May should come with a daily mascara alert.  Also, a personal soul cheerleader reminding you that you can do all the exhausting tasks this month throws on us.

I’m overwhelmed.  Which accurately describes every mother at the end of the school year.  But this year feels different having a senior. Because it is different.  It’s so different.  And dumb. I wish Senior year could have moved as slowly as his Fourth-Grade year – that one was a dousy.

My Momma-Heart is raw.  My brain keeps cheering me on that I can do all the hard things, while my heart is singing Meatloaf lyrics and informing me that it won’t do that.  It doesn’t feel like it can take one more last.  Not when there are so many things that I still need to tell him and teach him.  My friend gave the advice to have all the conversations and say all the things – so that keeps me up at night.  Only my darling isn’t too receptive when I pad my bare feet across the house to have a heart to heart, hoping he is awake as well.  Nor does he care about learning how to perform the heimlich maneuver on himself or the most efficient way to load a dishwasher.

I don’t want to brag, but I handle being overwhelmed like a champ.  In the case you need some advice on this so the rest of your May can be smooth, let me offer some tips that I find helpful:

• I simply quit living.  I stop being proactive on my schedule and quit looking at my calendar in hopes it will stop time. It’s odd that this doesn’t work and only adds to the frustration of being overwhelmed with tardiness and lack of preparation.  But, keep trying it.
• I mentally hit the snooze button on the household work and checklists that normally keep our life running smooth.
• I don’t grocery shop until the natives start hollering that we are out of milk and “everything”.
• I curl up in bed when possible, and stare at a lot of walls and even more piles of towels that are begging to be folded.  Towels are so needy sometimes. Fold yourself.

The biggest lie is that this will stop the inevitable from happening.  Time marches on, whether we are present for the moments or not.  The world doesn’t stop turning just because we are stuck in reliving our memories.  I’ve learned we miss a lot of sweet moments if we are staring into space thinking they aren’t happening.

CS Lewis tells us, “What you see depends on where you are standing”.  This is never more true than when your baby is about to leave the nest.  I stand behind him and see my handsome boy standing in a pile of beautiful baby feathers he has shed throughout the years.  He stands at the edge of our nest and sees his future laid out wide in front of him. It is sweet to watch him stretch his wings in preparation to fly, but the sweet is wrapped in a somber blanket of not wanting it to be over.

You may not have a senior, you might just be dealing with the other side of our current crazy – end of the school year crap.  Banquets, Recitals, Award assemblies, class parties, school parties, standardized testing…bless.  You just thought you turned in all the paperwork in September.  There is a whole ‘nother pile of summer camp signups for everything your child ever considered doing.  Then the darlings decide to take a growth spurt the last month of school and you’d better go buy them all the new clothes since their shorts are closer to the “booty short” description than “prep length”.  It’s enough to overwhelm June Cleaver, no wonder we get stuck in sensory overload.

While I can’t take out the calories of our emotional eating, I can offer this…

Pause Momma.  Say no to all the unimportant tasks that aren’t relevant to this short season.  Create margin for breathing so you can have the energy and strength to be present for living.  Live this day.

The towels might end up learning how to fold themselves.  After all….we did figure out how to put a man on the moon. I’m just sayin’….