Respite Away

At the dinner table last Wednesday, Chris announced he was giving me a gift: he was sending me away.

As of Friday, the baby and I would be spending the night at a hotel here in town, fifteen minutes from the house. (Yay for free hotel points resulting from all of Chris' travel!) 

I did not protest.

You see, lately I've not been the Mama I should be. For obvious safety reasons, I don't announce when Chris is away on business trips, but he has been gone four of the last five weeks. Being a mother of four children six and under is hard. Add in homeschooling: hard. Being the parent 24/7 is hard. No help in town (relatives, mother's helper, housekeepers): hard. One of the children seems to be in a really tough phase and we are feeding off each other: hard! 

I bet Chris' first clue was my incessant text messages and anguished emails to him while he was on his travels week after week, and his final evidence was coming home and hearing just how often I've been shouting at the little ones. (I really believe shouting doesn't have a good place in parenting, unless I'm shouting for the kid to get out of the way of the oncoming car. Sternness, discipline, consequences--yes! But shouting and using a rude tone of voice? That's just a failure of self-discipline and really is just the grown-up version of my child throwing tantrums and talking back to me.)

I thought about not even posting about my little respite away because I feel guilty (undeserving?) to have received such a generous and luxurious gift from my husband. I feel incompetent that I can't be perfect. Why can't I just buck up, be a fantastic parent all the time? I know so many women with very heavy crosses right now (marital, economic, chronic illness or death, etc.): given all my blessings, who am I ever to be anything but perfect and cheerful?!

However, I will share because it sure helped me when I heard a few years ago about mothers reaching this point and needing help from others, needing more dependence on God. (A Mother's Rule of Life is a good read on this point.)

So, Friday afternoon arrived. I brought the children home from homeschool co-op and set about to pack my bag. (Wow, is it easy to pack for one mama and one baby!) I almost got derailed from my Mission to Be at Peace when Chris and I heard bloodcurdling screams from downstairs. John ran in from the back yard with what we later learned were four angry yellow jackets in hot pursuit. Being wasps, they sting repeatedly, which these were doing, even through his clothing. They chased him up the stairs and into the bedroom! We kept finding a live wasp here, a live one there, and the last one was killed six hours later.

Image source

John got seven stings and was understandably very tearful. It hurt so bad! Calamine lotion, ice, ibuprofen, and Benadryl, plus lots of soothing words and then a TV show, and I felt he was calm enough that I could leave for my dinner date. Chris said it was unfortunate this happened while I was still home because now I'd worry, but it would have been worse if it had happened while I was gone because I'd have insisted on coming home: he's probably right!

One child, who has been seemingly so angry at me for weeks, if not months, kept falling apart crying at my leaving, which shocked me. It was very hard for me to walk away. If I didn't know how important it was for the children's sake that I hit my "reboot" button, I don't think I'd have left.

My girlfriend and I had a lovely dinner with our two babies (9 months and 15 months) as companions. I noticed that it took us a while but by the end of dinner we were even talking about subjects that were not our own children!

A bouquet of flowers and note from my husband

My friend was able to join me back at the hotel room so we could keep chatting and let our babies crawl around instead of being trapped in high chairs. There I found treats from my husband who had, like a gentleman, gone over to my hotel earlier in the day to check me in so I wouldn't have to go to one iota of extra trouble. (Yes, he pumps all my gas too, and other such care-taking tasks!)

Dried fruit and nuts from my husband

And he left champagne for me also!

It was a lovely suite. I felt like a rube when I rounded the corner into the vanity area and saw a television inside my mirror! I exclaimed out loud! Apparently it is called an "electric mirror." (Yes, I think it does reveal my naivete that I'm putting quotation marks around that.)

Two babies playing in the hotel room while mamas talked into the night

After a restful night of only one baby's wakings to tend with--which feels so easy to me after all these years of waking for multiple children variously having nightmares, sleepwalking, or generally calling for me--I enjoyed breakfast in the hotel and relaxing for a couple of hours while Joseph took his morning nap.

My breakfast companions: a darling baby, a compelling book, and hot coffee

During his nap when I found myself in complete silence and solitude, I realized suddenly that I could connect on the phone with a very holy friend of mine with whom I had been playing phone tag for two weeks. I texted her at 8:30 in the morning: "I'm available! Can we talk?" This holy mother of many and grandmother of many more gave me an hour of her time and I believe the Holy Ghost spoke through her to me. I was given so much on which to meditate, such helpful spiritual advice. If I come to her angry and frustrated, she never feeds that, she never takes me further into an occasion of sin by encouraging further complaining about this duty or that, this person or that one. How often do we speak over the course of a year and she gives me wise and holy advice about being a wife and mother, yet this was the time she finally shared the story from her own mothering and the demarcation point of Before and After her transformation. What point she had to reach, the transformation that occurred, the spirituality that was most helpful (St. Therese's "Story of a Soul", which I have read, and St. John of the Cross' "Dark Night of the Soul," of which I've read about one-quarter). I believe her sharing her own story of transformation earlier wouldn't have helped me, that she shared it exactly when it needed to be shared.

Now I am armed with so much to think about while I go about my duties. I am pondering some new spiritual practices. I will go back and read those books again.

I want to meet God in the souls of my children. I want to do my duties, not with an exhausted, resentful heart, but with generosity and peace.

I want to be able to say, "I'm coming, Lord," as Lindsay Boever suggests in her article (and may I second her recommendation to read Fr. Ciszek's book about his time in the Russian slave labor camps, which has been surprisingly applicable to me as a mother).

Everything that happens now I try to respond in my head, "I'm coming, Lord." I try to treat everything as if God is calling me. I see the house a mess, "I'm coming, Lord." I have a fussy baby at my leg, "I'm coming, Lord." I hear the baby crying for the eighth time in the middle of the night, "I'm coming, Lord." It is my goal.
Most of us will not die a bloody martyrdom for our faith, but we will be asked to die a dry martyrdom. Each day, one fuss at a time we can grow closer and closer to His heart. I want to be faithful in the small things. I hope at the end of my life He will say to me, "Well done, my good and faithful servant."

After my unplanned and fruitful spiritual retreat over the phone with my holy friend, the baby woke and it was time to check out of the hotel. I enjoyed shopping for fabric to sew the children's All Saints' costumes and a lunch out before returning home.

I was gone for 20 hours: wow! Two children tackled me and squeezed me so hard that I thought I might actually get hurt. The other child going through a phase (who I heard got tearful for me at bedtime) wouldn't come out to greet me, sat in a heap on the kitchen floor, arms crossed over chest, brows as furrowed as they could be. But we worked through it and have had a lot of special, tiny moments since I came home. But I have been warned by said child, "Don't ever go away to a hotel without us again!"