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Egghead

Sometimes I dream of being a bona fide egghead, a certified academic with an incisive mind boasting a Ph.D., maybe two, and several years of post-doctorate studies at an east- or west-coast university, who sits in a quirky café reading The New Yorker and writing essays about post-modernism.

Instead, I’m an unsophisticated stay-at-home mother of four in a 1970s, architecturally bland house on a cul-de-sac in a sleepy midwestern subdivision, who wears mom-jeans and stirs up chocolate chip cookie dough to eat by the spoonful while the children run through the sprinkler. And my mind? Well, I suspect my brain cells have been replaced by dryer lint.

I miss my mind. It used to be so good to me, with the ability to compare and contrast, to generate alternative solutions to aggravating dilemmas, to carry on a coherent conversation and make a grocery list. It used to store information such as phone numbers, the date I was born, my social security number, and the names of my children.

            After the birth of my fourth child, it was gone. No more mind, no more conversation, no more grocery list. The baby evidently yanked out 80% of my brain cells as he left my body and entered the world. I’m a bit jealous; I hope he makes good use of them.

You can ask my friends who kindly claim they never noticed, but in private will tell you the ugly truth: “For a full year she stammered and stuttered. She couldn’t follow the thread of a conversation without trailing off, confused.” “It was like talking to a brick wall. I’d get a vacant stare sometimes. She’d start a sentence and have absolutely no idea what she was saying.”

And it’s true. I couldn’t communicate or comprehend. I’d read a paragraph over and over, not retaining one word of it. I’d hoped to be spared having to introduce two people I’d known for years because I was afraid I couldn’t drag up their names from the abyss.

In the grocery store checkout line, a pleasant lady admired my newborn and asked his name.

“Um,” I stalled for time, because—no kidding—I was drawing a blank. I couldn’t simply smile and quickly roll toward the cereal aisle because we were stuck in line with the carts blocking my escape. I stood there, a sick panic gripping me—I had no memory of my own baby’s name. None. And the scariest thing of all? It happened more than once. To be on the safe side, I got into the habit of saying to my third daughter, “Why don’t you tell this nice lady what we call your little brother?” And it worked. My daughter proudly announced his name (for the record, it’s “Daniel”), and I thanked the Lord that at least one of us remembered. My daughter’s wonderful “saves” didn’t, however, erase the uneasy feeling that something was definitely amiss.

Postpartum memory loss is a phenomenon that is explored anonymously on discussion boards of online moms’ groups. It’s too humiliating to openly admit that you can’t formulate a thought anymore, but in those groups I have found moms who hesitatingly suggest that they think they’ve lost their memories and wonder if anyone else struggles with it. One woman asked this and her question generated a series of sympathetic responses and stories as moms virtually gathered around to commiserate.

Someone said she couldn’t remember directions to places she frequents, like her mother’s house. Another would hang up the phone and instantly forget the entire conversation as well as the person to whom she was talking. One mom claimed she would often run into a room on an urgent errand and stop abruptly, looking around, puzzled. She forgot what it was that was so urgent it made her run. She turned around and walked back out, bewildered. Finally, I was personally relieved when a humble mom confessed she couldn’t remember the name of her newborn baby!

Ah, so I was not alone.

Several unprofessional explanations were offered: Some women proposed that we lose brain cells while nursing—the babies, they say, just suck them right out of your head. Another called it “postpartum amnesia” and yet another said our brains shrink during pregnancy. She said it was documented and said “they did a study of it in England,” but I could never find it. Maybe it was a joke.

Overall, there were lots of “ha-has” and smiley faces in the notes, and toward the end, a mom advised, “Relax. It will get better.” I guess it was nice to know that others were struggling with their minds, but their empathy didn’t help me remember my son’s name during grocery store introductions. It didn’t help me finish a sentence or stop stuttering. By the time Daniel was seven or eight months old, it still wasn’t getting better with time and I couldn’t relax. I thought I had gone crazy, had a stroke, or was experiencing early onset Alzheimer’s. Most of my brain seemed to have melted away. Whatever was left up there felt fuzzy, like the static on an unclaimed UHF channel.

The mind is usually accessed while reading and responding to Scripture and even while praying to the Lord. Yet, how can I pray, worship, share Christ with someone, or meditate when all I’ve got to work with is a puff of lint? “We have the mind of Christ,” we’re told by Paul as he wrote to the Corinthian Christians, and I trust that it’s true—that I have His mind and have access to His wisdom and input at any moment—but frankly for awhile there I couldn’t seem to find much of anything worthwhile in my mind. I hate to embarrass the Lord—if I have the mind of Christ, He might want to upgrade it a little before claiming it.

We’re supposed to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, we read in Romans. Well, my mind sure could use renewal, but how does a mom renew her linty mind? We’re supposed to think about whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy. How do we think all those wonderful thoughts when we can’t even remember where we dropped our car keys?

Our minds matter and what takes place inside of them—our thoughts—matter to the Lord. Jesus Himself knows our every thought: the good, the bad and the empty. Because we know He’s concerned about both the godly and sinful ideas that pop into our heads, we can assume He also cares about the lack of ideas that pop into our heads, the sad emptiness. He knows and cares all about the mental lint, the fuzz, the static-mind I’ve dealt with. Those were humbling years; I thought I would never write again, and I sure gave up on the egghead dream. A Ph.D. seemed like a pipe dream.

