gift of his birth into our family. Happy birthday and thank you, I prayed all day long.

Happy birthday and thank you.

Sammy’s surgery. Or, trusting your heart.

Video ~ January 9, 2015January 10, 2015 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ Leave a comment

Part one because this is a long story and I’m too emotional about it to do a proper editing job. So grab a snack and settle in. Part two is linked on the bottom of this page.

Well, if you follow me on any social media platforms, then you probably know that the baby had emergency surgery last weekend. It’s been the longest few days, but also I can’t really believe everything that happened so quickly. It seems like a dream that any of it happened at all. Here’s what happened; also, fair warning, there are some sad/sort of graphic photos in here.

The last month has been full of sickness for my kids and pretty much everyone we know, so when Sammy got sick a few weeks ago I didn’t think too much of it. I’m not normally one to rush my kids to the doctor for every cough or cold (OK OK that’s not true, but my sisters usually talk some sense into me) but earlier in December I knew that Clara had strep. Her cousins had it, her aunt and uncle had it, and eventually a bunch of her little friends had it too. So I took her into our doctor and got her on medicine, and she felt better a few days later. We didn’t test the baby because he’s too young to worry about strep- they normally don’t swab or treat that in babies under two. Then a few weeks later, right around Christmas, baby Sammy and I both caught a bad flu, with sore throats and coughs that lasted for over a week. In other news, I haven’t slept since 2011.

Our family went to Washington on New Years Eve to celebrate Christmas with Sam’s family, and while we were driving I thought the baby’s cough sounded worse. I was feeling much better after 9 days of being sick, but he was getting sicker. We decided that if he sounded worse in the morning, we would take him to see a doctor in Moses Lake. He woke up the next day with a high fever, and still coughing. No matter what I did for his fever I could not get it to drop below 102. I was alternating Tylenol and Motrin every 3 hours, giving him cool baths, breastfeeding like crazy, and he just seemed off.

We put him down for a nap that afternoon, and while looking through pictures from our “Christmas” that morning, we all laughed at how chubby he looked. He’s kind of a chubbers anyways, but for some reason his face just looked ridiculously fat that day. The family gathered downstairs to watch football and eat lunch, and after his very short nap we heard Sammy crying. Sam went up to get him and as he came into the basement carrying the baby, I laughed again and, in a moment that I will never ever forget because I feel SO BAD I COULD DIE, I said,

“Man, that kid is getting fatter by the minute!”

Then I stopped short. His face didn’t just look chubby; it looked swollen. Disproportionate, even. I grabbed him from his dad and felt his cheeks, then ran my fingers under his chin. The left side of his neck had a bulge in it, rock hard and the size of a bouncy ball. I felt it again, felt the fever on his forehead, and stood up in a panic.

“We’re going to the emergency room. NOW.”
Sam looked at me like I was crazy and tried to calm me down, but I left my lunch and root beer right where it was on the coffee table, ran up the stairs to put on my jeans and coat, and tried to quell the rising panic in my throat. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I knew that a lump in a baby’s neck is not a good thing. Especially one that practically appeared out of nowhere.

The pictures from that morning make me so sad now. I wish I had noticed how sick he looked and what was happening on his neck. It’s so obvious, in hindsight.

As we drove to the ER, Sam did his best to assure me that everything would be ok. “He probably just needs some medicine,” we kept saying to each other, hoping that there was a good doctor in the hospital that day. Moses Lake is a small town of about 20,000 people, which means rural medicine by most standards, and we found out later that there was only one doctor on call, and he had seen over 60 patients that shift. We waited awhile, then the doctor spent a few minutes with us, did a quick examination, and said that Sammy had a swollen gland.

“It’s either a salivary gland or a lymph node, but either way amoxicillin should treat it.” He felt the knot in the baby’s throat, checked his vitals, and seemed sure about his diagnosis. So we picked up the medicine and got two doses in Sammy before he went to bed.

All that night, he burned with fever. I had him stripped down to his diaper, was giving him medicine the moment enough time had passed for another dose, and in the morning his temp was still 103. On top of that, the lump in his neck was twice the size.

What it looked like the first afternoon.

I sent a picture of it to my sister-in-law Malia, who is an Ear, Nose and Throat nurse practitioner at a big hospital in Boston. We had spoken a few times the day before when I was at the hospital with Sammy, and she wasn’t thrilled that they hadn’t done any further testing on the lump or referred us elsewhere. When I sent her the picture of his neck that next morning, she called me immediately. She and her friend, an ENT Pediatric specialist, both agreed that we needed to take Sammy to one of the big hospitals a few hours away and get him seen as soon as possible. The lump could cut off his airway, the infection could spread even further, he will just keep getting sicker by the minute; they both agreed that this thing on his neck was very bad news. Their urgency buried itself in my already worried head and I felt sick about what to do.

