The Juggling Act

I wrote this a few months ago, and never pushed "publish."  I revisited it today for some reason, probably because motherhood is kicking my trash this week and I needed the inspiration. 

~

I groan and roll over to silence the bleating alarm.  It’s 5:30 am. Between my anxiety-riddled dreams, soothing the two year old who was inexplicably awake three times during the night, and getting kicked repeatedly in the ribs by the four-year old who firmly believes Mommy and Daddy’s bed is his bed, I had closed my eyes for good about 4am.

Bleary eyed, I step in the shower, silently chanting my morning mantra: “Being tired never killed anyone. I will feel like a person if I can just make it to 10:00am. I will not die simply because it’s early morning.”

By 6:15 am, my household is reluctantly stirring, my makeup is hastily applied, and my first violin student of the day is beginning an E-flat major scale in the violin studio. I hit my knees in the dark living room, the shrieks of my boys’ first morning brawl echoing down the stairs.

“Dear Father,” I plead, “I’m not sure I have the energy to do this today. Please help me to be patient and kind to my children, even when I don’t want to be. Bless me with the energy and the stamina I need to get through this day.”

~

My second student of the day has just started tuning her violin when the studio door opens. My daughter, doubling as my babysitter this morning, is holding my four year old son by the hand.  “Mommy, my ear hurts,” he whimpers.

I excuse myself from the lesson, taking a brief look in my son’s ear to confirm yet another raging ear infection. I convince my poor, feverish son to take a syringe full of ibuprofen and hurry to place a call to the pediatrician. My sweet boy has never met an ear infection he didn’t have to have, and no run-of-the-mill course of antibiotics ever comes close to clearing the massive infections. The nurse gives me the last appointment of the day so I can still drive my daughter to her own violin lesson fifty miles away, then teach two more lessons in my studio, all before I have to leave for the appointment.

I choke back the bitter taste of guilt as I tuck a blanket around my little boy, turn on Phinneas and Ferb to help babysit, and head back to the violin studio, wondering how many more ear infections my son will get before the doctors start talking about a third set of ear tubes. While my student is perfecting her etude, my stomach is churning, knowing there’s no way we’ll be able to afford yet another surgery, especially now that we have no health insurance.

~

The guilt, the stretching and pulling in seventeen different directions, they are my constant companions. I could be a better mother if I didn’t have 22 violin students. I could be a better teacher if my students were the only thing I had to focus on. Days like this are a long walk across a tightrope strung over a pit of snarling lions: one slip-up, one late baby sitter, one dead van battery and it’s going to get ugly really fast.

~

There are other times too. The times when the teenager, who has struggled with crippling stage fright for years, has a brilliant recital performance and her smile lights up every corner of the recital hall.  The times where a young violinist and her mother beam with unexpected pride when they realize they’ve achieved something remarkably difficult. The moments when I giggle, witnessing my two sons wrestling like puppies on the living rooms floor. The day when my violinist daughter plays her Bach Partita so brilliantly and musically that it takes my breath away, leaving me in awe with tears in my eyes, despite the lunch debris spread all over the counter and the little brothers squabbling at a deafening volume.  Those are the times that remind me. This. This is what I’m supposed to do. This is where I belong. This is who I am.

So I’ll continue walking the tightrope, hitting my knees in the dark of the morning hours to plead for help, and ignoring the ever-present baskets of clean and dirty laundry.  I’ll mother, nurture, teach, guide, make music, chauffer kids to doctor appointments, rehearsals, and question my sanity daily.  I’ll giggle until my cheeks hurt with my kids around the dinner table, and I’ll stay up too late enjoying the only quiet moments in the day. And I’ll cry, and sing, teach, bandage scrapes, pray, and then hope against hope that it’s enough. For my students, for my children. For me. For God.

When the going gets tough, the tough write poetry

I've been trying to nightwean the baby. The thinking is, he's almost a year old and should be able to last the night without nursing 47 times. I tend to be a bit less than pleasant when I've been woken up multiple times all night long for a year solid. But since I'm not a cry-it-out mom, I've been trying for something more gentle. I think it will work eventually, but let's just say I didn't know it was possible to be more tired than I already was.

