Worry.

Worry.

Worry is a powerful thing.

Anxiety is probably my worst enemy in life. Sure, I worry about things that normal people worry about, but most often, I worry about things I fully recognize I absolutely cannot control, which is more than disturbingly neurotic. I even worry about how much I worry. And this worry seeps into my down time, my resting time, my prayer time, and my commuting time. In fact, just about the only time I am able to shut out worry and anxiety is when I work.

So, I work … a lot.

In college, I would take more courses, read more books, study more hours and write extra papers. As a “grown-up”, I do more emailing, write more strategies, develop more angles to projects already on the docket … etc. etc. etc.

Things always look better in the morning light, and most of my worrying starts at night. So, since it’s 8:38 on a Saturday night, bear with me.

Currently, I have been worrying a great deal about my vocational life. Making the big move from Youth Ministry (a place I loved and a mission about which I was passionate) to my new role at the Publishing House (where – although yes, I have a passion for the mission, I haven’t been working long enough to know if I love it or not) has been a bit of a sleep-depriver for the last three weeks.

But, today, all that worry was well and truly trounced by a new, monster anxiety – for our little Sydney.

Today, Sydney was officially diagnosed with a condition called positional plagiocephaly. In addition to learning to spell plagiocephaly without requiring a spell check – the past few days have been fraught with mind-numbing moments of concern followed by mind buzzing moments where I generate more questions than any Mommy should be allowed to ask. We have come to learn that plagiocephaly is especially common in babies who are born breech (which, as faithful readers know, was very much our reality with Miss Sydney Grace, starting back at 24 weeks of pregnancy and lasting until her surprise early arrival at the end). After x-rays and consultations at Children’s Hospital, we have learned that Sydney’s condition is not the more serious condition, craniosynostosis, that would require surgery, and we have learned that we have an array of treatment options to consider.

We have learned that we are not bad parents (though I am having a really tough time not blaming myself entirely) and that even though we have done tummy time, and repositioned her sleeping positions, etc. etc., this condition is very common given her early birth and her “I like to hang out breech” reality. Overall, we should be (and really are) really thankful. After all, today as I sat there in the radiology department at Children’s, I saw many, many Mommies and Daddies with many more reasons to be worried than our little family.

The thing I am worrying about is this: am I doing the “right” things for Sydney? I work. Is that a good decision? I’m not home to watch her 24-hours each day. I can’t guarantee that her head isn’t turned left too many hours (we have EXCELLENT women watching our precious baby …). Have I spent enough time playing and holding her? Am I to blame? And what if the treatment option we decide to use doesn’t correct the problem? I don’t want to fail her.

That’s the root of it all. I don’t want to fail Sydney. Not now. Not ever.

And the reality, as we all know it, is that I will. Actually, the reality is that I already have. And at some point, the Gretchen-who-hates-to-let-people-down is going to have to get over the fact that she is less than perfect. It’s not that I don’t “get” this. But it’s time to really, really get it, or else I have this sneaking suspicion that I am going to miss a whole lot of genuine, authentic opportunities to be comfortable with being the Mom I Just Am, as opposed to the Mom I Am Obsessed with Trying to Be.

And, maybe I am wrong about this, I think that Mom I Just Am is going to enjoy life a whole, heck of a lot more.

My friend, Lori is forever telling me to give myself some permission to go easy on myself. And you know what, she’s right. If I have any hope of being the “best” kind of Mom for Sydney, I need to whole-heartedly embrace that I am often going to be the worst and – rather than dwelling in that and rolling around in my own absurd and ridiculous pity party – LET IT GO!

So. Depending on what we decide, you all might see some fun photos of our little Miss Syd wearing her super cool new ‘DOCband’ helmet … and I hope that you’ll all cheer along with us as our little bug gets her noggin back in shape. Hers is external; here’s to hoping that Mom gets her internal noggin back in shape right along with her.

Do they make that helmet in the adult size?

