(Not) Winning

Preparing my house for an upcoming family reunion barbeque has forced me to confront some ugly truths: 1)  Spiders enjoy the nooks and crannies of my home, as they are undisturbed by dust cloth or broom most of the time, 2) Some of the sticky splotches on the floor are quite stubborn simply because they have been happy, stepped-over squatters for...ahem...weeks, and 3) dust builds up quickly, even on items that are used daily, like lamps, headboards, and stairs.  I live in this space daily!  How do surfaces in my house look, upon closer inspection, like the surface of the moon (in the case of the dust), or like a scene from Arachnophobia (in the case of the spiders), or like...something that's been splattered with unknown slop (in the case of my floors)? 

With the exception of some who really make cleaning a priority, there have to be some parents who feel my pain when they look at their cozy homes.  Any of you familiar with the "Company's-Coming-Scramble"?  That's the half hour before people come over when you shove stuff in closets and wipe off the most noticeable splotches and then stir up a cocktail to be sipping in a reclined position when the doorbell rings.  And then you apologize profusely for the state of your house that is not nearly as bad, in the main living areas, as it normally is.  But we pretend like this recently freshened-up state is natural, and we pray that the person visiting is completely fooled and completely not disgusted by our living conditions, or at least polite enough not to shatter my delusions.  I can remain inside my head, trying to ignore the critical cleaning fairy buzzing around telling me, "What is wrong with you?  Your kids are wading through the dust, except when their shoes are stuck in the goo!" The irony of it all is I'll go visit another family's house, who have most likely just labored through the Company's-Coming-Scramble, and I'll marvel at how they manage to live in such a gorgeous space and still keep up with their sticky, slobbery, yet endearing children.  Then the critical cleaning fairy turns into the self-critical-in-general fairy and demands to know why I can't get it together enough to have an up-kept house...oh, and also an up-kept family...oh, and also an up-kept marriage...oh, and also an up-kept classroom with up-kept students...it goes on and on.   I just want to keep up with everyone else who seems to be keeping up.

Last year after Zeke was born, I found myself trying to keep up--mostly with my sisters-in-law who each added second children to their families just months before.  I wanted to do what they could do...be home with the kids while my husband was at work/coaching, cart a toddler and a newborn around with me without seeming to freak out when all hell broke loose in a long grocery line, and be able to genuinely joke about the quirks and idiosyncrasies of only sleeping two hours at a time (or less).  Then, my baby had a milk protein allergy and I had to completely change my diet.  Then, my baby contracted RSV.  Then, my husband went to the state tournament for four days after what seemed like too many days of losing him to wrestling tournaments and meets.  Then, my husband had ankle surgery two days later and had to be off his feet (and unable to carry a baby) for six weeks.  I made myself believe repeatedly that I could cook dinner, and nurse a baby through the night, and help a two year-old with bedtime, and keep the house clean, and exercise, and act happy the whole time.  I tried so very hard to keep up.  As a result, I began to have panic attacks.  I began to fear everything, all day long.   

I called my sister-in-law at her office (she's our children's doctor) originally with the goal of getting some reassurance about my baby having such a nasty virus, hoping to calm at least one of my fears that seemed to be hanging over my head like a cloud.  As I talked to her, I was trying to joke about how crazy life was for us, and then I completely lost it.  I had never cried in front of her, so I was feeling awkward, but it felt good to be blubbering about how totally inept at motherhood I was feeling.  I remember her saying to me, "Erin, I always think about how calm you seem to be.  I always wonder how you deal with everything without getting upset."  I was shocked at first that she thought that I was so composed all of the time, especially when I had been trying to be more like her. But when I thought about it more, I realized her impression of me was just because I was trying exceptionally hard to be good at something, or at least seem that way.  I had done it successfully for awhile, but I had seriously damaged myself in the process.  It's a hard lesson to learn that doing my best is not always going to be enough by itself (or by myself).  Yet I repeatedly try to believe it.

