Author: Katy Mordka

Oh Facebook memories…I just can’t.  Some days it is funny things my kids say and some days it is who I became friends with, but on the day with the pictures of my kids when they were little???  I can’t.

This is what popped up from 4 years ago today…he was 3 with the cutest cheeks and curliest hair.  My heart literally hurts knowing these days are gone and that little face is growing up.  I texted Adam and told him this picture made me cry and hurt all at once.  (And not because I missed the days when I only had 1 chin.)  It’s the innocence and the carefree smile and the days of just hanging out.  The days where the hardest questions asked were, “will you play with me? and can I have a snack?” As hard as those days were, they were so much easier.

Now, we are dealing with the world and doing our best to walk through it with these kids we’ve been entrusted with.  It is a hard, hard world.  What do you say when your kid asks why they can’t be on social media and hears the message “I don’t fit in?”  What do you say when your kid gets picked last at recess every day and hear the message “I’m not wanted?”  What do you do when the hard questions come about the world and your answers are different from those shouting loudest?  What do you tell your kid when they hear the message “I’m not good enough?”  What do you do when your life and beliefs are countercultural?

You don’t get these questions when they are 3…there are no star basketball players or toddler social media groups.  There are days with no naps and too much sugar and tantrums and crying, yes.  But neither of my kids asked me at 3 why Matt Lauer wasn’t on the Today Show anymore.  Neither of them cried and told me they weren’t good enough.

This world.  Oh, this world.  Even with people shouting to be kind, it is a hard, mean, messy place right now.  We’re kind until your political views don’t match mine.  We’re kind until your religious views don’t match mine.  We’re kind until you say something that I don’t agree with.  Kindness is conditional but it doesn’t have to be.

We’re getting ready to celebrate Christmas – a day where love came down.  Where it wasn’t conditional.  God looked down on us and knew we were a huge hot mess and needed some help.  He sent help.  He sent love and kindness and compassion in the form of a baby.

I wonder if Mary felt the way I do as I watch my kids grow.  Sure they didn’t face the same problems with social media and mean girls but there was a price on Jesus’s head from the day he was born, just look at King Herod.  Did Mary’s heart hurt when she thought back to the 3-year-old face of her baby boy?  Did she want to cry why religious leaders tried to trip him up?  How did she not completely collapse when he was arrested and killed?  She was human so I’m sure she had her moments but from the moment the angel visited her, she said, “May your word to me be fulfilled.”  I see such willingness and surrender.

And this is where my rambling circles back around to those cute curls of my 3-year-old boy…surrender.  I believe these kids are not my own.  They were born for a purpose, one greater than I know.  I have to surrender, every day, and ask that I get out of the way and not mess it up.  Hillsong United has a song called “I Surrender” and it came on as I was looking at that picture.  I’m telling you – I have to surrender every day, all day long.  Because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what I physically accomplished but did I draw near and demonstrate the unconditional love that Jesus gave me?  (And please don’t read this like I’m golden and have it all together…I’m just trying to learn to breathe in Jesus just like air.)

The world isn’t going to get any better.  With more technology and selfishness (lets call an ace an ace, here) it just isn’t.  My kids don’t need phones and technology and stuff, they need me.  They need Adam.  They need Jesus.  They need us to navigate the rough waters and teach them where to find the answers.  But we can’t help with that unless we are fully surrendered, palms open and praying through the day.

So, for all of you moms and dads in the trenches with littles, take time to take the picture that will one day make your heart hurt more than you can imagine, and hang in there.  Because they will sleep through the night and they will dress themselves but they will also have a million questions that are hard.  So take that picture out and remember the time when it was a little easier and then take a deep breath because there is One who has the answers, if we just surrender and ask.

When you work, in any job, you get feedback, right?  When I was in school I got grades on papers and report cards, all telling me (and my parents) how I was doing.  Feedback.  When I was teaching, my principal would observe my lessons and give me an evaluation.  Feedback.  I can think back to any job – nannying, day camp counselor, babysitter…there was always feedback in the form of “my kids love coming” or “you need to do this” or “can you babysit again.”  Always feedback.

Now, I’m a mom.  A stay at home mom.  The feedback I get now is, “I need underwear, we are out of milk, the dog peed on the floor.”  My days are measured in loads done, meals made, toilets scrubbed, drop offs and pick ups.  Don’t get me wrong, I would absolutely not change this season.  I love that I can drop my kids off at school and pick them up and ask how their day was.  I love that we can chat and eat a meal and we are not rushed through it (most days).  I love that I know when they sneak clean clothes in with the dirty because I am here to see what they wear every day.  I love it.

But as much as I love it, it’s hard.  You don’t often hear that you are doing a great job.  There is no report card for the mom.  If you’re anything like me, you put one foot in front of the other, you do the best you can and pray.  You pray that your kids are kind and generous and loving.  You pray that you get everything done that needs to be.  You pray that you make it to practice on time.  You pray that they go to bed.  You pray that you can stay awake to have a conversation with your husband.  You pray.

But despite all the praying, isn’t it easy to see all the ways we fail?  I’m not sure about you but I fail on a daily (hourly) basis.  I fail in keeping up with the house (don’t bring your white gloves).  I fail parenting my kids (I have stories).  I fail at eating right (something I never had to worry about until my metabolism bid farewell around 35).  Then it’s a vicious cycle, I fail because I’m not setting a good example for my kids (because I don’t love brussels sprouts either) and then I just fail them.  The struggle is real.

