Nicole K. Twedt

Being Brave When Life Is Hard

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Archives for February 2017

Learning

02.23.2017 by Nicole Kristin Twedt //

Originally from a MOPS newsletter, winter 2012.  

When asked by my friend, Lea, to write a short essay about what I’m currently learning for the newsletter, my initial reaction was this: Are you kidding me, Lea?  I’m so tired I can hardly think straight, let alone write about learning something new.

I’m not usually such a downer, really I’m not.  It’s just that I’m aware of how little I’m retaining these days.  After all, I’m a mama to three young children, five and under, including an adorable baby girl.  I have trouble recalling lessons I’ve already learned.  I consider it a good day when I have enough mental energy to get dinner on the oak farm table in a timely manner.  It’s an even better day if the five of us are fed and I’ve not only washed, but put away our laundry.  Who am I kidding?  The laundry, even when folded, will be abandoned in the living room in piles for each family member on our caramel-colored couch.  I’m lucky to have my act together to bathe my kids more than once a week.

I’m may not be learning anything new, but I can tell you mindless things.  I can name how many half-gallon cartons of milk we go through a week (this was in the days before we went dairy-free), or how many of Lauren’s pacifiers should be in the pacifier jar by the garden window.  I can even tell you how much money I could be saving with coupons.

I don’t think Lea meant for me to write about such things.

Let’s redefine the question: What am I learning about God? 

Again nothing; or so I thought.

To be honest, I haven’t sat through an entire church service more than four or five times since Lauren’s birth in July.  These days I catch the sermon in the nursing lounge, surrounded by new and old mommy friends.  It’s not the same.  I get distracted.  It’s hard to worship before a TV monitor while my friends and I visit and feed our babies.

And it’s difficult to write about learning new lessons from God when you may or may not have a problem falling asleep during quiet times.  When I’m not falling asleep during sacred moments, God and I are usually interrupted by a certain cranky baby waking up early from her nap, or because my boisterous 3-year-old is trying to lick or bite his big sister.  Or because my tenderhearted 5-year-old found a bunny in our backyard.  The distractions go on and on; the learning doesn’t.

One early fall morning was no different.  I’m sure the scene is familiar to those who are in the trenches of motherhood.  I woke up (a little too) early by the baby.  She sleeps like a champ but decided not to this morning, which is the story of her now seven-and-a-half-month existence.  After coaxing Lauren back to sleep, I was tempted to go back to bed and hide under our warm down comforter with the Calvin Klein duvet.  But I decided to take advantage of the quiet house all to myself.  I picked up my Bible, the one with the worn black leather cover, with longing.  All I desired was to really hear from God, like I used to, coveting his presence sans interruptions from the little people in my life.  I began to read and pray, pouring out my guilt and frustrations to God about not having quality times with him anymore.  Instead of condemnation from him about what I could and should be doing, his tender voice spoke to my tired soul, reminding me that any time spent with him is quality time.  Come to me, he seemed to say to my heart. Come to me, covered in spit up, make-up less and tired.  Come to me anytime of the day or night.  Just come.

Just come.  Sigh.  I struggle with feelings of inadequacy, even as a child of God.   I often lose it with my kids, you see.  And I say things I should never say to my husband.  As I previously mentioned, I fall asleep when I attempt to pray or read my Bible.   I’m entirely too vain, I just know it.  I spend too much time worrying about the stretch marks that favor my right hip.  I waste hours of my life wondering if I’ll ever again fit into my pre-Lauren jeans before they fade out of style.  What’s more, my little house is constantly in a state of disaster.  If I have time to unload the dishes, the laundry is undone.  If I get to the laundry, then dishes take over my small kitchen.

But in all this negative self-talk, he reminds me to come.

He wants me to come to him because he thinks I’m something special, redeemable, even lovable, no matter what my house looks like.  No matter what I look like.  I’m learning once again that he’s all that matters.  He wants my heart, even when it’s going in a thousand directions.  He just wants me to come.

I’m reminded of my friend Lorrie, and what she told me when Lauren was born.

“Seize those quiet moments with God,” she said.  “Snatch them up any way you can get them.”

As a mother of twins, she should know.

So that’s what I’m learning these days, to seize quiet moments with God.  And in the process, my time with him is taking on a less traditional look.  I’m learning not to approach God like he’s an item to check off from my list.  No, I’m going for authentic moments, organic even.  I’m learning to set aside Bible reading plans, at least for now, and just pour out my heart to Jesus as I read my Bible.  I’m learning to listen to him as he quiets my attention-deficit soul.

I may smell like soy formula spit-up.  My dirty-blonde hair is a mess.  The bags under my eyes cannot be camouflaged, even by the finest concealer.  Don’t think for a moment I haven’t tried.  The view beyond my computer screen is of our tiny kitchen.  I see our white porcelain sink, overflowing with dinner dishes from the night before, and of bottles needing to be washed.  I spy half a dozen pacifiers needing to be rounded up and returned to the pacifier jar.  But my heart is full.  Because I’m learning once again just to come.

Just come.

Categories // Family Tags // faith, Motherhood, mothering

Happy Birthday, Blog!

02.23.2017 by Nicole Kristin Twedt //

Today’s my blog’s birthday.  Kind of.  Eight months have come and gone since I first payed the fees and did all I needed to snatch a domain and launch a little place on the internet where I can go to gather my thoughts.  Except the launching part never happened.  I didn’t know what to do to make this place look like a living, breathing, functioning blog.  So I didn’t do anything.  How do you create something out of nothing?  Writing is all I care about!  Not the techno-junk that comes with blogging.  Plugins, tags, widgets!  Oh my!