Years have passed since my son was born, and you may have noticed I’ve been able to compose these thoughts. Well, I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think that the Lord Himself has finally vacuumed out most of the lint and regenerated some lost brain cells. I think that the Lord has chosen to restore and renew most of my mind for His glory and purpose. I don’t know about my future, but at this moment, I can think. Actually I did some reading and discovered that researchers are blaming a lot of that foggy thinking on low estrogen, which means we can blame some of it on hormones, so maybe the Lord has stabilized whatever hormonal upheaval was zapping my mind.

Whatever the case may be and however He’s resolved it, the Lord has allowed me the privilege of thinking again, and I’ve learned through this experience that thinking is a privilege, a gift from God.

Now that I’ve seen how dependent I am upon the Lord for the ability to think, I’ve begun to appreciate and submit my thoughts to Him in a way I might not have if I’d never lost access to them. I cherish them. I’m turning my thoughts to Him as much as possible, praying He’ll give me each word or image I need when I need it. I owe Him for every thought; I try to take no idea for granted. I rely on Him for every insight, every flashing synapse that fires on cue and leaps to link with another.

It’s one more way I see that I am His, completely His to do with as He pleases. He’s bought me with a price and it’s no longer my life but Christ living in me—even in my mind. Every bit of me—including all three-and-a-half pounds of brain locked inside my skull—belongs to Jesus, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

While the Lord is re-booting my mind, He has revealed something else essential: Communing with Him, knowing Him, being known by Him and yielding myself to Him doesn’t rely on the mind. If and when it is functioning well, I employ it to submit to Him. But I belong to Him with or without my conscious mind. I would belong to Him even if I were in a coma or the late stages of Alzheimer’s, and I belonged to Him in the loopy postpartum hormonal chaos that made my mind feel like it had turned to dust.

In the end, I come to Him as a child. In Mark 10:15, Jesus says that anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. The word He uses for little child implies a very little child, probably a toddler.

I have a toddler right now. His mind is very busy, but not in an academic way. When it comes to relationships, he does a lot of “being.” He climbs up on a lap and leans back. He smiles. He laughs. He throws his arms around my neck and squeezes, sometimes rubbing or patting my shoulders.

It doesn’t take an egghead to love like that. It doesn’t take a razor-sharp intellect to experience Jesus like that. I can learn from my toddler. Regardless of the degree of my mental acuity, I can love Jesus like my toddler loves me, and I can receive the kingdom of heaven like our little Daniel receives his mama and papa.

I still have moments … lint moments, if you will. For example, I struggle to find certain words. In the worst days following Daniel’s birth, I couldn’t even remember the word for “that thing I sling over my shoulder to store my wallet and keys.” I couldn’t remember the word for those, um, those things we put on our feet to walk around. “Go get that stuff that you put on that thing you use to clean your teeth,” I’d say.

The girls were helpful. They created the “Finish Mama’s Sentences” game: “Purse?” “Shoes?” “Toothpaste and toothbrush?”

It’s so much better now. Now it’s slightly obscure words I fish for, words that my kids can’t help with. For two days I tried to come up with a word and finally ran across it in a magazine article. As soon as I saw it—“relinquish”—I realized it was the one that had been lost in the lint. In a church meeting a few months ago I had to stop mid-sentence because I couldn’t haul up the word “debrief.” For a moment, eight adults played the “Finish Mama’s Sentences” game. I shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I can’t think of the word. It starts with ‘de-’ and I want to say ‘delineate,’ but that’s not it.” Cindy got it within two guesses. She must attend a lot of meetings.

Anyway, I know now that to love the Lord with all my mind means that I love Him with it in its bright, creative fullness and also in its dull, empty, lint-ness. Love the Lord with all your mind, Jesus said—however much or little that may be. The point isn’t how much is in the mind. The point is the love. And, as an egghead or a lint-head, I do love the Lord.

During those dark, dusty days when the mental lights were dim, I did a few things to stimulate my mind. I don’t know if it helped or not, but I instinctively stayed away from intellectual “junk food,” like reality TV shows and People magazine. And I tried to expose my mind to things I thought might be of greater value, like classical art with its visual depth and classical music with its more complex dynamics, rhythms and chord changes. I don’t know that People and pop music are all that bad. I just figured I needed all the help I could get. I hoped some corner of my brain might ignite that would otherwise lie dormant. In the end, however, I don’t think that my diet of Van Gogh and Vivaldi did that much to bring back my brain. I think it was simply the grace of God.

At any rate, now that I have partial recovery, I can’t get lazy. I’m still responsible to submit my thoughts to the Lord, take every thought captive and let Him fill me with truth from His Word. I now understand that I literally have the mind of Christ. He’s in there, His Holy Spirit energizing the right and left hemisphere of my brain, assuring me of Jesus’ love and reminding me to pray, which I do with overwhelming gratitude.

Sometimes I look back and wonder how I prayed during the lint-years? How did I form words? How did I express myself?

Then I remember Romans 8:26. It says the Spirit helps us in our weakness. Yep, that’s what happened. My mind was weak, but it didn’t matter. “We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.” See? It’s okay. Sometimes we don’t even need words. We’ve got the Holy Spirit to speak on our behalf, and that’s worth far more than all the Ph.D.s an egghead might ever boast.

© 2003, Ann Kroeker

“Maybe [my sister] should go back to work,” I used to think. “Her mind has gone completely to dust.” I was aware that she was intensely (and, to my mind, ridiculously) focused on her children. But it was only after my own mind had gone to dust, several years later, that I was able to fathom why and to give some structure to those observations she had forced on me during her years of exile in Motherland. --Susan Maushart

[Susan Maushart, The Mask of Motherhood: How Becoming a Mother Changes our Lives and Why We Never Talk about It, (Penguin Books, New York, NY, 1999), 11-12.]

