Faith, Family, & Focaccia

A faith and culture Mommy blog, because real life gets all mixed together like that.

Author Archives: Serena Gideon Rice


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Mother to a Butterfly

butterfly smileI actually wrote this poem a few months ago. That particular night, however,  I did not have the emotional energy to post it, and since then the Princess and I have been sailing pretty smooth waters, so it has felt less relevant.

Today, however, it feels very authentic. It’s not that her behavior was so very unreasonable. She was justifiably frustrated about Mommy and Daddy working through virtually the entire snow day, while she and her brother had to entertain themselves. (By the way, I have discovered the downside of having a job that let’s me work from home).

Then at the end of this long, somewhat boring day, after Mommy had finally shut down her computer, Princess Imagination didn’t get to do her “show” at the exact moment she wanted to and she lost it. She’s seven. I understand.

I understand how she felt, and I also understand that sometimes my understanding doesn’t help. Sometimes she doesn’t need me to tell her that I understand. Sometimes she needs me to tell her that she is making poor decisions. Sometimes she needs my patience to sit and wait for her to work it through herself. And sometimes waiting for her to get over her fit of temper is so…damned…hard.

Mother to a butterfly

 

This smooth, hard floor is scraping at my patience

exposing an apparently raw nerve,

the urge to Just…Get…On with this damned metamorphosis.

This silent sitting nearly breaks my will

not hers, as I suppose I’m hoping for.

Resentment at this stasis brings distressing will to break.

But, staring at that fragile, frame curved in

around her anger, pain, thoughts I can’t read

I know cocoons must open from inside, I can’t break in.

And so I wait, exhaling stuttering prayers,

an incoherent hope that I won’t fail,

that love can still me long enough to give her time to grow.

Because, whatever started this display,

I know that what she needs is not my words,

but presence, that can prove I love her – butterfly or worm.

And then, soft miracle for both our hearts,

two quiet words, “I’m sorry” as she moves,

bright wings, unfurled now, curving around me; I get to see my butterfly reborn.


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Poverty and Worth – What Society Still Needs to Learn from Dr. King

Normally I keep this space for my personal reflections, but today I am breaking my own rule and cross posting a piece I wrote for the non-profit organization I am privileged to serve as executive director.

The piece is, in that sense, “professional,” but it is also very personal for me as it reflects on one of the influences that has shaped my own understanding of how to live out my faith in the world: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
I was lucky enough to take a semester-long course on King’s theology and social action during my seminary studies and those studies encouraged my emerging belief that the work of social justice could emphatically be ministry. I am now living out the effort to engage just such a ministry. It is much harder than it sounded in the hallowed halls of Princeton Seminary, and the daily grind of e-mails, and website edits, and politically worded communications often feel nothing at all like the work of the Kingdom. That’s why it is so very meaningful to me to be able to look to the words of a great leader like King and see that the work I am doing is about something so fundamental and holy as basic human worth.

You can read original post here.