we can do hard things

Like driving 18 hours with two young children. As I was driving and focusing on the road and trying to hand people snacks and referee and entertain and enjoy, I had an epiphany of sorts. If you know me or you've read my writing you have probably realized it way before me, but I'm uncovering and experiencing that motherhood is one big metaphor for life. A microcosm almost of the big, but small, things we experience every day, and it gives you the opportunity to take a step back to look through situations with a new perspective.This certainly doesn't mean that if you aren't a mother that these thoughts I share aren't applicable to you, it's me fine focusing my lens as these experiences as a Mama shape who I am. As I was driving with my darlins by myself to Atlanta I had a lot of time to think and listen to a lot of good podcasts (on the way there, on the way back we were in survival mode!). For the first time since I'd been back in the routine of things after my surgery and hospitalization I had a chance to process the deep thoughts that had indwelled but I didn't want to or hadn't had the time to process.I have realized two very important things, and if you've already arrived to these conclusions I envy you and if you haven't I hope that you see past the simplicity of these thoughts and are encouraged by them. First, our default is to be shocked and surprised when bad, hard, sad things happen; and second, we doubt our capability and capacity to experience, process, and understand them.Of course we don't want bad, hard, and sad things to happen. Of course we can't comprehend when they do. If you are a logical perfectionist like I am your wheels start spinning on what went wrong and how it could have been prevented and who is to blame. In our personal lives this leads to self-loathing and self-doubt and in our external lives the media only perpetuates our anxiety by magnifying all those "what ifs" and assumptions. At the same time we feel like we lack the strength to endure tragedy. We say things like "if that happened to me I could never________" fill in the blank to a long laundry list of horrible things. We also are weary and tired because there are so many tragic things around us that touch us personally and that the media again feeds that free floating anxiety by saturating our minds and hearts with the horrible.But the truth is, neither one of those things have to be our realities. Yes, brutal things are going to happen this side of heaven and I know for me at least, when I stop being so shocked by that, it gives me more control over my reactions. I'm not saying we shouldn't be deeply burdened by these things happening to us and around us, we absolutely should, I'm saying that when we shift our expectations and know that these hard things are part of life, the rug might be pulled out from under us, but we don't always have to fall backwards when it does. In the same right, we have to believe that our lives or purpose or hope are not voided if these things do happen and we are strong, we are capable, we are enough.There is a freedom in living this way that I don't think I've tasted yet but I feel it down in the depths of my soul about to burst forth. The freedom that our circumstances and capabilities do not define us. They do not limit our capacity for love and a lesson I learned a long, long time ago is that all of these hard things we are experiencing personally, a lot of it is not about us. It's about people who will come along who are also in the muck and we can come along side of them and not explain to them why they got in it, or how we think they should get out, but sit with them in it.I listened to Jen Hatmaker's podcast with Glennon Doyle while I was driving and repeatedly said "Amen!" over and over again as tears were streaming down my face. One of the quotes that stuck out to me and I would want tattooed on my body if I wasn't the most indecisive person on the planet and would question my decision a second later is this:// the brutal doesn't break us because the beautiful sustains us. --glennon doyleMic drop.I say over and over again that motherhood saved me from myself. It broke and continues to break me in the best ways. It may sound silly but I thought it would be physically/emotionally/mentally impossible for me to drive that trip by myself with my girls after I'd been so sick for so long. But as I was driving and sometimes it was beautiful and sometimes it was brutal in the most toddler of ways, I knew that in the hard moments it would eventually get better. That getting worked up about it wasn't going to make it any easier to push through, and that if I stopped to be patient and kind and understanding that they might not last as long.Now for the Mama's here are some tips that I learned along the 18 hour way that I wanted to share that may be useful to you and I think for the not-Mama's there are some life tips in here too:

• Set low expectations--expect that there will be meltdowns and unanticipated stops and that they will watch a lot of things on screens and eat foods you aren't proud of.
• Set high expectations--expect that you will get little moments of sweetness and togetherness and memories will be made and you will eventually get to where you are going even if it takes longer or isn't the way you planned.
• Plan for a lot of breaks--I used to be a pretty obnoxious traveler. Efficiency is the name of the game and stopping a long the way simply delays the endpoint. Hello, life lesson. We took two long-ish breaks for snacks and one for lunch and it made all the difference, gave us something to look forward to, and made me slow down
• Have anything you'll need in the passenger seat--I had snacks and toys and tablets and anything I'd need to grab right there. I didn't have it all together, I brought a Costco size bag of Pirates Booty instead of putting it in smaller bags, true story, and it made a huge mess, but everyone was happy. I think this metaphor is the prepared/planning piece that I'm learning to not resist, procrastinators unite, but to realize that it really, truly does leave you more time for the good stuff.
• Prop your iPhone up on the console and run the sound through your speakers-- When the tablets we have were out of batteries, ahem because someone forgot their chargers, I improvised. And I promise this is a good life lesson too, do what you can with what you have where you are.

I mess up almost every hour in motherhood and certainly in life, but I'm learning that the key is not striving to never mess up, it's picking yourself back up when you do. I share these thoughts with the most humble of hearts, realizing that I certainly will never have any of this truly figured out, but that it's worth sharing to shine light in the dark places and to move towards and sit in the pain because friends, we can do hard things, and we can experience hard things and we most definitely will break, but we will be sustained.