[A]ll women, after delivery experience a sudden sharp drop in estrogen availability after birth when they expel their estrogen-supplying placenta…In women who feed their infants only with breast milk, unsupplemented by other sources of nourishment, the ovaries typically do not turn ‘on’ to supply women with estrogen after the placenta is expelled, for some eight to ten or twelve months after they begin breast-feeding. --Dr. Claire Warga

[Claire Warga, Ph.D., Menopause and the Mind: The Complete Guide to Coping with Memory Loss, Foggy Thinking, Verbal Slips, and Other Cognitive Effects of Perimenopause and Menopause, (The Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, NY, 1999), 142-143.]

Those That Have Young

The first diaper I ever changed was my first child’s.

Perhaps I should pause a moment, allowing for horrified gasps and jaw-dropped amazement…

Armed with this little-known fact about me, one can imagine how shockingly ill prepared I was for motherhood.

I woke up in “Motherland” with Isabelle, my firstborn, who lay in the hospital plastic bassinet, eyes smeared with goopy ointment, head covered with a pink knit cap topped by a yarn ball that fell off before we even left the hospital. I wouldn’t let the nurses take her to the nursery; she must stay with me at all times. She slept well. I didn’t.

Though I was still dazed from the trauma of childbirth and the liters of hormones magnifying every emotion, the doctor discharged me two days later. I was going home, er, we were going home: Philippe and I…and Isabelle.

Philippe and I entered the hospital as a young married couple and would leave the hospital as parents.

After the agonizing process of dressing Isabelle in a sleeper several inches too long, fearful of bending one of her noodle arms too far and popping her shoulder out of its socket, or accidentally sinking a finger into her fontanel and causing brain damage, we were all finally ready to leave. The nurse came with a wheelchair to escort us downstairs. I held tightly to Isabelle as they rolled me down a corridor, onto an elevator, to the entrance. We weren’t saying much. I focused on finding the balance between clenching the baby tightly enough so as not to drop her on the hard tile floor, and loosely enough not to suffocate her. Philippe was hovering. The nurse made small talk, took a picture, waited with me while Philippe ran to bring the car around.

The nurse waved as she rolled the wheelchair back in and disappeared into the depths of the Family Life Center.

We gingerly placed Isabelle into her blue car seat for the drive home. For about twenty minutes we fiddled with the straps, shocked at what a tiny peanut she seemed, swallowed up by the car seat.

She was sleeping, limp as an uncooked chicken, her head lolling to one side so far that one of us held it upright while the other balled up receiving blankets to wedge between her ear and shoulder. The blankets were only mildly successful. Finally we determined I would ride next to her in the back seat and hold her head straight.

We debated about covering her with another blanket. It was a sunny spring day, but someone said that babies get colder sooner than adults and if they get chilled they can develop pneumonia with complications that put them on respirators. Well, that’s not exactly what they said. But what did I know about babies? I’d only changed about five diapers at that point. We covered her.

Every now and then we looked around nervously to see if anyone was watching, evaluating our first awkward attempts at parenting. Was anyone staring? Does someone from the Family Life Center send out security to confiscate babies whose parents can’t keep their newborn’s head straight?

After several glances over our shoulder, it became obvious no one was looking. No one cared if we got it right or wrong. We were on our own. This little human being was riding home with us and I, Ann Kroeker, who had never changed a diaper before arriving at the hospital two days before, was to take care of her. 

Philippe crept home by the back roads. I sat in the back feeling Isabelle’s cheek smooshed against the palm of my hand. So tiny. So trusting.

I think she got ripped off. Who thought she should have me for a mom?

It was so much responsibility for someone so little exposed to parenting. This wasn’t a project, this was a person! I was petrified I’d mess things up and ruin her life.

Eighteen months later, only barely adjusting to the fear of messing up one baby, we had another, Sophie. Now I had two people whose self-esteem I could crush by mismanaging naps or feeding schedules. I imagined that the possibilities of causing dysfunction, disillusionment or dysentery were endless, and many days I felt panicky. My fears clearly amplified by sleep-deprivation, it was a big burden to carry, both figuratively and literally.

When Sophie was born, Isabelle wasn’t quite walking yet. Those first weeks, I would hold Isabelle on one hip and balance the baby car seat against the other. And to top it off, baby Sophie had an immature sphincter muscle at the top of her stomach. After every single feeding, she spit up. Sometimes it was projectile vomit that would splat against the wall or arc across the room like a fountain.

When I dropped Sophie off at the church nursery, we packed a beach towel and a stack of about ten bibs I’d sewn from extra-thick face towels. I bought them in bulk, cut out a neck hole and sewed ribbing around the edge. They needed to be tight enough to keep globs of spit-up from oozing down her neck and inside her outfit, but loose enough of course not to choke her. And I needed as many of them as possible. When I returned after the one-hour-and-fifteen-minute service, a haggard nursery worker—her own outfit splattered with wet spots—would hand over a plastic bag bulging with the beach towel and the homemade bibs completely saturated, some of them dripping. Then she would hand me little Sophie, whose outfit was soaked in spite of the massive bib that was also approaching its saturation point.

It’s hard to relax and think clearly as a parent under these circumstances.

Stress built up inside of me that produced debilitating back muscle spasms. Twice in the first year of Sophie’s life, I could barely walk. The doctor prescribed muscle relaxants and Motrin and instructed me to lie flat on my back as much as possible. Ha, ha! Was that a joke? I thought maybe it was, since she knew I was the mother of two children under the age of two. The doctor didn’t laugh when I did. Maybe there was an edge to my laugh, a hint of mania, perhaps? Could she come home and help out with dinner? No, probably not. Could anyone?