So what happens when we all try to keep up with the Joneses, and we're all the Joneses?  My feeling is that there's a great deal of competition going on between neighbors, with considerable pressure to stand out, or to seem like we're winning at life.  Very often it's unstated and uncouth to acknowledge it, especially between family and friends.  Check out some Facebook statuses, and following comments, for some great examples of this.  One mother updates about her child's latest above-average accomplishments; another mother responds that he must be an unbelievable (code word for frickin) genius!  One person posts a picture of the sunset over the ocean, cooing "My view before a candlelight meal," and another person responds that they are "jealous ;-)", and we all know that the winking face really means "like seriously, keep that to yourself while the rest of us are waiting in the longest line (of traffic or people) known to man."  What we put out there for people is purposeful, whether it's on Facebook or in our homes.  It's showing our daily life successes, and it's showing disappointment when we don't have what someone else does.  It's constant competition because we all want the prize of being the best at something.  But the truth is, 99% of the time, our individual best isn't good enough to be the best.  And yet we spend our time passive-aggressively peacocking, or comparing ourselves to the peacock. 

I think we're all victims of society's conviction that we should win, and we should be able to do it alone.  I know I face the side effects of competition for an unattainable prize daily.  I strive to win at parenting, writing, teaching, or just plain old existing every day, and usually not consciously.  And then I start wondering why I feel so crappy about my parenting and housecleaning in comparison to other parents I know, who never seem to be suffering from insecurity and self-doubt.  I become a slave to the Company's-Coming-Scramble to appear to other people that I am winning.  I even post clever updates on Facebook to make myself feel better about what I'm slowly beginning to learn about being just one out of seven billion people.  I will not always win.  In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't even matter if I lose every race I participate in (by the way, I am leaving that dangling preposition as a rebellion against winning at grammar).  What I have to start realizing now, I think, is that the process of trying to win brings along with it genuine, blissful joy when we think we're winning, and hopefully (and more importantly), deep and reflective humility when we aren't.  Really, if I was the best mother, the best wife, the best house cleaner all of the time, I'd have absolutely nothing to strive for, and I'd be a hard, empty shell of a person.  I might as well surrender to this now.  In fact, since winning is a statistical impossibility, I should probably be spending most of my time with my face to the floor in reverence to the only one true perfection (my Creator).  Because I'm pretty sure that my faith and prayer are the only things that have gotten me through many-a realization that I'm not (cannot be) winning.

So here's my prayer for this week, as I try to make my house and yard look like it is effortlessly maintained for the sake of impressing my family:

Lord, grant me the grace and humility to realize that I don't have to win to have value.  That I am loved and can be loved, even when my house, or my family, or my life is a mess.  Help me celebrate success and reflect on failure as two different ways to encounter Your love for me and the world.  Amen.

The Disease of Deserving (and What to Do About Christmas)

Just last weekend, Jon and I were sitting down trying to figure out what to do about Christmas.  What to do about our children tearing through present after present after present, discarding each one behind them as they search for the next one with their names on it without so much as a glance at the person who gave it to them or even a minute to marvel at the new treasure they were given.  It's not a usual kick-off-to-summer type of conversation, but it's been on my brain off and on since a) last Christmas, and b) finishing up another school year in my extremely wealthy district.

It was probably just a couple of weeks ago when I brought my Wii into the classroom for my students to play as a celebration/bonding activity.  The students, without question, had the best time in Literacy class that they'd had all year (trust me, I have no illusions about this despite some of the self-professed amazing lessons on plot structure they experienced, in my humble opinion).  The goofy dancing game was so popular, in fact, that I had not one, but two students tell me on the following Monday that their parents had either bought them the game, or the game console and the game over the weekend.  A third student told me that she was thinking about putting a Wii at the top of her wish list, over the iPad, for her birthday, though her Kinect has kept her perfectly satisfied since she turned 11.  My students are all around age 12.  They are not graduating high school or even accomplishing something notable enough to justify $250 worth of gifts on a random weekend.  Some of their parents, however, believe that they deserve such showering of gifts because their kids simply want them.  Because our culture has evolved from the days of Austen:  it is a truth universally acknowledged that a child of well-meaning parents must be in want (and possession) of everything.  As a result, their children are sometimes extremely sweet, normal kids (and sometimes self-important rascals) who also seem to understand that they deserve extravagant gifts because that's the way their world operates.  It's just how things are. 