... dearest Jesus +

Every evening, we end our bedtime routine with Sydney by praying over her the prayer I grew up saying. My sister and I were blessed to grow up in a home rich with love and nurture. We were “tucked in” each and every night.

Actually, I can vividly recall the night some time in the mid-teenager years when I bravely (and in my mind oh-so-maturely) told my Dad and Mom that I was “okay” on my own.

I went into my bedroom. Closed the door; and laid there in the darkness listening to the whir of the ceiling fan, wishing I could somehow call out to my parents to come say goodnight and pray with me, while still preserving my sense of teenage independence. After that “Wendy-leaving-the-nursery” moment, I routinely invited Mom and Dad to still come say goodnight. Not every night, but enough to keep the ritual alive and well.

It was something of a tender and inexpressible joy to teach my husband this child’s prayer. He asked me to repeat each phrase again and again until he had it down pat. As we place our hands on our little baby each night and pray to our Heavenly Father, I can’t help but be moved. People who know me well are not surprised by this reflection; I have always been a “rooted” person. Sharing a bedtime prayer from my childhood with my child is a moment rich with heritage, constancy and tradition. Sharing this prayer reminds me of the blessings of my youth and the grace with which my parents raised me.

This prayer is yet my own and its tender simplicity has become a source of rich reflection over these last 16-weeks of new parenthood.

The prayer is this:

Dearest Jesus, wash away
all that has been wrong today.
Help me every day to be
good and gentle, more like thee.

Thus far, being a Mommy has revealed me to be a far better and far worse person than I knew I was. Far better in that I have discovered patience, which I never thought I possessed. I have encountered contentment, without the exhausting pursuit of perfection. I am learning that I have the capacity to be better and more comfortable and more relaxed in my own skin – something I have worked on all my life. And all it took was the arrival of a tiny creature so immensely beyond my ability to control and BAM, I feel calm.

As for the far worse … It has become patently obvious that: I am selfish. I am easily irritated at my dear husband. I am critical and impatient when the “routine” is not followed. And for some unexplainable reason, my faults seem amplified now that I realize there are little eyes watching. It’s unnerving.

And so, each night the words “wash away all that has been wrong today” strike a deep chord in me; and the hope to be “good and gentle more like thee” has new meaning as well.

I don’t know where my parents learned this prayer. I did a little Googling and found it as the second verse of an old German hymn, "Now the Light Has Gone Away" by Frances R. Havergal, 1836-1879, and there the first words are “Jesus Savior …” My Dad was raised in an extremely German home and I am guessing this came to our family through those channels, I don’t know.

Perhaps now that I am grown, I can add a verse or two to this simple prayer. It seems to me that nurturing devotion to the Father through prayer and song and Word will provide me and Leon with new and fresh and vibrant understanding about how we can better love Sydney. Our love for her is a direct overflowing of our love for Jesus … The hymn actually offers this idea in prayerful verse and concludes:

Thou, my best and kindest Friend,
Thou wilt love me to the end.
Let me love Thee more and more,
Always better than before.

This is a fitting prayer for our life with Jesus and our love for Sydney.

Simple? Sure.

True. Most assuredly.

+ centered +

As many of you know, I started a new job at Concordia Publishing House this week, which is to say the Jameson family started a new job this week. The experience was something like the first day of school. For five straight days.

That's sort of how life has felt for months now, truth be told.

To say its been a fairly hectic few days would certainly be an understatement. It's not that the hours were exceedingly long or the job exceedingly stressful; it was just NEW. After 10-years of marriage, six years at the International Center, and 15-weeks as a new, young family, this week was a departure from "our norm". (Whatever that is!) And we found ourselves muddling through with some success, some stress, some late nights, and several early mornings. Nothing felt "normal", routine or typical; and certainly nothing was boring, average or ordinary.

What has proved most intriguing this week has been that our family time has become the most sane, most low-key and most necessary experience in the midst of all of this change. Life with Sydney is the newest and most unpredictable part of our day. Yet it was when we were finally home together at the end of work and commuting and coaching tennis and worrying over the multitude of mundane daily "to-dos" that we found ourselves most at peace, most content and certainly most restored to get up and do it all again the next morning.