Some days I sank to the floor during naptime and dissolved into tears. I tried to get enough sleep and stay in shape through jogging and visits to the gym, but with all of those fears and nerves and daily demands, I was reduced to survival mode.

I wanted to thrive. I wanted to be relaxed and content. I wanted peace. But I felt ragged and helpless, out of control.

Alone.

I wanted to flourish in every area of my life, but most of all, I wanted to experience Christ Jesus during these years of early motherhood. Out of a rich relationship of my own with Him, I wanted to pour truth and life into my kids. I wanted to be living in intimacy with the living Savior.

But I was just hanging on, and times of intimate fellowship with Him seemed a lifetime away. Long stretches of intimate communication with Him were a thing of the past, from my pre-mom years, having taken on a hazy, dreamlike quality. Memories of pre-kid quiet times took on the misty aura of a 13^th century European monastery…distant harmonies of a choir in the background, the tolling of bells, Luther-like revelations of truth.

I admit that those pre-kid quiet times weren’t like that. But they were quiet.

Let me try to remember reality. Well, I sat with a Bible, a journal, a prayer list, and I prayed. I wrote. I listened.

I listened for God, that is, not for restless babies who could scream during naptime at any moment. I could go for a walk outside and meditate on Scripture without having to load up a wagon with juice boxes and answer questions about asphalt and flowering trees. I could research questions in concordances or commentaries without being interrupted to read Pat the Bunny. I could sign up for in-depth studies and spend large blocks of time reading and annotating, writing in my own books with my own pencil, rather than discovering crayon marks scribbled across pages on which I never intended to write.

With kids, all I could manage were tiny prayers of desperation that squeaked out in the middle of rinsing applesauce out of the baby’s hair. Snatches of Scripture might come to mind, things I’d cling to, like, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Okay, Lord, You promised, so You’d better not. I’d pray these kinds of things while driving to the doctor, listening to the baby scream because she’d dropped her pacifier just out of reach, Um, where are You right about now, Lord?

Of all the times in my life when I should be walking closely with the Lord, it should be then (and now), when I was responsible for the lives and souls of those little human beings in my care. Yet the best I could do was to call on Him in a desperate tone things like, “Oh, please, You’ve got to help me here, Lord! Have mercy on me, because I can’t do this on my own!” When I got a few moments to write in my journal, I would scratch out prayers asking how on earth I might find time with Him again.

I knew that I was connecting with Him at a visceral level and I believed He was with me, somehow, somewhere. But every day was such a struggle, fumbling to put away groceries and keep up with mountains of laundry, that I couldn’t hear His voice or respond in any significant way.

Now, I need to assure you that Philippe did more during those agonizing first days, months, and years of motherhood than simply drive us home from the hospital. He would come home at the end of his work day, roll up his sleeves and start changing diapers, folding laundry, locating lost pacifiers, sweeping, mopping, hugging, holding. But we had a traditional arrangement where he was the primary breadwinner and I stayed home with the kids. When he came home from work, he was an amazing help, but that was after I spent ten daytime hours on my own, organizing and orchestrating the activities and needs of two and later three children.

I was learning to be a mom on my own. When the grocery bags ripped and oranges, grapefruit, and cans of Sprite rolled under the car, I was on my own with two kids to haul inside, change, put down for a nap before lying on the garage floor to poke out the cans and fruit from under the chassis with a yard stick. I was on my own when the baby spewed on the carpet, the couch, the wall, down the front of my shirt, in my hair, on my shoes and I was all alone when one time I lifted her up above my head, laughing, my mouth open wide, and then she…you know…yes, I was alone for that.

At some point in the midst of all of that aloneness, a friend of mine—a mom—pointed out a passage in Isaiah 40.

He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.
Isaiah 40:11 (NIV, emphasis mine)

Something about that verse comforted my mother-heart from that point on more than any other passage of Scripture. Something about the tone of gentleness, the care and concern of a shepherd for a mom assured me that He really was leading me. He was with me. Always. Since diaper number one.

That verse helped me to finally believe and be convinced that I was not alone. He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart, but He made a point to single out moms. He gently leads those that have young.

He gently led me, one who had young.

He was with me in the back seat of the car when I rode home from the hospital balancing Isabelle’s peanut head in my hand. He was with me, leading me during naptimes when I sat on the floor and wept, catching my tears in a bottle to store up and prove His presence and compassion. He was with me in the garage, while I poked at the Sprite cans, wanting to drop peace into me in place of the strain and stress. He led me as I led those children into each phase of their own lives. He led me into fully functioning motherhood.

He gently leads me to this day. I still have young, and I thank Him for that promise and that image of a nurturing shepherd who anticipates needs and carries the weary ones. He uses that image often in such well-known passages as the 23^rd Psalm, where David, a shepherd himself, sings of the Lord as his shepherd, leading him beside still waters and making him to lie down in green pastures.

I think back to those stressful years of adjustment and remember things I forgot. Many afternoons when I thought I couldn’t think or function another moment, I was able to nap because the children’s naps miraculously synchronized. He made a way for me to lie down and rest. I’d forgotten that.

Our local supermarket offered a child care area that was well organized and monitored for moms to use in order to shop without little hands grabbing sugar-crammed cereal boxes and fussing over the right to buy Doritos. As long as I was in the store, they assured me I could do whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to shop, though they puzzled over what I might do with my 90 minutes of free time while trapped in a supermarket.

