Shut Doors and Text Messages

 Life is different with teens.  I totally expected it would be, and yet I TOTALLY didn't expect some of the surprises.  In referring to these unexpected changes, I shall kindly use the word "adjustments" because so many other words that come to mind just don't have quite the same gentle ring to them.  

One of the adjustments that took me by surprise was the shut door.  Sure, I remember being a teen and wanting my privacy, closing a door so I could hear myself think or listen to music not everyone else in my house was keen on listening to for the 15th time that day.  But shut doors are everywhere!  I walk upstairs to a shut bathroom door, shower running and an incredibly beautiful song being belted out behind it.  Down the hall is another shut door to a room recently emptied by my oldest moving to college (sniff, sniff...not even going to think about going there right now).   Next to it, there's another shut door with a nerf basketball swooshing the net and slamming the door over and over again.  And yet around the other way, a door closed with only the silence of deep studying going on behind it.  All of these doors are to be expected.  All of these shut doors are even necessary.  Privacy, independence, it's all part of life.  I know this.  But oh how my momma heart longs to find those doors occasionally open and beckoning me to come in.  Remember when they were little and didn't want the door shut?  Remember when they needed it open to know you were still there?

And then...my phone dings (or rather jams to Back in Black because I'm an adult and I can..haha) and they open a new unexpected door for me.  One needs help on math, or wonders where the clean towels went, another wants to know what time dinner is, can I pick them up, or even just says hey and sends a fun message.  Anyone care to guess what this does?  This busts my heart right open and makes me smile!  They reach out in their own way, and me as their lucky momma jumps all over that!  I will take the text door and use it to get right in there behind that other shut one. 

Because when it comes down to it, no matter how they reach out, they reach out.  Whether it be what I envisioned or not, I'm going to seize that moment and soak it in.  I pray God helps me not focus on the closed doors that feel like distance between and see the text message for the stretched out hand and heart that it is.

Renovations

 I've decided to update my blog.  I may not be the mom of a handful of wee-ones anymore.  But there are a couple of things that I most definitely still am:  a mom of a handful of absolutely amazing children and a child of God with a heart full of the joy He brings me through these five incredible blessings.

So this is a warning that my topics may be refocused, just as my very life has been.  There have been so many adjustments over the last two years.  Simply put, life as I knew it changed.  I now no longer live in Georgia, or New Jersey, or even in Texas, but have come to land in Florida.  I no longer solely homeschool, but now have one in college, two in private high school, one in private middle school, and one schooling at home with me.  We moved into a house, moved out to completely renovate the house, and then moved back in to make it our home.  All of these and so many more changes have stretched me in ways that I don't even know how to express. Not only has it been a transition of place, environment, culture, people, home, and church but a complete renovating of who I am as a mother.

Thus, the blog will renovate with me.  I plan to share how being a mom of teenagers and preteens and a little lady brings about so many unexpected challenges but also so many overwhelming blessings.  I'm not exactly sure what that will look like or what I'll be allowed to say and share, as certain individuals are now old enough to read my posts, but somehow I hope that through writing I will remind myself, and anyone else out there floundering in a sea of transition, just how our Father treasures and teaches through all of this beautiful chaos.