The Tell-Tale Laundry Basket

If they only knew my pile of laundry sat in the same spot in my living room for over a week.

Prior to its current location, it accommodated itself next to my grey ottoman in my family room. The basket nestled beside the ottoman’s deflated corner where my children cemented their footprints from one too many games of the “Floor is Lava.” I thought I would actually get it done if I put it in the living room.

Instead, I grew resentment towards it.

Much like a monster hiding under my bed, it taunted me with my maroon sweater’s empty arm and the leg from my worn linen mauve jumpsuit. Would it reach out and drown me with my fluffy white bath sheet, jeggings, and graphic tees that I’ve loved so much?

Another reminder of how I just can’t get it done.
I can’t do it all.

And if only they knew.

You know who they are. The voices that scream at you when you’re not dressed like usual for school pick-up, remind you that you’re bragging about your kids despite talking about their challenges or even nag you with “how you do it all.” And you can hear the Poe-like dreadful pounding of your heart in your ears—beating—harder, quicker.

You’re supposed to be superwoman. Can’t you fold a two-week-old basket of laundry?

What do you do all day?

The question taunts and repeats itself like a groaning old record. It skips. It repeats. It’s deafening.

But what if I uncovered the basket by ripping off the bath sheet—the one I had at the top of my Christmas list because it was a king-sized version of a regular towel? Undoubtedly, the monster would devour me whole. It’d entangle me between sports bras, weave me through holes of my white eyelet blouse, and chain me to a misplaced polka dot sock from one of my kids.

Soon, I would see that the voices weren’t from my unfolded, wrinkled laundry—my fear of my man was suddenly evident. As much I would hope I grew resilient from the ridicules of social media or even comments from friends, I care.

And I care too much.

My heart desired the affection of their words. They lulled me into a stupor until I fell flat on my face, aching and unfulfilled.

“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.”
—Proverbs 29:25

I reached in the basket and pulled out my favorite plain, white long sleeve t-shirt. I grasped the handles, grunted as I picked it up, and placed the basket in my room. In the end, it’s a heavy basket of clothes that I’ll fold later this afternoon. But I pray that my delight in the Lord’s Word may loosen the bands of misguided judgment. I feel safe once again.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Unmaking Fears".

Missed Providence in the Hurry

“Hey, are you coming?”

My friend asks hesitantly on the phone as I bolt up from my couch. My blanket, now extra fluffy from a fresh wash, covered the lower half of my body. I even ignored the dangling dryer sheet still hanging on. That dryer sheet and I had a lot in common.

My daughter has a soccer game—in 15 minutes. My dramatic gasp reminisced of those cliffhangers that I so often saw on Telemundo’s many novelas. 

My worried and kind friend asked me if I was okay—and then promptly reminded me I should go. At that point, I felt like a film crew had its camera centered on me, and it swung around at 360° in slow motion. The blanket, dryer sheet, and my senses flew into the air while I barked out directions to each of my kids.

To my oldest—he was captain of the snacks.
My daughter was in charge of changing but not put on her cleats until we reached the car.
And my youngest, at 4, just please use the restroom. Please. I don’t care if it’s on the floor; we just need to go. 

Like a well-choreographed action scene, each member of our family played their part with gusto. The oldest even threw our chairs into the trunk. Nice touch, older kid.

The Top Gun pilots had nothing on my kid-sized crew and me. Eat your hearts out, Air Force. My minivan probably broke through the sound barrier—and one stop sign. Talk about riding through the danger zone. Was this worth it? 

The giggles that erupted from the passenger seats shot me back into reality. The hurry didn’t seem to bother them even as I raced against the clock. Minutes passed as we wove through streets, inched closer to the soccer fields.

Eventually, I managed to snag a parking spot by my daughter’s soccer field. We made it right as the game started—self-high five.

The boys and I shuffled towards the field with our folding chairs. 

A little relief.

“See? You made it just in time!” I slumped into my chair and affirmed my friend’s observation with a grunt of some sort.
“Wait—is it the 24th?”
“Uh, yes?”

Back into action. I grabbed the 4-year-old, repeated a similar action scene to Target, and managed to catch only 10 minutes of my daughter’s soccer game.

In the car, on the way back from grabbing a variety pack of Annie’s snacks (great soccer snack choice, by the way), I started laughing. I laughed because the choreography, the quick-wittedness of my children, and the moment were all out of my hands. Could I have planned better? Possibly. But the dates from the soccer game changed a week ago, and I didn’t have access to my calendar since I received a new phone earlier that day.

