parenting – Page 2 – gianna soderstrom

getting stuck

July 1, 2019Posted in courageTagged goals, hard times, life instructions, parenting, small steps, winterLeave a comment

This post is full of instructions. They’re instructions that we all need at some time in our tumultuous years. Sometimes the days begin to feel long and pointless. Maybe you’re sick – sick for a long time and it feels, or is, debilitating. Maybe you’re just low on inspiration and working the 9-5 because it seems that is all life has for you. Maybe Netflix has convinced you that you owe it your attention, despite nagging doubts. Pretty much anything can suck us down into the stuck place; a job, finals, parenting, moving, dim living spaces, too much pasta.

Please know I’m not talking about depression here. I know depression can be influenced by all those things and more but you usually can’t just “get un-stuck” when it comes to mental health. You’re worth enough, valuable enough, to close this blog post right now and get help. But if it’s just a weird little inward battle to get up and get dressed on those days that feel pointless, then this is for you.

I’ve had plenty of my own stuck days. In fact I think I wrote this during one of them. (To be honest I was just looking through my unpublished posts and decided it was time for this one to come alive.) But stuck days don’t last forever – I know this because after months of feeling sick and watching the light at the end of the tunnel receding as fast as I advanced, I’m beginning to come out into the light. It’s just been little things – morning sickness for four months, a sinus infection for as many weeks, a toddler who’s getting faster as I’m getting slower and more pregnant. But for all that, the sun is coming out. Joy is breaking through (accompanied by warmer weather, hey!) and now I want to share some of the things that have helped me walk through it with hope. In fact, many of these things are still working habits mine – practices to fight back against the dark we all face any given day.

Do what you can. Go slow, as slow as you need without critizicing yourself at all. But if you can get dressed, then do it. Getting dressed will make you feel better. And hey, now that you’ve come this far, eat some breakfast. Try to get some protein in. Do what you can, even if it’s a microwaved hotdog or a bowl of breakfast cereal. Do what you can. If you can get through work, do it. If you need to take a nap and safely enclose your contented little babes in their crib for half an hour while you sleep, you set yourself a time and get those 30 winks. Do what you can.

Move a little. Maybe exercise just isn’t really an option. Ok. I’ve been there. I’ve had my afternoons of laying on the couch watching old movies because my body won’t move without pain (or just nausea. Babies, I tell you.) But if you can, take a walk around the block. Get a little air. Maybe stretch out with some gentle yoga. Movement will help your mood, gently lift you just a little bit. Trust me – I’ve felt it happen on the most disappointing days. Heck, if you don’t have any physical restraints, push yourself a bit and get in some solid cardio. You’ll thank me later.

Go outside. Maybe the most you can do is go sit outside. Maybe you can’t even do that. Find a sunny window. Or sit on the patio if you have one. Walk around the yard, around the block, down to the park or coffee shop. Take a long hike if you have the ability. Exercise plus fresh air is a vital combination.

Set a goal. Pick something small that you can achieve within a day or so. Write a card to a friend, finish the dishes from last night, wash a load of laundry, cook a meal at home. There’s a sense of achievement that comes when you finish a task or a goal, no matter how small it is.

Put down the phone. I know it seems small, but try to replace a few minutes of phone time every so often. Pick up a book. Stare out the window and let your mind wander. Take that quick walk around the block we’ve been talking about. Take a few minutes to stop the games, the comparison of social media, the branding and promotion and posting to prove that your life is good too. Just enjoy your life for a few minutes. I don’t say there’s anything wrong with your phone, only that we humans have the capacity to get so sucked in that it begins to dominate every nook and cranny of our life.

