A friend recently passed on to me the article Don’t Carpe Diem written by Glennon Melton, which I have since found made the rounds in just about every “mom” circle about a dozen times.  I glanced at it, read the first few lines and wrote back “this is gold– I can’t tell you how many times people have told me that, and it makes me frantic too!”  Then I sat down and read through the article and realized that the author and I were touching different parts of the elephant.

The fact is, as mothers we have all been told a thousand times to “enjoy it! it goes so fast!” and that sort of thing.  It gets tiresome at times, but just about as tiresome as anything else you’ve been told to do constantly and yet constantly fail at. When people say “they grow up so fast” what they are really saying is “life goes by so fast”.  Seeing kids grow up is just the alarm that makes us realize it, which is why I think mothers hear more than their fair share of these types of encouragements. This being said, I definitely sympathize with the frantic feeling that Ms Melton describes every time someone “encourages” her this way.  In my case I’ve come to realize this feeling is really one of two things:

1. A feeling of anxiety because I really haven’t been grateful when I should be, and isn’t that a miserable way to spend a wonderful life?

or 2. Anxiety because I really have been trying to enjoy and be grateful, even frantically so, but the moments just keep slipping by.  And all too soon I know that little tousled toe-head will move on and move out, and I won’t get to peer into his crib at night or take him to the park, and then what….?

Ms Melton is fully aware of the feeling of failure: “I used to worry that not only was I failing to do a good enough job at parenting, but that I wasn’t enjoying it enough. Double failure.”  This is a visceral feeling that every self-aware mother identifies with, which is part of why I think this article has been so wildly popular.  The good news is that while she might be a double failure, we are all TOTAL FAILURES– both at doing and enjoying whatever it is that God has laid out for us– and that’s OK! As long as we admit it, repent of it and move forward in faith.

To flesh that out a little, real enjoyment isn’t rolling on the ground laughing from the time we wake up until the time we go to bed and all the time between naps. That much Ms Melton gets right.  However, I think it robs life and the God who gives it to us to say that joy only comes in tiny moments she calls “Kairos time”, or that there is only joy in having parented, not in parenting.  As precious as those moments are when our children are obedient/adorable or maybe just sleeping or even grown and gone, real joy is not found in those alone.  It is found by taking the fun times and the hard ones and being grateful through both.  It doesn’t need a fancy name, it doesn’t need to be discovered by a 21st century writer/blogger/mother, it’s pretty simple and it’s been around since the beginning of time.  It’s called a grateful heart. It entails looking at your child who is screaming at the top of his lungs and trying to throw himself out of the stroller (to use a recent example) and still being able to enjoy the gift that they are because you knew they were going to be sinful (just like you) and demand impossible things of you, and be so selfish that they don’t even care if you’ve slept eaten or gone to the bathroom– AND YET they are still a wonderful gift! and full of promise!  And although she doesn’t seem to realize it, what Ms Melton calls “Kairos” is, at it’s root, actually just age-old gratitude.

And that’s the rub.  What we want to be told is what Ms Melton comes to as the conclusion of her article: find moments of joy/”Kairos” in this crazy difficult existence of motherhood and it’s all good.  The problem with that is that it leaves a gaping hole– well o.k., maybe not a gaping hole– maybe just one large enough for a child to fall through.  You see, I think children can tell when we are just gritting our teeth and bearing it (by which we really mean “them”) albeit finding moments of joy– and when we are actually enjoying ALL OF IT and therefore ALL OF THEM.

God expects us to be tight-rope walkers of a sort.  He expects us to balance between loving and receiving the goodness He gives us in this life (which includes our children), and not expecting those things to ultimately fulfill us.  He wants us to take deep, wonderful, ridiculous joy in our kids and to still realize that they are not the source of our joy.  I can fall off that tightrope on either side and I’ve developed a little test to tell me which it is so that I know how to get back on when confronted by that “enjoy it” person in the grocery store.  If I feel like the member of a chain gang that someone just walked up beside and barked an order to “enjoy it!”, chances are, I have fallen off on the ungrateful side.  If, on the other hand, I feel like a person eating their last meal, trying to eek out every second of joy, every flavor, and then someone pokes their head in my cell and says “enjoy it!” chances are my misplaced expectations are making me frantic.

