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haikus for the third trimester. (56)

I’ve never been good/at haikus my husband said/you write them instead.

We’re forty five days into this one hundred day “blogging for baby” extravaganza, and honestly, there are nights when a topic is hard to come by. Jason challenged me to mix it up a bit and to craft a handful of pregnancy haikus, so here goes:

Regarding the bump: “You’re how far along?”/Awkward sizing up moment/”Bet you’re having twins.”

Regarding food: Two bites and I’m full/but twenty minutes later/I’m famished again

Regarding age: Thirty four years young/Two babes at home and growing/third one on the way

Regarding sleep: Insomnia reigns/Belly owns the sprinkler move/Left side for the win

Regarding baby prep: Babies don’t need much/but Pinterest tells us they do/instead, feed, hold, love

Regarding birth: There’s no “right” way/every birth is different/do what works for you

Regarding postpartum: Rest is at a low/mama needs to eat and nurse/baby snuggles close

 

Ok, maybe not my best go, but I’m committed, at least 😉 Haven’t broken out a haiku since college (I don’t think). Thanks, hubs.

waxing poetic with a side of sleepy,

mm

32 week bump!

32 week bump!

 

 

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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.

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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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year of light.

It settled in my chest on New Year’s Day. I’d written this long list of potential focus words for myself for 2016, but not a single one felt exactly right. It had to hold meaning in more ways than one, so I’d mulled over options like margin, whole, invest, thrive, vessel, open, rest. Each of these was close to something God’s been doing in my heart, but none hit the mark until I found time alone to pray it through. When it finally arrived, it felt like it came in a whisper:

“Light.”

Light. I rolled it around in the spaces of things I’ve wished for and aspired to in this fresh new year. It feels perfect.

2016 will be a year of light for me, even though I can hardly know in this moment what the next twelve months will hold.

Marked by some of the weightier burdens I’ve ever carried, 2015 felt the opposite of light. It felt heavy, straining, bogged down. Despite my efforts to be positive about circumstances as they came, difficulties arrived one after another, and my soul got weary. I am thankful that we serve a God who can carry us through the dark, and that no matter where we are in the tunnel, He always offers us light and feet for the path.

I’m embracing this, and now I want to live in it. Light.

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Naturally, this words carries so much meaning, and I want to lean into it in all of its possibilities.

This year, I will focus on carrying things more lightly and giving the rest up to God.

This year, I will direct my energies into being a light in the world–to strangers and friends, but especially to my family at home.

This year, I will set my eyes on the light and possibilities before me, and put to rest some of the darkness that has pressed me down so relentlessly in 2015.

This year, I will aim to wake more readily with the light, and to end my days earlier to give my body the foundation it needs to be well and stay well.

This year, I will trust that Light will find me, and that there will be moments of great joy that bring healing and wholeness and hope.

This year, I will be intentional to pray light into the lives of those I love.

This year, I will do my best not to sacrifice light in my children’s lives for the sake of time or others.

This year, I will lighten our lives of things we don’t need and work to live more simply in contentment with what we already have.

And this year, I will dive into the places in the Word where “light” is found, exploring its meaning and the fullness of what God might have for me as His daughter in the year He has ordained in my life as LIGHT.

I am grateful for the confidence I can have in God’s promises to us as his children, and I am so thankful that He is attentive to us in the big and small things, even when we cannot see Him there. As I write this, the sun has just broken through an otherwise cloudy day and is shining brightly in my face–a light I cannot ignore and more confirmation that light is worthy of my attention this year.

I pray that you are settling well into the new year and finding your way, just as I am searching out mine. One day at a time. One word at a time. One possibility at a time.

love and light,

molly madonna

 

“You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light.” -2 Sam 22.29

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one chapter at a time.

gracefuldecemberlogo

It’s a quiet afternoon here where I sit, and I am so thankful for the space. It’s hard to believe that December is coming to a close, but beautiful that a whole new year stretches out before us when the clock strikes midnight tonight. I am ready to turn the page on 2015.

I’ve learned a lot this year, and I’ve been stretched in the exercise of inviting a graceful December into my life. I hope the same is true for you as you’ve joined me in welcoming the good, the hard, the magical, the bittersweet. Every year contains these things, but some more so than others. In my little corner of the universe, 2015 had greater measures of hard and bittersweet. But there were amazingly sacred, heart-swelling moments, too, and I don’t want to forget them for all they’ve offered. I will close this year and this chapter feeling challenged, pursued, and full.

I’m still trying to flesh out a word for 2016 that feels not-too-big, not-too-small, but juuuuust right for the days to come. I laugh a little remembering last year at this time…so many questions pouring through my mind then, and almost entirely different ones than the thoughts that fill my head now.

I am grateful for the grace that sees me through all of my questions.

Earlier this week, Henry was asking for something in the car. I was working to get it for him, but as I tried, he asked me again, and again. In a moment of frustration, I raised my voice at him, “Henry! I am not  Google, OK?! Not everything is right away. You can’t have everything in an instant. That’s not how things work.”

Even though I know this to be true, and I’m learning over and over to be patient in new ways, life in a high speed world makes it easy to think we should have what we want, when we want it. And we want it all right now. But the world is not at our beckon call, and even if it were, everything in an instant might not be what God has for us, for good reason.

If I’m taking any wisdom from these past twelve months into the new year, this might be the nugget I’ll cling to the most:

The best things in life aren’t instant. But the waiting makes them sweeter in the end.

We don’t really have to depend on anyone or anything when life is handing us everything we want at every turn. I actually think this can be a very dangerous place to exist.

This past year has put me on my knees more times than I can count. And I’m grateful. Heading into the new year, I’m without expectation for guarantees.

The one thing I’m banking on is that God will carry me or hold my hand or give me wings–whatever He deems appropriate for each and every circumstance. It’s a good place for my heart to be, no matter whether it’s wondering, hoping or aching.

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The quiet from earlier lasted just a short while, and this blog post has become my next exercise in living out the practice of patience in big and little things. 🙂 I suppose God is honing my spirit even through this… everything is an opportunity for grace to sweep in, and it’s all shaping the next, unknown part of my story. No doubt surprise and delight and growing await, whatever the year ahead might hold.

Here’s to 2016, my sweet friends. May our stories brim and bubble over with grace and graceful living!

Love to you, and Happy New Year!

molly madonna

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#2015bestnine