Sam and I debated all morning about whose advice to take; the ER doctor who had actually seen Sammy in person, or the two ENT specialists across the country who only knew information from us and a few picture texts. I wanted to get him to a children’s hospital, NOW. The way his swollen face looked, the way his fever would not drop, and the way he was acting all sent buzzes of panic through my bones, like electricity in my knees and elbows. The thing was, the ER doctor had told us that the lump would get bigger, and not to be surprised if it took up to a week to get better. Sam wanted to let the amoxicillin get in his system, and wait until we knew he wasn’t getting better until we took further action. I wanted to get the hell out of dodge and make sure my baby was ok. Sam thought I was being ridiculous; and maybe I was, maybe I was assuming the worst without enough information, but in my heart of hearts I knew that something was desperately wrong with my little boy.

My mom and my mother in law have both always told me, from the moment I was pregnant with Clara, to trust my mother’s instinct. You will know better than anyone if something is wrong with your child, they tell me, and you have to trust that in yourself. Even when other people think you’re crazy, even when you feel crazy, you have to hone that instinct and respect the discernment God gives to moms.

Now, I’m sure some of you are reading this thinking how very sexist it is of me to make all these claims about moms and not dads, but listen. Number one: I’m a mom. I can only speak from my perspective. And number two: I really don’t think dads have this sense in them. I don’t. I’ve never seen it, from all of the incredible and wonderful fathers I know, I’ve never seen them know something about their child the way a mother knows in her heart. Sometimes we’re wrong, of course, sometimes we take babies to the doctor for no reason at all because moms are also completely insane; but after a few kids, that instinct sharpens and is rarely off.

As the morning went on and I texted Malia, called my sisters and my mom, and had endless discussions about what to do with our family in Washington, Sam eventually called me into the kitchen. He was buying me a plane ticket home for that evening, he said, so I could take the baby straight the children’s hospital in Boise and get some peace of mind. He still didn’t really think we needed to be so worried, but he trusted me and was sending me home to find out. I sank with relief, and felt such gratefulness for his faith in me.

We packed our bags, my father in law and Sam drove us an hour and a half to the airport in Spokane, and I prayed that it was a waste of a plane ticket and that everything was fine. We boarded a nearly empty plane and settled in for the 39 minute long flight. 39 minutes in the air, with a burning baby on my lap and a wildfire of worry taking over my mind.

CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO

Inconvenient Love

December 19, 2014 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ 2 Comments

A few weeks ago the worship pastor at our church asked me to write something and perform it for the first week of Advent. Advent is four weeks of preparation for celebrating the birth of Jesus (or why we celebrate Christmas) and each week has a different theme. The first week is Love. So that was my assignment: Write something about love, and then tell it to the church.
That’s all she gave me to work with. One word. Love. “I trust you!” she said, and then left me to my wonderings.

As I prayed and started drafting together words and sentences, the only two thoughts that kept coming to mind were “Uncomfortable” and “Inconvenient.” Weird, right? I needed to write about love, and not just any love but Christmas Love which is my favorite kind of love, and the words God kept whispering to me were “uncomfortable” and “inconvenient.”

I was confused. Those ideas were not where I wanted to start my piece. I wanted to tell everyone some warming thoughts about, I don’t know, spreading Christmas joy and loving your neighbor as yourself. I wanted to use annoying words like “magic” and “glow” and “holiday cheer.” I am the worst of the worst when it comes to Christmas, playing my holiday Pandora stations starting in October, working sugar cookies into my food group pyramid, and rolling out traditions with gusto. I know some people (like my husband, God help him) aren’t fans of the hassle and expectations of the holiday, and I know some people don’t even think it IS a real Christian holiday, but for me? These cold and quiet days in December lead me straight to the manger, kneeling before the crazy and inconceivable beginnings of the life that my entire faith is based around: Jesus born unto us! Incredible!
See, now I’ve begun my Christmas babbling and this is exactly what I imagined writing about- this is the kind of stuff I want to say about Christmas Love.

But instead?
“Uncomfortable,” He whispered.
“Inconvenient.”

I prayed for insight. I wrote lengthy, meandering first drafts. I gave up, began again, and gave up once more.Then in the midst of all this thought wrestling and word wrangling, Thanksgiving came.

A Thanksgiving week came, a week that has since been named, “The Cursed Thanksgiving.” Because it was a week from the pits of hell.

I should have known something was up when I made sugar cookies the Sunday before Thanksgiving (so simple, so second nature to my cookie loving ways) and had to throw away the whole double batch of dough… because I forgot half the butter.

Thus it began.
The Cursed Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving morning, Sam’s brother didn’t feel very well. He had arrived at our house from Washington the night before, along with his wife and their little boy, and Sam’s parents. He felt progressively worse throughout the day, and didn’t even make it to dinner at my sister’s house. He laid on our couch in pale and clammy silence until he finally started throwing up while we were all away at dinner. There was no real way to avoid him, since there were 6 adults and 3 small children staying in our tiny house for the whole weekend, and every corner was full of people or stuff. Which isn’t ideal, but I come from a family of seven kids so I’m no stranger to the inevitability of shared illness, and share we did.