Once a week, I dropped off the kids and walked with my book bag across the store to a small dining area set up in a corner. I bought an iced tea, pulled out my journal, a Bible, a book I wanted to read and study, and for 90 blissful moments of freedom, I could be alone with God. Well, relatively alone. It was still in a supermarket, but I settled down by the plastic planter, hidden slightly from the melon-thumpers clattering through the produce department. I forgot that God gave me that creative solution during a season of intense spiritual fatigue when I craved Him. That supermarket coffee corner served as an oasis in what seemed like the sandstorms of life—a metaphor than can be confirmed during an afternoon with a toddler in a sandbox.

Other examples come to mind—evening meetings I attended every other week with a group of creative adults who were helping to plan our church services. I was invited to participate, and I always hoped that my contribution was helpful, but those gatherings fed my soul. I felt valued. I was with people who were devoted to the Lord and I learned from them, inspired by their passion for Him. That, too, nourished me.

I realize that the Lord heard every tiny outcry, every sigh, every prayer that I might know Him in the midst of motherhood. I see now that I was never alone. He was actively involved, leading me as a mom.

It’s a powerful realization: He led me then, and He leads me now, over 11 thousand diapers later. Yes, I figured it four times, just to be sure. It's at least 11 thousand.

Thank the Lord I’m not alone in Motherland and never have been. Someone has been there all along, taking care of the mother, as well as the child.

© 2003, Ann Kroeker

Flab

I’d say I look to be about four or five months pregnant.

Trouble is, I’m not. I am not pregnant!

At the YMCA a few months ago, I scrutinized my flab in the mirror and tried to suck it in. The flab sagged.

“I have got to get rid of you,” I muttered, mentally calculating the days until the neighborhood pool would open and I would be forced to don a swimsuit in public. Memorial Day was only three weeks away. Would I make it? Could I lose the weight and tighten the torso? I flexed my abs. They crinkled.

I tried to imagine a washboard stomach, but it was difficult. My abs look more like clothes wadded up against a washboard instead of the washboard itself. My stomach has always been a trouble spot, but it’s now an eyesore. Here it is two years after my last baby was born, and a hunk of leftover flab sags limply, heavily, a curse. So far I’ve gotten by, by shoving the whole big wad of flesh into a pair of jeans. Suck in and zip, the flab stays put. What am I going to do without the girdling effect of my favorite Levis with their strong stitching, solid construction and rivets to hold it all together under stress?

Summer is around the corner, the season of swimsuits and elastic-band shorts made of flimsy materials with absolutely no rivets. What am I going to do without my denim girdle?

“I have no choice. It’s my dignity or you,” I announced to the flab. “One of us has to go.”

The very next day following my ultimatum, on a soggy spring Saturday morning, we packed up and headed to the soccer fields for an early morning game. I was wearing shorts—not Levis—with an elastic waistband. A T-shirt hung loosely over the top of the shorts. Covered, but not flattened or forgotten, Flab flopped around unhindered beneath that baggy T-shirt.

I was fumbling with a green folding chair, wrestling it from its nylon storage bag to stake my claim along the side of the field when one of the loudest moms greeted me with a smile. We chatted a moment, and she evidently misunderstood something I said because she exclaimed, "Oh, I thought you were pregnant! I wasn't sure, but now I can see that you are! Congratulations!"

Oof! She might as well have punched me right in my squishy gut. That minor showdown in front of the YMCA mirror apparently only angered Flab and I could practically see it stick its tongue out at me as I struggled with how to reply. I glanced down. Did I really look pregnant? I mean, not just a little pregnant, but pregnant enough for a relative stranger to comment on it loudly at a soccer game?

"Well, no, I'm not pregnant," I sputtered. I fiddled with the chair by way of distraction; I couldn't look her in the eye. "I'm just ten to fifteen pounds overweight."

She tried to make a joke, and I tried very hard to smile. She set up her chair farther down the line while I sank into my own. As the flab settled around my midriff like a gel-filled cummerbund, disgust settled in my mind.

I have got to lose this flab.

To be honest, this is kind of a new thing for me, this stubborn flab-issue. I’ve never had a model-thin body, but I’ve been fairly healthy, strong and somewhat trim. My torso is rather boyish in many respects—no waist, no cleavage, no curvy hips—but after the agonizing years of adolescence, I grew to accept and even appreciate it. By jogging, I could keep myself at a weight I felt was appropriate—it’s higher than anyone thinks, but I look acceptable at that weight, so it doesn’t bother me.

But this flab, it bothers me. It really bothers me, especially when people confuse it with a fifth child in the making. After the first two babies were born, I was able to reclaim that ideal weight and form fairly quickly with modest adaptations in my diet and starting up the jogging again. With the third baby, it took a lot longer, but I eventually returned more or less to my original shape.

With this one, this fourth, I’m over the 35-mark (that’s 35 years, not a 35-inch waist…although, come to think of it, I haven’t actually measured. It could be close.), and in spite of all the toddler-chasing I do in a day, Flab remains.

It seems like cruel and unusual punishment to inflict this struggle on someone who was willing to sacrifice her body so that four human beings could experience life. It seems moms should automatically be rewarded with slimmer, firmer, curvier bodies than ever after being willing to loan them out for nine months and beyond. Instead, we’re faced with defeat—well, some of us are. I do have some skinny-mama friends.

But I’m not one of them anymore, and my three daughters have noticed the extra inches. One of them innocently observed as I trotted upstairs one day, “Mama, you jiggle every time you take a step!”

I paused mid-step and took a slow, deep breath. This might be one of those defining moments in forming my child’s body image. I chose my words carefully.

