Five Minute Friday: REAL

Every Thursday a one-word prompt will be announced here on my blog at 10pm EST (and continuing through Friday).

Those who’d like to participate in Five Minute Friday will write for five minutes on the topic of the week, post it on their own blog and link up the post here.

GO

Well there's a scary word.  REAL.  Who actually knows the "real" me?  And is our internet obsession and online presence ever truly real?

Facebook friendly: with makeup and hair done

I liked walls.  I liked to keep people at a distance.  I wanted them to see a version of myself, not the "real" me, and I was afraid of anyone getting too close and seeing behind the walls.  I found that sarcasm is a great wall-builder.  So is humor.  And lies.  And just plain being mean.  I worked hard to build my walls, and I thought of myself as dwelling in some fabulous castle behind my fortifications.

But then God showed up in my life.  He made His presence known.  And one very important thing to know about God is that he is a wall-destroyer.  Just look at the Battle of Jericho in the book of Joshua.  Those people did absolutely nothing but walk around for a week and play some music.  God is the one who made the walls fall down.  And He did the same for me.

Making silly faces with the boys

My choice would have been to open a door and let some people in.  Or to step outside the walls from time to time, but leaving them standing so I could retreat if necessary.  But God's plan for me (and His plan for you) is to demolish the walls, to leave nothing between me and Him, nothing between me and the people I'm meant to know and love.  Without walls, they can get to know the real me, and maybe they will love me when they know the real me.

STOP

Love and Marriage (10 Years In)

A few years ago, our pastor preached a sermon on marriage and told the story of Adam and Eve.  You know how it goes, right?  The world was created, then Adam and Eve were created to live in it and care for it.  They were made for each other, to be helpers, partners.  The Bible tells us that they were friends with God, that they were naked, and they felt no shame.  But then...then there was the forbidden fruit, the Fall, the Covering, the Curse.  The man and the woman hid from God and they made clothes to hide their bodies from each other.  I sat in my seat (3/4 of the way back, where I am most comfortable) and I thought about this story.  Like, really thought about it.  The end of the story, well, that all sounds very familiar.  Shame?  Secrecy?  Hiding from everyone, even God?  Oh yes, I know it well.  But back to the beginning.  That part sounds amazing, and impossible.  I wondered if that would ever happen for me and my husband.

I think every love story is a reverse of the first one.  We begin distrustful of the other--fallen, covered, cursed--yet we long for this person so much that we overcome our fears and we take that leap.  We imagine a Paradise, a personal Garden of Eden where we can return to that original state, and look at each other naked and unashamed.  But how do we get there?  What steps do we take, how do we change?

I've been married for ten years:  ten busy, stressful, happy, confusing, lonely, lovely, life-changing years.  By no means have we "arrived", nor would I call myself an expert.  But I've seen glimpses of what true partnership can be.  It is so good.  Turning to another person and having him meet my needs.  Telling the truth-the whole truth-and he listens and accepts me as I am.  Tackling tasks (whether it is the dishes or raising the children) together and realizing that it takes half the time and energy when we are both giving it our best.  This is how two become one.  By taking care of each other.  By supporting each other.  By working together and building one life, one family, one home.

It really hit me when I asked my husband to buy a new mascara for me at the store.  He was heading out to get groceries with one kid while I stayed home and entertained the other two (it's just easier this way).  I needed a new mascara because I lost the other one.  I found it a few days ago in a box of tampons.  Who knows how it got there.  When I couldn't find it, I assumed it had gotten thrown out by accident or eaten by one of the kids.  So Chris can get me a new one, right?  He doesn't know anything about makeup, but this is what I did: I told him the exact name of what I wanted.  I texted him a message so he could reference it when he got to the store.  It's in an orange tube.  He got there and called me to say they didn't have black, but they had black/brown.  Would that be an okay substitute?  Yeah, it's fine.  And he came home with exactly what I had asked for.  It seems like such a small thing (I mean literally, what's a tube of mascara?  4 inches?), but it represented something huge.  A milestone of sorts.  For the first few years of our marriage, he would go pick up sandwiches for us and I would write out exactly what I wanted, the way you do with your co-workers when everybody orders out.  And he would always bring home French Onion chips.  Why did you get those?  Don't you like them? No.  Oh, well I thought you liked something gross so I figured it was this.  Every.  Single.  Time.  For years.  And I was disappointed because I thought my husband at least should know the kind of chips I like.  It went both ways, truthfully.  I would buy the wrong candy (But I thought you liked this?).  He would buy the wrong shampoo (NO, the green bottle!).  I would pick a movie he hated.  He would listen to music at night.  And on and on.

