Leaving the Little Years, the power of listing out reality, choosing Who you give your Yes to, and why I think your life is the stuff of saints

My life right now in the Middle Years

I thought my hands were pretty full back in the thick of the Little Years. And they were. I have years of old blog posts to prove it, after all.

These days I am squarely in the Middle Years, though. And my hands are so, so very full.

The Middle Years

In this season, all of our six children still live at home. We are about to have only one child under 7. We currently have two teenagers, one middle schooler, two still-wild-almost-Irish-twin-boys in elementary school, and the most adored and adorable two year old on the block.

Our kids attend three different schools. I work part-time outside of the home at an ad agency. I’m in the car at least two hours per day during the work week because of where our kids’ schools are located (and fall activities like PSR, soccer, and youth group are all about to start up). Mike and me are in the middle of serving a four-year term together as the head of the English-speaking Domestic Church movement in the United States.

There are school papers to sign and nighttime meetings to attend and homework to supervise and apps to download for grades and projects to buy posterboard for and sports practices and doctor’s appointments. There are much bigger grocery bills. There are emotions and raging hormones all around (including mine…why thank you, my Late Thirties).

We’re also currently living with my parents while we fix up the new house we just bought, for good measure. Life is so good, but it’s intense.

Mike and I need outside help so much. And God provides for us…we are blessed. But I think about how our American culture idolizes self-sufficiency and productivity and independence and Living Your Best Life, and how my high-octane life probably makes some people feel pretty uncomfortable…or just curious. Why have so many children if it’s that hard and you need so much help? Why be married if you have to work so hard at it?

But I say, “What’s the point of living a life that actively avoids anything that’s hard, uncertain, inconvenient, or uncomfortable?”

I know there are some people out there who would secretly think I’m either a saint or a religious fanatic or a doormat, but the truth is that nobody says Yes to their life all at once. Life is a bunch of Yes-es, all strung together. We all have to choose what or Whom we’re going to say Yes to.

Mike and I had one Couple Dialogue over the summer (we ideally try to do these monthly in Domestic Church) and really talked honestly about the heavy daily stress and demands of our life right now.

We went into the conversation with the intention of making some decisions or new rules of life to alleviate the pressure. But instead, we had kind of a breakthrough that night. We came to the conclusion that we had discerned our life and activities together and with prayer as best we could, and there just wasn’t anything major we could cut out or do differently—at least in the short term.

What came out of that conversation felt like a new kind of Yes, and a new kind of unity. It was a Yes, as a married couple, to what is right in front of us—to the Middle Years—to reality.

Listing my way to a different kind of Yes

There was one morning a few years ago that I woke up extra tired, resentful and sorry for myself. I was smack dab in the middle of the Little Years. I decided to write down every single negative interaction or stressor I had to deal with for an entire day. (I’d show Michael later and he’d really see who had the harder job, wouldn’t he?)

I started writing down every temper tantrum, every time I had to break up an argument, every time someone made a mess I had to clean up. I wrote down when my afternoon nap got cut short because two of the kids made up a game of throwing Legos at the wall instead of napping like they were supposed to. I wrote down when I was trying to read a lesson to my homeschooler and a younger child interrupted five times. I wrote down every time somebody in the house complained about the food I served them (or their sippee cup color).

By 4pm, I stopped writing everything down. I had filled three notebook pages front and back with line items.

And my heart actually felt lighter.

I had proof that it wasn’t all in my head. My job was hard.

That day would have been exhausting for just about anyone, let alone a sensitive, melancholic, introverted mom like me. (And little did I know at that time that I had an undiagnosed autoimmune condition that made me even more chronically tired and extra sensitive to stress that the average person. And I don’t think I’d yet read the book that made me change my mind that God gave me the short end of the stick making me an introvert.)

Fast forward to a similiar experience last year that helped me ease my heart into my new season of life in these Middle Years.

An old friend we got to go on vacation with showed me a list app she and her husband used. She had a list for groceries and for household to-do’s, and shared both with her husband so that they could tackle things together. I downloaded the app that evening and starting inputting everything on my to-do list that I could think of.

There were 52 things on that first list I made.

And my heart actually felt lighter.

(More than a year later, my record is getting down to only 20 things.)

Again, the exercise of listing out my reality made it into a more concrete thing for me to say Yes to—and entrust to God’s providence.

The most beautiful and courageous Yes-es we can give to God are those that imitate Mary’s Yes, those Yes-es where we have no certainty of the future except that God will be there, and that He is goodness and mercy itself.

That said, I think that it’s an incredibly powerful and grace-filled exercise to look together with the Lord at your life in this present moment, and say Yes with clear eyes and a trusting heart to all that He has placed or permitted to be on your plate.

I was made for such a time as this, and so were you. My Yes-es, my love, my prayers, my gifts, my works, and my to-do list are all needed in this time.

And so are yours.

We’re all made to be saints.

We have recently had some significant unexpected flooding and also additional repairs needed at our new house. Like many home projects and renovations on old houses, we’ve had some very unpleasant surprises, and our timeline for getting in the house has been lengthened. We’ve had to let go of some of our initial plans and make some hard decisions.

Two friends of mine in the same day texted to check in on me last week, and both of them told me something to the effect of, “Your life is the stuff saints are made of!”

But this response instantly came to me: “Actually, I am convinced that if we knew the reality of the private sufferings of any committed Christian, it is always the stuff of saints!”

Everybody suffers.

“I feel we must tread the same road to Heaven, the road of suffering and love.”

-St. Therese of Lisieux, Doctor of the Church

I have a wide community of friends, and the details of so many of their lives include private or little-known sufferings that wrench at my heart. Longterm illness, addiction, infertility, singleness, separation, job stress, anxiety, clinical depression, loneliness, a difficult spouse, miscarriage, caring for aging parents, caring for children with special needs, family drama, wayward children, financial stress.

I see these people making a sincere gift of self to their families and others. They don’t turn inward and wallow in self-pity. They are normal people, just like me. They make mistakes sometimes and suffer the consequences. Bad things happen to them and good things happen to them. They keep moving forward, trusting in God as much as they can. And I watch their good God provide for them.

Most of these people don’t think they are anything special. They wouldn’t call their suffering or their stories extraordinary.

But more than once I have teared up when I spot them sitting in Mass ahead of me with their beautiful family of 3 or 8 or 10, when I see them serving someone in need when they themselves could have used a night free from cooking, when they smile at me across the boardroom table and I’m the only one who knows a little of what they’re going home to that night.

I think that, if we could see people as God sees them, we might see other people’s souls as light all around them. The holier the person, and the more beautiful their soul, the brighter they would appear. Their brightness would grow in moments or seasons of special holiness and closeness to God.

The brightest souls would almost always have no idea how beautiful they were.

I wonder if one of those souls is you today, a saint-in-the-making. :)

Where does God want to affirm you in your life? Where is He asking you to rest in Him today? What is He gently encouraging you to let Him handle?

Jesus, I surrender myself to You. Take care of everything.