Bio – Kelly Capriotti Burton

Hailing from Al Capone's old stomping ground, Chicago Heights, IL, Kelly was a stranger to Southern Gospel music until marrying into it! Always a music fan, she discovered a fondness for gospel harmonies, southern hospitality, and road life while traveling with her husband, soloist Rod Burton.

Kelly has previously worked as a corporate project manager and a high school English teacher. She has written and taught in a variety of outlets and now spends her time caring for four children (two toddlers, two teens), assisting with Rod's ministry, serving as Editor-in-Chief of SGN Scoops Digital Magazine, and to break up the boredom, working as a partner in YMR Music Productions, which presents the Branson Gospel Music Convention.

She considers life to be one unexpected adventure after another; her biggest so far was having two babies in 15 months after being diagnosed with infertility. She considers laughter (with a side of sarcasm) to be the best strategy, God’s grace to be the greatest gift, and miracles to always be possible.

Website: www.mylifeastheglue.com
Email: kelly@sgnscoops.com

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What does a normal day look like to you?

Is there such a thing?

I have two kinds of normal days, those at home and those on the road, but in either instance, normal itself is relative. For example, a normal day regardless of my location usually begins with coffee…but I have foregone the privilege of drinking it during our church’s Lenten fast. And so, the morning begins with tea and some grumbles, until I get it through my head that every pleasure I have in life is a gift and not a right!

But that’s another column…

Recently, I encountered the story of a young mother whose second baby girl, Nella, was born with Downs Syndrome. No one can really prepare for this, but the condition was definitely a difficult surprise to the new baby’s parents. I have so enjoyed reading their story, this mother’s realistic and optimistic (yes – you can be both!) take on life’s curve balls and on motherhood (http://enjoyingthesmallthings.blogspot.com/). Just yesterday, she began her blog entry with this quote:        

"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day, I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return."- Mary Jean Iorn

How often do we long for a better day, a smoother day, a more exciting day than the one we are living?

Last month, I lived out one of my southern gospel wifely duties and traveled with Rod and our two little girls to Nashville to complete the tracking sessions for his new CD. We’ve changed our processes a lot in three years, and this time, I am more formally involved with the design and theme of the project. While I have no idea how to do anything in the studio other than admire all the shiny instruments and cool buttons and make witty and encouraging (OK, and sometimes sarcastic) comments to my husband and the poor engineer, it’s important for me to be there with Rod. I want to lift him up. I want to offer him a different perspective when he hits a roadblock. I want to fetch him water and give him hugs.

But it was not to be this time around. A 3 and almost 2 year old can only last so long in a recording studio, even if it does have a couch and DVD player and enough room to play, because a 3 and almost 2 year old want to admire the shiny instruments and cool buttons too… with their hands. And when they can’t, they express their protest with extremely loud and really, really pitchy noises, which are somewhat distracting to the people trying to make all the music sound amazing.

So instead of being inside with all the cool music people and my own dear rock star husband learning and listening and having fun, I was stuck on the bus in downtown Nashville with the two kids for 13 hours. I had no stroller and no car and no resistance to all the snack food that tends to fuel us on these trips.

It was a very long day.

When I was living it, I was aggravated by the fact that it felt like such a normal day. I could feed the kids and chase them and play with them and show movies and try to work in between at home, with much more room to stretch, run, and hide. Here I was in one of my favorite cities, outside a historic and state-of-the-art recording studio, with my husband inside not just making a new recording that we shaped together but launching a new aspect of his career, and I couldn’t be there.

Woe is me, right?

Following the story of baby Nella and her family, reading the stories of other mommies out there, talking to my sisters in southern-gospel-wifedom, I know I am not alone in my frustrations and yearnings. We all look forward to those spectacular mornings when the kids sleep until 9:00 am and wake up happy and with no memory of how to whine or where they left that stinking Laugh and Learn Puppy who sings “Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes” over and over again. We look to those rare and possibly mythical occasions when the sweet children in their matching clothes actually sit through an entire service, even the boring prayer parts. We look forward to romantic dates with our husbands during which we wear skinny jeans and non-mom shoes and feel glamorous instead of ridiculous.

But in following those stories, I am also reminded that there is comfort and peace in our “normal,” whatever it might be. My normal, as I seem to remind myself frequently, is messier and more chaotic than I ever planned or anticipated. But it’s also a part of the life that I always wanted.

On Valentine’s Day, reading through my Twitter feed, I was reminded how less than even 10 years ago,  my “normal” was feeling like I had no love to celebrate in my life. I rolled my eyes at pseudo-Valentine-esque sentiments about ‘God’s love,’ as though that meant I would be getting flowers and a fancy dinner out. Back then I often resented my normal, how lonely and alien it sometimes felt, and today, I sometimes covet the freedom of that normal, in which you can do things like sleep for seven uninterrupted hours and eat whatever you want for dinner, even if it’s peanut M&Ms, and you can run to the store just for cotton balls and milk in less than an hour. Normal, like grass, must always seem plusher and lovelier when it’s not yours to care for.

Just less than four years ago, my normal was being an infertile stepmom – oh what a tortured group we can sometimes be! I joined online forums where I could complain and be pitiful to strangers because I would never allow myself the sad luxury to my real life friends. I thought God was punishing me or making fun of me, when of course He was actually refining me in preparation for something better than I ever could have foreseen. I see our miraculous outcome so much now that it’s difficult to identify with that old normal sometimes, to know what to say to others who are trying desperately to have a baby. Recently, when my own sister-in-law was trudging through the same journey, I was often at a loss for words or actions that seemed right. It was only when it came to celebrating – my new niece or nephew will be arriving in October! – that I profoundly remembered the feeling of that old normal, and how it turned from pain to triumph.

Normal will always be relative, and most likely while we live it, it will always seem a bit boring or limiting or below the standard of our desires. But, like our family, our talents, our, ahem, metabolism, it’s what our Father designed for us…and ten years down the road, we will likely only remember the details that made us happy! No, really…

I know ten years from now, when Miranda and Kaity might spend the majority of their days arguing with me about their school work around our kitchen table before sulking in their rooms with the doors closed, I will look back at that overcast Wednesday in February 2010, downtown Nashville, and remember only of the 30 minutes we did spend in the studio how they sang along with “Beulah Land” and stared in awe at the array of guitars and charmed the session leader with their batted-eyes. I will remember how imaginative they are away from all their toys and how they wrapped up towels to use a babies and pretended the washer/dryer was a train headed to Disney World (no, I did not let them get in it). I will remember hard they hugged at bedtime and how sweet they looked while they were sleeping and how they did manage to behave like angels the day before we were at the studio.

For now, I make it a task just to remember: be thankful for the normal that is today.