Motherhood and Muffin Tops : To Everything There Is a Season

If the holidays don’t make returning to a life of productivity a big enough challenge, add a first grandbaby in the mix and you’ll really have trouble finding your way back to fruitful function. First, let’s get the most important business out of the way. As a new grandmother, it is my sworn duty to share recent pictures of my grandson. I may be new at this Punkin thing, but I do know that picture-sharing is one of the fundamental benchmarks of success in grandparenting. It has been since the dawn of photography. It may look diffferent than it once did, but the concept is still the same. Our grandmothers carried our Olan Mills pictures around in the plastic photo insert that came with their wallet and we continue on with the tradition in our more sophisticated technological ways. But, I mean, really. I could just stare at him all day.

Ok, so not to be obnoxious in my gushing, we’ll move on to another topic. For the last week, the weather people have really been pumping us up in the South about a big snow coming. The story is always the same. They start talking about it a couple of weeks ahead of time. Little southern children everywhere get all excited at the prospect of school closing. They start sizing up trash can lids and cookie sheets and collect cardboard boxes for potential snow sleds. It will be a major snow event, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Since that first long range forecast, they took us from 8” to 5” to 1-3” and then only a light dusting and that didn’t even materialize. The crazy thing is that our kids, who both live on the Alabama coast, are currently accumulating an impressive snowfall amount. At least, the little children here in central Mississippi got a free day out of school to frolic in the cold, brown grass. Such is the plight of the perpetually disappointed children of the Deep South.

Our coastal grand pups trying to figure out this puzzling bathroom situation.

It’s coming up on a year since we lost our Otis and, today, I wanted to talk to you about how I’m still learning from his life. It’s a couple of weeks shy of a year since he died and I still cry for Otis a good bit- sometimes when I’m driving or taking a shower or falling asleep at night. A flash of a sweet memory will come to me and my eyes will flood with tears. They’ll roll off my chin or wash down the drain with the shampoo or soak into my pillowcase. You might not understand that- especially if you’re not an animal person- but the bond I had with that stray dog was something I can’t explain and he was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to let go.

About two months after Otis died, Blair and John Samuel found out they were having a baby. A baby was the one thing we’d all been praying for for years and God had answered that prayer in His time and in such a miraculous way that glory could go nowhere but to Him. As the months of her pregnancy progressed, Davis and I decided to purchase a townhome in an area near where both of our kids live. Not a primary residence, because neither one of us wants to move, but a place to go when we want to visit or one of them needs our help. It’s perfectly situated- 20 minutes in one direction to one child and 20 minutes in another direction to the other and now Carson’s significant other, Anna Kathryn, lives 20 minutes in another direction as she’s just started her student teaching there. I don’t think we’ve ever felt more peace or validation about a decision as that one. There have already been so many situations when we’ve remarked to each other how thankful we are to have it.

With the going back and forth- from here to there- before and after Jack’s birth, one thought kept coming to Davis and me. None of that would be possible if we still had Otis. He would have been a nervous wreck and completely unnerved by the constant movement and changes. After all he’d been through, he just couldn’t deal in back and forth and this and that and to and fro. It had to be one way, all day, every day for him to feel secure and comfortable. It became apparent that these new changes that came with the baby we’d prayed for would have made him miserable and also caused us a lot of stress of feeling torn. In retrospect, we saw that, sometimes, letting go of something may help us to fully receive something else. That’s what we felt like we’d done. Not that God caused our loss but, in it, our lives were better able to accommodate the very thing we’d begged Him to give us. During the several months chase for Otis when I first became so attached to the dog I’d never even touched, I prayed over and over for God to spare him from dying alone without ever feeling love. He answered my prayer and gave me the desire of my heart. He allowed me to show him what love felt like even if I only got a little time to do it. He did answer my prayer, but letting go of him made room for another most wonderful answer to prayer - the desire of our daughter’s heart to become a mother.

For the last three years, I’ve been praying for God to reveal what I’m supposed to be doing with my time and ability. A ministry, a need, a person, a project, a job. I don’t know if I’ve ever prayed for anything as consistently as I have that and I seemed to mostly just hear silence in return. Not that I’ve just been sitting idly on my duff while praying but I’ve been asking while following the leading of the Spirit in my day to day schedule. There have been a couple of answers He’s given me and I’ve followed through with those ongoing assignments but nothing that matches the amount of time I have to give. I still felt like I could be doing more.

For the last year or so, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to continue the blog. In three weeks, it will be 11 years since I pecked out my first blog post and 962 of you read it. I’d never been more sure of anything than I was of the call to start that writing venture and it has been a blessing that has been more fulfilling than any other project I’ve ever taken on. For the last year, I’ve really ramped up my prayers for direction of what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve not gotten a clear assignment yet, but the story of Otis keeps emerging in my mind whenever I pray. Sometimes, God gives us something for a season but we may have to let it go in order to receive what’s next. I like to know the plan and what’s coming up, so I wanted my next assignment before letting the blog go, but I feel like He’s asking me to make the first move. Obviously, it’s not that the blog has consumed a large amount of my time lately, but it’s the weight it’s carried with it over the last year or so and the mental energy it consumes- wrestling with what to do with it or what to write or how to possibly begin to part with something that has meant so much to me- something that felt like it defined me. I’ve tried to tell myself the struggle was menopausal brain fog and a scarcity of content that we haven’t already covered in 11 years, but I think He’s just let me flounder so I could get to this point to trust and walk away from this thing that’s so dear to me. I’ve finally decided it’s time to let go of Motherhood and Muffin Tops, this sweet, sweet gift God gave me so many years ago to be ready to receive whatever it is that He will send next. It may be writing on another platform or it may be something totally different, but I hope you’ll pray for me to know it when I see it.

You’ve come along with me as I’ve limped through the letting go process. I know you’ve likely felt this coming. Some of us are just more stubborn than others and that’s always where I fall. What precious companions you are. What devoted prayer warriors you have been. What faithful friends you’ve become. I started this journey as a 46 year old with a 14 year old and a freshman in college living at home. You’ve walked with me all the way to a senior discount at Michael’s, nightsweats, and Punkinhood. What a privilege for me to have you by my side for 11 years and I’m not willing to let you go cold turkey. If we’re not already friends on Facebook and Instagram, I’d love for you to send me a friend request- to Joni Neal Miller and also Motherhood and Muffin Tops- so we can keep up with each other. After a while, I may post more frequently -especially on the Motherhood and Muffin Tops pages to keep in touch. The blog site itself won’t go anywhere and if you’re new-ish to the scene, you may want to go back and dig around in the archives.

Thank you. In case you’re wondering, it is possible to cry and feel relief at the same time as I’m doing right now.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4

We have done all of those things together.

Thank you for the good times, my friends.

With much love,

JONI