I'm an independent kind of person anyway.  I know I can at least trust myself to do things the way I like.  And that's a great mentality for a single woman.  But it doesn't make a marriage work.  The partnership that we all crave (whether we say it out loud or not, you know it's true) is the Good Thing that we hope will happen when we say "I do."  But what I've learned over these past ten years is that you only get the Good Thing after you do the Hard Thing.  And the Hardest Thing is to trust.  To be open.  To say, "It really bothers me that you don't remember what kind of chips I like.  I want salt and vinegar."  And to be willing to figure out how to help him remember.  Maybe he needs a text.  Maybe he can only handle a list that has one item on it.  Maybe he needs to carry the empty bottle with him to the store.  (And, for the record, maybe he needs to be slightly less self-involved and pay attention.)  And that goes both ways.  Once you start getting the lunch order right, then you can move on to the bigger things.  The insecurities.  The fears.  The hopes and dreams for the future.  Honesty and vulnerability are Hard Things.

It's a Hard Thing to stand before another person, to bear your soul and your body and the rest of your life, to be naked and unashamed.  And how amazing for him to strip down too, to lay it all out on the table.  Not just that, but to accept you for who you really are, and for you to accept him fully.  That's the Good Thing we are working towards, what makes this all worth it.

Scabs, Wounds, and Healing

Michael fell a few weeks ago.  He was running barefoot at the pool (insert lifeguard whistle) and tripped on a little ledge and went sprawling.  I hurried over, knowing he would need me even before the cries began.  I held him and patted his back, I inspected his knees and hands, I kissed his and head and "I got ya, it's going to be okay".  He kept crying, which was strange, because I didn't see any blood.  It seemed like too much for just a bump.  Then I shifted his body and I saw it: a giant bloody toe.  I had looked in all the expected places for an injury, but it was his toe that had been scraped of skin and was bright red.  I took him to the lifeguard station and we did the usual, antiseptic wipe, pressure to slow the bleeding, a band aid.  I kept holding him for several more minutes, then he was ready to get back down and play with his friends.  We changed the band aid when we got home, applied some Neosporin, covered the foot with a sock so he wouldn't mess with it.

About a week later, he came to sit beside me.  His feet were bare again, and he was looking intently at his injured toe.  He touched it gently, and I noticed that a huge scab had formed over the cut.  "Does it still hurt?" I asked him.  He nodded, still looking at the toe.  "That's called a scab," I explained.  "The scab grows over your cut like a natural band aid and it stays there while the skin heals underneath.  Then, when it's ready, your scab falls off."  I was about to say, "And it'll be like it never happened," but I stopped myself.  That's not accurate, I thought.  I mean, he still remembers the fall and the pain a week later, and while he might forget about it over the course of his life, it's not going to go away.  It was a big enough cut that he'll probably have a scar , a silvery patch of new skin to remind him of the fall.  So instead I said, "When it's ready, your scab falls off and you'll have a little scar where you got hurt.  But once it's healed, it won't hurt you anymore."  He looked at me then.  "It won't hurt no more?"  Nope, it won't hurt no more.

I thought some more about wounds and hurts.  I thought of James, who hits his bruises, hoping it will make them go away.  I thought of my sister, who would pick her scabs too soon and bleed, who would pour nail polish remover over her cuts.  Thankfully she learned better wound care in med school, and when she performs surgery, she stitches and glues and pieces her patients back together.  But it's not just our physical wounds that we mistreat, that we run dirt into or pretend they don't exist. We do this in our wounded hearts, we use crude, ineffective means to cover and hide and our hearts just get mangled in the process.  There is only one way to wholeness, one course of treatment in our bodies AND our hearts to fully heal.  We have to flush our wounds, treat with antiseptic, cover with clean bandages, and we have to let our bodies do the hard work of rebuilding.  We need new skin, new nerves, new connections to grow under our scabs.  And we have to wait, to allow the healing process to complete itself.  Only then can our scabs fall off, our bandages be removed, our bodies and hearts be free to live fully.  Not as pristine as the original, but whole as our scars entwine us and help us to move again.

http://desertstream.org/living-waters/

Because It's Just a Phase

I went out for a date tonight with my husband.  It was sunny and cool and I was hungry, so we went to a restaurant and talked about the big stuff and laughed about the little stuff and shared our food with each other and held hands.  And somewhere between the mozzarella sticks and the ice cream I started thinking about my friends, so many of whom have become parents this past year.  I was thinking about you all and wondering if you're having trouble getting out of the house and leaving the baby with someone else.  (Maybe you are the one having a hard time, maybe the kiddo is screaming when you pass her off to Grandma, maybe it's a little of both.)  Whew, I remember those days.

