I have been engaged in a quote journey by Anne Neilson for awhile now called 100 Days of Gratitude. Each quote is paired with her original artwork Angel Series. I
have decided to share some of the quotes that hit home for me during yhr month of November. Each week I will post seven quotes from/for the week. Perhaps by December our hearts will be softened and ready to receive what Advent brings. Here is today’s nugget:
“We can complain because rosebushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” Abraham Lincoln
Love y’all, Marla
PS, I don’t think I can post her artwork because of copywrite, so here is a stock photo from the internet…
Last week our minister asked me to read the scripture for today (Sunday). I was honest with him and told him I would feel like a complete fraud as this particular commandment is a daily struggle. Our lesson comes from Deuteronomy 5:16 and Ephesians 6:1-4. I wrestled all week with these verses, not because I didn’t know them, and not because I have not followed them, but because, as an adult, I do not feel I successfully live out Deuteronomy 5:16.
Interestingly enough, I remember memorizing Ephesians 6:1 in kindergarten. “Children obey your parents.” I was (and still am) the quintessential eldest daughter. My husband sent me a meme this morning actually:
Why am I not surprised that we never learned Ephesians 6:4 in kindergarten? “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” You could also substitute or add “and mothers”. After all, if we are to honor both, should they not both be held accountable? The intent of this verse probably was not an invitation for obedience to become a two way street between parent and child. However, if I have learned anything about raising adolescents, provoking, angering, demanding, and frustrating your teenager will backfire every single time. If yelling “do what I say, not what I model as your parent” isn’t an example of the dark side of God’s humor, well, I don’t know what is.
I am not a perfect parent. I was not a perfect child. I learned to be a good enough parent. I never learned how to be a good enough child. I am haunted by my own adolescence. The blind obedience, desire for approval, and belief that love could only come from being perfect nearly killed me—more than once. I have stared those demons down every day of my adult life. Mistakes are learning opportunities. Failure builds resilience. Blind obedience is dangerous. One’s character is about truth not perfection.
Thus my struggle with Deuteronomy 5:16. “Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” The first time I discovered that my parents were fallible was in fourth grade. They had to tell me the truth about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy. I didn’t believe my parents could lie. It was a heavy blow. I was a true believer in magic and fairy tales. I thought happily ever after was real and it would rightly come to me. (I got my happily ever after, but that’s a tale for another day.)
I can count in one hand the number of times I was truly disobedient from the time I was twelve or so. Self-flagellation was very much alive in spirit though not in physical action. Somehow I survived middle school. High school was a daily recitation of “college is coming, hang on and don’t be stupid.”
When I arrived at college it did not take long for those inflexible “perfect child” restraints to snap. I am fortunate that I had a support system to replace those crumbling guardrails. I credit the interested, present, and understanding adults on and off campus in my life for being there for me.
My parents divorced my junior year. The fifth Commandment and I have been on limited speaking terms ever since. The divorce itself I have come to terms with. The subsequent life paths of my father and mother are not my business. They are who they are and our relationships are what they are.
I have struggled with the idea of honoring my parents all of my adult life. This must certainly be a moral failing on my part. It certainly does not fit the mold of eldest daughter. Duty? Check. Accept them as your parents? Check. Honor them? As a dear friend of mine says about questions he doesn’t wish to answer, “do you want the real answer or the funny answer?”
So there you have it folks. The unvarnished truth. The imperfection. The sin. I have always been honest with my own children. I have acknowledged the failure to model Deuteronomy and Ephesians in the expected manner and done my best to explain why. I can only hope that my attempts to do the right thing are stronger than the less than stellar results my boys have sometimes witnessed and experienced.
Today’s sermon had many comforting moments. Honor looks like taking care of your elders. Check. Honor looks like accepting that a mother and a father gave you the gift of being. Check. Honor looks like doing your best to live a life with God at your center and above all others. Check. If this is what the honor of really Deuteronomy 5:16 means, then I can do it and so can you. These ideas do not bring me the peace of absolution and freedom I seek, but as Brian McLaren says, “We make the road by walking.”
