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state of the union. (100)

Wow. To begin again, here in this place…these 100 days…this is humbling. It’s a great time for me to acknowledge how fortunate I feel that my belly is so full with baby, but also to take a step back and make note of exactly where I am today, just as I prepare to teeter over into a double digit countdown in the morning. It’s crazy. As with so many things, the days go by slowly and the weeks pass in a flash.

Tomorrow, I will be 26 weeks pregnant.

This baby is moving and growing, certainly, and I am, too. Not always in the direction I want to be in some regards, but always moving and always growing just the same. Today was not a day I would have been proud to broadcast to the world. The truth is, I’ve been feeling pretty raw this week–personal challenges stacking up and troubles here and there that are insignificant over the long haul, but that feel weighty to me in my current state of mind.

It’s hard to be real with myself sometimes, and it’s even harder to be vulnerable. This being said, I felt burdened today to begin this pregnancy countdown with the truth–not because it’s comfortable right now, but because it’s honest. Someday, when our little bean looks back on this time of preparation and anticipation for his or her arrival, I deeply hope that my authenticity will create space for our son or daughter to feel freedom to be authentic, too.

I woke up this morning ready to face the day, but by 10am, I was ready to call it quits. Some days are just like that. Our stay at home trio was housebound yesterday while our eldest (Henry) battled a stomach bug and I battled the mess that was left in its wake. This, coupled with our youngest (Eloise) having broken a bone in her ankle last week, and I was just a bit bummed about missing out on plans to get out of the house and into the temperate, sunny day peering in at me through the windows. We’ve been cooped up more than usual this past week, so a day outside together in the sunshine was going to be balm for my mama soul.

Today I got out of bed thinking we’d give our outside plans another try, but to my surprise (and admittedly, my frustration), Henry was not yet back up to speed. He spent the morning on the couch, poor Eloise limped along in a physical way, and I limped along emotionally. The living room still smelled like yesterday’s yuck, and try as I might, I couldn’t get rid of it. No cleaning or scrubbing or diffusing or sudsing did the trick. The house was stinky, and my attitude was worse.

These circumstances are no big deal, and they are absolutely no one’s fault. But the pregnant mama inside of me just wanted something to go right; I wanted desperately to have some sort of summer “experience,” wishfully thinking we must pack in lots of summer goodness before this baby belly slows me down more in the months to come. I suppose I’m in a “seize the day!” sort of mode, but there’s not a whole lot about life this past week that feels like it’s in the mode with me. Today was no exception.

There’s nothing remarkably awful about the day I’ve had, but the little things have just continued to pile on in a way that challenges my every effort to stay upbeat, to choose joy, to parent graciously and well. I got news before lunchtime that I didn’t see coming–a change of direction that calls me to prep my heart and mindset for future things in a way that’s not what I’d hoped for or planned. And I want to be strong before all of this–both the small things and the weightier things that I’m called to as a mom and an adult and a friend, but this morning I just wanted to (needed to) cry on the couch for a moment and not save face in front of my kiddos by “being strong” for one more minute or one more hour of this day.

Sometimes strength looks like being real and letting your guard down, even if it means doing something that the world has taught us is weak–something that will cause people around us to talk or ask questions and not fully understand.

So here we are,  a 26 week-along state of the union from a harder-than-I’d-like-to-admit place:

My two year old and five year old saw me cry today–more than once, and I am feeling raw and jagged-edge as I enter into this countdown of days. I wanted to do it with so much grace and sophistication, but I also wanted to do it for the sake of remembering what was (and what is) real. I showered at 1:30p this afternoon, and I put on the comfiest pants and tank top I could find. I didn’t do my hair. I put Eloise down for a nap and Henry played Legos and I spent time trying to get back to what’s true by praying a desperate prayer and quieting my heart in the Word. And I took this photo, so I’d remember this upside down day and the following:

-what 26 weeks pregnant looked like

-what 100 days feels like

-why it’s important to be honest with myself and to look and dress the part without guilt

-that I’m still smiling daily at the idea of this baby tucked inside, no matter what comes as I wade through this crazy-beautiful season:

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Because life is real, and some days are hard, and sometimes the dog photobombs your belly pictures and it’s all going to be ok, anyway.

This journey is an imperfect one, but it’s the journey I know that God has planned for me. There’s one more day on the books, and I’m grateful for it. I woke up with air in my lungs and summer calling outside. Maybe I’ll be able to answer it just a shade better tomorrow 😉

bidding adieu to triple digits,

molly madonna

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here we go again!