I hope these ideas help you. I hope they remind you that even on the ugliest, hardest days you can find a small ray of light. I hope these ideas walk with you through the dregs of winter and into the spring. Here’s to you who feel stuck. We’ll make it, friends. Sunshine is coming.

dandelion moments

June 14, 2019Posted in adventure, courage, habitsTagged blogging, flowers, Gianna Soderstrom, goodbyes, gratitude, hope, joy, parenting, photography, toddler, travelLeave a comment

I was standing down by the lake-edge, blinking back tears of goodbye and wishing this rich green Minnesota environment could be mine all the time. And then I turned and saw my toddler blowing a dandelion that had gone to seed, the magic of it as much in his eyes as in the wish he doesn’t know how to make yet. The almost-physical ache I had felt faded soft as the lapping lake water. I could be ok, with moments like this that slip in with unexpected happiness. I chased the boy around with my camera, instructing him to blow. Mom even grabbed him a new dandelion when the first one was out of seeds. I went inside with thoughts of dandelion hope echoing through the punchy grief of my goodbyes.

I have a tendency to let moments like this disappear into the humdrum of my days. When I curl up on the couch in the evening and my husband asks how my day was, these aren’t the things I think of first. My automatic response is to describe the lakeshore, the tears, the goodbyes, the ache I didn’t want to feel. And then I look forward to the next hard thing: I say words like, “And now we’re home and he’ll have to get used to not being the center of attention all the time; he’ll cry and hang on my legs, and ask for special treats like Larabars and his pacifier.” I forget the dandelion wishes until the very end: “There were a few good moments. Erik was so cute, blowing a dandelion with his lips all full and pursed. But I don’t know if I got any good pictures.”

I’d like to think we color our perspectives beginning with the best and happiest memories, but I don’t think it’s true. I felt joy just as strongly as pain but I focused on what was hard and hurtful instead of what was beautiful. It’s easy to do, honestly. Hard moments do make a strong impression on us. Hurt is real. Goodbyes suck. And just like that, the rain clouds that lasted for half-an-hour are all we can remember of our sunny days. It’s like a trick we help our own memories play. Like the movie Inside Out; let Sadness touch one memory and it all turns blue. No amount of scolding from Joy can stop the infectious touch spreading across a myriad of dandelion moments.

It feels like that’s an inevitable truth; the memories that sit strongest with you will color your whole day – maybe eventually your whole life. And what if your whole life, day by day, turns blue? But I don’t think that’s the whole picture, not quite.

I think we have a say in the process. I think we have a voice in the way these memories shape us – we give them some of their power and we can take some of it away. And maybe we’ll never be able to erase the hurting parts of our days. Goodbyes will always be painful, won’t they? But we don’t need to erase pain to feel joy. We just need to feel it, to really see it and honor it and give it the place it should have. And that might take some fighting.

I think we can turn our lives bright again in small but meaningful ways if we really pay attention. The deep, the real and the magnificent exist for each of us if we are willing to notice it and hold on. I can’t tell you how you will do this. There isn’t a prescription for joy because no two lives or circumstances are the same. No two people feel and capture and remember emotions the same way. Your dandelion wishes will look different from mine, even if you have a dandelion-blowing toddler trundling across the dewy grass, enchanting his aunts and grandma all together. But that said, I do have a few ideas.

Write it down. Sit with your thoughts and memories at the end of a day or early the next morning and just scribble a few notes of the things that made you smile. Dandelion blowing. The airplane ride with a toddler that actually went really well. Dewy grass on my feet for one last morning, before we returned to dry Colorado. Let these things grow into a habit and you will begin to find the permeating ability of joy.
Take pictures. Maybe only one in one hundred will be instagram worthy and honestly, isn’t that ok? Taking a photograph can help you remember. It may pop up in your memories, or maybe Google photos will throw it into a video for you. Or your mother will ask you for those photographs and years later you’ll find them tucked in a box or an album somewhere, and you’ll remember.
Ponder. When you have those quiet seconds, the waiting seconds when you could pick up a phone and scroll, just review your own hours. Look for the beautiful things. It’s there, it’s waiting – just hunt through your own memories and dig them up. Color your days in the in-between seconds. And maybe when you find yourself lying in bed at night, you’ll realize that even with the goodbyes and the long travel and the way he cried all the long drive back from the airport, it was a day of dandelion moments.

slowly

October 24, 2018Posted in habits, parenting, writingTagged Ben Rector, blogging, Colorado, Colorado Springs, hurried, living slowly, parenting, parents, peace, rush, slow, slow living, toddler1 Comment

I let my shoulders relax in a quiet exhale. Does it feel like a music kind of day? I turn on the CD player and Ben Rector spills cheerily out the open windows. Yes, a music kind of day. I smile. E chatters. Perhaps being late to the toddler program is worth the gentle pace of our morning.