I’m all out of honest reflection at the moment friends. I just want to be a good human. Humbly on the journey of life with you.
Every day I wake up thinking, this is it, we’ve bottomed out as a nation. Today we will say enough, and claw our way back to civility. Today we will begin to glue our fault lines back together and find a way forward. Alas…
Perhaps it has always been this way. Roving bands of Sons of Liberty used to tar and feather British loyalists, burn them out of their homes, kidnap them and put them on ships back to England. Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. And eleven states seceded from the United States during our Civl War. Mob violence, political assassinations, and the potential breakdown our country has always been with us. It’s still happening today.
Make it stop friends. The rapture didn’t come. The apocalypse hasn’t happened. Nuclear annihilation is still in check. I need people to stop acting like we live in a dystopian universe and instead live in the universe we have been given. I truly believe we are better than this current reality.
The only way through is together and the only way to be together is to LISTEN.
*Active listening is consciously giving your undivided attention to someone (or something) with intentional focus not only on the words, but body language, visual cues, tone, and message. *Passive listening is the exact opposite. We hear words, but do not engage, and miss the message.
Which one do you do?
If you can’t (or won’t) listen. Write each other letters. Remember the Anti-Federalist and Federalist Papers? Our founding fathers published essays to each other when advocating for their version of the Constitution. You too can read and write about your differences with others!
However you choose to receive (or repost) information, seriously evaluate where it comes from—digital, audio, video, print, person—all of it. This is perhaps the most important part of all.
There is an enormous difference between an association of like-minded individuals and an echo chamber. Deconstruct those scrolling algorithms. Get out of your self-imposed silo.
We come together as a country with like-minded ideas such as democracy, rule of law, and freedom of speech, but we have a thousand different thoughts about what these ideas mean and even more differences about how to execute said ideas. We are not all saying the same thing, but we’re all saying something. And it ALL matters. My rights end where your rights begin and your rights end where my rights begin. It’s a high minded restating the golden rule folks.
Below is a picture of our beloved Phi-Eu debate space from Davidson (google it). I added a link to a Youtube video from 2024 explaining about it.
Phi and Eu Halls at Davidson College in Davidson, NC.
There are seasons in every life. Some seasons are easy, others are interesting, some are boring, some are painful, and some seem to never end.
When I was a young mom, I thought the diapers and sleepless nights and painfully repetitive answers to my toddlers’ questions would never end.
Then what I call the “ballfield years” arrived. Summers were long and hot and sticky and long. Saturday mornings on a field or in a gym watching my child was sweet for about ten minutes and then it was exhausting.
All of a sudden my life transitioned into the long, slow goodbye.
Parenting adolescents is the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life. Harder than moving out on my own. Harder than adjusting to marriage. Harder than moving to my husband’s hometown and starting my life over—again. Adolescents are still egocentric. The transition from egocentric to self-sufficient is tricky and confusing for them. They are sitting at the grown-ups table without a kid’s menu. The rules they always thought were black and white are suddenly gray and elastic. Teaching a child to solve his own problems and deal with his own emotions is terrifying. Overnight I went from the one person who could make it all better, to the one person who cannot fix anything under any circumstance.
The scariest part about raising an adolescent child is the discovery of whether or not you and your spouse actually made it out of adolescence yourselves! Thankfully we did, but it is so easy to fall into the old habits that used to plague your own growing phase. The well worn, “Who’s the 12 year old here?” still echoes in these walls.
This long goodbye—as I have renamed adolescence—is for me, a joyful sorrow. It is like living in a perpetual state of the oxymoronic: seriously funny and ridiculouly serious. I have existed in this state of joyful sorrow, training our sons to leave us, for over a decade. The last bird is going to launch in less than a year. I am so happy for him and so sad for me all at the same exact moment.
The season is going to change again and I have no idea what to do next. What windows will open when all the doors are closed? I still have half a century of living to do and I refuse to live a half life. I am however, completely frozen in place just now. I practiced letting go well for years: going to school, riding the bus, sleepovers, summer camp, driving a car, moving away to college. I learned to let go so well that I have forgotten how to start again.