Just shy of five and a half years ago and in the midst of my first pregnancy, I felt a little nudge in the direction of a personal challenge. With no little ones in tow at the time and plenty of days stretched out before me to prepare for baby, I decided to attempt writing daily for the last 100 days of my pregnancy countdown. I was fully aware that God and nature might dictate more or fewer days before we would welcome our sweet babe, but 100 was a tangible number for me and a way of quantifying the waiting and time as it passed. I didn’t know how the project might evolve, nor that it would end up being a great blessing to me as a mama looking back someday. All I knew is that I was up for something, and 100 days seemed about right.

Days went by, and some were robust and beautiful while others pushed me to new limits and into new territory. I never would have remembered so many of the finite details of that sweet, growing season had I not been jotting it all down. Why I made it public, I’m not sure, but it stuck, and the end result was what I hope will always be a wonderful story for our firstborn, Henry, and a walk down memory lane for my mama heart. As others came along for the ride–reading, commenting, interacting when we met face to face, the village around me felt so tangible, and my awareness of being surrounded was great.

In this way, 100 days became a vessel of community, connection, openness and honesty that I craved. I loved the process so much that I repeated it with our second born, finding it just as cathartic and helpful and heart-driven the second time around.

It’s true of me that I like a little bit of a challenge from time to time, so I’m grateful to the handful of folks who expressed their doubt that I could see my first 100 days project through. While Henry arrived six days before my official due date estimate, the momentum of the first 94 days held me accountable all the way into active labor–a sweet, sweet memory and a hilarious story of me blogging through contractions, which Jason tells best. From start to finish, I loved the process for what it did in me and around me as God prepared my heart for motherhood that first time.

In retrospect, I’m also grateful to those who were certain I would never repeat the challenge for a second child. You know, unfinished baby books and the thousands more photos you have of your first born versus the second and so on. Doubt gave me great fuel for an already determined fire, so when we were expecting Eloise in 2013, I began a 100 days project for her, too. I’m so glad I did.

Tonight, on the second longest day of the year and after a handful of challenging days and weeks, I find myself again on the eve of another 100 days. It’s been on the calendar for some time now, but my anticipation of it is peaking just before I turn the page.

Another 100 days means far more to me than a personal challenge or a public one. Each time, but especially now, it translates into a season of expectation–this one following a more difficult season of wondering, waiting and doubt. These next 100 days (give or take) equal a million answered prayers and the very definite call I’ve sensed to mother again…every dream and heartache and hope and fear welling up and being turned over for joy in the form of a dancing babe within.

This pregnancy has not been easy for so many reasons, some of which I’ll undoubtedly unpack here in the days to come. And it hasn’t been without my constant need to die to self and to acknowledge that I’m not in control. I don’t take a single day of this baby’s life for granted. Not one. Perhaps, for me, that’s part of why this process of counting the days feels so personal and important and sweet.

This time around I feel a little more seasoned in some things and still very green in others. The call to vulnerability and trust is new with each pregnancy for different reasons. So, here we go again, foraging new territory in a practice that has become refreshingly familiar. I can’t say how delighted I am to have arrived at the edge of another countdown, nor how full my heart is that we can be here, journeying through the big and the small things in life, together.

For as long as the little bean will stay tucked away safely as he or she grows, I’ll be here.

mom munchkin baby

with joyful expectation,

mm

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sweet surprises.

My fingers have just been itching to get back to this keyboard. Life has been so full in these past months, and full of mostly wonderful things, but it’s just the nature of this season for me to run out of time and brainpower at the end of the day to sit down and write. As with all things we care about in life, this has been an area I’ve had to make peace with as I put it on hold. This, along with others like yoga, reading for pleasure, and cleaning the house to the fullest extent have waited patiently for me as I’ve danced along the wire, balancing new and beautiful and trading joy for joy. I don’t take this for granted, but I am so grateful that, from my vantage point today, there is so much good to juggle.

There has been plenty brewing under wraps here as spring comes around. We surprised Henry and Eloise with a trip to Disney World in April, celebrating Henry’s fifth birthday while we were away (this will earn its own post/s soon, just as quickly as I pick my favorites from the 2,500 photos we have from the week). It was the first time since I can remember that we completely unplugged and got away as a quad, which was timely and necessary and fulfilling and a ton of fun. We’ve also been whittling away at small home projects here and there in prep for warmer and fuller days ahead, and we’ve enjoyed longer visits with  family in town. We’re doing our best to rest a little more, to clear things out that we no longer need, and to be practical about what we can balance well as a family. It’s true that there’s no such thing as perfect balance, but there is definitely manageable vs. crazy, and we’re learning as we keep growing together than the former brings out the better in all of us. I love us as a team.