Every day with Sydney brings with it some incredible new moment. Just the reality that her physical self is never the same from day to day is amazing. She is continually growing, striving, reaching and developing right before our eyes. A new job with new co-workers and new challenges doesn't hold a candle to the changes that Sydney has brought into our lives, but somehow the upheaval on the home front is actually a calming, reassuring thing. Coming home to Sydney doesn't feel exhausting or overwhelming. Instead, after a day of the unfamiliar, her familiar, chaotic presence is something we crave. It puts everything else into brilliant, obvious perspective.

Our desire to be fully present in our moments with Sydney is essential to us. Together, Leon and I drink in our new, burgeoning sense of "family"deeply and with gratitude. We pour our hearts into our at-home time; energy and joy and enthusiasm we have long expended elsewhere is now fueling our own home. It is difficult to fully express how this surge of investment feels and how it is changing us.

So ~ this week was definitely new and overwhelming and insane and fun and extremely unpredictable. But in the midst of all of that was Sydney. And Leon. And me. And even Bailey. And our brand new, God-granted family proved the center that held it all together.

How incredible is that?

Remembrances of Chet and Irene ...

When I was a girl, few things thrilled like a visit from our out-of-town relatives, especially a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Staude. Perhaps it was because it happened so rarely ~ they far preferred staying home on the farm in Saint Joe, MI, and we were more than happy to visit them there. But a few times, usually in the early fall after the grape harvest was complete, Grandma and Grandpa made the drive to Saint Louis to see us. We would be excited for days before their visit. When "the day" would finally arrive, my sister and I were overwhelmed with anticipation! The school day simply crawled by as we grew more and more excited (and pity our poor parents who had to answer again and again, "What time will they be here?!").

Finally, we would be home ~ waiting at the front window, watching ... watching ... and then! we would see them! Now that I am a grown-up, and recognize how strangely tiring it is drive across the country, I simply can't imagine how my grandparents managed to keep pace with us as we hurtled ourselves out of the front door and down the lawn to meet them before they had more than one foot out of the car!

Grandparents coming to visit were a very big deal, indeed!

This weekend, Sydney's Nanny Jameson is here to visit. Watching her tenderly love on and coo over her baby granddaughter, I am coming to understand how my Grandparents found the energy to love on us even after long hours of travel. Her gasp of joy, mingled with just a little wistfulness as she saw her little Sydney (who was taking a nap, of course!) for the first time in 2-months, touched my heart. And Sydney, even as young as she is, seems keenly aware that she has the undivided attention of our house guest. Nanny played and held and fed and rocked and bathed and snuggled with Sydney ~ and she's only been here since 2:30 this afternoon! She came bearing gifts in a suitcase bigger than the MINI and probably wants to stay forever! Sydney is blessed indeed, even only 15-weeks old, to have Nanny come to visit. (Grandad Jameson, we know you are reading this and are here in spirit! Next time!)

I feel thankful that my daughter has the blessing of something I did not have (and isn't that the sort of thing so many of us want for our children?). She has doting grandparents here in town, who are part of her "every day" moments, which is a relationship I never knew. And she also has the blessing of "far away" grandparents, whose special visits become a source of such excitement and "spoiling" and fun that you just can't wait and you never want them to end.

Sydney has both and as hard as it is for Nanny and Grandad Jameson to live so far away, we want them to know that they have a special role in Sydney's life and we love it when they are here!

What a weekend lies ahead!

... kick me ...

A fabulous commentary ran this morning on NPR. If you're not a fan of FRANK DEFORD, you should be. This morning's piece, "Sweetness and Light" suggests that perhaps the Olympic Games have run their course in our contemporary, global experience ... it's a good read, but a better listen. CLICK HERE and give Deford's piece some consideration (at the very least, I learned that the Olympic torch was the brain child of Nazi Germany ... interesting, and makes it ~ as a symbol ~ lose just a bit of its mystique ... at least for this idealist.)