Mondays and cupcakes

We had to wake up early on a Monday after a full, full weekend to get to an appointment for one of the kids. No one within our walls is a morning person by nature and we were all wishing for an hour more sleep. My house smelt like five people's stale, sweaty soccer gear waiting to be washed and garbage that should have been taken out the day before. No one was getting ready, or eating breakfast or brushing their teeth. I kept finding them all with books or toys, quietly settled instead of staying on task. There was one giant melt down before we left the house - I told them it was okay, they were sad, they were frustrated and rubbed their back. I ignored my impulse to tell them there was no time for this, they were too big for this, this was not a big deal.

Sometimes it feels like there is no time for compassion.

We made it eventually, we all got in the car, two out of three with brushed teeth and made it to our appointment just on time. Then, we start the drive home. There was a lot of bickering from the back seat. I put in one headphone and turned on my music (highly sensitive mama's driving with kids survival tip).

Still it got too loud and at one point I yelled 'would everyone be QUIET!'. It worked for two minutes before the bugging and bickering started up again.

So I took them all for cupcakes.

Here is one tiny thing I know about life. Sometimes we all act like assholes. We pick a fight when we should pick peace, we yell when we should listen. We melt down when it is inconvenient.

There is no such thing as perfect.

Yet there is such as thing as beloved - it has nothing to do with how we act - it has to do with who made us. It's an unfathomable idea. How we are so loved all the time, no matter what we do. How that love is expanding continually like the universe itself. Nothing can ever convey it fully.

I still feel this urging inside to try though. To give my children and myself glimpses that it is okay to melt down, yell, disagree, bug, bother, be selfish and act ungrateful. All that doesn't change how you are loved. How you are needed. How you are cherished. How you are safe here in this place of beloved love when you are not at your best.

And just for one day, that looked like cupcakes.

On Being A Human Mother

We said goodbye to my grandmother yesterday. I got to hug all four of her children, both of my parents and my own three siblings all in one day. Everyone felt sad. Everyone felt happy. After the hugs and the remembering and the goodbyes I went to the ocean. I needed to feel alive and it's the place where I feel the freest to be good and sad and angry with God.  I needed a liberal dose of freedom. I noticed this about the Colbecks yesterday - for better or worse we are freer to be sad in private. So I got mad and sad with my feet wet - touching the sand. At some point (like always happens by the sea) I found myself breathing: God is love.

God is love, God is love, God is love.

I thought about you, all my children. I'm away from you for the first real time in nine years of being a mother. I hopped an airplane in the first hours of the new day, long before you will wake up. It brought me here, a whole days driving away in just a few hours to mourn. I'm thinking of today. I'm thinking of my life and the people I love and God being love and there is something I need to tell you.

I love you.

I know it's cliche and anticlimactic and I tell you every single day but please hear me. We want unconditional love from our parents - we want it, we need it. When we think it is absent it keeps us disconnected.

So know this - know it to the core of your being. I love you. And in the wise words of Rob Bell who borrowed them from God: there is nothing you could do to make me love you less.

There is nothing you could do to make me love you less.

I need to write it here, put it down. I need to build our talisman, erect our ebenezer because I mess this most important thing up. I act like your dirty clothes on your floor, or your bickering with your sister, or your performing, affects the way I love you.

Hear me say it again because this will go on as long as I live. 

I will say no when I should say yes and say yes when I should say no. I will talk when I should listen. I will stay silent when you want some advice. I will chase you when you need space. I will let you go when I should pursue. I will say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, believe the wrong thing. I will work too much or too little and I will keep the house too clean or too messy. I will have too many hobbies or too few. Hear me because I will yell too much and play too little.

I will care about the wrong things.

And even though there will be millions upon millions of times when I love you well - these times when I love you wrong - when I love you not enough - when I love you like a human mother, these times will still cause damage.

So hear it again and again and again. I love you. No matter what you did last night or two minutes ago. No matter who you love, no matter how we disagree. No matter how I act.

I write it down so we can both read it and remember what really matters. I write it down as a request to please remind me when I am choosing the wrong thing, a plea to tell me when I'm not understanding. I write it down to hope you will forgive me when despite your best attempts and my own I still don't get it. Because I am a human mother. And I need to lean hard into love.

I love you. No matter what.