By the end of this flu rampage two weeks later, the virus had gone through 12 people in my immediate family- including my husband and both of my children (and then eventually me). Have you ever seen a baby throw up? It’s so, so sad. Not only do they feel terrible, but the surprise of vomit coming out of their little body is all over their faces as they twist and cry and try to avoid the sensation that is coming up their throats. And they are not attuned enough to their bodies to throw up anywhere except directly in front of them, which, more often than not, was on the person holding them while they cried.

Namely, me.

I had been praying all week for God to reveal something new to me about love, praying for some insight as I wrote. I asked for clarity about real love.

NEVER PRAY FOR ANYTHING YOU DO NOT WANT TO HAPPEN.

Because nothing teaches a lesson about “uncomfortable love” like someone else’s warm vomit sliding down your neck and into your shirt.

It wasn’t just the throw up, either, that this week of curses launched our way. Nothing went right. I burned/ruined almost everything I was in charge of for our dinner, despite the fact that I orchestrated and cooked most of our perfectly executed Thanksgiving in Arizona the week before. Had I ruined all my holiday mojo by trying for a repeat championship? Even as I was packing up my (ruined and replaced by store-bought) food to drive to my sister’s house, I knocked a glass of juice off my counter. This may seem insignificant, but I was already running late and now sticky juice and shards of glass were scattered all over the kitchen floor. It was like a punch in the throat reminder that I could do nothing right.

^^Pictures from our visit to Arizona, good Thanksgiving and pre hair fiasco.^^

The week just got worse and worse, my house a den of illness, my children sick and cranky, the family tense with each other and each other’s germs. And no one was even hungry for all of the food and leftovers, due to the constant splatter of vomit stealing our appetites. This whole shit-show (quite literally in terms of the eventual progression of the cursed stomach virus) culminated, in my vain opinion, in the most tragic of incidents:

when I got the ugliest hair cut of my entire life. In a rash decision to get my hair trimmed by a stranger at a new salon because I was already there with my family, I let some 19-year-old girl accidentally make me look like the annoying best friend in every 80’s movie ever made. Or maybe I look like Cathy, that sad cartoon character who loves chocolate. My hair is shaped like a rectangle and I look like I’m wearing a poorly made wig- I mean, I would look like that, if I ever let my hair down. Which I most certainly have not, in almost a month now. My vanity! Shot to pieces! Hair buns every single day, it’s the only way I handle leaving my house.

Through all of this madness, through the whole week of annoying and disappointing circumstances, something was firming up in my heart. An acorn of understanding, my hands cupping around some small and distinct idea about love. As I washed load after load after load of sheets and laundry from my children and my husband’s flu, as I watched my little sister host a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner, all the while hustling around her three small children with another growing safe in her belly, as my home pulsed with the angst of too many people with too many feelings and too many germs, as my sister-in-law missed out on Thanksgiving to take care of her sick husband, as my mother in law and father in law took it all in stride with the calm of two people who raised five children together,

as all of this swirled around me,

love was revising itself.

In the middle of the week, as Wednesday afternoon slid into evening, I watched a baby be born into the world. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. My older sister Rebecca was out-of-town for this special birth that she had planned to attend, and now she couldn’t make it. She was devastated. The girl giving birth asked me and my little sister to come instead (it takes two of us to replace Becca), so we dropped all of our Thanksgiving preparations and hurried to the labor and delivery floor of the hospital downtown. The couple welcoming a new son weren’t much older than kids themselves, the mother not even done with high school yet. We watched these two teenagers bent towards each other, one in the dire and insistent pain of childbirth, the other with tears on his face as the mother of his baby cried out with shock. Neither of them had planned for this; the baby or the pain, but here they were, 9 months and one failed epidural later, birthing a son on Thanksgiving eve. She cried, she pushed, she said she could not go on… and then a dark-haired son was born. They bent towards their child, their faces lit with awe and fear, their eyes brimming with tears, the maps of their young lives suddenly redrawn with this engulfing new love.

And there was Christmas. Right in front of me.

It was everywhere. It was in the constant laundry. It was in the three baths a day I was giving my sick babies. It was in full guest rooms and missed dinners and ruined plans. It was service and kindness and care for each other in our worst states.
It was humbling.
It was inconvenient, unaware and dismissive of our holiday expectations.
It was gritty, hard, and compulsory.
It wasn’t pretty, this grand and strange love being revealed to me.

Revealed in the painful and surprising birth of a family that I witnessed in that hushed hospital room. Revealed in the dark of night as I held my whimpering daughter, feverishly clinging to me in her sleep. Revealed in the patience of my dear family. It was Christ in us and through us, Christ here, Christ come to show us what real love looks like, starting in the humble manger of a humble stable.

It was Christmas anew.

And it was, actually,

quite beautiful.

Here’s the piece that I finally squeezed out of my fingertips and shared on a Sunday morning, if you want to watch it. It’s the first few minutes of this video. And here are the words that came.

Uncomfortable Love: Merry Christmas

December 19, 2014 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ Leave a comment

Christmas is coming, and we need to talk about love.