So, back to Christmas.  Both of my kids' birthdays are within 20 days of Christmas.  Not only do they take home a truckload of gifts on their birthdays from all of their generous aunts, uncles, grandparents, and friends, but then they do it twice with Christmas time factored in.  Zeke is not quite old enough yet to understand why hundreds of dollars worth of gifts suddenly appear in our house during the winter, but Gracie, at three, is starting to.  She's already starting to expect it.  I'm aware of how melodramatic this thought is going to sound, but my mind is creeping to Student X and Y who are lovely children and believe they deserve gifts because their parents and family members are generous and can afford it.

I want to nurture in my children not only gratitude, but also the spirit of giving.  That our purpose here is not to receive 80% and give 20%.  That the world needs to see more selfless people who can give and not count the cost, as quipped in my favorite prayer by St. Ignatius.  That we aren't entitled to be given mountains of gifts just because we were fortunate enough to be born in the middle class suburbs in a family that loves us.  That our extreme wealth in circumstance is the very reason we need to be denying ourselves more and extending love to those who are without.  I want my children's Christmas memories to be more about others, steeped in love and faith, and less about quantity of gifts.

This is where I become very overwhelmed.  To teach my children these things, I need to fully understand it myself and put it into practice more often.  Yet daily, daily, I find reasons and justification for taking more for myself.

Earlier in the week, I found myself sobbing while folding laundry.  We had just returned from a short trip to the lake house, deprived of sleep, and were staring down the witching hours before bedtime.  I was craving a break, so I grabbed a laundry basket and closed the bedroom door behind me.  Then I melted into self-pity between the balls of socks and folded squares of t-shirts.  With my forehead pressed into the mattress, I entered into a conversation with God.  The words of the prayer I mentioned earlier, the Prayer for Generosity, scrolled through my head, "Lord, teach me to be generous.  Teach me to serve as You deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward except to know that I do Your will."  I explained to God that it's the toil and labor part that gets me.  Sometimes I'm just tired, and I do need rest.  I need it, don't I, to be a good mother?  Then I stopped talking, because Jon was downstairs with the kids, emptying out their suitcases while they played nearby, and I had abandoned him, as if my own fatigue was somehow more extreme than his.  I called myself out on my own behavior and decided to stop explaining.  I listened for God's advice.

He was telling me nicely that I didn't really deserve anything.  Nobody does.  "Deserving" is something that comes from people and our cultural norms.  What we "deserve" is in our heads, because it all depends on our environment, social upbringing, etc.  Someone in St. Louis feels he deserves a summer with less humidity; someone in Africa feels he deserves another goat.  It's a human notion.  Outside of my limited understanding of the universe, I don't really deserve anything.  Nothing good, and nothing bad.  Deserving is a human thing, and I only should really concern myself with serving God and being an expression of peace and love (the best I can).  So, those times where I've just come back from a vacation home during these lovely, wide-open summer days that we teachers get, and my beautiful kids are driving me a lukewarm version of crazy, I should not be concerning myself with "deserving," because it's all in my head.  My family needs me, and the messages I send myself about preserving time alone because I might fail shows a lack of trust that God's grace exists.  I need to know that I can actually ask and receive whenever I want from a Heavenly benefactor--not piles of presents, but grace to get through the times when I tell myself I deserve more.  Once I understand that, I think, I can better extend myself beyond, well, myself.

I want my kids to not have to learn about service and selflessness as late as I have.  I don't want them to grow up believing that they "deserve" everything in the world because they are born privileged.  I really don't want another Christmas to go by where we've allowed ourselves to bask in all that we have and not sacrifice in love for others who have less.  I want to stop asking myself, "What should I buy for the kids who have everything?"  I want the kids who have everything (including myself), to spend Christmas (and eventually, a life time) sharing the wealth.  It's rolling around in our brains, what to do about Christmas.  What to do to spend more time serving, and less time deserving.