First-time parents, 2007

I remember when James was just a month old and my parents came over at dinner time and they said, "Leave the baby with us.  Go meet Chris for dinner."  See back in those days, my husband took classes in the mornings and worked all afternoon and came home around 11pm.  I had just stopped working to take care of the baby and didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing all day.  (I watched old seasons of Gilmore Girls and read novels and took the baby for a walk most days.)  So with my parents pushing me out the door, I headed over to my husband's work and met him for his dinner break and we went to Taco Bell and stared at each other until finally he said, "This feels weird."  Because it had been just the two of us for a while, we'd done this plenty of times, but now we were three, and it felt strange to be without the baby.

First Father's Day, 2007

Those early days of parenthood are around-the-clock marathons of giving and sacrificing and bonding so intensely with this new little person.  And it took months, no--years, for us to be able to walk out the door without our little kid screaming and crying and chasing after us.  There were times when I changed my mind about leaving.  Times when it just didn't feel right, I didn't trust the person who was supposed to be taking care of him, so I didn't go.  But there were other times when I knew he would calm down and have fun, I just had to leave and let him realize that other people could take care of him for awhile.  I needed to realize that other people could take care of him too.

Imaginative Play, 2013

But tonight...the boys were invited to come make cookies with Nana, so we loaded up the car.  Everybody grabbed their shoes and socks, and with a little help from us, we were all ready to go.  We pulled in my parents' driveway and there were squeals of delight from the back seat.  "NANA'S HOUSE!!"  I got out of the car, but the kids were already through the door and shoes were off again and by the time I walked inside, they had all dispersed to different corners.  I said a quick hi and thanks to my mom for the opportunity to go out, and as I turned to go, Mikey came running around the corner.  "Hey buddy, I'll see you in a little bit!" I said.  "Okay Mommy, bye bye!" he called over his shoulder as he kept running.

Birthday Bowling, 2014

And it hit me.  You guys, it's just a phase.  Those days of guilt and ambivalence and crying every time you leave...it doesn't last forever.  Those summer afternoons of breastfeeding and napping and bleary-eyed everything.  Those days of camera constantly in hand to document all the amazing, breath-taking NEWNESS.  Those frustrating hours when you just want them to sleep a little so you can look at Facebook or read a magazine or take a shower.  Those moments of doubt when you're sure you're getting it all so very wrong because it just doesn't look like how you thought it would look, your kid doesn't seem to be doing all the stuff the other kids are doing, your hair is messed and all the other moms seem fashionable and put-together.  It's just a phase.  I promise you, just keep going.  You can get through this day and this hour and this moment.  You can do this!!  You are the only person uniquely qualified to care for this little person.  To him, you are the master of the universe.  You control the weather and you make the food and you carry him around and your smile is like seeing the face of God.  And it won't last forever, this 24 hour caregiving.  There will come a day when you drop your kids off at the grandparents' house and they barely notice you leaving.  There will come a day when they walk to the playground with their brother or a friend and you stay behind.  There will come a day when they start reading books to themselves at night while you sit in the other room.  And those are all good things.  Because it's just another phase.

Spreading His Wings, 2014

The Story about the Van Door

Last night, scrolling through Facebook, I came across this post by Jen Hatmaker:

"Spent the day in Nashville with my publishers and adorable PR team, planning for "For the Love" which you will have this summer. I think we got work done, but all I can remember is laughing and telling hilarious stories. 

Beth's comment to her toddler daughter about what to do with her precious apple slices comes to mind. (Can't handle. These are so my people.)

Which brings me to this: what is your most hilarious, worst Mom Meltdown Fail? Like when I told my sassy-mouthed (then) 5th grader to get a shovel, go in the backyard, and dig his own grave? 

Let's hear it. I swear you are not the only mom who lost her crap really bad once."

My first thought (of course) was "I don't have any stories like that."  Then I began reading through, and the memories came rushing back....