Maybe what I want is an epilogue to our story, but in real life there is only the afterword.
Thanks for loving me through these next seasons dear ones. I am boldly asking for help. I am genuinely living through humor. And I always hold onto hope.
You are 18 today. Time went so fast. We’ve had a time of it over the last several years. Adolescence hit hard and mean and so completely differently from your early years that it felt like whiplash. But with prayer, a throwback music playlist, and Chick-fil-a, we made it. As we move into this new phase of adulting, it will be hard for me to take my hands off of the wheel. It is your ship not mine. As you said when you were two years old, “I fick its [fix it] my own self.”
You were always my sweet snuggle bunny. From the start, you just hung out tucked under my chin on my right arm as I did everything—chased your brother, made dinner, did laundry, talked on the phone, all of it. When not in my arms, you lived in your baby swing in the kitchen of our old house keeping me company. You never protested the stroller when I put you there with cheerios while I chased your brother. You were such an easy going, sweet tempered toddler. I always said if you had come first I would have had six children.
You have so many talents and gifts and unique proclivities. One of your early ones (that you still have today) is the ability to sleep anywhere, anytime, in any situation. You slept on a moving seadoo, a moving float/tube behind a boat, in a 4×4 side-by-side, in a golf cart, on the bleachers, on the floor, and my personal favorite, on a ski slope waiting for pickup from ski school. I’m just a weird enough mom to have picture proof of it all, because it was so precious to me. It became a family tradition to see where you would sleep next!
I have never known a child with as much emotional intelligence as you. From the start you always cared more deeply than any other child about anything. Be it a sick friend, a hurt pet, a disagreement between friends, a playground injustice, an exasperated teacher moment, a broken rule, being passed over, overshadowed, or dismissed, you were always ready to defend, extend love, forgiveness, patience, or just use plain good sense. To this day, I am not sure you realize how incredibly unique and brave this gift of emotional intelligence is. You see people differently. If the world loved like you, it would be a far happier more generous loving place. You make us all better humans.
When you went to kindergarten I was inconsolable. I teared up for weeks. When you went to middle school I was so very proud. Bless it, you spent a large majority of your middle school years as a COVID kiddo online or in a mask, but you seemed to thrive anyway. When you started driving, I was torn between the elation of freedom from carpool and feeling distraught over the loss of my forever buddy. You were my ride or die warrior for 16 years.
Now you are a high school senior and I don’t even know how I feel. You seem nonchalant about it. I am a hot mess.
Parenting a second born is just as unique as parenting a first born. There is the sense that I’ve done this before and I know what’s coming. Yet, in many ways it’s like parenting for the first time all over again. I was in a different stage of life when you came. We were no longer in residency. We made a home in TN. We had a three year old and a mortgage. You were the cherry on top of a life full of blessings.
Oh my darling, you have been the absolute joy of my universe and I am so proud and happy and scared and already a little bit lonely. I cannot wait to see where you will go and what you will do with this last year of high school and beyond. The next chapter awaits. I’m ready for that new journey too—but not yet.
Enjoy being 18 and all of its privileges. Respect the responsibilities that come with being 18 and own them. I am forever in your corner. You’ve got this.
Go with God my baby boy. There is no one like you in the whole world.
It’s July 7th already? So far, it feels like the summer that wasn’t. I haven’t had much to post, because, well, I’m reeling from family medical issues, the intractable nature of our country, and the recent tragedy in Texas that isn’t over yet. A friend of mine lost her battle with cancer leaving four teenagers. I feel like I’m living in a movie with a doomsday script where the writer cannot decide on which problem to focus.
In the midst of all these plot lines, I know with certainty that life is just life. We have to live it, make peace with it, and find the goodness in it. While I don’t have to remind myself to be grateful every day, I do have to remind myself that my response to difficulty is my choice.
