Jen is a work-at-home mom, parent to three, and she’s been a stepparent for over 15 years. She is well-equipped to discuss and write about the great, and the not-so-great, details of all-things-parenting. Along with spending quality time with her family, Jen enjoys music, chocolate, camping and relaxing. And laughing! To learn more about Jen and her writing follow her at FEEL THESE WORDS.
JEN’S ZEN – Remember not to ForgetDo you ever just “fall into bed”, completely wiped out from…Life? Of course you do. You’re a Parent. The packing lunches, readying school children, working, dentist appointments, bathing the dog, bathing the kids, carpooling, laundry, making dinner, cleaning dinner, bedtime, books, brushing teeth…sigh…I know. Do you ever lay in bed and think, “This must have been the longest day of my life”, and kind of shudder at the thought of tomorrow’s to-do list? Me, too. But just when I’m about to complain, to really complain… I Remember not to Forget… I awoke this year on my 35 birthday to the news that a classmate had died. On the very day I woke up celebrating my life, she had lost hers. I didn’t know her well, but I knew of her battle against cancer and I was rooting for her as our whole community was. She didn’t get a chance to get married, to have children…She was fighting for her life while I was worrying about my to-do lists… At her funeral, where I couldn’t help but realize I was sitting next to one of my best friends as so many in that room said goodbye to theirs – where her mother said goodbye to her daughter — a woman sang out a soulful rendition of Janice Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee”. “And I’d trade all of my tomorrows, for one single yesterday…” Some days, my kids’ voices blend into this pitch that hurts my ears, and the “I wants” and “I needs” and straight-up chaos of a “family” and the details, and the school papers and…raising small human beings. I get annoyed, my tone gets tight…I “fall into bed”… only to read this soul-shaking Facebook post from a grieving father who lost his eight-year-old son to cancer: “It’s been 8 months since I gave you a hug, Buddy. I miss you.” I fret about our house not being clean enough or big enough or “enough enough” – and then I remember packing household items not too long ago to donate to a family who lost theirs in a fire… I remember watching my children blissfully bounce around at the park this summer, climbing and sliding away — next to a mother and father spoon-feeding their teenage child in a wheelchair, the victim of a car accident… In the perfect world, there would be no pain. No cancer. No tragedy. But we live in the real world – where trivial matters actually seem important, and we “fall into bed” exhausted, worrying about tomorrow’s to-do lists… That’s when we have to Remember not to Forget… That tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, and we don’t get to trade our tomorrows for yesterday. That we’d beg for This day back – with to-do lists that were too long and patience too short, money too thin and “problems” too thick… We’d beg for This day back were tomorrow to hold something truly tragic. We have to Remember not to Forget… How truly blessed we are to be exhausted by…Life. And to be truly grateful for every person, every moment, every event… of the messiest, loudest, craziest, most imperfect and truly unruly longest days of our Lives. JEN’S ZEN — Because the damn dishes are never done. Laundry is a cruel joke. And because children are beautiful lessons in Patience and Counting. 10, 9, 8, 7 Breathe… |
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