Coloring all of those moments and casting beautiful light on the ones ahead is my ever growing belly week by week. It’s true. After a long time of wondering what the future of our family might hold, and after countless prayers for another baby, God has graciously entrusted another little one to us to love. As I sit here, my 20 week old bump is full of life–baby’s kicks and movements dance within, bringing me great, great joy every time.

Life is full of surprises, and I’m discovering day by day that I’m still healing from past loss and battling back fear while I try to simply trust in God’s plan. This gets easier week by week, but it’s not lost on me that faith is in the things we cannot see, not the things we can tangibly hold. Each week my belly grows, this pregnancy is, more and more, something I can physically see and experience. And I know that God is calling me through this process to learn to give everything–all of it–over to Him again and again. I have to die to self every day to drown out the voices that are not His. I have to make a concerted effort to lean on the understanding that this baby is God’s and not our own–that His ways are higher than ours, and that every day there is life within me is one to treasure.

Remember the beginning of this year, when I committed to light as my word for 2016? In this pregnancy and so much else, God has been faithful to me to offer a direct path toward light and lightness and letting go. I want to be a good steward of these things, and so I pray that I will keep discovering the depth and marrow in each step of the way. I am terrible at this some days, and better at it on others. No doubt the sweet reminder of God’s goodness to us, increasing right in front of me daily in the mirror, has been a healing balm over wounds on my heart. In a way, nothing has changed–I am working to hand the unknown over to God every single day. And in a way, so much is different. I dream ahead to the day when our babies will meet our newest little love, and all of me wants to burst. It’s impossible to contain the hopeful joy that comes from that place.

There is freedom in expecting God. He is full of wonder, and His graciousness brings me to my knees.

I am so thankful to finally be able to share this joy here with you. Together, we weather the good and the bad, the hard and the beautiful. As such a big piece of me and of our lives as a family, no longer keeping news of the Baby Bean quiet feels right and good. I look forward to where this journey will take us in the days to come. And I’m so glad to be back to the keys.

grace and peace,

mm

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bookending february.

I hopped on just now with something pressing on my mind, only to realize that the last time I wrote was the first day of February. How fitting it feels to be back on this last day of a leap year February, twenty nine days in to a historically dreary and wintry month here in the midwest.

It’s been a mild winter, sure, but we’ve still had our share of snow-piled, sunless days, and (like most) I am more than ready for spring.

I woke up to Monday this morning with no particular sense about the day. I knew we’d head to school, that I’d have a few hours before pick up, and that we’d launch into another busy week after a weekend we’re already all missing at home. What I didn’t expect was the spiritual muck I’d encounter somewhere between the school parking lot and the start of my quiet time alone. Sometimes things have a way of flying at us out of nowhere, don’t they? Life is full of surprises, and if I pretend that the spiritual things of this world take no part in them, good or bad, I’ve missed out on a key element of life as a feeling, thinking, perceiving person.

Sometimes it feels easier to ignore the spiritual and emotional, and to attempt at rational, straightforward and pragmatic instead.

The truth is though, I’m living my life these days trying my best to walk with God–to trust him, to press into him, to rely on him for all I need–even thought I don’t get it right all of the time. And I think when we live life with spiritual intention, we have to expect that there will be opposition, and we have to acknowledge it when it comes.

I walked into the coffee shop this morning, said hello to a friend, and started to cry. Our brief conversation was a gift today, because she gave me permission and space just to let it out. I didn’t want to be crying. It frustrated me. But when something is welling up and we haven’t let it spill over, it’s going to find a way out eventually, and it might do that in an unexpected or challenging space.

“Losing it” for a few minutes this morning was probably the best thing that could have happened for me on this last day of a dreary-feeling month. It isn’t that there hasn’t been joy or goodness in the past twenty nine days, it’s just that I probably need to shed a few things spiritually in preparation for a hopeful and soon-coming spring. Maybe my heart knows just as well as my body that it’s ready for light…craving sunshine and longer days…wishing away heavy layers and ready for growth.

Maybe your heart is ready for something different, too? Maybe you’ve got something welling up that is beyond ready to pour out. Maybe, like me today, you don’t even see it coming yet.