We commenced our adventures in homeschooling this morning with poetry. Abby and Ashlynn were supposed to be reading and then writing their own poetry. So they started reading their poems, outloud. Each trying to out do the other when it came to loudness. It was then that I declared that they were to read all poems to themselves. Then the writing commenced. They were grouchy, I was grouchy and sleep deprived. I was wondering if I could send them to public school just for a day or two.  So then, I texted a friend, complaining, venting. Bless her, she wrote me back in rhyme. And so for most of the rest of the day, our messages were in couplet form. Credits to Morgan in red.

Grammar, poetry, sentences, you stink.
Working on English is a waste of ink.

My sister, my brothers, they're driving me crazy.
I wish I could just watch TV and be lazy.

Haiku isn't hard.
Sometimes it doesn't make sense.
Refrigerator.

Pulling out wipes is lots of fun.
This making of messes is never done.

Speaking in rhymes is ever so amusing.
Except for my girls, it is confusing.

Tell them it's easy and really a gas!
They just have to focus, they'll get it, en masse!

Now the time has come for me to shower.
When I am done, I shall smell like a flower.

Showers lovely.
They keep me from being fugly.
(I think this one was my favorite of the whole day!)

The word "fugly" gets you extra credit.
I laughed really hard when I read it.

Ian and Max are both super snotty.
They wipe boogers on me so I can feel like a hottie.

Why must they always wipe it on Mom?
A tiny little booger bomb?
(I never said it was going to be uplifting poetry!)


And then we switched to limmericks:

There once was a mom who was tired,
Because all her kids were so wired.
She tied them up tight,
And turned out the light,
And said "If you don't go to sleep, you're all fired."

Lest you think that today was all about bad texted poetry, we did actually something. This is Ashlynn's masterpiece of the poetry unit so far, written while studying Shel Silverstein and hyperbole.

Isn't she cute? She had a piano recital tonight and was amazing! Musical and a writer! I'll keep this one...

Stinky Boy

by Ashlynn Smith

There once was a boy who would not take a bath.

He hated using soap as much as doing math.

He smelled like stinky fries and rotten eggs.

He had beetles crawling up and down his legs.

He never changed his clothes and it made his skin turn black.

He nearly gave his mom a great big heart attack.

But one stormy day he got caught out in the rain.

It washed the boy all clean, and he didn't even complain.

So there you have it. Stacy, Morgan, and Ashlynn. Poet Laureates. We're excited about our upcoming book tour. 

And now, for some poetry

Scriptures read.

Prayers said.

Baby fed. (And fed, and fed)

Exhausted.

To bed.

Find a Friend Friday!

One of my favorite bloggers is Steph over at Diapers and Divinity.  I'm pretty sure she is spying on my life with her posts most days.  With every post I find myself nodding, smiling, laughing, and being inspired by the topics she tackles.  She has a feature on Fridays where she spotlights a blogger, and today, it's me! 

Ta da!

So head on over to read my interview and learn more about me than you ever really wanted to know.  And stop and hang out there for awhile.  You'll love it, I promise.

And if you're visiting today for the first time, thanks for coming!  Pull up a chair and stay awhile.  You might have to throw some laundry on the floor to make room to sit down, but the Diet Coke is cold, the treats are plentiful, the company is good, and the kids are free to run wild.

For Mother's Day

I'm guest-posting over at MMB today... Yes!  Little old me!  Come on over and check it out. 

It's a post I wrote last year on Mother's Day, not knowing how similar I would be feeling this year.  Never would I have thought we would be a month post-op again, nor that I would still be feeling so many of the same feelings a year later. 

Thankfully, just as toddlers learn from repetition, (ask me how many times we've read "Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See?" to Max this week...) I've been given, and will be given, lots of chances to learn patience, compassion, and unconditional love. 

Here's to hoping that in the next year, we stay out of the hospital.  And that maybe I can move just a little bit closer to being the mom I want to be. 

Musical Memories

When the bishop showed up at my door on Saturday afternoon just before we were leaving for a trip to Salt Lake to meet with a doula client, I wasn't concerned.  He lives just a few doors down from us, and we are frequent visitors at each others' houses.  When Abby told me he wanted to talk to me, I still wasn't worried.  He told me he was there to give me the speakers for Sunday, (I get to be in charge of the Sunday programs,) and as I wrote them down, he proceeded to tell me that I was the final speaker for Sacrament Meeting the next day.  When I started to object, he told me the topic was music and how hard could it possibly be for me to speak about music?  I asked him if I could bring a CD player, a 75-piece orchestra and the Mormon Tabernacle choir so I could talk about all the ways music has changed me.  He gently told me that would be inappropriate.  I mumbled and grumbled something that inadvertently must have sounded like acceptance, because at about 9:50 this morning, I was standing at the podium, speaking about spiritual experiences I've had with music. 

