A Mile Wide and…

September 21, 2012 Lindsey P. Brackett4 Comments

It’s Five Minute Friday! The perfect way for a too-busy mama sometimes writer to help some words find paper. Or blogsphere.

Wide….

He said it this week in the revival. “Our faith can be a mile wide and an inch deep.” It’s a phrase I’ve always used to describe my curriculum in my classroom of middle schoolers, not my faith in Jesus Christ.

But it’s true.

A mile wide. An inch deep.

I know a lot. My heart and soul and spirit are covered over and over with the words and the cliches and the hymns and the scripture. I could write for a mile about being in church since I was a small child, about learning of Noah and Moses and Jonah’s big, big whale, but I couldn’t dig you a trench and fill it with hope.

My faith is too wide, too busy trying to make everyone fit it to become a root that reaches deep to find its source for living water.

So my revived thought this week is that maybe I need to dig in, dig down, dig deep and let God be the one who is wider than the sea rather than me.

Stretched Between

August 18, 2012 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

Stretch is the prompt…

In so many ways, it’s all the same. Desks in rows and newly sharpened pencils and stacks of kleenexes and way too much paperwork.

But the feet in Toms or neon Nikes belong to children I don’t know, have no connections with, will only be here long enough to barely know before their real teacher returns. They slouch or hide behind their hair or sit and stare at me with eyes big as I welcome them to their first days of middle school and tell them how many days they will have to know me.

I get up too early but not early enough to fix the breakfasts and brush their hair and take the first day picture. My throat catches when I climb into the minivan alone to drive away and let their daddy load them up all four for first grade and second grade and Mimi’s house.

There I’m in control, the teacher, the confident one who could do this with on the fly and make it seem planned. I console tears and fright and lost schedules and mix ups. I breathe relief at the end that this classroom isn’t mine and I can give it back in only a few short weeks.

Here I stretch to make it all work. The backpacks and lunches and laundry and supper and preschool Open House and all the times that I am mommy.

Even when I’m not there.

Friday Five · marriage

When the One You Love is Enough {5 minute friday}

July 20, 2012September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett6 Comments

Ten years ago today I thought it was enough that we had the perfect, fairy tale wedding. Blue chiffon on my bridesmaids, yellow roses in my bouquet, a full church, and a fabulous reception. For that day, that moment, that time, it was enough.

It was perfect.

We had given no real thought to the future. Neither of us had jobs. Neither of us had set-in-stone plans. Neither of us had given days beyond our honeymoon any thought at all. All we had was an apartment, crates of wedding china, and degrees so new you could smell it on the paper.

It was enough for then.

And sometimes it’s enough for now.

Those aspirations of the newly married…we still haven’t reached them. We probably never will. Because those ideas we had of what would be enough were more than we could ever need in this lifetime.

Today we define enough by the groceries in the pantry, the socks on the floor, the toys in the bathtub. Enough is counted in bedtime stories and sloppy kisses and dirty diapers and one more snuggle before the alarm sounds.

Enough is more than the fairy tale, the happy ending, the one perfect day.

Enough is when you get up every day and try again, and try harder, and love even when it’s hard and the home is in chaos and the kids are shrieking and the air has gone out again in the truck.

It’s enough that we’ve made it ten years and would do it again, over and over, everyday for the rest of our lives.

Friday Five · http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post · madelynne

See: 5 Minute Friday

June 1, 2012September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. Brackett4 Comments

What do you see?

I see my two big girls, my first attempts at mothering, my inability to fix their hair incredibly cute on this last day of school.

I see Annabelle is tall enough to wear the dress Madelynne wore the first day and Madelynne is forcing that smile because she was irritated I would take their picture but wouldn’t drive them.

I see how much they’ve been through this year.

Such a big year for such little people.

A mommy who couldn’t quite get it together but is trying so hard. A new brother who was so unexpected and such a blessing. A change in lifestyle. More of the words “we just can’t afford that” and less of the giving in.

I don’t think I’ve scarred them. If I have, I don’t see it.

Instead I see hope for the future. Another chance to help make the world a little better, brighter, sweeter.

They’ve completed kindergarten and first grade and so soon this picture will be caps and gowns and sequins and tiaras.

I’ll take the hand me down dress and forced smile.

amelia · Friday Five · motherhood · reflections

Five Minute Friday

January 6, 2012 Lindsey P. Brackett3 Comments

This is a great idea from Gypsy Mama. Now let’s see if I can write uninterrupted for five minutes. It’s supposed to be more stream-of-consciousness than edited and perfected posting.

Because I ever have time for editing and perfecting.

Here goes….

The first Friday of the New Year. The topic is roar…

Roaring for what exactly? And how? Amelia likes to roar. Especially when she’s strapped in the grocery buggy for longer than thirty minutes and the line is long and she’s bored. Then she starts roaring. So I say, Amelia are you a tiger? And she says in that sweet little almost-two lisp, Yesh.

Then we pretend to be an elephant, a pig, a cow, a duck, a chicken, an owl (with flapping arms and hoo-hoo) and a lion (which is basically a tiger again). It’s adorable and makes me feel like a roaring mama. Fended off that tantrum, that’s right.

Sometimes she roars and chases her sisters around the house. They squeal and run and climb in and under the kitchen table and make lots of noise that I sometimes get annoyed by. So then I roar like a mean mama. And they get in trouble for—for what? For being kids? For having fun? For distracting me from something that can’t possible be as important as they are?

Their daddy roars with them too. He chases them all around the house and they play and play. Always right before bedtime. And I’m usually in the kitchen wiping down the table and wishing I had the courage to roar just for the fun of it. Just to hear my own voice and their laughter.

ROARRRRRR……I’ll work on it.