I have so many reasons to keep going and ride this bumpy ride of life. I have my health. I have the best of friends who recently fed us for a whole month. Check-ins, calls, texts, and visits buoyed us daily. Medical recoveries are going well for all parties—even minor victories are victories!
The country feels like it is going to hell, but honestly, has anyone ever not felt that way at least once in the last 50 years? As precarious as democracy feels right now, we’re still America. I’m going to keep showing up for my neighbor in the best ways that I can and vote every chance I get.
I don’t even have words for the families in Texas. After the total annihilation of Western NC from flooding last fall, I can’t even imagine how Texas is coping with such a dramatic flood. What if that had been Quaker Lake Camp when I was 8 and my sister and I and all of our friends had been washed away? Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer, for everyone.
Hoping for some clarity in the last half of summer. Thanks for wading through the crazy with me dear readers. I’m grateful for you and happy to be on the earth with you.
Holding you in love and healing light. Love ya’ll so big,
Maycember was quite a challenge this year, hence the late post. Love Y’all, M
Time for my yearly Mother’s Day post where I bask in the triumph of my boys turning into good humans. I thank the friends who help me along the way every day. I give a nod of gratitude to my mother-in-law. And I make allowances for my own mother. I’m certain that one day my sons will chagrin as they talk about my shortcomings and those crazytown moments of their youth with me.
I can think of no other choice in the world more frightening, dangerous, or world-changing than motherhood. Truly, no other change to one’s life and body is more significant. For those who cannot or choose not to become mothers, there is no other position in the world that can causes more personal strife than not being a mother. As women, sometimes it seems like we just can’t win. No situation, no place, and no person in the world receives more judgment, more opinions, more negativity, or more blame than a woman of childbearing age. It’s almost as if the whole unique proposition of motherhood is somehow taken out of our hands and given to other people who think they know better in all stages of our lives from 12 to 52. And I want to know why.
First of all, it’s nobody’s business. However, as humans we have somehow allowed it to become everybody’s business. When are you going to start a family (um, highly personal with a multitude of answers)? When are you going to have another one? OR, don’t they know how that happens (when there are say four or five children)?
Then there is the visible/invisible dichotomy. Women become visible when they are pregnant, or holding on to toddlers at Target, or cheering on their kids at a sporting event, graduation, weddings. Perhaps that’s why so many women start pushing for grandchildren. Their previous visibility has faded and they are ready to be back out there in the limelight.
Ah, but that limelight, however fleeting, is harsh, flourescent, and glaring. The imperfect moments of life provide a running commentary for others. Glad that’s not my kid running around like that. Did you see what her daughter was wearing (note: “her” daughter, not where’s the dad)? She’s really let herself go. What is she feeding those kids (again, “she” as if a dad can’t make a peanut butter sandie, or slip the kids some candy)? Then there is the ultimate stressor, the crying baby on an airplane is your baby. I could go on. The amount of judgment is limitless.
The comments we have allowed as a society to sink in and become part of our everyday psyche are truly terrifying. It takes years and years and years to root out those memories embedded deep in our amygdala. I am just as guilty as the next person when it comes to judging mothers. In fact, I’ve said everything I wrote here. Shame on me. For someone who feels the judgment as deeply as I do, how dare I even think it? Shame on me.
I am a mother of two sons. I am an aunt to five nieces. I have given hugs, fixed booboos, called out behavior, celebrated victories, counseled, questioned, and fed more children than I can count as an educator and volunteer. I run the spectrum of feelings about being a mother every single day of my life. There is nothing I will ever do as important and impactful, while at the same time invisible and undervalued as being a mother. Motherhood is the most complicated state of being that there is. The act of mothering is always in the present tense. Motherhood cannot be quantified because love is a living, breathing, ever-expanding state of being. “Love you to the moon and back” implies without limits, but I’m sure a child has calculated the distance as some point!
So, Happy Late Mother’s Day to all women in the world in the roles of mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, friends, church moms, teacher moms, volunteer moms, babysitters, and any other role that spreads the love.