But in the middle of my hurry, I almost missed God’s providence.

A friend who calls.
An older child that thinks of details like seating.
The 4-year-old who did use the potty.
A working minivan.
Money for snacks.
A soccer game to attend.

They aren’t impressive marvels—they’re pretty simple. Even if we missed the soccer game, nothing would have changed. God would still be present.

He still provided those seemingly insignificant details in my life that remind me of his goodness towards me. Maybe for the next time, there will be rest in the hurry—because God is there at the end of it all.

The Truth from an Abuela's Guilt Trip

“¿Y los niños no saben hablar español?”

The question dug like a sharpened dagger into the pit of my stomach. Here I was, minding my own business, on a street corner eating paletas with my little ones and my husband. The sun was just beginning to set and the stickiness from my paleta covered my hand.

“No, my kids don’t speak Spanish yet,” I translated in my head. The words were even harder to say to this old woman. She was your typical abuela—her navy knit skirt reached the ground as she shuffled towards my husband and me. She wore a blouse that was made of polyester and imitated a traditional huipil. Even though it was close to 90º, she still had a scarf that covered her shoulders and her fanny pack hung loosely around her waist. Her wrinkles accused me—they all managed to guilt-trip me in the manner of motherhood in which I had failed.

I let down my children by not sharing my native tongue. It’s a rarely used tongue that now had a terrible accent. I felt like an imposter.

She contained a grocery sack full of colorful trinkets and toys that she wanted me to buy for my kids, toys that my kids had rejected while they blissfully ate and finished the last of their sticky paletas. The lights from the plastic toys jeered at me.

What kind of mamá are you to not teach them the language of their heritage? 

I took another bite from guava paleta, trying to focus on the sweetness of its flavor. Somehow though, how very typical for an abuela to guilt you into not trying enough. My kids are actually witnessing something so very typical of Latino culture that I knew if my mom were watching, she would be right there cheering this abuelita on with “mmhmm!” and “Ya ves?!” 

Yes mamá, I see. 

I had heard earlier that week that a lady I know wasn’t “allowed” to go to this particular part of town. It was “too dangerous”—as it turned out, it was dangerous in terms of my ego. That dagger of guilt did really hurt. The paletas taste great though. 

After that abuelita chewed me out, she politely blessed me and said her goodbyes to my family. My kids managed to look at her and wave—“¡Adios!”

Good job, guys. Couldn’t you have pulled out a few other phrases sooner?!

The honest truth was that I looked at my kids and knew immediately that it didn’t matter how well they knew my native language—they were still Latinos. 

I looked at each of their faces, covered with sticky paleta juice, and saw the same joy that I experienced as a Latino child. Hot summers waiting for the bell to ring from the paletero, admiring piñatas in store windows close to dark, and little abuelitas imparting wisdom from what they knew displayed real Latinidad.

God created my children as small city Iowans with Latino roots that taste like sticky paletas in the summer and sound like mariachi music. They’ll have the pride of college football team cheers in the fall time and color from piñatas in a store window. 

What’s true about me is that my motherhood is going to look a little different than a born and bred white Iowan. I may struggle with that from time to time—but the Lord gave my children and me a heritage. In that, we still display the beauty of His diversity. 

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "True".

hurry up + wait

Back when I was a newly minted wife, a military wife no less, I heard this saying frequently: “hurry up and wait.” It was said almost as much as “Semper Fi.” Was this the military spouse motto? Was some drill instructor wife going to tap me on the shoulder and ask me to respond accordingly?

What in the world does “hurry up and wait“ mean anyway?

As time went on, I found that it’s less of a theoretical principle and more of a process. Waiting by hurrying or hurrying time along by waiting. The hurry in the wait. The wait in the hurry. Deployment or the long days of training made this idea clear.

Ultimately, my husband left behind a career in military service and thereby concluded by military spouse calling. But the quippy saying stuck along. Hurry up and wait.

I can’t tell you how annoying that saying was to me. If it has a checklist, you bet I’m all about it. Oh, and accolade? Count. Me. In. While it’s not something I’m especially proud of, I thrive in an environment where I go until I’m out. No waiting involved. 

And this is where marriage, motherhood, and discipleship all found me—a woman so involved in the hurry just to get to the end. I learned the hard way that sanctification doesn’t happen overnight. When I first became a believer, I thought, “This is it! I’ll never sin again!” Ha!