“Yes, well, I’m not at my healthiest weight,” I conceded slowly, trying to sound comfortable and natural while measuring my response to her honest evaluation. “That’s why I’m trying to jog more often, because exercise will help. And I need you to help me eat fewer sweets. Can you warn me? ‘Mama! Stop!’” She laughed, and you’d better believe she reminded me later, brownie halfway to my mouth, “Mama! Stop!”

I’m trying to help these three beautiful young girls feel good about themselves no matter their shape. They’ll be studying magazines and billboards, television and friends. They’ll be faced with friends who struggle with eating disorders and obesity—what will be their fate? The odds are against them; they will be rare girls indeed, if they march into today’s culture feeling great about the way they look.

They don’t need to hear their mother moaning about her flab, obsessing about it…on the other hand, I don’t want them to think I’m content to stay this way. I want them to think in terms of good health. Oh, it’s such a dilemma! I want every one of my girls to feel great about who she is and how she’s made, no matter her size. Yet I want them all to aim for good health and find their ideal weight.

So what do I say? How can I speak truth to them? How can I convince them that they are loved no matter what size or shape they are? I’m never sure if I’ve said things that will backfire later. I pray for the right words and how to model a healthy self-image myself. 

It was easier when I was trim. It’s on my mind more often now that Flab is so prominent.

I took my jiggling flesh for a jog the other day. I’ve been jogging a few times a week. I usually use those 20-30 minutes to think, to pray, sometimes to let a praise song float around in my head to the rhythm of my run.

Now and then I think about those verses about honoring God with our bodies, and offering our bodies as living sacrifices. I’ve noticed that firm-abbed Christians like to quote those when promoting natural-food diets, vitamin and herbal supplements, and Christian workout tapes. I’ve noticed how jealous I am of firm-abbed Christians, too.

On this jog, as my flab flopped to the beat of my shoes on the pavement, I wondered about honoring God with my body.  “Does this run honor You, Lord?” I prayed. “Does the flab dishonor You?”

A worship song popped into my head.

Come, now is the time to give your heart
Come, just as you are to worship
Come, just as you are before your God
Come

© 1998, Brian Doerksen, Vineyard Music

I stopped jogging. “‘Just as I am,’ eh?” Sweat streamed down my flushed cheeks. Just as I am. 

That’s what I want my girls to know. No matter how big or little they are, no matter how close they are to their ideal weight, or how far, the Lord loves them just as they are.

That’s what I need to know, too. The Lord loves me, too, just as I am.

Sometimes I think so much about how to communicate truth to the kids, I miss it when it’s just for me. That day, at that moment, the truth of that song was for me.

And to think—all this time, I thought my problem was flab.

Flab isn’t my problem. At least, it’s not the main problem. The problem is that I’ve been feeling unacceptable. And that’s unacceptable. That’s the very worst message to send to the kids. It’s the very worst way to live.

Sometimes when I step out of the shower and see myself ungirdled, I feel like I’m not the person God wants me to be. I feel that I’ve failed the Lord in this area. I’ve let Him down. After all, I think, at this same point following the birth of the first three babies, I was back to optimum health. I was rested, I was trim, I was healthy. Now look at me! I’m sorry, Lord.

But that song, those lyrics, those truths sank in. “Come to Me, Ann, just as you are. Not later, when your stomach is taut again. Right now, just as you are.”

Maybe I’ve never before felt the need for His unconditional love and acceptance in this area. But I do. I need to know that I’m loved with the flab, as well as without. I don’t need to love the flab itself, but I need to accept the Lord’s love for me, who draws me close to Him, flab and all.

That’s what I want to tell my girls.

“The Lord loves you, I love you, and any friend or future boyfriend should love you, flab or no flab. You are loved. Come over here and let me give you a big hug. Come to me, girls. Come to me, just as you are.”

Come to me, Ann, just as you are.

I started jogging again with a sense of awe that God loves flabby moms like me just as they are.

The New American Standard version of Matthew 11:28 spontaneously came to mind. “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden,” and I laughed. Heavy-laden and flab? Funny.

The weary, heavy-laden flab-mama is being invited to come to the Lord Jesus regardless of waist measurements.

I don’t have to earn His favor. I can rest in His love. I don’t have to return to my ideal jean-size or optimum poundage to gain an invitation into His presence. Every day He invites me to experience more with Him. Every day He wants to tell me how much He loves me. Every day He yearns for my worship. Flab doesn’t matter one bit to Him, except when it keeps me from experiencing His love.

I know I’ll wake up tomorrow morning feeling just as squishy as ever. And I’ll probably frown at my reflection, clench my fists and reissue the showdown with that aggravating flab. I might even do more crunches and add some weight training. The girls will remind me to stay out of the chocolate chips.

But the flab, while still a foe of sorts, can also serve as a reminder for the weeks—er, most likely for months—ahead of the Lord’s invitation, to me, and to my girls, and to any woman who has ever looked down and felt a loss of dignity and a pang of unworthiness:

Come, just as you are, before your God.

* * *

Here I am, Lord. I come to you…with all of me.

© 2003, Ann Kroeker

On July 5 in 1946, the bikini was introduced to the world by French designer Louis Reard at a popular swimming pool in Paris.

[Source: MPR’s “The Writer’s Almanac,” July 5, 2003.
http://www.writersalmanac.org]

Mommy Sisyphus

Every morning I long to linger in the surreal storylines of my dreams, slapping the snooze button and delaying reality as long as possible. When the alarm sounds the fourth or fifth time, I will my eyes to creak open and blink numbly at the day.