Two years ago, we bought a minivan.  Finally we could have more room for our growing family!  We got the Chrysler Town & Country with Stow N Go and automatic doors.  We were super fancy.  Months later, I had planned out a fun family outing.  We dropped Chris off at work so that we could pick him up after work and go to the zoo's special Member Night, with extended hours and probably a bit quieter than during the day.  I don't remember details about how the rest of the day went, but probably it was stressful, with three boys (ages 6, 4, and almost 2) home all day, with the summer heat, with me just not managing my feelings very well.  The time came to load up in the car, and again, I can't remember why, but I was rotating car seats around. (I hate dealing with the car seats.  When we get past this age I will probably try to burn them for the catharsis.)  I was sweating and the boys were whining and I reached the point of Mommy Meltdown.  I began to yell and bark at the kids to JUST SIT DOWN IN YOUR SEATS.  Someone was stressed about a seatbelt that wouldn't buckle, and I went around to the passenger side, grabbed the handle, and with an animal roar, I ripped the door back...and it just kept going.

YES.  I pulled the door off our minivan.  The children became very quiet as they stared with wide eyes at the Thing That Just Happened.  I tried (feebly and unsuccessfully) to reattach the door, to slide it back into the track.  And then I realized that I couldn't drive a car with NO DOOR.  I called my husband to tell him he needed to somehow find a ride home.  Then I had the biggest meltdown ever, crying and talking to myself, and oh yes, sweating even more.  All while my three children watched from their seats.  I could not think.  I did not know what to do.  The world had tilted off its axis as I paced around my garage.  So I made a decision.  I called a friend.  This is someone I'd known for about a year, a fellow mom who always seems so calm and collected and is constantly giving me good advice.  She is a treasure.  I knew that I was taking our friendship to new territory by inviting her into my chaos.  I remember feeling keenly aware that this is not something I'd done...ever...with a friend.  With my voice still hysterical, I explained the situation.  And she was the exact right person to call.  In her calm, firm voice, she said, "Rachel.  Take the kids out of the car.  You are not going to the zoo today.  Just go back in the house and wait for Chris to get home."  I nodded desperately.  "Okay, okay, yeah that sounds good.  Okay, yeah, I will.  Okay, okay kids, let's get out of the car."  My voice was still in that strange, hysterical place.  And for probably the only time in their lives, my children very quietly exited the car and marched back inside and sat still and staring.  I pulled a carton of ice cream out of the freezer and served it up for the boys.

My dad came by later to sort of jimmy the door back in place, then we locked it and drove it to the mechanic, who fixed it for only $50.  A short time later, we were loading the family in the car and I was getting frustrated again and pulled on the door too hard and Chris begged me to please, please just use the buttons to open the sliding doors...something I still do to this day.  The boys would bring it up every time we got in the car for several months, "Is the door broken?  Mommy, did you pull the door off the car again?  Can we drive our car Mommy?"  Clearly this affected us all very deeply.

In fact, this crowning moment of Mommy Failure spurred me to check my anger.  Last year for Lent, I chose to give up yelling at my kids.  It was something that was happening far too often and I felt out of control.  So for six weeks, I would catch the rage as it bubbled up, walk into the kitchen, take deep breaths, grab some candy, stop and pray for peace.  I usually lost control about once each week, the shouting would come out of my mouth and I would stop mid-sentence and will myself to speak in a regular volume.  And the really magic thing is that I don't go into full-blown Mommy Meltdown these days.  I'm racking my brain trying to remember the last time I threw a couch out the front door or hurled a toy downstairs or spanked my kid so hard he bore a red handprint.  My friend remarked this morning that our family seems a lot calmer these days.  It's true.  There are arguments, of course, the kids fight over toys and I raise my voice because I TOLD YOU TO PUT IT DOWN AND COME TO THE TABLE, but overall we are much less stressed than we have been in the past.  

Because that is the power of a mother.  I have the ability to influence my children, to set the tone in our house, to train them up in the way they will go.  So how am I using that?  What are they learning from me?  (And not my words, because of course I am so good at saying all the right things and giving "important" lectures on why they are privileged white American males who have it so much better than the rest of the world and they should thank God for where they were born and the fact that they have clean water in which to bathe AT ALL, so never you mind if it is the correct temperature or the perfect depth or if you would like to soak a little longer...)  Am I showing them how to properly love other people?  Am I showing them that we all have feelings but that our feelings shouldn't rule our mouths and our behavior?  Am I teaching them what is REALLY important--not a clean house or combed hair but Truth and Justice and Mercy and Compassion.  There was a time when I really wondered if I was the right person to be raising my kids.  I wondered if someone else (Liga, probably) wouldn't just do it so much better.  But I am slowly becoming someone who is worthy of the title Mom.  I am learning to help my children fill their minds with attitudes that will help them soar, not weigh them down.  But I still use those buttons to open the car doors.

