I saw it, briefly, but I saw it over and over again. The big, overly-happy smile of a young mom at story time, and just above it a flicker of self-doubt in her eyes. A tiny tremble of “what on earth am I doing here?” that perhaps she hoped the other moms didn’t catch.

Have you ever been in a group of people and wondered just how many things are actually going on under the surface? Today I looked around at all the young moms at the library’s Tales for Two-year-olds and wondered: how many were bored to tears with Twinkle Twinkle and Old Macdonald for the 8-gazillionth time? How many beautiful hearts were doing battle with their culture-rattled brain—demanding to know how this could possibly make sense when the bills are piling up and the “check engine” light just came on and here they are Ringing Around the Rosy instead of sitting back in their cubicle? How many came only because they want to get out of the house or because they wanted to be able to say they did something worthy of getting dressed that day, or because 'they'—the experts in the books and on the blogs-- say storytime is good for kids’ social skills…and stuff. Whatever all that other stuff is.

Full disclosure: I've been all of those moms! Every. Single. One. When my first was a new toddler, I was already pregnant with her sister and could barely muster the strength to shower and drive the three miles to story time, let alone grin big and make twinkle-diamonds with my hands. The most exhausting thing was the voice in my head telling me what I was doing was a waste of my time. A woman I know later expressed it better—“Couldn’t I just pay someone to do all this mindless playing I spend all day doing?”

Outsource the mindlessness. It makes so much sense, doesn’t it?

But Mama, I am here to tell you… what you are doing is the opposite of mindless. It is something that, whether you intend it to, or not, will reap benefits for years and even decades to come.
As a mother who also has older ones now, I see every day so much benefit from the songs and stories and time together. Those words have set the foundation for language skills that have produced articulate kids who love to read and write on their own. The rhythm and music has lead to an interest in math games and logic and debate (not to mention my joy in hearing them sing, whether they are two or ten!). And, the most important, in my book: happy memories that lead to secure connections and emotional health, that mean when their world is shattered and they are devastated, they know they have a safe place.

Please hear me: what you do matters! This is not inconsequential work and it's not mindlessness! Our culture doesn’t celebrate the little moments that you will observe in the next few years—but I urge you to. Please realize that when a toddler knows what is coming in a song because they have sung it 15 times, they feel secure—accomplished! And that beaming smile says “I learned that and now I want to learn MORE!” When they practice jumping like popcorn, their brains and bodies start to work together and later those little popcorn legs will be able to jump way higher than you on the basketball court. And when you hold them in your lap and tell them to quietly listen to Five Little Monkeys, they register that soft, safe space, and know you are their home.

Mama, how you are spending your time with your children is worthy, so worthy. Whether it is at the library or not, time spent with them is the long, slow, brick-making and -laying process of setting the foundation for their life. Like a city skyscraper, these things below won’t be visible when they are older. But if we build that base with them now, they will be set securely to rise high above it. Proverbs 29:18 “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Keep that vision of your child in mind—one day they will be grown, and you are setting their foundation now that they may grow fully, later.

Today I urge you to fight back against the voices that tell you what you are doing with your babies doesn’t matter, whether they are in your own head or coming out of someone else’s mouth. Fight back and say, “This child is worthy of this, and so am I.” Fight back, and then rest, knowing that you and what you are doing, is good, and wise, and right.

I see you and I appreciate you.
Lindsay

When you are sixteen and you are so tired of being brutally uncool and overlooked, and the years of being sneered at pile up, you will do really stupid things. Sometimes it’s a lot of stupid things, and sometimes those stupid things will stay with you for a very long time.
 
For me, I found a double whammy way to both be accepted and to appear that I didn’t care about being accepted: cigarettes. Of course, this is also a great way to ruin your health, waste tons of money and time, and to discover the hardships of addiction. It took me years (and years) to put them down, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And it wasn’t that it took me eight years to want to be done with them—in many ways I wanted out of the habit almost as soon as I got into it. Quitting, though, was hard, and I failed at it over, and over, and over again.

It’s January 10 and my hunch is there are a lot of us out there who have already experienced a blow up in our plans to make 2017 the year. Goals are falling apart. We don’t see how to make what we wanted to happen. We’re back in old habits already and we feel pretty crummy about it. Can we share a collective group shrug here and acknowledge this: Failure happens? It is so rare that any of us makes a goal and then follows a blissful, obstacle-free path to reaching it. But that doesn’t mean it’s time to let go of your goals. Here are five things you can do to get back on track.

1. CELEBRATE THE PROGRESS YOU DID MAKE
So, you messed up. You only got to the gym once last week—not nearly the five times you meant to. Or maybe you only made it a few hours before you yelled at the kids—again. Or maybe you caved and your sneak visit to Facebook stole yet another hour from your day.
 
Yeah, you’re not where you wanted to be right now. But no matter how far off your goal or resolution you are, you probably made some amount of progress. So often we are focused on the distance that still lies between us and our goal that we forget to look back and acknowledge that we made it a few difficult feet past the start line—and that we are closer than we were! This is important and worthy. Write it down, tell it to yourself in the mirror—do something to acknowledge that you made progress as you steel yourself to try again.