It seems easy, at this time of year, when my house is slung with cheerful decorations and twinkling lights, when I’m wrapping up gifts and singing soft Christmas lullabies to my babies as they fall asleep each night;

it seems easy to know what love looks like.

Isn’t that love there, flickering in the pooling wax of advent candles? Listen, it’s there, in the reverent strains of O, Holy Night, The Stars So Brightly Shining.
Isn’t love so pretty at Christmas?

But real Love? The kind that builds us up, brick by sturdy brick, the kind that doesn’t make sense, the kind that never gives up?
Real love isn’t always pretty. It’s not always easy or comfortable or found in the warm glow of holiday nights.

Sometimes, love is uncomfortable.

Sometimes, love is inconvenient.

Sometimes, love can even look downright unholy. The Bible is full of stories that are full of the kind of uncomfortable love that makes us cringe and look away, because it’s just too complicated and inconvenient to try and understand.
The Israelites spent 40 years wandering in a desert… that’s love?
Hosea marries a prostitute and welcoming her back again and again and again… that’s love?

Even in the opening lilt of “Away in a Manger, No Crib for a bed,” we are handed the uncomfortable picture of a baby born in the barest of circumstances, welcomed to the world on the dirty floor of a dirty stable.

Why does this holy love look so,

unpolished? humble? even foolish?

In this Advent season, as we pause and reflect on the coming of our Savior, let us revel in the strange and surprising love illuminated by His birth.

Love is a scared young mother in Bethlehem, arched in pain as she labors with the bloody birth of the Christ Child, giving herself over to the Task at hand.

Love is a nervous father, called to carry the Holy Burden of marrying this pregnant teen before him and calling the son she bears, his own.

Love, Emmanuel, God with Us, left Heaven and came to earth,
on a journey from an all-mighty kingship, to helpless body of a baby.

Love came down because Love didn’t mind
our dirty hands and our broken hearts.
Love came down because HE WANTED YOU.

He knows you, He sees you, He heard you, and yes yes a million times yes-
He. Wants. You.

Born without a bed. A man without a home.
Infant in a crude and simple manger,
teacher hung on a crude and simple cross to die-

His life? Was uncomfortable.

His love? Is transformative.

It’s a moment of crisis. A tilting, hinging fulcrum in time, a grip on your heart so great that you can take or leave it
but His Love cannot be ignored.

We know what real love is because Jesus gave his life for us. And there is no greater love than this, than he who lays down his life for his friends…
and, dare we say it?
This inconvenient, unholy thought on the holiest days of our winter season…
love laid down his life-

for his enemies.

This messy, Perfect Love goes slogging through the worst of times.
When the mud is deep. When the edges are frayed. When the frame on which you’ve built your very life has snapped beneath you:
This Strange Love presses on.

Love came down into our darkness and shone a great light.
Love came down into our darkness.
Love came down.

For you.

Merry Christmas.

a bad video montage and other holiday musings

December 15, 2014December 15, 2014 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ 3 Comments

Christmas home videos are a genre unto themselves. When we go visit the Horney house in Washington, one of my favorite ways to pass a few hours of our Christmas vacation is to watch any of the home movies of the 5 Horney kids, meticulously recorded and organized by their diligent and loving father. There is something hilarious and slightly warming about the youth in their voices, the five of them squealing over gifts and stockings and even rejoicing at the presents that the others receive. Seeing Sam as a little boy is like falling in love all over again. It’s like I’m watching my past and my future all wrapped up in one sweet and freckled 8 year old. He was shy, very kind, constantly helping his three little brothers and his big sister, his dark hair always perfectly combed, his voice raspy and quiet. He was so different than me as a child (bursting with noise and talkative energy, of course) and I like to imagine what I was doing at the same time as whatever video we’re watching. Like Christmas in 1989, when 9 year old Sam is in Washington opening up Washington Huskies sweatpants and I am 3 years old in Idaho, opening a baby doll at my Grandma’s house. There we were, and here we are, the same age as our parents in the videos (but weren’t they so much OLDER than us, I thought??) with our own kids on our laps staring at our own tree.

I never used to understand why people hate home videos. There’s a particular romance to such an intimate record of the past, the nuances of a person’s voice and movements and laugh, encapsulated and somehow magnified in their static state. I never used to understand hating all of that- until last night.

Time-lapse videos are so fun to watch, and I’ve been wanting to make one on my own. So I decided to set up my video camera and record our tree-decorations this year. Sam and I have a long standing argument concerning Christmas trees. He wants fake, I want real, so we normally meet in the middle and don’t get one. We’re the worst. But last year we broke our tree-less truce and bought a real tree from the sad pickings of the mid-December Home Depot parking lot, because, you know, who can stand keeping holiday magic from their happy 15 month old? This year Sam bent his will and again our living room filled up with pine and cheer. And, this year there were TWO happy babies to impress with lights and ornaments!
There is no Scrooge strong enough to fight the joy of a toddler exclaiming in wonder over the same exact tree every single morning.

So, I recorded our whole process, from the tree nursery visit (which required a fast explanation concerning the man wandering around in a red suit, who we don’t “do” but is sort of hard to avoid) to the frustrated unspooling of lights to the angel placed on top.