Most days, I can flump out of bed and trudge through the morning ablutions in a daze, slowly stretching my joints like the Tin Woodman working himself back into motion.

On some days, however, especially during this stage of parenting, I lay on the bed sensing a bit of dread curdling in my gut like week-old milk discovered in a sippy cup wedged under a seat in the van. Those mornings I wake to the crushing weight of my role as a mom, oppressed, like something enormous is bearing down on me, looming like the big black clouds of a thunderstorm.

When I finally achieve consciousness and stare at the ceiling, it’s as if I can almost make out the rough outline of the massive granite boulder of motherhood that I must push uphill all day as best I can, like Sisyphus. He displeased the gods and was sentenced to pushing a boulder uphill every day in eternity. I’m not sure what I did to merit such attention, but the same boulder seems to be waiting for me every morning.

So I find myself at the bottom of the hill, facing my assignment of boulder-pushing that is guaranteed to result in zero progress. All day long I ram that blasted boulder up the hill, hoping beyond hope that maybe I’ll make it to the top and enjoy a sense of accomplishment. Instead, the day’s end is marked by a feeling of eternal failure. I plow into the challenges of the day, only to find they’ve rolled back farther than they were when I first got up.

I sort and fold loads of laundry, only to face heaps and piles more. I wash plates and stack them clean in order to scrub them again after the next meal is consumed. I change my toddler’s diapers only to put on clean ones that will be soiled minutes later by what is surely the most efficient and productive digestive system in the northern hemisphere.

As I vacuum and straighten the living room, three other rooms are dismantled. I’ll stand back and admire the relatively clean results I’ve slaved at, only to cross the threshold of the family room and stare with dismay at a carpet of LEGOs strewn from the couch to the doorway. Scraps of paper, string and dried out glue sticks intermingle with Playmobil characters jumbled on the coffee table. The toddler will have scooped out blocks by the handfuls and placed them in every container imaginable, including planters and toilets. I find jelly smeared on the piano keys, grape Kool-Aid drips dotting the carpet, and half a bagel impaled—cream-cheese-side down—on the bristles of my hairbrush. Scenes like these are all too common in my home. For every clean room, there are five trashed ones. Every completed task begets dozens of disasters. The mythical boulder quivers, and in an instant the inevitable happens.

Splat.

I’m squashed as flat as a Warner Brothers cartoon character by the discouraging weight of motherhood as it rolls backwards and smashes me into the messes at my feet. I meander, numbly, through the aftermath, sifting through the debris of Scotch tape scraps and uncapped markers. Then the day rolls to an exhausting end amidst disagreements at dinner over how many peas must be ingested before being excused, followed by a last-minute search for blankets and Beanie Babies. At last, around 9:00 at night, I sweep the crumbs from under the kitchen table, toss a load of laundry in the machine, and stumble to bed, defeated.

Next morning: begin again. Squint against the morning light to spot that stubborn boulder awaiting another day’s valiant, vain efforts. I swipe the sleep out of my eyes, mutter a martyrish complaint to my husband, then roll up my sleeves because I have to keep on pushing—I must—and about the only apparent benefit I can figure is nice biceps. Hauling around a 28-pound toddler accounts for those.

It can feel like failure, this whole motherhood thing, like I’m pushing against a boulder that isn’t budging one millimeter. I feel like I’ve labored hard and long (no childbirth pun intended), and for what?

One dreary, gray morning, I sat nursing my second cup of English Breakfast tea steeped extra-dark. The floor was sticky from day-old, dried Popsicle dribbles, so I heard the slow squeak-squeak-squeak of someone’s rubber-soled shoes crossing toward me from behind. Nathalie eventually appeared at my side, brown eyes fixed on me, unblinking, with a poker face I couldn’t quite read.

“What now?” I grumbled. It was too early. I could hear LEGOs and blocks being flung in the other room.

“Nothing,” she answered.

“What do you want?” I asked, only half interested in the answer as I turned back to the deep, black tea.

“Nothing.” Yet she stayed, standing there, staring. After several seconds of her lingering presence, I turned to her with a hint of exasperation, “Do you want me to get you something? Do you need my help? Don’t make me read your mind. Just tell me!” I watched a slight grin turn up the corners of her mouth as she reached out and touched my arm. “I love you, Mama,” she whispered.

Oh.

And that was all. She scampered off to play with her sisters, squeaking across the kitchen floor on her way out of the room.

Yes, well, there you have it. One whisper, one toothy grin, and one supremely guilty mom awakened to a burst of perspective. She squeaked off and left me to ponder the truth, and the truth is, I have four kids who seem to be not only growing potatoes behind their ears that I have to scrub away nightly, but those same four kids are also growing in maturity and generosity with an increasing understanding of spiritual truths. They may smear purple paint onto the bathroom light switches from unwashed fingers, but they can also touch my heart with a well-timed hug, perceptive to my weariness or each other’s tears.

I may have messy kids with dirt under their fingernails that I’ll have to scrape out before bedtime, but sometimes it’s there because we’ve teamed up on some gardening projects, planting pots of impatiens and slinging mulch together. We’re learning to work together and at times to give each other space to be alone, to create, to think, to read, to pray.

Yes, the workload is heavy, but these wonderful people are being formed…and I’m being formed among them. In the mornings, I tend to forget all of those critical realities transpiring in our hearts and souls, especially because they happen in slow motion. When all I can think about are the immediate things—plates and the Diaper Genie and the load of reds souring in the washer—I forget to celebrate the important things that really matter.

