The heart of the issue…{breaking up is hard to do}

How do I write it, how do I write it, how do I write it? Among all the fluff {fluff stuff that feeds my soul and leaves it hungry, not bad fluff stuff, just not intended for soul food}, how do I articulate what is throbbing in my heart soul today? {just start. No perfection, just start}

It was a rough ride in today. The to-school commute. All were tired, short, stressed, chewing and biting each other and no grace anywhere. I was one of them. Chewed and spit with the best of them.

As the storm quelled, I shamefacedly whispered without words, Lord help us. I am a child. I get into it and get hurt and give hurt just like a child. I am suppose to be the momma here. The calm, the lover, the fixer and soother and I am the wounded, hissing child.

Why? When I want to be so much more than a wounded child? Why am I STILL so many times {majority in this season} the child and not the momma?

Contributing factors….but not the heart of it:
-sleep…I stay up to late and am not rested. Which makes me get up too late and too tired… so I then....

-do not spend enough {any} time in the word, prayer, alone with God. Momma’s well is lined with dry, scratchy concrete, and dipping into it when a toxic crisis is happening, draws forth hot air and hissing.

I spend my after-they-are-in-bed-time creating things with my fingers {valentine pillowcases, at present}. Not bad in itself, but being the current fluff-stuff I am feeding my soul….. I watch a recorded tv program while I work, than another, than another, than…..

The soul craves what you feed it.

I am not feeding it God, I am feeding it fluff-stuff and tv junk. Junk food, junk reactions.

I know I need to break-up with my tv. Miss formerly prideful don’t have any channels. I got channels at Thanksgiving as a “bargain” for a cheaper internet service and planned on canceling channels after the Christmas season {programs}. It is still here.

I then planned to break up with my nighttime lover when we move, next week. Then I ordered it for the new house. Breaking up is hard to do.

I heard a sermon and the part that made my heart skip a beat, was the question: Are you drifting? What are you doing now that you use to not be doing that is distracting you?

Tv – I knew then I had to break up, but didn’t

My son went to Encounter Jesus Culture, and on a message on holiness, he talked about doing something radical and how he put a towel over the tv. My son did this, when he came home. My heart again said, break it off, but I didn’t.

See my soul craves what I feed it and breaking up is hard to do.

Then today, too tired again for morning well-filling with the only living water, love, I am one of the broken children exacerbating the toxic spill in the car.

And the heart of the matter I read from the soul-aching, yet hope-filling words of Ann Voskamp. Learning to be a Mama from our children…

“…what it means to show grace, to step over negativity, to bite the tongue, to hold and soothe the sadness, to work on when tired, to pray more fervently, to wipe up the ugliness with love, to cover up the sinning mad with the embrace tender, to learn to do love the only way love is real: unconditionally.”

“Because a mother soaks it up.”

{Or at least we are suppose to.}

“One morning I’m buttering toast and they spill soul entrails, again, and I’m left flailing, again. One child mocks and another wails so older child metes out vigilante justice and alliances are formed and betrayed and tensions rocket and any instructive words on my part seem to tip them all more and consequences imparted slop more mess and soon the room tilts and a tsunami wall of rising, ugly pain threatens to deluge our humble abode and sweep all away. Now would seem a good time to throw up arms, wave a feeble dishtowel defeat.

What else can a mother do when it all falls apart?

Soak it up. God shoots back an answer to my rhetorical question and I’m rung.

Absorb pain with love. Mop up hurt with embrace. Throw down self and wipe it all up.” You truly must read the rest here.

And the heart of the issue is my allowing myself to forget that I am the momma…and to be momma I cannot have an empty well. I can love them because he first love me…but I have to allow him to first love me through time, word, prayer.

So yes, I am breaking up with my tv today. More important, Lord, help me to feed my soul with you, so I crave you, so I can soak it up, like you do!

Thank you Lord, thank you Ann.