So what do we do with the lack of feedback and the screaming of failing?  I don’t have an answer other than fight like hell.  We pray and we hold our people close and we tell our people our junk and we love them when they tell us theirs.  We are real and we talk it through.  The mamas need to stick together.  We need each other and not for pats on the back and fake smiles but for real, authentic conversation.  We need each other for the long haul because our babies don’t sleep and our toddlers are 2 and 3 and our elementary school kids have math.  And don’t get me started on jr. high or high school.  We need real.

So, let’s stop every once in a while and have coffee or ice cream or a margarita.  Let’s talk it through like real people because you can Pinterest all you want but I don’t buy that your life is a magazine shoot where your kids are perfectly dressed and well behaved all the time.  I don’t buy that you and your husband never have “discussions” or drive each other nuts.  I don’t buy perfection because it doesn’t exist for any of us.  Look at that,  common ground!  You aren’t perfect and neither am I!

Bottom line, we need people and if you don’t have them, get them.  Shoot, call me.  Email me.  I will be your person.  We need to stick together because the world is too hard without real people.  I’ll give you feedback and if I can’t, I’ll pray.  I know a guy who is good with everything.

There are a lot of things I could write about, especially in the whole moving, coming home, leaving people category.  I miss Fishers.  There, I said it.  I miss that place something fierce.  I miss my people and I miss my church and I miss my job and the little people that I got to hang out with and their families I came to love.  I miss my house (yes, I’m vain enough to really miss it).  I miss my neighbors and the bus stop and the school my kids attended.  I miss their amazing teachers and office staff and the fact that I could walk in and laugh or cry and it was all ok.  No one looked at me like I was crazy.  I miss the ladies that would come to my house every Wednesday for small group and we would share our lives and grow and learn and pray and love each other.  I just miss it.  But I don’t want to get on here and whine about how much I miss Fishers every time I write.  As my very wise friend says, “it’s ok to feel it but don’t pitch a tent and camp there.”

To be honest, I’ve been “planning” on starting this blog for over a year but I didn’t know what to call it, so it was easy to put it off.  I thought maybe people would think I’m silly for writing and who really cares what I have to say.  Or what if I’m judged because of my grammar mistakes?  (Because I know the difference between the “theres” and the “too’s” but sometimes its just a typo…and I start sentences all wrong and write run ons and can overuse and the exclamation mark or comma with the best of them.)  Well, here’s the part where I say who cares!  Because if I was worried about what everyone thought of me, all the time, I’d be buried.  (And trust me, most days I’m neck deep.)

Isn’t that what getting older and learning is about?  Learning to let it all go and actually like yourself?  It’s a work in progress.  It’s not an easy road and when you add on moving to a new city (because I don’t live in the same Phoenix I grew up in) and new everything, it’s even worse.  What if those moms don’t like me?  I don’t drive the same type of car and I don’t wear the same kind of clothes and I certainly wouldn’t be able to share clothes with them (maybe my left thigh would fit).  It’s so hard, this life.  It’s harder than I’d like to admit and I thought by my late 30’s it would get easier, like I would have it “figured out” and I would have some kind of routine or stability but its’ that hilarious!  God has such a sense of humor!!!

The definition of transplant is “to move or transfer (something) to another place or situation, typically with some effort or upheaval.”  So, this is really a life long thing because we are always moving and learning and changing and it always takes effort and sometimes it is a total upheaval.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, get ready!  I will probably ramble (much like tonight) and try to be funny and try not to cry and try to just breathe.  This whole transplanting back home thing will probably take on a life of it’s own.  So…here’s to the adventure and the upheaval!

First, why “Transplanting Back Home?”

Because it is exactly what I am doing.  Sure Phoenix is home but home has become many places.

Home is Tucson where I spent my first 2 years of marriage in our first house while working at my first real teaching job.  It is where we had our favorite restaurants and hang outs and a church to call our own.  It is where we struggled and survived and made the hard decision to see if somewhere else could become home.

Home is Thornton where I struggled to get a job and cried a lot and almost got lost and didn’t know a soul to call for help.  It is where I found my tribe (for that moment) and had friends who not only fiercely loved me but let me fiercely love them back.  It was the place where I found my love for kindergartners and picture books.  The place where I had to struggle through the hard and saw the Lord meet me in the midst.  It is where my first baby was born.

Home is Fishers where I struggled to adjust to being a new mom with no friends.  The place where the Lord, again, met me in the struggle and brought the right people at the right time.  It is where I fell in love with the state fair and the endless horizon.  Where my second baby was born and I adjusted to being a new mom again, this time with some friends who prayed for me through too many sleepless nights.  It is where I fell in love with a preschool and elementary school because of the amazing people who worked there and not only taught, but loved my kids.  It is the place where I met the Lord in a way I never knew possible.  It may have taken 7 of the 10 years, but it was home.

Now, home is in Phoenix.  Again.  The area we live in didn’t exist when I lived here last.  It was all desert.  Some of the people are the same and some have changed.  It is getting to know a place all over again.  Phoenix is the same and different all rolled into one.  It is getting to know a new school and all the policies and procedures and figuring it all out.  It is painting and hanging and making a home my own.  It is learning and growing and once again leaning in to know that I am not alone, because so often it feels lonely.

Please don’t misunderstand, I don’t only lean into the Lord when I move.  It is a daily exercise, a daily choice, a daily joy.  But sometimes when you are leaning and you’re not sure if the walls will hold you or your tears will drown you, you hear the sweetest whispers saying “I’ve got you.  Always.”

Here’s to making an old yet new place home.