If, however, I am in the middle of the grocery store and things have gotten rather hairy and someone tells me to “enjoy it”, and I feel like saying, “Thanks, that’s a good reminder. I am enjoying this imperfect situation to the fullest realizing that it’s good but it’s not the end-all, and a perfect one awaits me,” then chances are I am right where I should be on the tightrope.

(Parenthetically, I would draw a line of difference between the person who says “enjoy every minute of it” and the person who says “I enjoyed every minute of it.” It’s one thing to point a person towards perfection and it’s another to point them towards yourself.)

Ms Melton touches on the fact that other people besides mothers have hard jobs and yet people don’t nag them to “enjoy it!”  To that I would say, why not?  Shouldn’t we all be enjoying this life to the fullest extent that a temporal/flawed existence can be? So in conclusion, do carpe diem– do encourage new moms to seize the day if you think it would be uplifting, and while you’re at it, tell the same thing to a 75-year-old man and a 5-year-old child.  But most importantly, remind yourself.

Long, loooong ago when we were house hunting in Miami it seemed every house we looked at was muted colors, tan, light brown, coffee, chestnut, hazel, beige, toast.  The realtor opened one more front door walked in and said, “rambling beige,” and forevermore I’ve remembered that term.  And I thought, “I will NOT have a rambling beige house.”

In the market for a couple of chairs, I pretty much fell in love with orange ones:

yep, orange. Definitely

Or turquoise, yes, maybe turquoise.

turquoise in leather...

But here’s the crazy thing; I think I love orange chairs; I think I could go a little wild with turquoise and then I take a look at my handy Pinterest board where I put my whole look together and it is totally rambling beige.  I am shocked, but picture after picture confirms it; I like monotone.  I am boring.

I know, I know; I could bring out some color with pillows, throws, a tchotchke.  But I won’t; I mean take a look at those pictures, no color.  Even the tchotchkes are muted.

I have rambling beige pieces showing up for my living room this week, no orange, no turquoise, no purple; just beige.  Maybe  there’s enough color in my life that I don’t need it in my living room.  Yah, I’m going with that.

I love antiques mixed with mid-century modern, color (which I need constant inspiration for because white is just too easy), bold patterns, graphic fretwork, contrast, a spot of glamor.  I love House Beautiful and I enjoy other in-print magazines like Elle Decor,  Architectural Digest, etc.  Today it’s hard to make it in paper– so much has moved on-line– and even print media needs an Internet presence.

I’m new to the on-line magazine world but here are a couple that seem to have it all.

Lonny

House of Fifty

Fresh Vintage

Have you read the children’s books, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, or, If You Give a Moose a Muffin?  The story starts with a simple little cookie given to a mouse, but as soon as that mouse gets a cookie he’s going to want a glass of milk to go with it, and chances are if you give him the glass of milk, he’s going to want a mirror to make sure he doesn’t have a milkstache, and after that he will notice that his whiskers need a little trim and he’s going to ask for scissors…

Well, if you give Andrew, Jarrett and Matthias a gun, they are probably going to want another gun to keep it company. And chances are they will want a membership in a gun club to go with them.

After that they will notice all the empty rounds they’ve spent and they are going to want some reloading equipment to go with it. And if they get the re-loader, they will realize they need a caliper to measure to the thousandth inch for perfect calibration.

After that they will look around and notice they have no bench for their reloading equipment so they will ask for a bench and then they will look around and notice that they have nowhere to sit so they will need some stools.  They will go to the kitchen and take the stools so they can sit and reload.

The trouble is the mom of the house will miss her stools and when she goes looking for them she will find them in the basement and ask that they be brought back to her kitchen.

But sooner or later those three men will steal the stools again…

I am in the market for new kitchen stools.

In a way it's only fair, that they use my kitchen stools because I bought them in the automotive department

So, I have decided I need new ones in the kitchen and they can keep my others. I still love industrial.  Looking around I have narrowed it down to a few:

I love the idea of a back on the stool.

But I am afraid that there might not be enough passage way if I opt for a back

These are probably a little too modern for my kitchen but they are the perfect combo of back/backless

Maybe a tad too farmy for my house

I am kinda leaning towards a backless style again so it can completely tuck under the counter when not needed.

So….. should I stick with industrial?  I really love it.