Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose

I started this post over a month ago. I am sad to say it is still just as relevant today as it was then. Have y'all ever seen Friday Night Lights?  The TV series, not the movie.  I stumbled on it on Netflix a year or so ago and binge watched my way through it.  And then I found the movie and watched it. I loved them both. One of the things that has stuck with me ever since I watched the first episode of the show was "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose".  It became a mantra that the Dillon Panthers shouted before they headed out onto the football field to play.

Victoria Macey - Dribbble

It also became a mantra I started applying to my life. I'm a firm believer that change comes from within. If I want the world to be a better place, then I need to start with me. Start by cleaning out my baggage, my preconceptions, my biases. View every person I meet knowing that they have their own struggles, their own beliefs, but they were fearfully and wonderfully made.

Fill my heart so full of love that when terrible things happen in the world, I act, and not just speak.  I fully believe in the power of prayer. But words without actions serves me, not others. It can be something as simple as a friend with a sick child, or as terrible as an attack.  Prayer can be my first step, but it should not be my last. Can I take the mother of the sick child a meal? Offer to babysit her other children so that she can get her child to the doctor? How can I help her? Can I give blood to help out when a tragedy happens? Donate supplies to the blood banks to help out the donors when they are far away?  How can I actively show love?

During the movie, Billy Bob Thornton, who plays Coach Gaines, gives a speech. In it he says: 

Can you live in that moment, as best you can, with clear eyes and love in your heart? With joy in your heart? If you can do that, gentlemen, then you're perfect

If we can live in this moment with clear eyes and love in our hearts, we're perfect.  Clear eyes, to see that our world view isn't the only one. To see that just because we haven't experienced something, doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It just means it hasn't happened to us.  Hearts so full of love for mankind that we would listen with open ears to others concerns and make them ours. That we would begin to try and find a way to heal our country together.

Where have all the children gone?

Or rather the Mom's of adult children.  I'm an avid reader, online and in life. I devour books and I read multiple blogs daily.  Many, no actually all, of the blogs that I read about motherhood are from the viewpoint of mothers whose children are still young.  Usually 14 or younger.  I feel like fourteen is sort of a cut off date. After that we, as mothers, know that our children are heading into their teenage years. And we remember those years. We know how chaotic they are, how you feel like you don't fit in anywhere. I know if the internet had been around when I was a teenager, and my mom made a post about me. Well I would have just "died."

So I get it. I understand why the blogs are all from mommy's who have young children and why they go (mostly) silent about their children during the teenage years and beyond. I think, though, that it's also because we're ashamed. When your child is little and makes a mess all over the house, well heck, every parent has dealt with that.  Or when your elementary school child needs help with homework that you don't understand.  Been there, done that.  But when our children become teenagers, we start to think they will magically morph into pillars of society who will rarely, if ever, do anything wrong.  And telling the world that our child messed up (read, "is human") is a super scary thing. Because if they're messing up then I'm obviously a horrible parent, right?

There is no way that a good parent would have a kid who lies to them, who sneaks out in the middle of the night, who drank before the legal drinking age, or (God forbid) who cusses like a sailor.  That isn't what a good kid looks like. Especially a good Christian kid. Being a Christian isn't especially hard.  Being what society thinks is a Christian is almost impossible. When you have children who are now adults, who aren't what society thinks a christian should be, it's even harder.  I'm still a mama bear. Even though one of my cubs has a cub of his own, I still want to protect them.

I am the worst at keeping up with my blog.  It's mostly a place where I share my random thoughts, my grief over my mother, and my never ending battle with weightloss.  But I want to try and start sharing stories with you about my children.  Most of you who read this right now have young children. But one day they won't be young. And maybe you'd like a place to go to read stories and think to yourself, "hmm, someone else went through this too. Maybe we're not so different"  Because in the end, I don't think we are. We're just afraid to share.

It's ok to grieve

In June my mother will have been gone from this earth for three years. It doesn't seem like it's been that long. Some days I roll through life perfectly fine, thinking of how she would have loved this or that, how much she would enjoy the beautiful weather.  And then others, for seemingly no reason at all, I will find myself struggling with even mundane tasks, like running errands.  She'll pop into my mind, my throat will constrict, and tears fill my eyes.  And suddenly I am struggling to keep it together.  

Grief in silhouette by Tim Green

When someone you love dies, no one gives you a manual.  You're usually given three days off of work to grieve them, and then it's back to the daily grind.  When my grandmother died, I thought the grief process ended that suddenly. That after just a little grieving you turned off your emotions and got back to the business of living.  Aside from her funeral and that first week or so, I can't remember ever seeing my mother or her sisters cry.  I thought they were over it, that it was done.  It wasn't until my mama died that I realized how wrong I was.  I was sitting at my Aunt Sue's house talking with her about when Granny (as we called her) died, and she began to cry.  I was shocked at first, and then so relieved.  I told her exactly what I just told you. That I thought they had gotten over it and just moved on. I had thought I must be doing something wrong because I was still upset over a year later.  She looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "No".  

Light after Darkness by Jhong Dizon

It was like a switch flipped on in my brain. Grief isn't something you just do for a little while. It's something you will do the rest of your life, in different ways.  And that is OK. It's OK that sometimes I need to break down and cry. It's OK that sometimes I can remember sweet times with mama and be happy. There is no right or wrong way to do this, and best of all, there's no time limit. I don't have to "get over it" and move on.  I just have to live, one day at a time, sometimes one moment at a time, and living is all mama would want from or for me.  Just to keep going and live my life.