Our table is scratched and has wobbly legs. Apparently, when I’m not looking, my boys use yogurt as finger paint, so if I ever actually get it clean, I give the laser eyes and tell them to git out of my clean kitchen.

We all go out and dig around and pull up weeds. I wear a baby and hold my phone in the air at the irises. I’ve learned how to hold the frame the way that shows only the beauty.

What you can’t see is how fallen apart we are. The tin on the 70 year old chicken house flaps in the wind. The ceiling touches the floor. The once regal trees have been snapped in two for years now from the dead weight of ice, and now they host Spring’s creepers. The honeysuckle wraps a death grip tighter than kudzu. It’s beautiful, how fallen apart we are.

Once in a while Fayetteville’s train whistle blows. The frogs talk us through some things; the birds want to say it loudest. We’re never going to get this place right, this old house, the random railroad spikes breaking our lawn mower. Everyone who drives by can see it, but then, too, how the garden grows, how the one azalea lives in perpetual fire, hot pink against our rock.

I send the boys to the table outside, by where the old strong roses reach up the fence. We make our mess outside, and throw trash in a burn barrel. “It is what it is,” we say. The most beautiful things are what grows out of the broken, even sometimes the hidden things we pull out of the bramble, like that homemade horse-drawn cart we found in the woods.

Motherhood is just that – broken, hidden, beautiful.

I hardly keep clothes on their backs, and it’s not that I don’t try. I spend all day trying. I waste so much in frustration, and then in a flash I’m broken, see the worth in the pain.

The baby smells a horse for the first time. I watch the exchange, protective yet permissive. The fuzz on the mouth of this large animal is unreal soft, made for babies. We all ought to be trusted that much by a horse, ought to know what it’s like to stand close and watch the wind comb an old mane. Horses do indeed bite, but what’s a horse if you can’t get close enough to smell the sweet feed.

I’m catching glimpses.

I’ll never work hard enough, never get it together, never  be able to tell you how much I want to love better.

***

The more I hear the impact that Mother Letters is having on lives, the more I’m confirmed in our decision to publish it. We need to see the beauty in the broken, Mother. The amazing women at LoveFeast Table want to treat you today, and it gives me so much joy to be giving away their Mother’s Tree of Life Necklace, valued at $199.

This heirloom quality, 30″ necklace is hand-made using genuine, fine quality gemstones and sterling silver and will be customized with your children’s or grandchildren’s birthstones.

This giveaway ends at 11:59 PM on Friday, April 27th and winners will be announced on the RunaMuck Facebook page, so follow along there to hear the news.

To enter, simply follow LoveFeast Table and Mother Letters on Facebook and come back here to leave a comment. If you’ve purchased Mother Letters and had a chance to soak any of it in, give us a little review on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble, and come back here to enter your name 4 MORE TIMES! We would really appreciate the feedback, and we’re so grateful to LoveFeast Table that they’re helping us celebrate you as a Mother.