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

— 1John 1:8

Ouch. The truth isn’t in us if we turn a blind eye to the wait? DECEPTION? If you’re focused on the hurrying part of the saying, you lose sight of Jesus (1 John 1:6). We end up believing a lie that we can be our own saviors if we simply do everything and say we no longer sin. Because what perfect person needs Jesus? But the person who’s stuck in the waiting room? Turns out you can find Jesus in the wait.

“Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight….” 

Not all hurrying is bad; just like this beautiful, old hymn expresses, there’s a day when our faith will be sight. The sanctification will be complete—our joy complete. So hurry up and find Jesus in the wait. 

hola, fizzy

Two things:
It’s my blog’s birthday! YAY!
But it’s also a rekindling of an old friendship that I’ve had with my own words.

You see, I’ve always loved words. When I was 5, and I had a new neighbor move into the apartment next to mine. You would think I thought it was Christmas morning! I immediately said hi, asked what she liked to do and what her favorite toys were. I don’t remember if I was bouncy, but I would like to think I was.

But it didn’t exactly pan out the way I hoped. My new friend looked at me with big eyes, hid behind her mom, and looked confused. She had no idea what language I was speaking, but it certainly wasn’t English.

English is actually my second language. You’d never know from our conversations because no, I don’t have an accent—Spanish or Southern (since I grew up in Atlanta). My Spanish has an anglicized bent to it. Not tor-till-uh level, of course, but enough that you can tell that there’s a difference similar to the peh-cahn and pee-can difference (there’s an open syllable for pecan, in case you didn’t know that the latter pronunciation, I believe, is correct).

Yet, sharing my own words has been difficult. I’ve always found a reason NOT to. 

My favorite and least favorite class in college was screenwriting. There was something to the formation about a story, on paper, that developed into something more on screen. It seemed almost magical how something as simple as letters arranged in a certain way on a plain sheet of paper became a lesson, an emotional response, or even a memory that someone else relives. In that same class, I learned to share my soul.

But I also had the soul-crushing experience of in-class critique. One particular screenplay I wrote was rather dark, but it was something I wanted to share. After I read my story, my professor said something that I won’t ever forget.

I’m not sure that story works.

Those words seared into my soul like a hot brand. I remember a sinking pit growing inside my stomach, but I quietly thanked him for his feedback and hid my face behind my other classmates’ scripts to avoid the roaring rush of tears ready to let loose at any moment. At the end of class, I surrounded myself with the words from my classmates from their own stories. I basked in their words while I all but tore apart my script. I couldn’t deny the magnificence of their words because their stories spoke to me as well. I made peace with my script and immediately thought of what I could do to change it. But one of my other classmates stopped me in the hallway.

I thought it was an important story—here’s why.

And just like that, he laid out every aspect about what worked and how I held back.

***

My stories have changed from my youth. In a way, they’ve become less about me. In a weird paradoxical way, they’ve also become more about who I am. The biggest story of all in me has to do with the gospel. 

One of the best storytellers I know is my friend Peg. Peg is who I want to be when I grow up—confident, bold, unashamedly enthusiastic, and knows how to pair red lipstick with anything! Peg is also the epitome of Titus 2:3—she is a godly woman who loves her husband to pieces, a devoted mother, a counselor to all women, young and old, and speaks the truth with so much honey, you’d wonder if she were a bee.

This same woman gave me marital advice and prefaced it with the fact that she recently got into a fight with her husband. Boldness has red lipstick, and her name is Peg. 

Along that same vein, she doesn’t just speak what sounds good but teaches what is good. When I read further into Titus 2, Titus 2:5 ends “..that the word of God may not be reviled”. Peg showcases the gospel in such a way that the forgiveness of Jesus is always the punctuation mark to her advice, counsel, and stories. The word of God is revered in the way she lives life!

*** 

I thought about titling my blog “hola, Fizzy!” after Peg’s nickname for me. But I thought it would be a more appropriate introduction.

Hola, hi, and hello! I’m Neidy (nay-dee). Peg says I’m enthusiastic, but I want to be clear. I’m enthusiastic about one thing—the gospel. Many parts of my life appear lovely and cheery (and for the most part, they REALLY are), but I certainly don’t have it together. I’ve fought with my husband. I’ve yelled at my kids. I’ve said I’m sorry more than I care to count. 

But forgiveness has been offered to me—free because of grace. Every story I tell is with that lens. 

So if you’re reading this and this doesn’t work for you, that’s okay.
But if it’s important to you, then the gospel is why my story works. I’m sure we’ll laugh a little or even cry, but in the end, it’s all about Jesus.

I’m thrilled you’re here.