And since I spent my creative blogging hours last night writing a talk, and since I spent an hour and a half writing something, you better bet it's going on my blog!  (Especially since I've found myself unable to post anything even remotely interesting lately!)  And everything went well today, thanks for asking.  Aside from Max trying repeatedly to escape the confines of the pew to run up to me as I was speaking, there were no highly embarassing incidents.  Which, you know, is really saying something!

I have been blessed throughout my life to be involved in music. I’ve been reading music almost as long as I’ve been reading words, and many of my best memories have come because of my involvement in music. My husband even proposed to me the night we met after he found out I played the violin! I’ve played in orchestras all over the United States and Canada, I’ve sung in the Tabernacle, and I’ve been teaching violin lessons since I was seventeen years old. I’ve been fortunate to learn and perform many of the great musical masterworks of composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Brahms. But interestingly, the music that has touched me the most, that has changed my life and made the biggest impact on me, is the sacred music that brings with it the Spirit of the Lord.

When the bishop asked me to share experiences of when I felt the Spirit through music, I struggled to think of something profound to share. It’s not because I haven’t had experiences where I have felt the spirit when listening, singing, or playing an instrument; it’s exactly the opposite. It’s because there is rarely a time when I’m in the right frame of mind when singing or performing hymns and other good music hasn’t helped me to feel the spirit as well as uplifted and strengthened me.

Elder Dallin H Oaks has said: “Sacred music has a unique capacity to communicate our feelings of love for the Lord. This kind of communication is a wonderful aid to our worship. Many have difficulty expressing worshipful feelings in words, but all can join in communicating such feelings through the inspired words of our hymns. When a congregation worships through singing, all present should participate. As we sing we should think about the messages of the words. Our hymns contain matchless doctrinal sermons, surpassed only by the scriptures in their truth and poetic impact. We need to make more use of our hymns to put us in tune with the Spirit of the Lord, to unify us, and to help us teach and learn our doctrine. We need to make better use of our hymns in missionary teaching, in gospel classes, in quorum meetings, in home evenings, and in home teaching visits. Music is an effective way to worship our Heavenly Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. We should use hymns when we need spiritual strength and inspiration.”

When Tom and I were first married, we moved into a ward comprised entirely of people living in apartments. It was a ward filled primarily with young couples, a large amount of people with musical experience and a very determined and ambitious bishop. He decided that our ward choir was going to be the best ward choir that ever was, and enlisted nearly every person in the ward to join the choir. The piece he chose was “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” We had some great times rehearsing it, and were excited to perform it for our ward. Our bishop had even talked about recording it to a CD, and taking our ward choir “on the road” to perform for other wards!

I was a few months into our first pregnancy, and the week before we were scheduled to perform, we suffered a painful and unexpected miscarriage. I was devastated and grieving. When the bishop came over to check up on us, reminding me that we were scheduled to sing that Sunday, I told him there was no possible way I could sing that Sunday. I felt too fragile emotionally and spiritually, not to mention physically. He told me he thought the very best thing I could do was to sing, and allow myself to be strengthened and uplifted by the spirit.

The next day, I reluctantly joined the choir, mostly because of my bishop’s encouragement, and as we started to sing, I felt myself surrounded and uplifted by the spirit that was present, and I found myself doing more crying than singing. I was touched by the lyrics:

“O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.”

The spirit bore testimony to me that day of the Lord’s love for me, and His ability to comfort me and strengthen me in times of struggle. And although I still grieved the miscarriage, I found that in the coming days and weeks, when I started to feel sad or discouraged, I was able to remember that performance, and the feeling I had of being wrapped in the Lord’s love, and it strengthened me. To this day, I still get teary-eyed when I hear that piece performed.

One of the inevitable things that comes with the territory of being a musician is taking the music callings. In fact, before we came to this ward and I got called to be in charge of the ward bulletin and newsletter, it had been almost ten years since I had had a calling that wasn’t a music calling. One of my most challenging and enjoyable music callings I had was being the Stake Choir director. The counselor from the Stake Presidency that was assigned to me was a professional choir director, and he insisted that we were going to have an excellent choir that was going to set the time for a very spiritual stake conference. Needless to say, I was feeling the pressure.

