Dashboard Confessionals

For the last few weeks my mom has been getting phone calls from me while I sit in the carpool lane at Kyla’s school.

I call and cry about all the things in my life that are wrong and confusing and how the dentist says Kyla needs extensive work done on her teeth and I feel a weight of guilt about it, thinking it’s my fault we didn’t floss enough or remember to brush enough on the way out the door to school.

I have all these ideas for writing but then I log onto blogs and see people are already writing on the same topics with more panache than I could possibly muster up between the dental appointments and lack of sleep that follows my late-night thoughts about life as a pastor’s family.

I am trying to figure out what it means to be a mom still, eight years after Kyla was born. I don’t know how to mingle with the moms at the farmstead. That is after I got lost on my way there and called my friend crying. So much crying it’s ridiculous. Also, I ran over our stroller there.

I can’t seem to shake the guilt and the shame I have over my lack of abilities in the areas of hospitality and service. Women are expected to excel in these areas. But I serve with my words. I serve with my hugs. I do not serve with homemade cupcakes. In fact, I’m pretty sure you don’t want me to.

I know what I want to do out of who I am but everyone else seems to have a different idea. I get tired of the boundary pushing. I want to give up and crawl into my bed at home after I pull out of the carpool lane.

My mommy listens well. Sometimes she has to tell me to slow down because I’m speaking so fast about all of the insanity surrounding my days. She can hardly get a word in between the talking and the tears.

A few weeks ago, mom sent me a package with some articles she copied off. Some ideas for writing prompts. I finally opened them this morning.

One page had a section titled “Be Yourself” and the following was highlighted by my mom:

The poet E.E. Cummings once wrote...“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” We all want to hear from people who are original—with original thoughts, ideas, and style. You be that person.

The last line was underlined by mom and then below it she wrote:

You are that person! Love, Mom

I have no answers but I’m glad my mommy sees me. I’m going to post that page on my dashboard. Maybe it will help remind me of whom God knows and says I am as I cry and confess in the carpool lane.