But in a surprising twist, I almost couldn’t stand watching the 45 minutes of family time when I uploaded the movie. Though it had happened mere hours before, I already felt sad while it played across my laptop screen. It was like I could hear my kids in the future, laughing at Sammy eating pine needles, laughing at Clara’s squeaky voice, the two of them teasing their (future) younger siblings with statements like, “This was back when the family was still perfect.”

The bizarre instant nostalgia choked me, a warm scarf of future longings around my neck.

My babies were asleep in their beds, the tree had been decorated for barely an hour, and I already missed this time together: Christmas with a two year old Clara and an almost 1-year old Sammy, in our little house on Sanetta street where we’ve lived since we married seven years ago. I’ve watched too many other old home videos to think that I won’t watch these videos of my kids someday and miss this simple season in our family history.

Is this why people hate home videos? Because they make you sad?
Or is it because they are usually boring, too… Yeah, probably both.
So I took precautions to avoid sad OR boring, by turning our Christmas tree decorating into a time-lapse movie that, as it turned out, plays exactly like a classic and terrible 1980’s montage. Using Earth, Wind and Fire as the soundtrack probably didn’t help, but I swear you wouldn’t be surprised by a Tom Selleck cameo in this thing.

Enjoy watching our baby eat everything he finds, Clara get in a wrestling match with her cozy chair, Sam and I cooing over a baby picture of Smooch, and the general sense of chaos that is holiday decor. Enjoy NOT watching the part where Sam walked by with his bare butt towards the camera while I wasn’t looking. That didn’t make the cut, surprise surprise.

Here’s to premature nostalgia and bad montage footage! Cheers!

what the hell happened last night?

December 12, 2014December 12, 2014 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ 8 Comments

When Sam is on-call for work, it’s sort of a known factor that I’ll be doing everything by myself for a week. This is fine, it’s better by about a million and a half miles than him being gone every other week like his old job required; I can do a week “alone” every other month. No problem.

Except last night, when it was a problem.

Sam’s phone rang at 6:22 p.m. with a power emergency he left to tend. (Did you know that happens? Like, when you call the power company because your lights are off, or you just ran into a power pole with your car- someone is leaving their house to come help you. Fact.)

So, his phone rings, he leaves, and it’s 6:22 p.m. Do you have small kids? Do you have any kids at all? Do you know what is happening at 6:22 p.m. in a home with children?
Everything. That is what’s happening. Every feeling, every emotion, every complaint, every need, every chore, everything is happening. My mom calls it the witching hour, aptly named, because your children will indeed turn to witchcraft and evil spells for the next 2 hours until they are sound asleep.
Or actually, maybe it’s because the mom turns into a witch for the next two hours until they are sound asleep?

I’m not actually sure. Either way, aptly named.

At 6:22 at our house last night, dinner was almost over and the kids were ready for a bath. Which, spelled out a bit further, meant that my kitchen was torn apart by dinner preparations, my table and floor were torn apart by dinner consumption (and food throwing by my youngest, WHY SAMMY WHY) and the kids were dancing around naked in the bathroom while straining to get into the bathtub filled with warm water. This is normal, because we usually split ways after dinner, me to the bathing arena and Sam to the kitchen, me cleaning our slippery children while he cleans all the dishes and dinner mess. It’s a good system, except when he leaves in the middle of our loud little circus. This was also, interestingly enough, the night I had prepared myself to throw down the hatchet and make the baby “cry it out” for bedtime.

The last week or so (or even more? I don’t know. Life has been a blur of travel, holidays, and illness) Sammy has been terrible at night. He falls asleep fine, but then he is up constantly, from about 10:30 on, wanting to nurse or play or cry or whatever his dumb baby brain is thinking about at that particular hour. Like most bad habits that my children start to exhibit, it snuck up on me, one instance at a time. We slept in 4 different houses in 4 consecutive weeks when we were traveling last month, so I had a lot of grace for my kids and their sleeping needs. Especially because we were staying in other people’s homes and I didn’t want any unnecessary crying or bedtime shenanigans, more often than not I was rocking, singing, and nursing when it was time to go sleep, and way more often than not, both kids ended up in my bed sometime during the night. But. Now we are home. Now it is time to settle back in to routine. Both kids in their beds at 7:30 p.m. and falling asleep on their own and staying asleep until morning. Right?
Wrong, says Sam the Fifth. Very wrong, Mama. Now let’s play “bite the mommy and daddy until they wake up and play with me” one more time tonight, whaddya say?
Egads. That is what I say.

So last night! Was the night! When I was going to put my tired foot down on my drool covered wood floors and say Go The #$%& To Sleep, Baby Sam!

After many splashes of bath water, a wrestling match into pajamas (Sammy, that is. Clara is an angel at bedtime, seriously), a toy cleanup whirlwind, and reading a book, it was time for bed. I tucked Clara in her bed, rocked Sammy while singing a few Christmas carols, then laid the baby in his crib and tiptoed out of their shared nursery. Sammy immediately started crying. I cursed.