This place has become such a spot, ever so slowly and just for me.   It’s still new to me, this blog, but I’m starting to use it regularly as a place to pour out my heart and soul through writing, my words under lock and key, for my eyes alone.

But today, by mistake, this baby went live and a blog was born.  For the whole wide world to see.  The birth was premature, just a bit, but she’s here to stay.

Here’s what happened.  I met Jody at a Panera in Renton.  She’s a seasoned blogger and willing to help.  But a mistake was made when we fiddled behind the scenes with the dashboard.  All of the sudden the blog went live.  We tried to get it un-live, but neither of us knew what to do.  Jody sent a message to her tech-y friend to see if she could kill it.  We tried creating a new Coming Soon plugin.  Not sure what happened to it.

Normally I would freak out.  Maybe not in front of Jody, but alone in a bathroom stall or on the car ride home from Renton.  You see, I like things just so.  My work doesn’t have to be perfect as perfect doesn’t exist.  But anything worth doing is worth doing well.  Can I hear an Amen from you melancholies?  I know you’re out there.

But something Kimberlee and Emily mentioned a few nights ago came to mind.  And what they said slipped from my brain and fell smack into this tender heart of mine.  You see, my writer friends told me about G. K. Chesterton and how he wrote, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”    So there you have it.  Take that, perfectionism!  I’m going to be brave and let this blog be what it is.  It’s nowhere near ready.  It’s not even functioning properly.  But it will be someday.   Hopefully someday soon, very soon.  And until I get my blog’s act together, or pay the big bucks to have someone make it pretty, I’m going to start publishing my work, bit by bit.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

Categories // Being Brave, Writing Tags // Blogging, G. K. Chesterton, Perfectionism

New Year, New Word

02.22.2017 by Nicole Kristin Twedt //

Originally from January 2017

Sometimes I have a word for the year.  You?  I started this practice in college.  Before choosing a word was a thing.  Maybe it was a thing but I didn’t know it then.  Come to think of it, I never really choose a word.  The word always chooses me.   Not in  a whoo-whoo way.   A word settles deep in my soul and I can’t shake it.  Like a fleeting thought that comes to stay, invading my heart and mind.  Sometimes it’s a word of encouragement, a guiding principle, even a cautionary word.  Sometimes this little word is for the entire year.  Quite often my word is for a specific season, for a time when needed.  Then a new word finds me.

My very first word was balance.  That’s a story for another day.  I was in college, living in the duplex townhouse on Superior Street and my life was out of whack.  It was on it’s way to being less whacked out but it was a long process and I wasn’t there yet.  Not even close.  Balance was my reminder to basically chill out and not fall to one extreme or another.

Some of the other words were Hope, Challenge, Quiet and Brave.  I was up at 3-something this morning, and too tired to think of the others.

Sometimes I get a phrase and not a word.  Sing a New Song was a biggie from the end of 2015 and stayed with me into the first part of 2016.  I wrote about it briefly.

I decided not to “choose” a word this year.   Not that I do the choosing, but a word didn’t fall into my lap by the time it usually did.  I simply forgot all about the practice of getting a word until the last days of 2016.  I was listening to the Sorta Awesome Podcast, or maybe it came to me while reading the first few chapters of Annie F. Down’s Looking For Lovely.   I don’t remember exactly where I was when the word for 2017 came.   But I’ll never forget the way I felt.  It came like a ton of bricks and settled like a pit in my stomach, much like indigestion.

Write.

No Bueno.

I don’t like this one.

I’d like another word, please.

Write.

Write, or the practice of writing, is what I’ve been running from.  But it’s hardly a new word or a theme.  Summer and fall of 2016 was supposed to be the time to write.  I was supposed to write while the kids were in school.  I was supposed to wear frumpy wool sweaters, black leggings (better yet, LuluRoe leggings), and type for hours at the computer desk in my family room with my Starbucks travel mug and my little dog, Chloe, by my side and bring hope through the written word, all in the comfort of my own home.  The truth is, I’ve never not written as much in my life as I have since June.  Even my prayer journal has sat neglected, hidden under my Bible.  I know it’s there.  But I can’t see it.  I’m not about to write in it.

Sure, I’ve been busy with other commitments, some legit like helping at school and mentoring through MOPS.   And there’s the basic time suckers like dishes and grocery shopping and always laundry, which will be the death of me.  Why do I feel like Jonah mounting the next ship to Tarshish, running from my calling?  Why, oh why, do I run from the very thing that brings me hope and joy and what I hope brings a little brightness and truth to others?

I don’t want to start writing again.  Why?  It’s in my blood to write.  Writing brings life, clarity, joy.  The very practice of putting pen to paper, even tapping the keyboard and seeing words illuminated on the screen before me, revives my soul.  But what usually brings life to me is kind of sucking the life out of me.  What’s my problem?  Don’t tell me, I know.  It hurts to write because to write is to process.  And it hurts to process.  It hurts to hurt, plain and true.

Here I am, the one running from my calling.  The one writing about not writing.   A walking contradiction, that’s me.  It occurs to me that for once in a long while I’m clearheaded, fire in my soul, alive and well.  And it occurs to me that while writing about not wanting to write, I’m actually doing it.  I’m writing.

Categories // Being Brave, Writing Tags // faith, MOPS, Word of the Year

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