My Thoughts on Women

I woke up this morning with a question on my heart:  Has there ever been a better time to be a woman?  The answer is an emphatic NO.  One only has to watch season one of Mad Men to realize how much has changed for those of us living today, how much freedom we have to think and act and be who we want to be.  Thanks to the tireless work of the suffragists, the educators, the trailblazers, the leaders, the law changers, I get to live in a time of unprecedented opportunity.  I can choose what job I want to have (homemaker!), what color to dye my hair (I'm thinking purple next...), what books to read (The Trumpet of Conscience, go read it NOW), who to vote for (that one's trickier since politicians suck as a rule).  Don't even get me started on the advancements in menstrual care...from red tents and rags to those bizarre belts and toxic shock syndrome, and today researchers are hard at work finding ways for us to avoid that monthly debasement altogether.

Girl Power! (I'm in the yellow shirt) 2006

I shared last week how I feel about men, both the general men of the world and the men closest to me.  It is because of these men who love me, my husband and father and sons, that I find my femininity.  It is in response and in relation to them that I see who I was created to be, see all my strengths and weaknesses clearly.  We have both, sisters, because we are whole people and we are flawed people.  The weaknesses of our gender aren't too hard to discover.  We wound with our mouths.  We gossip and whisper, we exaggerate and lie, we criticize and we judge.  And for all of the pain we inflict, we are mortally wounded when the tongues of others lash our skin.  Chris Rock says, "Women would rule the world...if they'd stop hating each other."  We allow envy to course through our veins and we forget to cheer each other on.  We forget to embrace the positive side of womanhood.

BFFs 1998

Because we live in a world that says we have to be like men to be worthwhile, we have forgotten why it's so great to be a woman.  We carry and birth new life.  We are created to safeguard the next generation with our bodies, and are capable of so much love, tenderness, and nurture.  If the children are the future like the song says, then ladies, it all begins with us, with our wombs and our breasts and our arms.  Let us never forget to wonder and celebrate at what we bear within us.  And closely related to our child-bearing is our child-birthing and ridiculously high tolerance for pain.  I firmly believe that if men had to experience the process, the human race would die off.  But we don't just stop there, with the necessary aches and groans of labor, we inflict more pain on ourselves in the name of beauty.  Waxing and tweezing and high heels and underwire (not to mention the torture of Jillian Michaels) and we don't even bat our eyes.  That's nothing.  We can endure and we can triumph through it all.  And our greatest strength is really the flip side of our greatest weakness.  All the infighting and verbal assaults we wage against each other can very easily be steered towards good.  Because our most feminine quality is our ability to go deep.  We learn about each other.  We open up about our hurts.  When we let our hearts swell with love, we realize how much we actually care about each other.  We realize that your victory is my victory and your pain is my pain.  We learn how to join arms and hold each other up.

It takes a Village 2013

I went to high school.  We all went to high school.  So we all know how scary other women are.  I chose to inflict pain right back at those who hurt me.  That seemed like the only way to survive.  But it's not.  I've been learning the past few years about another way to go, about real, healthy female friendships.  What it is to accept someone for who she is, to notice her abilities and her beauty and not feel threatened by it.  I've learned how to be vulnerable because I know I'm with safe people.  I know what it's like to be freaking out and scared and realize that my girlfriends (or sisters or roommates or classmates or whatever) are the last people I want to call.  Which is a real shame, because I have a few ladies on speed dial that are better at talking me down than even my husband (that's really saying something, since this is the guy I chose as The One to talk me down for the rest of our lives).  And WOW!  When I can reach out and there's actually another woman there who doesn't make fun of me or criticize me or judge me?  It's an incredible feeling ladies.  It's what I want for us all.  But we have to make it happen.  We have to be the change we want to see.  (Ghandi!!!)

Sisters (at Madame Toussaud's) 2013

For all that we have left to accomplish, the changes of the past several decades give me hope.  We aren't "there" yet, but we can get there because of the advancements women have already made.  We have platforms and microphones and education and spending power ladies!  We have voices and passions and we were made to be part of the solution!