Cut to 45 minutes later:
After several failed attempts to lightly pat Sammy’s back and lay him back down, after a few hugs, after a few desperate “It’s night-night time, buddy. It really is!” in my most convincing voice, he was still crying. Standing up, shaking the bars of his crib, furiously crying. And of course his poor tortured sister was also crying, because unlike the maniac across the room, she actually wanted to fall asleep.

I gave up on the “put them to bed in their own beds” mantra and carried a very upset Smoochie to our room, along with an armload of her pillows, stuffed animals (“my guys, mama. Don’t forget my guys!”) and settled her into my bed. Where she continued to cry, asking me to fall asleep with her, too tired to be rational at this point. But not, as it turns out, too tired to watch an episode of Bubble Guppies. Thank God for those weird mermaid kids.

23 minutes later:
Sammy still wailing intermittently. Bubble Guppies end credits rolling. Me speed reading tips on crying it out at 11 months old. Clara still awake. In perhaps the best parenting move of my day, I press play and let Clara watch the exact same Bubble Guppies, again. In case you’re counting, it’s close to 10 p.m. at this point and she is about to get 46 minutes deep into a cartoon haze. I’ll pick up my mothering award at the door, thanks a bunch.

23 more minutes later:
Bubble Guppies is almost over. The baby is still upset. I am slumped against the three feet of wall between our room and the nursery, my phone the only light in the hall, defeatedly reading bedtime tips for babies. Suddenly I find a list about “crying it out,” a sort of “are these things true of your baby?” list to help you determine why they’re waking up during the night.

-Will he only fall asleep with a binky? No. He hates binkies.
-Will he only fall asleep while nursing or drinking a bottle? No. He nurses in 5 minutes flat.
–Will he only fall asleep to music or rocking? No, he can skip either one.
-Does he nap well during the day? At least 4 hours combined.
-And most importantly, Does he fall asleep on his own? YES. Always has.

“Your baby does not need to cry it out. He needs to be night-weaned. Slowly and gently.”
OH GOOD LORD IN HEAVEN. Why have I been torturing my son all night? WHY AM I THE WORST MOM EVER? And why didn’t I read this stuff before we started?

I rush in and pick up my sad son. I cradle him to me and tell him I’m sorry. I climb in my bed next to Clara, turn off the tv, pull both of my tired babies close to me. I nurse Sammy while Clara snuggles up against his back, both of us kissing his head resting between us. He drifts off to sleep but his sister is still awake, breathing slow and even in the dark. I feel her delicate hand reaching across the pillow, searching for me. She touches my cheek and then presses her hand to my chest, right where my heart lays beneath my sternum. She’s done this since she was a baby; impatiently pulling open my robe or tugging aside my shirt to rest her cheek or her hand on my heartbeat. It’s been such a long night, alone, making decisions and unmaking them and feeling so tired before we had even begun; I am so tired. Clara drapes herself around her sleeping brother and falls asleep with her fingers brushing against the warmth of my beating heart.

I laid there for a few minutes, praying over my kids and feeling so thankful for their lives. I took a picture of them sleeping and sent it to their dad. I crept out of my room and cleaned the kitchen. I cleaned, took out trash, measured coffee grounds for the next morning, turned off lights and blew out candles, brushed my teeth and crawled back in my bed full of babies. I tucked myself around them and fell asleep with a sigh.

Parenting is so hard. Parenting is so amazing. Parenting makes me cry happy tears and sad tears and frustrated tears, all in the same hour. Parenting is the gift of real, messy love. The gift of perspective.

Parenting is a small hand holding your heartbeat, counting on the steady rhythm of your blood and breath to make sense of the great big world beyond their sleepy eyes.

And all of that,
every bit of it:
is so, so good.

travel with kids: everything nobody else will tell you.

November 25, 2014April 14, 2015 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ 2 Comments

When I was 22 years old, freshly married and kid-free, I had the moronic confidence of someone whose main job is to take care of themselves. So when my sister offered me a free plane ticket to Hawaii, a free ticket which was a carrot on the end of a long stick named “but you have to bring my 3 kids with you,” I was like yeah, sure, bring it on! I think I may have said, and I quote,

“How hard can it be to fly with three kids?”

Laughing, laughing, laughing all around, cue my inevitable humiliation and whatever disasters awaited me. No matter WHAT happened on that trip, I would deserve it, if only for the foolish audacity to imagine everything would be juuuust fine. And happen things did.

Everything was fine all the way to San Francisco, where I fed them lunch, the 1-year-old, 4-year-old, and 6-year-old who I was about to cart across the Pacific Ocean. We had just boarded the plane for Honolulu when the 4-year-old announced that her stomach hurt. After we settled into our seats, she leaned over and hurled that airport lunch all over herself. I cleaned her up in the spacious confines of the airplane bathroom with the wet wipes and extra outfit her mom had advised me to pack, praying it was an isolated moment of motion sickness. And then she proceeded to projectile vomit for FIVE. HOURS. STRAIGHT. I am not exaggerating. She threw up on her clothes, she threw up on her second set of clothes, she threw up on her seat, she threw up on her sister’s seat, she threw up on her brother’s seat, she threw up on my seat, she threw up on her stuffed animals, and in the very worst move of the entire stomach emptying episode from hell, she threw up on the DVD players.