The perception shift that requires continual reminders helps me view the tasks more philosophically, understanding that there are lessons to be learned: abstract lessons in “patience,” “longsuffering,” “servanthood,” and “humility” that are learned concretely.

Patience: “Put your clothes in the hamper. Put your clothes in the hamper. Put your clothes in the hamper. Put your…”

Longsuffering: tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap on the arm while I’m on the phone.

Servanthood: Toenails, ears and diaper-issues that require a shower and 30 minutes of crib sterilization.

Humility: Apologizing in tears to a four-year-old for disciplining her for something she didn’t do.

Lessons like these let God the Father form Christ in me. It’s a tangible way I’m continuing to be transformed into His likeness, the likeness of a humble servant.

Motherhood requires me to lay down my life for another (four “others,” to be precise), and Jesus reassures me that there’s no greater love than this. I’ve learned that to find my life I’ve had to lose it among Lincoln Logs and mismatched socks. I’ve come to see that moms fit the observations Jesus made, that in God’s kingdom, the first shall be last and the servant of all. As it turns out, motherhood has strategically positioned me for Kingdom “success,” naturally aligning me daily with Jesus’ paradoxical kingdom-values.

Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. And if serving others is good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for me. Motherhood—my life right now—is all about serving. He assigned me this boulder of servanthood to push in obedience.

It’s my assignment to daily serve as mother to four magnificent human beings. There will be results, though perhaps not what I expect. I must set my mind and will to serve obediently as a mom, in all its great moments and in the dreadful dreariness of seemingly zero progress, trusting that God will do what He wants in the lives of my family and in me.

Even when I recognize and acknowledge my God-given assignment and its noble beauty, however, mornings are still hard. At the very least, it takes a hot shower and a few cups of that strong, black tea to ease me into consciousness. But my hope is that sometime after the third cup, when sunlight streams across the kitchen table, perhaps I’ll think not about the massive boulder, but this massive shift of perception.

Obedience. Servanthood.

It’s that simple. How about that? In the end, it’s the simplest lesson of all: to serve and obey the Lord, and trust Him with the results.

I don’t suppose you could remind me of this…first thing tomorrow morning?

© 2003, Ann Kroeker

TREES (an essay written for Good Friday at Grace Community Church)

In the beginning, God created trees.

It wasn’t the only thing He created, of course, but He spoke vegetation into existence by commanding the land to produce it. And there came the trees bearing fruit with seed in them according to their kinds. God saw that it was good, and then He closed out the third day. Done.

And to this day, we can think about trees, bearing seed according to their kinds: shagbark hickory, sassafras, dogwood and redbud. Apple, pear and persimmon trees; walnut, oaks, and ash. White pine, blue spruce, buckeye and willow. Beyond the woods of Indiana, there are palms and redwoods, orange and grapefruit trees; fig, olive, jacaranda and eucalyptus trees.
It’s amazing to ponder the miracle of a tree. They begin so small: an acorn, pine cone, sweetgum ball, a whirlygig from a maple tree.

From seed, to sprig, to a shoot with an ever-widening root system. It branches out and a tender young tree stakes its claim in the soil beneath and the sky above, pushing toward the heavens.

While it grows and changes, it faces seasons. With seasons, comes more change: from dormant winter to sap-rising spring, when buds, burgeoning, draw light from the sun to deepen through summer. Fall comes, and trees explode in vivid color before dropping their leaves to return to quiet, solemn, exposed outlines against the gray skies of winter.

A Creator worked seasonal transformation into the bigger change of seed to tree. Change is good, He might say. Without it, there could be no seed, no future trees, no possibility for growth.

Look at a tree if you can; study it, ponder it, sit under it, climb it, rub your hands over it. Then think of the tree and the change, the strength it develops as it lives through another season, another year, earning another ring deep within.

Jesus was present at Creation, His voice somehow joining with the Father and Spirit, speaking everything into existence.

What, then, was it like for Creator-Jesus to come to earth and be immediately placed in a manger, probably rough-hewn from logs cut from trees He Himself first sculpted? What was it like for Creator-Jesus to later become Carpenter Jesus?

As He grew, Jesus would have been surrounded by wood shavings and sawdust, as tables, chairs, chests and cradles were constructed from bark-covered logs stripped by His earthly father, and later, by Jesus Himself.

He would have learned what wood worked best for each piece, shaping it to fit His purpose: He may have carved designs into wooden chalices, whittled a knob for a drawer, and chiseled joints to form a solid bed that would bless some newlyweds. He would have known the earthy smell of freshly sawn wood and recognized a tree from the scent of its discarded chips and scraps flaring up in a fire warming His dinner.

Imagine Him walking the rugged landscape of the Holy Land, made Holy by His presence there, pausing to lean against a fig tree, or reaching to brush his fingertips against an olive branch, privately enjoying the familiar feel of wood, known so well to His rough hands. Jesus even sought the cool silence of trees in the darkness of Gethsemane, as He agonized over the Plan.

How did it feel, hours later, to be hauling His cross, the wood of a tree cut to destroy? The Creator, crushed under the weight of a tree. He felt it against His body, no chance or thought to run His hands over it with the pleasing realization that He had spoken it into existence. Nor would He have imagined it stripped of bark and smoothed into a chair leg or a spinning wheel. His mind was focused on other things, on a transformation He alone could understand…a transformation He alone could bring about.

As the Creator-Carpenter hung, nailed to a tree, splintered wood was the last thing He felt as He let the greatest transformation of all begin.

From that point on, true change, true transformation for each of us was possible. The Creator-Carpenter, as Christ…on a cross.

Let us think of that, as we ponder a tree.

©2002 Ann Kroeker