I was sitting on the couch just now, not really thinking about anything, and a song I learned in middle school chorus popped into my head. I even remember the sign language that we learned to accompany our song! It was a unexpected pleasant memory.
Music is a medium for the brain to process and store information. Songs are like tastes and smells that instantly transport you to a place or time from the past. Songs are also a conduit for emotional regulation. Songs are a way of learning and memorizing information. Music is definitely powerful.
If you’ve ever seen the movie “The Holiday” there is a funny scene in which Jack Black and Kate Winslet go to Blockbuster and he talks about the power of a musical score—complete with his own renditions. It’s intelligent humor while also making a serious point.
We all write a musical score to our life. Ofcourse, I am a musical theater person so I randomly break out in song just about anywhere. I have a somg or melody attached to almost every memory I can think of!
As I said earlier, music is used to teach life lessons, not just process feelings. For example, learning to give thanks develops with the daily singing of the blessing before lunch in preschool. Johnnie Appleseed, the Superman Song, and God is Great all conjure up visuals of tiny little hands folded over little lunchboxes on little tables with little chairs.
Lessons about good behavior in kindergarten came in the form of “oh be careful little ears what you hear/eyes what you see/hands what you do/mouth what you say/feet where you go.” I don’t care who you are or how old you are, that song will remind you of your behavior, stat.
We use music (I would include rhymes and chants here) to help children learn and remember important information. Whether it’s being “hallway ready”, learning the days of the week, refocusing attention, or memorizing multiplication tables, teachers everywhere use rhymes and chants to reinforce a desired outcome.
Sidenote: In my 40’s, I retooled “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” to Keys, Wallet, cell phone, purse. Alas, somebody else had the same idea and made their Instagram meme first. But it works!
I sang in church, alot. My church friends will never let me live down “Morning Has Broken” or “Let us Break Bread Together” both of which I sang with great frequency for offertories and anthems on Communion and Fifth Sundays. And my terrible attempt at “O Holy Night” during every Christmas service from 1988-1994 still makes me cringe.
Then there are the middle/high school dance memories where you tried not to cry when the boy you wanted to dance with to “that” song danced with your best friend—or your worst enemy. Movies like “Footloose”, “Back to the Future”, “Grease”, “Sixteen Candles”, and She’s all That” all have high school dance scenes for a reason.
And let’s not forget the Top Ten at Ten on the radio, VH1, and MTV! How many nights did I stay up listening, or watching (if I could sneak past my parents) for my favorite song/love song/song that made me cry over a boy? Taylor Swift’s 2006 “Teardrops on my Guitar” is basically everyone’s teenage crush story.
And sometimes, you just need to hit the open road. A good drive needs a good soundtrack…
Let’s take a moment to honor the importance of the mix tape. Sadly, kids today will never understand the beauty of the perfect mixtape. Sure we transitioned to burning our favorites onto CDs, creating a playlist on our Ipods, or these days just choosing a “channel” on IHeart Radio or Spotify, but the significance and satisfaction of creating the perfect mix of songs that explain your life has been lost. I still have the mix tapes my husband made me in college. I cannot play them anymore as I do not have a cassette player any longer, but I cherish them all the same.
Human beings have music at weddings and funerals, birthdays and ballgames. Happy Birthday is arguably the most universal song on the planet. In the United States, the national anthem is played before every school, college, and professional sporting event. Picking the perfect wedding song has become a defacto art form. Funeral songs are also important! “Taps” is played at every US military funeral I have ever been to, or watched on television. If I don’t hear “It is well with my soul” at a funeral, I begin to wonder about the afterlife for the dearly departed whose life we are celebrating.
I challenge you to think about the significant events in your life. If you were making a soundtrack of your life, what songs or musical pieces would you attach to those memories? If you were writing for the theater, would your life be a straight play, a musical, or an opera? It’s an interesting exercise.
Love Y’all like an early 90s hard rock love song. Go make a mixtape!