2. REMEMBER WHY YOU MADE THE GOAL
Why do you want what you want? Remembering this is key to wanting to start over again and try. Write it down. Or find a picture of something that represents your why and put it where you see it often. Think about it. Pray about it. Keeping the ‘why’ front of mind helps when you face the temptation to give up on it.

3. RE-ASSESS THE GOAL
Was it too lofty? Did it not have a number attached to it (having something to measure really helps)? Did you not make time in your days for something new? Did you forget identify, or to eliminate the thing that triggers the bad habit? Something happened that made it easy for you to fall back into the habit. Now you know, and you can make the change.

4. RECOGNIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY
I hesitated even to use the word ‘failure’ in this blog, except that it echoes back the language we often use. I have, in recent months, though, tried to re-frame what I have previously defined as failure into OTE’s—opportunities to excel, or “learnings”—opportunities to gain knowledge about myself or what I’m trying to do (h/t to Ben Crane and Amy Porterfield for those terms, btw). Both are far more productive ways of looking at things than to tell myself I’ve failed or to define myself as a failure.

5. RESTART
After you’ve done the above, you are ready to get back up on the horse and try again. This is always a scary thing, but when we do the other steps, we are more prepared to succeed, and to get further along than we were before. Sometimes it takes one restart, sometimes it takes many restarts. But eventually success in some form comes and we can celebrate an accomplishment that means something big has happened in our lives!
 
I lost track of the number of times I had to restart on my goal to quit smoking. Certainly it was well into double digits. It was a terrible cycle to be in, but the road to finally accomplishing the goal took a lot longer because I didn’t always do the steps above. But eventually, with perseverance, I succeeded, and it was worth every failed attempt to finally beat the habit. Your goal is still out there--go get it!

When I was a senior in high school, I reluctantly joined my school’s brand new speech team. Until that point, I had pursued things more artistic things, but I was looking to beef up my college applications and some of my teachers thought I’d be good at speaking. I haughtily told the coach that I needed to do only limited prep events as I was far too busy with other pursuits to devote a lot of time to his activity. But I dutifully showed up for practice and enjoyed the challenge of coming up with three-point speeches in a just a couple of minutes. I remember early on, after one speech that I thought was particularly impressive, my coach, Mr. Meadows, told me “That was good. Now you need to use that writing talent you have in your speeches.” It was a bit baffling to me—in all my haste to get up and get speaking, in an event where you don’t really have time to prepare much of anything, he was encouraging me to write! But he saw that a gift I had would enhance my speaking, and wanted me to see that it could be used in a way I hadn’t thought of. Mr. Meadows didn’t want me to change what I already had, he just wanted me to recognize it and grow it.

Now, so many years later, I have begun to enjoy the idea of adopting a theme as each new year roles around. While re-focusing can certainly happen any time of year, January presents a natural opportunity. This year I’ve decided that it is time to EMBRACE my gifts, and I’d like to encourage you to do the same. What does that mean? It means that we need to take stock of and recognize what God has given us. And it can be so many things: specific talents, learned skills, burgeoning interests, people who have been put in your life, or situations you’ve been placed in. Now, this may be more difficult when you are younger and haven’t had time to uncover or develop talents. It can also be hard if you have been taught to pursue someone else’s goals for you rather than to cultivate your own. And another challenge is when you have gifts that the culture around you doesn’t value—but that God does. But whatever they are, in order to embrace our gifts we need to become mindful of what we have been given.
 
Once we realize what our gifts are, it’s time to learn to love them. My daughter has an adorable sign she made in a girls’ Bible study that says “It’s okay to be happy about a skill I have.” I appreciate this so much because for too long the prevailing notion has been that to recognize that you have something good means you are not humble about it. But the exact opposite is true—humility is a choice to put yourself lower than others, which requires knowing that you might actually have something they don’t. It is not prideful to realize “I’m good at this and intend to use it for good.” Or, “I have this money/resource/thing and I can be useful with it.” In fact, to NOT recognize and use what’s given to us is wasteful and displeasing to God—numerous scriptures tell us that if we do not use our talents we invite the ire of God (Matt. 25:14-21, Luke 19:12-27). You can’t love or use a gift if you don’t know what you’ve been given.
 
Perhaps the most difficult part of embracing our gifts is realizing that when we choose to embrace and use certain gifts we may need to give up other pursuits. I don’t at all mean that we should not do necessary things as they arise—of course we need to respond to urgent needs even if they are outside of our comfort zone. But when we talk about what we are actively growing and using, it may mean accepting that some things we have been eyeing or trying to do are actually better left to others. 
 
I would love for you to come along with me this year… it’s not a resolution or even a goal, but more of a journey, a chance to be more mindful about what we’ve been given and grow in it. I’ll be posting different thoughts on how to find and embrace our gifts as the year progresses and I’d love for you to join me! If you have an idea of what gifts you need to embrace, or if you have questions about how to find them, please leave a comment and I’ll try to incorporate your thoughts into future posts on this theme.