I never used to move slowly. Grant loved that about me at first – I made decisions quickly. No dallying over laminate restaurant menus for us, thank you. I’ll have the avocado burger, water to drink, wedge of lemon please? But I also took tests quickly and drove quickly and worked quickly. I made a lot of mistakes. Little ones usually; isn’t forgetting the pacifier a little mistake? But Baby Boy has big lungs.

I resisted moving slowly when E still fit in the infant carrier on my back. I’d tuck the just-in-case pacifier in one pocket, my phone in another, and off we’d go. Now it’s getting harder. We need shoes for the toddling boy, snacks to satisfy when naps aren’t forthcoming. I bring water for both of us and his spare clothes and diapers and wipes and before you know it we’re scrambling to get out the door, grumpy and frazzled about a half-hour toddler program at the library.

But things are changing. Sometimes we make it to the library on time and sometimes we just walk in when we get there and look for books instead of joining in on toddler songs that started five minutes ago. Sometimes we rush out the door to church and sometimes I start collecting the snacks and pacifier and shoes in advance, readying us to get E into the nursery in time to sing through worship, breathe quiet and focus ourselves. We’re learning to live more slowly.

Slow looks like letting E walk to the park at his own wandering pace, keeping him gently on track. Slow looks like reading the same book again and again because Llama Llama’s Red Pajamas are allowed to be fascinating to a one-year-old. Slow means I lose my own reading time because I’ve spent it with the boy who just wanted to be held. (Hello, molars.)

Slow looks like setting aside the stress, like mindfully planning ahead. Like being ok with forgetting. Slow looks like long walks in the stroller that’s the only thing that calms him down, and long bouts of play when he’s full of giggles. This practice of moving slowly has a trickle-down effect, I’ve noticed. I’ve let my walks become more leisurely. I set my phone down more often (and I’m less hard on myself when I pick it up.) I think more clearly when I’m not hurrying. I let E interrupt me more.

I dare you to think about moving slowly this week. Drink your morning coffee without your phone in your hand. Think of something you could take the rush out of. Start small. Start slow. See what happens.

discipline

October 3, 2018Posted in Bible study, camp life, courage, habits, parentingTagged Bible study, blogging, discipline, habits, J. R. R. Tolkien, keep on, learning, parenting, study, truth, writingLeave a comment

hiking, pancake rocks, colorado, fall colors, mountains, friends

“Discipline is supposed to serve you; you’re not supposed to serve the discipline.” She wasn’t talking to me but I heard and remembered.

Were we halfway through the summer when those words sank into my heart? I held on to them the rest of the weeks we remained at camp. Discipline is supposed to serve you. I could list the ways I discovered that this summer.

One day in May I finally decided that if I sat down every day for a long time then I could finish a big writing project. I counted out the days and set a count-down widget on my phone to remind me time was ticking. There are 152 of 258 days left until my self-imposed deadline. The goal I set for myself is almost met. I’m in awe, and a bit afraid of my own progress, and eager to set a new goal. I’ve always been nervous about writing, but discipline served the ball back into Fear’s court. I’ve written a lot this summer, with gratitude to discipline.

I was handed a Bible study booklet in the last week of May to begin prepping for the study I would lead for four of the counselors. The nine steps of Bible study that were laid out in the beginning of the book startled me. I didn’t know how to begin – it had been so long since I studied scripture that way. So I broke the study down into chunks. I made it look manageable and I sat down to study every morning or afternoon while Erik napped. I learned so much about God, about scripture and about study this summer. A summer of discipline has gotten me excited to study God and his word more.