At the end of every school year, I emailed my students’ parents Mrs. Marla’s Summer Playbook of how tos, what fors, and why nots for continued speech and language practice at home. In retrospect, it was too long, too overwhelming, and likely never read by any of them. After twenty plus years of trying to cover too much, I have boiled my summer list down to three things: rest, play, and read.
Rest
Most parents do not have the opportunity for summers off. Once school is out, many folks have to leave their children with grandmas, babysitters, nannies, older siblings, or in more formal daycare situations and go to work. Lots of families make the summer camp circuit. Regardless of what you do or have to do this summer, try to REST.
There was a time when I wanted my boys to have something to do every second—baseball, swim lessons, piano lessons, art camp, and on and on and on. We could have rested! I’m not saying these opportunities were not valuable or not worth the hefty price tag. I’m saying, rest! Take naps. Be bored. Go to bed early. Sleep late and watch cartoons on Saturday. Go to church and eat dinner with grandma on Sunday, and then nap again. Our bodies and our children’s bodies are begging for rest. Unplug. Tune out. Lay in the grass and watch the clouds; rest.
Play
I am afraid that play is a dying art. We do not play anymore. What happened? Children need to play. They need to get messy and scrape their knees. They need to spill things and build things. Play is children’s work; it is how they learn.
I once made a one sheet for my parents of no-prep, no-prop games to play with their children. Examples include: Hide-n-seek. Freeze tag. Red Rover. Red Light Green Light. Mother May I? Simon Says. I Spy. Pass the Secret. Telephone. Most of these games are oldies-but-goodie-games we played with each other a long time ago.
I am not a crafty person, but I love scissors and glue on a rainy day. While glitter and slime are banned from my own house, I do love play dough, paint, sticks, mud, sand, water, markers, stamps, stickers, and crayons.
Never underestimate the intrigue of kitchen pots and pans and tupperware and cups—just put the knives and forks out of reach. Banging on lids and stacking cups and opening and closing drawers bring real joy to toddlers. Pretend tea parties and “playing” chef turn into real cooking practice and learning how to make simple things. Following a recipe is natural math practice and a lesson in patience.
Read
Dear friends, you know my love of the written word. I need not belabor it here. Read to your children. Let them see you reading. Visit the library together. Make up funny stories and share them. Illustrate your favorite stories. Challenge your child to write down a favorite story told by a grandparent, family member, or friend. Make up alternate endings to books you read together. The power of reading is infinite.
My favorite Peanuts cartoon.
Have the best summer friends. Enjoy your families. Enjoy your pets. I hope you get a little me time too.
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Groban. Theater kids have grit. Theater kids have endurance. And theater kids love life.
So many of the most important life lessons I have learned over the years came from from my time in musical theatre:
Be on time.
Be prepared.
Be brave.
Take direction with grace.
Learn your notes.
Learn your lines.
Learn your co-actors lines.
Know your audience.
Connect with your audience.
You can perform sick.
You can perform tired.
Performing sick and tired too often will give you mononucleosis, so learn when to stop—preferrably before you get mono, not after.
Being a diva can and will backfire on you.
Understudies and Swings are the most valuable cast members you have in the show.
Help with the set, the costumes, the sound, the lights, and the marketing—you never know when you’ll need to know that stuff.
Thank those who make the set, the costumes, the sound, the lights, and the marketing—without them you have no stage and no audience.
You can sing and dance with the man who broke your heart.
You can even sing and dance with the man whose heart you broke.
Learn to Fail and then fail spectacularly—it’s a better story that way.
I think life is much like a musical. We love our favorite characters so much because they reflect back to us the human condition. Feeling seen from the seats when someone on stage sings about love, or rants about hate, or cries about loss is real and precious and divine. And our need to be heard by those sitting in the audience is just as strong. The theatre is more than just entertainment. The shared connection with each other is what makes us human.
“Theater is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.” Martha Graham*
Go see a musical dear ones. Experience the energy of opening night. Feel that flutter in your belly as the lights go down and the curtain comes up. You will not be disappointed. If you don’t break out into song on your way home after a show, well, I’ll always love you, but we will never be kindred spirits.
Marla's Alphabet Soup 