Let’s give each other grace and space in these days, can’t we? I know few souls who aren’t ready for a refreshing–who aren’t longing for more light. And I’m convinced that entrusting the good and the hard and the sacred to God each day, while affording each other a safe place to land, is precisely where we need to start.

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t be happier that this is the last day of February. I’m not one to wish time away, but I will be glad to embrace the reality of March tomorrow (even if it is going to snow again…) Light will always find a way back in.

love and grace,

mm

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writing a better story.

“If we keep asking God about it, why doesn’t he just answer?” -Henry, 4.5

He asked me this getting out of the car yesterday. It kind of broke me in two…all of my own doubts and aches welling up in this one question, simply stated by this big beautiful soul who is just trying to understand the world from his four year old vantage point.

I didn’t tell him that this uncertainty is one he’ll probably wrestle with here and there for the rest of his life.

Instead, I said something like, “Sometimes the things we want aren’t actually the best thing for us, buddy. At least, not at the time we think they are. God knows what’s best for us, so we try to trust him even when it doesn’t seem like he’s answering. But we can definitely keep asking him. Let’s keep praying for it and see what happens.”

I choked through my words, trying to believe them for myself at the same time as they meant to comfort Henry’s precious heart.

It’s so easy to celebrate answered prayers when they come. Much harder to swallow down all of the feelings and questions that arise when they don’t. I know this firsthand, and I’m sure you do, too.

So why should we keep going on believing that our God is good and sovereign, and that he has our best interests in mind?

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8.28

If we hang our hats on the Word for truth and guidance in other areas of our lives, then we can place our bets on this part of the Word being true, too.

I know that it’s hard. Oh, believe me, I do! I’ve prayed for things for a long time that just don’t seem to be coming to fruition. I’m praying for them even now. And a lot of times, I want to shake my fist at God and say, “Don’t you hear me?! If this is what you’ve put on my heart, then why won’t you allow it to be?!” Sometimes I get a little mad. Sometimes I cry it out on my knees.

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These two. Part of the story God is writing for me right now. If I blink, I might miss it.

God knows that I love story. He put that love in me. He knows that I especially love good story–story with a resolution, a growth point, a beautiful ending. He knows that we all do.

So I have to decide on a daily basis whether I’m going to believe that God is just being mean, and withholding what I think I want and what I think is best, or if there’s a sliver of possibility that he knows–better than I do–what my heart and life really need. 

Choosing to rest in the thought that God is sanctifying me and my life through the waiting is an everyday thing. A daily dying to self in order to acknowledge that I didn’t create my life, and it doesn’t belong to me.

We are living on borrowed time, friends. Every minute, every moment, every breath. We didn’t just appear on earth by accident, and we didn’t come from apes. We were created by a most holy God who has a plan for the world and a plan for our lives.

As hard as it is to own it and admit it, this is one of the most valuable lessons I can pass on to Henry and Eloise. These moments of doubt and questioning are opportunities for growth for their hearts, and they’re opportunities for my heart, too.

See, without the waiting, there’s no need for hope. There’s no need for prayer or wrestling or clinging to God. For me, I know God uses these times of waiting to strengthen my faith–to write a better story than I could imagine myself. When I look back on all of the times I thought I knew what was best for me, I can remember countless times I’m thankful that the story didn’t go my way.

“If we keep asking God about it, why doesn’t He just answer?”

Oh, but He does! He just might be taking the path less traveled to get us there. He might have things in store for us that are so beautiful we can’t even fathom them in our own understanding. He might take his time for our ultimate benefit.

I can rest my head here, or I can fight it. One choice makes me ache all over, and the other gives me feet for the path.

I pray that I will raise children who have feet for the path. They’re going to need them. I need them, too. I pray that their stories will be the kind dreams are made of, but beyond that, that they will have strength and faith for whatever comes.

“It is God who arms me with strength and keeps my way secure. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer; he causes me to stand on the heights. He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You make your saving help my shield, and your right hand sustains me; your help has made me great. You provide a broad path for my feet, so that my ankles do not give way.” -Psalm 18.32-36

If you’re in my camp, waiting on answers today, ask God to show you in some way that he hears you. Maybe the answers we’re looking for won’t come right away, or even on this side of heaven, but God hears us. I prayed that he would fall on my words here today. Maybe they’re for your heart as much as they’ve been for mine.

Praying that your yoke would be light in this season, loved ones, and that your story would be made more beautiful in its time,

molly madonna