I don’t even remember the middle three hours of that flight. I think I blacked out for a while, purely for self-preservation. At one point I found myself asking the annoyed flight attendants for yet another large plastic bag, which I was ripping into with my teeth to create head and arm holes, and making my embarrassed and miserable niece wear as a puke poncho. An older woman walking down the aisle patted my shoulder, then leaned in and said,

“Honey, you are a saint.”
I gripped her hand and pulled her down to face me, and with wild eyes I whispered back,
“These aren’t my kids.”

The point IS, we made it to Hawaii, where I promptly caught the same stomach bug and threw up for two days straight while my sister, in gratitude and slight amusement, tossed toast and magazines to me from her guest room doorway.

Since that adventure, I have traveled thousands and thousands and thousands of miles with my own kids, by planes, trains, and automobiles, with my husband and (foolishly, again) by myself. I gladly share all of my hard-won and pathetically earned secret information to make your travels as painless and smooth as possible when accompanied by small selfish people who think gum is a food group.

: ^^ On our way home from Boston. To be fair, I took the kids across the country by myself for 10 days. I needed a lot of stuff. ^^

Travel With Kids: Everything Nobody Else Will Tell You

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE’S PITY.
For the most part, your fellow passengers are so glad to be traveling alone and oh so glad to not be you, and this translates into a helpful attitude. When they ask if they can help, be ready with an answer! Can they hold the baby for a split second while you rearrange your carry-on full of toys? Can they pull a bag out from the stroller basket? Can they unzip that DVD case for you? Can they carry your bag up to that bench by Starbucks?

Give them a chance to do a good deed and give yourself a chance to breathe for a split second. Everybody wins.

BE THE LAST PEOPLE ON THE PLANE.
Not the first. Never the first. You’re just wasting precious running around time- run their little legs ragged while you can, people. And then you won’t have to wait in a long quiet line, or walk slowly in a line down the aisle, or have to hustle your kids out-of-the-way when you finally find your seats. Go on last. Trust me.

PICK THE FLIGHT WITH LONGER LAYOVERS OR NONE AT ALL.
Because old-you might have been able to make a 20 minute connection with a bathroom break AND a coffee run, but parent-you needs to find the family bathroom, change a diaper, nurse a baby, let the kids run up and down a few empty hallways, eat lunch, wash hands, repack carry-on bags and then maybe finally buy an over-priced latte. Give yourself a few minutes to do all of this, or plan a direct flight. Short layovers are a bad idea.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO OVER-PACK YOUR CARRY-ON BAGS.
In the world of traveling with kids, there can be this undercurrent of competition in who does it better. I saw a mom in an airport who was wearing her baby, had a toddler on a leash, and ONE SMALL DIAPER BAG on her arm. Meanwhile, I had a double stroller, a backpack, and a weekender bag JAM PACKED along with my two small children and their various blankets. In the world of who did it better, it might seem like she was winning. This is false. Here’s why: Because I know my kids. I’ve traveled with them a million times, and I knew I would need everything that was in my arsenal of stuff. Think through your whole day of travel, no matter the mode, and plan hour by hour. If your kids are old enough to watch 3 full-length movies and eat apple slices all day, simply pack their DVD player and an apple. If your kids are babies who need constant attention and soothing, pack their favorite blankets and movies and snacks and little toys, so that you can move your day along in 20 minute increments of survival if need be.

PLAN FOR TERRIBLE THINGS TO HAPPEN.
I always, ALWAYS pack two extra outfits for each kid, and enough diapers/undies for an entire day without our luggage, and in case of: spilled apple juice, peed pants, diaper blow-outs, smeared animal crackers, delayed planes, et cetera ET CETERA. Pack their extra clothes in gallon Ziplocks so that you have somewhere to put their dirty clothes, and don’t forget to bring a fresh shirt for yourself as well.

THERE ARE NO ATHIESTS TRAVELING WITH KIDS.
I don’t care what you do or don’t believe about a supreme being. When you are 37,000 feet in the air or 237 miles away from your highway exit and one or all of your kids are crying because you can’t hold them/let them walk/feed them lunch yet/find their binky/get them to sleep- YOU WILL FALL TO YOUR KNEES IN PRAYER. You will cry out to God to fast forward time and space and to please make your baby stop crying, and you will whisper a grateful “thank you” when everyone arrives unscathed. There are no atheists in fox holes, and there are absolutely no unbelievers traveling during nap times. So don’t be afraid to go there; you’ll be better off with a prayer on your lips than a curse word. Although a few of my prayers included curse words, so. Whatever it takes.

BE THANKFUL.
Recognize the incredible privilege of even being on airplane or on a road trip, the magnitude of wealth that a plane ticket or a tank full of gas and a working car represents to billions of people all over the world. You might be getting stressed in the circus of TSA security measures or really tired of hearing your kids ask when you’ll get there, but there’s a mother out there who isn’t sure where her babies’ next meals are coming from. So. Put your shoes on the conveyor belt and be thankful.