I don’t remember exactly what was going on in our lives at the time, but I do remember that I was struggling to feel close to Heavenly Father. Our rehearsals were on Sunday night, and I was having a hard time both feeling motivated to go and lead a rehearsal, and feeling intimidated and inadequate in my calling. I sat in the parking lot of the church before I went in and said a brief prayer, pleading for help, because I knew I didn’t have the energy or the ability to do it on my own that night.

One of the songs we were preparing was “Nearer My God to Thee.” We were rehearsing the rarely sung 4th and 5th verses to the hymn, and I was doing everything I could think of to get the choir to transmit the feeling and emotions behind the words into their performance. I started asking them to think about the beauty of the words in the 4th verse:

“Then with my walking thoughts, bright with thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs, Bethel I’ll raise.
So by my woes to be, Nearer my God to Thee.
Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee.”

I explained to the choir that when the hymn spoke of “Bethel” it was making reference to a monument to God; so in essence, we were singing about how because of our trials and struggles, we would be able to glory God through coming closer to him. Then we talked about the words of the 5th verse, which read:

“Or if on joyful wing, cleaving the sky,
Sun, moon and stars forgot, upward I fly.
Still all my song shall be, Nearer my God to Thee,
Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee.”

I became emotional as the truths of those words touched my heart. I love the images of being filled with joy so powerful that you are splitting the sky, and feeling the spirit testify to me of how joy will follow the struggles if we are willing to stay close to the Lord. As the choir sang those two verses, I was overcome with emotion and was barely able to continue directing. I left that evening grateful, not only that the Lord answered my prayer and sustained me through the rehearsal, but that I was blessed to feel His spirit and have my testimony of the Lord’s love for me strengthened.

Sometimes I struggle to express my feelings and my testimony in words. There are so many times where words feel inadequate to express what I feel in my heart. It is at times like that where I am grateful for my ability to express myself with music.

And here, you'll just have to imagine me playing an arrangement of "Nearer My God to Thee" that I decided to put together last night at 11 pm, with an accompanist who agreed to accompany me at approximately 8:53 this morning.   I am so much more comfortable using music to express myself, and although I was lacking the 75-piece orchestra, I was glad I was able to bring my instrument to wrap things up.
 
Do you have a favorite hymn or piece of music?  What about a time that you were strengthened or uplifted by music?

Writer's Block

You know how some people have songs that get stuck in their head and no matter what they do they can't get rid of them?  I have things that I need to write that are not leaving me alone. 

I hesitate to even talk about it, because it's so cliched.  You know, the stay at home mom who turns into a casual blogger, who then decides she's a brilliant writer and wants to write the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL and land a huge book contract.  I don't think that I'm a brilliant writer, although I have fun blogging.  I don't intend to write a novel, at least at this point.  But I do have ideas and part of articles that are bouncing around my brain, tormenting me.

So I think the only thing to do is sit down and write them.  I have at least three articles I need to write, all very differnt, all three are outlined and taking shape.  I know exactly where I'm going to submit them, and had a very emotional, spiritual experience that told me I need to write one of them as soon as possible.

But I have a million excuses.

I have no time.  (Of course I have time.  I have time to sit and waste on Facebook...)

I have a baby who doesn't let me use the computer without screaming.  (OK, this part is true.  But he takes a long nap in the afternoons and sleeps at night.  Once again, this speaks to my lack of time management skills!)

I have nothing unique to say. (Maybe, maybe not.  Except if that were the truth, I don't think that I would be feeling so strongly about it.)

I think what it comes down to is that I'm a little nervous.

All right fine.  I'm scared stiff.

Scared to put myself out there.  Scared to be rejected.  Scared of the sheer amount of work it will take with little to no reward. 

But maybe if I start getting all of this out on paper it will stop tormenting me and let me sleep at night.  

So here's to writing.  And a brand new kind of adventure. 

Oh, and a minor update.  (Because I know you were all sitting around holding your breath wanting to know the health status of my family.) Everyone is well. The viscious stomach flu made it's rounds through our house, sparing no one.  We each took our turns laying around the house moaning for 24 hours or so, then we were done.  And there's a strange kind of relief in knowing that all five of us were sick, and now there's nothing else that nasty flu bug can do to us!  And as a bonus, there were no trips to the Dr, urgent care or ER. Hah!  (And if I'm back in 6-8 hours to amend that, you have my permission to mercilessly rub it in my face.)