*All the women pictured are dearly, deeply loved by me (even Oprah), and I will always feel tremendous gratitude to each of you for being a friend, a sister, a mentor to me.  You ladies rock!*

My Thoughts on Men

"Consider the target: women in their greater physical

weakness and emotional sensitivity are the target

for cruel and arbitrary assault.  The dishonor of women

runs like a dark polluted stream through history,

and all women have in some way been impacted

by it.  Misogyny is a universal blemish

on the face of woman."   -Andrew Comiskey

When I look around at the world, all the problems we face today seem to boil down to one source: men.  Think about it.  Men are ISIS, men are Al Qaeda, men are Boko Haram, men are warlords.  Men are in seats of power all over the world, arguing with each other over who has the bigger throne. Men are the oppressors of women, children, and minority groups under the guise of religion, law, and brute force.  It's hard to imagine women inventing prostitution, racism, fast food, or sweat shops.  War and all its various horrors are clearly the handiwork of men, since it is men determining when a country invades or attacks another, men who lead troops of other men to the front lines, men who created and deploy bombs, drones, and artillery. (Just in case you think I have pink blinders on, yes, women also fight.  But we like to do our damage in close range, so we can see the hurt we inflict and watch the life drain from the eyes of our enemies.  We're satisfied with sharp spears, even if they only take shape in our words.)

Not to mention, men, how you make your families vulnerable when you abandon them, leaving women to serve as both mom and dad to the children you create but refuse to raise.  Single mothers are working to sustain the family and also totally responsible for the emotional nurture of their kids.  All of that is too much for one person.  So young women grow up never knowing love and affirmation from their fathers and seek out replacements in the form of abusers and takers.  Not to mention that the young men who are drawn to fundamentalist hate groups grow up in homes without fathers.

And so I stand in judgement, blaming men for all these problems and more, but still I hold a candle of hope.  Because what stands between me and my burning hatred for the world's injustices are five guys offering a glimpse of what men are supposed to be.  I am fortunate to be surrounded by men who love me well, who uphold the often forgotten practices of fidelity and service, who embrace the strengths of masculinity without exhibiting the flaws of their gender.

I grew up in a home with both my mom and my dad, and my dad has always told me that I can do anything.  He took me to the library and let me get any books I wanted (I was at the library with my kids recently and overheard a dad tell his daughter to just get one book...I wanted to inform him that they are free and shouldn't be limited, but I held my tongue).  He taught me to play basketball and explained the rules of football as we watched games together.  He told me I was beautiful, even when the mirror seemed to contradict him.

Because of how I was raised and the kind of man my dad was, when I became an adult and looked for a partner in life, I found a man very similar in Chris.  He appreciated and loved me from the start, not perfectly (for there is only One who loves me perfectly, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around who He is) but well.  I knew that he would be the kind of father I wanted my kids to have, and I believed he would be a husband who would honor and cherish me for the rest of his life.  So far, I haven't been wrong.

Together, we created two lives.  How I desired for those children to be girls, to raise them to be fierce, awesome women who don't take crap from anyone, pursuing truth and justice.  But God in His infinite wisdom gave me sons.  Even when we stepped outside our gene pool, still a boy was the one we got.  So instead of raising warrior daughters and feeding them misandry along with my breastmilk, I am becoming tenderized daily to the beauty of my boys.  I love them, not in spite of the stink of their farts or the messes they make, but because of them.  I am learning to take delight in their feats of strength and enormous appetites, their stubbornness and their desire to lead.  (Even the three year old the other day demanded that I follow him, instead of the other way around.)  I feel so strongly the duty I have to these boys, to show them what a woman is.  She is strong (as I chop down trees and move furniture).  She is soft (as I cuddle their growing bodies and give comfort to their boo boos).  She is smart (as I help with homework and teach them new things).  She is brave (as I kill spiders and engage in plastic sword fights).  She is loving and worthy of love (as we live this life together, taking care of each other).  And oh, I can see the men these boys will grow into.  I can see them taking jobs as teachers and police officers, helpers and public servants.  I can see them falling in love with strong, courageous women and creating families of their own.  I can see them doing the hard work of love (because if they don't, if they try to bail, their father and I will drag them back home no matter what).

And so my candle of hope burns into the night.  What if the tide is turning?  What if men and women together could bring healing to this earth, if we could set things right?  What if our men stood in their rightful places as protectors and providers instead of being pimps and power-hungry?  What if we loved so boldly that we fought back against terror and injustice?  What if all our children grew up in families where fathers were present and active, because they didn't bail, because they didn't die in an unjust war, because they knew what really mattered in life?  If we could do this, then we could all live free, men and women together.

Thanks to my guys, for being the persistent flame on my candle.