IF ALL ELSE FAILS, Screw ‘EM.
My sister in law told me this once. It’s helpful. If things just aren’t going your way, if the day has been long and hard and your baby or toddler just cannot be consoled, please don’t worry about the passengers around you. They will likely never see you or your kids again. They will go on their merry way and not give you a second thought, so why worry about what they think? Most of them probably feel sorry for you, honestly. And if they are actually upset about a helpless, tired, confused baby who dares to (God forbid) cry on a plane…. then repeat sentiments above.

So! Happy Travels this holiday season and beyond. May your flights be smooth, your roadtrips be jolly, and your snacks be filling. Much love from the Horney house to you and yours!

fresh snow, fresh grief.

November 14, 2014November 17, 2014 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ 3 Comments

I was supposed to attend a funeral today. A memorial service for a family who lost their little girl last week. She was a beautiful 13-year-old, a hurting soul who just couldn’t do this life anymore, and left a broken-hearted family behind. I wanted to go to the service and stand with the rest of the community, stand and honor her life and her parents and her siblings. But it’s been snowing for two days now and I couldn’t make it to the church. So while a family is weeping with their fresh wrenching grief, I’m snowed in at home with my little babies.

It was a strange morning. As the clocked turned to 11:00 a.m. and I knew the church was probably coming to a hush as someone stood in front to open their time together, I imagined preparing a funeral for one of my children. I shivered at the thought of our greatest nightmare as moms and dads. I cried and prayed for that hurting family. I sat on the floor and stared at my own kids, tearfully kissing their hair and their eyes and their feet and the middle of their chests where their precious hearts beat away. I am broken and thankful and afraid, all at once, in this warm glove of my house. Thankful for motherhood. Broken with fresh grief. Afraid in the vulnerability of parental love.

Bent in prayer for a family bent in pain.

The older I get, the more often tragedy seems to seep into my awareness. Am I just more conscious of it all? Am I simply paying more attention? Why is it all so bad all the time? How can we operate under all of this uncertainty, under the constant strain of inevitable catastrophes that threaten to consume us whole? How can we go on like this?

I don’t know. The world outside is covered in six inches of fresh snow, the reality of my neighborhood now cloaked as foreign shapes, softened edges. You could get lost in the frozen unknown of it all. The thing is, we are going on. I’m packing for a trip. My sister is preparing a Christmas song for children’s church. Sam is out buying a snow shovel. My friends, these sweet people who love their kids so much, are posting pictures of their families in squishy nylon coats, their cheeks pink and cold, playing happily outside. The world is turning and turning, and good things are still happening, and the snow is still falling too. We are going on.

Truth: I don’t know how we can go on like this. How we keep breathing, despite the bad news, despite the funerals, despite the catastrophes. All I know for certain (this is it, this is truly it) is that I put my hope in a Savior. In the God of my heart and the God of everything I know to be true and pure. In the God who lets the snow fall and lets the sun shine and has never, ever, abandoned me or any of us. That’s it. That’s all I know. And that’s the only way I can go on.

Come heal this world, Jesus. It’s too much sometimes, it really really is.

In light of grief; I wrote this essay below after my friend Jimmy died last year. It seemed like the kind of day to share it again.

Thinking of your beautiful Camille today, Corey.

Love, Jessie

————————————————

THIS IS HOW YOU GRIEVE.

i just want to keep the curtain shut tight.

November 11, 2014November 11, 2014 ~ horneymomtellsall ~ Leave a comment

This morning Clara climbed up on the couch and snuggled next to me while I watched the Today Show and nursed Sammy. The camera panned over to Jennifer Hudson right before a commercial, and the singer waved to the camera with a happy hello. Clara smiled, waved back and said “Good morning!”

After a second, she turned to me with furrowed eyebrows and asked, “Mom? Can she hear me?”

There are all these Wizard of Oz moments as a parent, when you have to decide whether to pull back the magic curtain a little bit further and reveal a truth about the real world, or let them keep imagining a more exciting existence. These moments are a teeter-totter of emotions for me: excited to see her mind exploring the limits of reality, sad because I know what disappointment lies ahead, hesitant to reveal too much too soon or too little too late. When they ask these questions, when they finger the folds of the curtain and look to you with curious eyes, what do you do? How do you know which conversations to have when?

This morning it’s an innocent question about the limits of a television screen. But what about tomorrow? Or next year? Or ten years from now, when her friends and the world around us are whispering and shouting messages that I can’t begin to sort through and file away for her?

If parenthood doesn’t send you to your knees in prayer, I don’t know what will, I’ll tell you what.

For today, for now, I told her the truth. No, Jennifer Hudson didn’t hear you. That’s not how TV works. She nodded, kissed her brother’s head, then slid off the couch and asked me to pour her a bowl of cheerios.

And so it goes.

Horney Mom Tells All

stories, jokes, mediocre parenting advice.

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