I have had to be disciplined with my parenting too. It’s incredibly self-sacrificing to hand little Erik a spoon when I’m giving him a bowl of oatmeal or Greek yogurt and let him try to shovel a few bites into his mouth. Things are a lot less messy when I just feed him. But will he ever learn that way? It’s important to me to teach him the things he needs to live life well, love God well. It’s taken a lot of discipline to consistently choose the messy education experience instead of the tidy spoon-feeding.

I don’t really like discipline. That’s not the point of this post. But when I’m not in the thick of parenting I usually have enough perspective to reframe it. “Step by step, one travels far,” J. R. R. Tolkien says. I think discipline is applicable to more than just the hard things that challenge you at the core of who you want to be. There’s other things – like looking for small beautiful moments in you day or remembering to write down what you’re grateful for. Little by little, one unpacks every box after moving to a new home, or learns to love healthier foods. Little by little the autumn colors roll down the mountains each October. Maybe the longer we practice discipline the more we discover that it’s pure gold.

I’m in the thick of everything right now – the parenting, the writing, the unpacking, the study. The fall colors. Don’t think I’m advising back over my shoulder from the other side. I’m stuck hating the act of discipline right alongside you (trust me.) I’ve just seen the outcome before and I’m willing to work for that.

There’s a song called Keep On Keeping On by Colony House that tends to fall flat to my ears in the middle of my best seasons. When life is easy, I can’t listen. There’s no real keeping on to do. It’s in the mirey middle sections of trying to do things that won’t be finished for weeks or years that I have to have that anthem running through my head and heart.

So, friend, keep on keeping on. You’ll get there. Remember, “Little by little, one travels far.”

breaking days

June 25, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, courage, parentingTagged beauty, blogging, camp life, camp wife, children, Colorado, Eagle Lake Camp, faith, God, Jesus, learning, marriage, nature, parenting, parents, truthLeave a comment

For nearly a week now I’ve been clinging to five-minute increments of quiet while E plays flips the stiff pages of a board book or gnaws contentedly on a toy. And in between those five minute spaces I’ve tried everything.

“Are you still hungry? Is it your teeth? Do you need tylenol again? You can’t be tired already… Shall we go outside for a bit?” Anything. Anything to stop the grunting, the whining. Camp is flexing its muscles, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. The woods are wearing their Sunday best. Ocean Spray like lace spills from rocky outcroppings, Showy Daisies and Black-eyed Susans pin an emerald cape to the shoulders of the hills. The meadows wear lavender flowers of Columbine in their hair. And for a week I struggled every day; just don’t cry, just don’t cry.

I cry anyway. By the time he goes down for his morning nap I have been tempted to pull my hair out so often that if I had any follow-through, I’d be bald. When he wakes up, too early and still cranky, the angst has scarcely had time to settle. I try to remind myself of all that is lovely.

“You’re a sweet boy, and we adore you,” I whisper. He stares blankly while I spoon up more applesauce and attempt to smile around the despair I feel. I try to play with him. He only wants to be held. I try to let him play in the other room; maybe if I am out of sight he will be content. I only get one dish washed before he is crawling across the kitchen, wailing heartily with real tears in his hazel eyes. Forget the dishes. Maybe he needs another nap. Ten minutes of “cry-it-out” later, I reluctantly admit this is not the solution either.

All the camp is blossoming, all the hearts are reveling in discipleship and the study of God together. These are glory days, and these are breaking days.

Yet somehow, these days drive me deeper into faith, deeper into marriage, deeper into parenting. I pray nearly constantly, and God begins to answer. After nearly a week, the teething abates slightly, the smiling boy is back, recommencing his giggles. Grant digs in, buying me chocolate, telling me to set aside the dishes for when he’s home, changing the diapers. I get down on the floor instead of cleaning or scrolling or reading, and we play tag, tackle, chase. The beauty begins to shape out of the frustration. The glory of life grows slowly back up beside the brokenness. I take time to look at the hard edges of parenting a 1 year old and I ask God for eyes to see what he would show me; ears to hear what he would tell me, a heart to receive what he would give.

