The blog home of speaker and writer Mindy von Atzigen

The blog home of speaker and writer Mindy von Atzigen I am a lover of words, Jesus, and His church. I am also a wife, a mom, and a friend. I hope you'll consider me yours...

New Life

Author's Note:  The last post, "A Mother's Prayer," chronicled the beginnings of a gift left on our front porch.  You can read it by clicking here.


When my daughter heard the good news that the four baby porch birds had hatched, she was immediately sad. 

"Oh no, that means they will grow up and fly away."  And this from a girl who doesn't read her mama's blog.

But, she gets it.  The wrenching of the heart that comes with letting go.

What she can't yet see is that the same growing up that takes a baby away from its nest is the same stretching that made her so confident she would navigate kids' camp just fine this year without a parent sponsor or her older brother going with her.  (She was very sad to learn her dad would be the camp speaker this year, as that meant the whole family is going after all!)

It's that same stretching that caused her to want to try a new dance class next semester, to expand her experiences. 

And it's that same stretching that means mom gets to be on the quiet side now when she picks out her own clothes for school, developing her own sense of style.

She can't see it now.  But, she will.

How do I know?  Because I have lived through enough "wrenching" seasons in life to know that on the other side, I have been transformed.  And passing through the cocoon never feels comfortable. 

It's tight.

It's dark. 

It's sometimes lonely.

But, on the other side, I can fly where before I could only walk.


A Mother's Prayer

My son was in an accident a couple of weeks ago.  It was in a school vehicle with several other students, and it could have been very, very bad.  But, it wasn't.  Everyone is safe.
 
It took my heart several days to sort through the emotions that rose up during that first phone call.  It's taken many more not to allow fear to dominate when I see him pull out of the driveway in his own truck.
 
We are fragile creatures, us mothers, our hearts battered daily by this call to raise human beings.  A call that demands we let those same human beings, once tiny in our arms, loose to fly on their own.  It's that process of wrenching the heart in a million different ways, a different one every day, that envoke the apron string jokes and the pillows in boutiques with large letters emblazoned, "Call Your Mother."  Because it's a life-long wrenching.  It never stops.
 
And that kind of constant wrenching hurts.
 
And is exquisitely beautiful at the same time.
 
Because without the wrenching, the babies don't fly. 
 
Without the wrenching, no nests are ever built, one generation turning into the next.
 
Without the wrenching, a mother's job is not fulfilled.
 
So, it was not lost on me the gift my God gave me this week.
 
A nest.  Built in the lantern on my front porch.  A nest built by a mama who sits and waits patiently every day for her babies.  A mama who flies away every time the front door opens, protecting her young by drawing attention away from her brood.
 
But now, in a few short weeks, I'll be reminded all over again, that a mama's tucking of the feathers around her babies lasts only for a season.  And then it's time for them to fly.
 
God's voice spoke gently, but it was clear.  "You get them for a while.  To tuck and to nurture.  But, you can't hold them back.  They weren't born for the nest."
 
The wrenching hurts.  But, it's good. 
 
Today, I held up the camera to snap a photo, wanting to see how many eggs the mama ended up with in her nest.
 
When the camera came back down and I saw the number, my tears flowed.
 
"Thank you, God, for the gift of my babies.  I treasure them.  And I will let them fly."
 
 
 
Author's Note:  Happy Mother's Day to all the mamas who read Treasure the Ordinary.  Blessings to you as you celebrate the beautiful call that has been yours because a child was born to your nest.

Pause

"Be still and know that I am God.  I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."  - Psalm 46:10

I don’t have much to show for my two years of German in High School.  I know how to count to ten and how to sing, “I’m a foreigner and I don’t speak German very well” to the tune of “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain,” neither of which are all that helpful. 

However, I do have a random German phrase stuck in my head.  I can say, “Sprechen in die pausen nachs,” which means, “Speak in the pauses.”  I can do this because our teacher used to play a cassette tape (yes, I'm that old) with a woman speaking German sentences.  After each sentence, the woman on the tape would instruct us to “sprechen in die pausen nachs,” and we were then supposed to repeat her sentence.  I apparently didn’t learn any of the other sentences, but I can tell someone really well to “speak in the pauses.”

And maybe that’s a good sentence to know. 
 
In the middle of the sheer chaos of life, to choose to use my one sentence.
 
"God, I am stopping.  I am stopping everything.
 
Come speak in the pause."