I'm a Cliffs Notes Mom
I’m an “all or nothing” kind of lady. If I can’t do something all the way, I would rather not do it. It is my greatest strength and my greatest weakness.
My “all or nothing” mindset helped me to wholeheartedly commit my life to living in Africa and parenting Lifa as a single, young lady years ago. It helped me say, “I choose you,” to Chris Ladd when we had the fateful “business meeting” and decided to commit our lives to each other before we had ever even been on our first date. It helps me every morning when my alarm goes off at 4:40am to get up and get the most out of those quiet morning hours with God so that I can give my all to my family and our city for the rest of the day. It can also leave me empty from going, giving and going some more all day, every day.
I typically operate at either 100% or 0%, and I’ve learned how to make that work. But recently, it stopped working…
There has never been a season or struggle that I could not muscle through in my lifetime. There have been plenty of hard ones, but I have kept going while I mended. When we lost a life within me, I tried to carry on, muscle through, be the mom I decided Lifa needed me to be…. All the things… at 100% and no less. I even did a ridiculous deadlift workout 1 ½ weeks after the miscarriage thinking, “You’ve got to jumpstart your life to get it back. This is what works.”
DID. NOT. WORK.
My body physically shut me down until I was forced to spend a week on the couch, allowing my heart to confront its grief while my weary body healed itself. Slowly after that, the migraines, anxiety and exhaustion I had been experiencing faded away, and I was ready to rejoin the rest of the world.
It started out as doing just 1 thing a day. (I usually do 347 things a day. There’s a striking difference.) My 1 thing a day typically involved driving Lifa across the city to rugby practice or tutoring. We spend hours together in the car every week as we take on Cape Town rush hour, but we’ve found that audio books make that time awesome! Lifa hangs onto every word and has developed a love for adventure, fantasy, and reading. It is a special way to invest in him and make memories. Who knew you could look forward to traffic!?!
We recently finished the Chronicles of Narnia and moved on to the Hobbit. Guys, I could not hang in there for the Hobbit. First, we tried the BBC Radio Drama version. Good idea in theory only. Then, we broke down and bought the proper audio book. Lifa ate it up. LOVED IT. At first, I spent our special bonding-traffic-Hobbit-time with a post-miscarriage heartache too loud to hear that fine British accent or the terrible voice of Gollum. As time went on, I spent that time with my mind just completely shut off- on total reprieve because J.R.R. Tolkien could not be my 1 thing that day. It had to be Lifa.
I was failing in the school of “all or nothing”. If I couldn’t even listen to the Hobbit while I drove, I was clearly not winning in any arena of life… probably even ruining Lifa’s.
On the day we were going to finish The Hobbit, I found myself sitting in my car outside of Lifa’s primary school reading the Cliffs Notes so I could still discuss the story with Lifa. Yes. I did that. I sat in a car rider line, and read Cliffs Notes. Worked perfectly.
I thought I had stooped to a new low there, but I realized I needed a new way of thinking instead. I missed most of the 11 ½ hours of an audio book, but I did not miss an engaging conversation about what Lifa liked and thought of the book. I did not miss the heartfelt conversations while we did homework or serving my guys healthy dinners at a life-giving table. (Even if that dinner was oatmeal or eggs on some nights!)
I’ve decided I’m ok with Cliffs Notes. It took me 11 ½ hours of guilt to start to understand that I want to give my all to the things that are going to matter forever. A story that plays from an app on my phone comes and goes. The stories we write at our dinner table, and the legacies I leave in Lifa’s heart will one day make their way to eternity’s gates.
Those are the stories that matter. I don’t think I want to do everything “all or nothing” anymore. I’ve spent a lot of myself on things that fade away. I want to give my all to the 1 thing that matters and do my best with the rest.