When we walk down to dinner, I point out the way bushes bloom out of rocky crevices. I chatter back to E’s cooing and we discuss all things wide and wonderful. I breathe deep and smile at the wriggling boy, and count the stars in the waving grass with the few minutes I’ve been given.

seeing

May 11, 2018Posted in adventure, camp life, habitsTagged adventure, Adventure Camp, beauty, blogging, cabin, camp life, Colorado, Eagle Lake, Eagle Lake Camp, earth, God, gratitude, Jesus, kids, learning, light, nature, outdoors, parenting, parents, sky, teaching, truth, writing5 Comments

Yesterday we moved most of our summer things up to camp. The back of the truck was full of boxes, the baby boy full of rice and stew. The higher we climbed up Rampart Range, the higher the anxiety mounted in my own heart. We unpacked, stowing our favorite mugs in the cabinets, tucking away canned tuna and steel cut oats in a cupboard, setting bread and tortillas on top of the fridge.

With each thing I unpacked, the stark reality of our summer at camp took on form. I had known the fridge would be small as but I tucked kefir on the top shelf and then negotiated the almond milk behind it I wondered how I would work with this space. I knew there wasn’t a bookshelf but when I stowed my favorite books behind a charming little end table door, I wondered how I would survive in this literary desert. The windows, larger than I had remembered, were covered in window wells and my heart sank a little more. I had planned for Erik to share our room but when I put him down in the pack’n’play, still unhappy after a bottle of milk, I wondered how much more motherhood I could manage for the day.

I saw the sun shining through a hedge a few days ago. The sidewalk was shadowy and dark but in the gap between the leaves the sun was bright and gold, all the more beautiful for having trickled through the leaves, maybe. And when the sun slips behind the dark-rising mountains in the evening, the colorful rays of evening shine out the more lovely for being ephemeral.

Perhaps that is the way with all beautiful things. I must learn to see them. The moments of glory in parenting will only shine the brighter when I am looking for them, when I have walked through the frustrations. The small closet, the narrow cupboards, the welled windows; these will all become worthwhile when I have looked for the ways that camp life is shot through with light. The same moment the sun sets, the stars begin to appear. When the challenges rise like the dusky mountains in the evening, the soft rays of joy may just become more beautiful.

Look for the light, my friends.

when life builds you

April 11, 2018Posted in Bible study, courage, parenting, writingTagged babies, Bible, Bible study, blogging, gentleness, grace, love, parenting, Proverbs, Proverbs 9, truth, wisdomLeave a comment

You know the days when your baby takes long, peaceful naps and the sun is shining on the patio? You know the days when everybody’s happy when Dad gets home and there are kisses and giggles; dinner time is a cozy, cheerful affair? You know when you look at those smiling green baby eyes and put down the distractions and go for a walk together, cooing and bababa-ing back and forth at each other the whole while? Those are the days you build your life.

Proverbs 9:1-2, “Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars. She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table.” I didn’t really pay much attention to these two verses until a year or so ago, when I read the end of the chapter in the context of the beginning. Verses 13, 16-17 say “The woman Folly is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing.” She calls out “‘Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!’ and to him who lacks sense she says, ‘Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.'”

You know the days where your babe seems to wake up just half-an-hour too soon every time you lay him down? The days when you have a crick in your neck which causes a headache which, you ruefully reflect, will probably mean terrible sleep? You know the days when the terrible sleep means you’re still groggy when the boy wakes and wants a bottle, so you might as well just stay awake? You know the days when the man you love comes home and you just want to snap that you never get to punch out and go home from your job? Those are still the days you build your life.

It’s obvious in Proverbs 9: Wisdom works. She builds the life she wants, the good life. You can’t exclude the bad days from this pretty pattern you want to create. The days when you’ve planned and organized and somehow your life still seems in control of you? The days when you sit down dazed on the edge of the bed and wonder if you managed anything, at all, besides the (too-late) timing of your son’s (slightly healthy-ish…) meals? Those are the days you want a do-over. And those are the days you still need to build – if nothing else, build your responses to the way those hours shove you around.

You can’t – ok, let’s stop masking this in second person.

I can’t create a grace-filled life if I’m not going to have that grace on the hard days.

I can’t lead a loving life if I toss love to the wind when it’s not easy.

I can’t have a heart that serves if I’m not going to serve when I’m tired.

Let me tell you, this kind of life – this kind life – takes a lot of courage. But even more it takes persistence. I need courage and mercy and gentleness this morning? Yeah, well I’m going to need them all again this afternoon, this evening. Again, tomorrow morning. It seems it’s always time to choose. Everything is only ever built brick by brick.

example

April 4, 2018Posted in Bible study, habits, parenting, writingTagged Bible, Bible study, blogging, caring, children, Colorado, God, heritage, kids, learning, love, loving others, loving well, Mom, parenting, parents, Proverbs, Proverbs 4, teach, teaching, truth, writingLeave a comment

Morning nap – first nap of the day. Sit you down and read I tell myself. I leave the breakfast dishes, the scattered letter blocks with baby teeth marks, and I begin my mid-morning with scripture. It’s a slow-forming habit. To ignore the sunshine, the messy floors, the urge to spend quiet hours indulging in youtube – it’s not easy. The rewards come slowly, but they come. So I sit with my Bible again.

I don’t like to have a daily time with God unless I have a plan of some kind. Lately, as I attempt to parent well, I have chosen Proverbs as my starting point. I’m reading through the gospels as well, but I start each study time by reading through the chapter in Proverbs that corresponds with the day of the month.

It is four months in; I love the repetition. Again and again I hear the same warnings against adultery, the same urging to seek wisdom, the same need for a fear of the Lord. And again and again Proverbs says “listen, my son”. Each time I’ve read it I’ve thought, What have my parents taught me that I need to remember and listen to right now? Today, God changed what I heard. What do I want Erik to learn from me, and remember?

That was not a comfortable question.

I want Erik to learn love. I want him to know the “breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” so that he can love others with that same abundance. So then, that is how I need to live. I am pondering now how I can better love others. I want to be somebody who cares, who remembers somebody’s name, who hears their struggle without condemnation.

My mama was a great one for loving people. She’d invite anyone over for holidays if they didn’t have a place to gather. She’d talk to a stranger in the grocery store or a wrong number on the phone for an hour, just because she cared enough to feel their hurts. I want that heritage to run strongly in Erik, so it will need to run strongly in me. I have heard it said that a mother’s biggest contribution to the world may be those she raises. If that is true, then the only way I can truly magnify that contribution is to lead Erik by my own example.

So, here is to living the large love my mother taught me. Listen well, baby boy.

explore

March 6, 2018Posted in parentingTagged babies, crawling, kids, learning, outdoors, parenting, teachingLeave a comment

Erik is crawling. He used to scoot around on his blanket from one end to another, searching out the toys I’d scattered across it for him (although they were only ever an alternative to looking for any charging cords we may have left out.) Now he’s on hands and knees, back and forth from one end of the house to the other and almost as fast as me.

He crawls to the washing machine to watch the bright clothes swishing behind the door. He crawls to the reflective oven door and leans towards himself until he bumps his forehead on the glass. He crawls to the broom and touches the bristles that stick out at odd angles. He crawls to the bedroom and stares at the mirror; opens the door, closes the door, opens, closes. Again.

I love it.

He’s exploring and learning and searching and in all this I get to guide him. We go outside on the warm days and he crawls across the patio from one end to the other, touching the grass and marveling at the texture.

“Grass!” I say, “It will turn bright green in the summer, and you’ll learn to run across it barefoot.”

He picks up dried foliage from last fall.

“Leaves!” I say, “They grow green on the trees in the spring, and then in the fall they turn colors and fall down. We’ll make piles of them and jump into them, and hear them crunch under our feet.” I crumple them in my hand for him, “Crunch!” I say. He crawls back to the other end of the patio.

It is all a marvel to me. He smiles when I help him stand. He stares seriously when we go outside. He grins and giggles when I play crawling games and call him over to me. He is piecing together the world. I am piecing together parenting; stringing together happy moments to balance out the hard ones. We learn together.

That is what most of this life is, after all.