There’s this weird, twilight experience that happens to women when they become mothers. Suddenly a distinct line is drawn between who we were, and who we are now. We feel simultaneously lost, and in the same breath found as we embrace this thing called motherhood.
Photo by Lulu Photography
It can cause a bit of vertigo if we’re not careful.
It seems that this feeling of embracing motherhood, dying to self, rediscovering passions, balancing life, and finding ourselves again ebbs and flows throughout the years in an endless cycle. Sometimes I feel like I’m coursing with purpose in my every day. I feel fulfilled in my role as mother. I feel energized in my work. I feel like…well, I feel like I’m enough.
But there are other seasons – the dryer times when I am utterly spent, weighted down with the responsibility that each day throws my way. I feel incapable of loving my children well, overrun by laundry that never ends, frayed by the bickering and arguing, and completely dry in my work.
In those times I feel like nothing I do is enough.
If I’m being honest, I will tell you that I’m fighting my way out of a very long dry spell right now.
I’m discouraged in my work, feeling like I’m spinning my wheels and getting nowhere fast. I am constantly overwhelmed by laundry, by bathrooms that just. won’t. stay. clean. I can’t seem to pull dinner together before 5:30 every night, I dread the grocery store, and some days I just sort of wander through the house like a vagabond.
I’m even feeling inadequate as I type this blog post, positive that these words have been written before by someone who probably articulated the message much more eloquently.
It’s in these times that I constantly remind myself that motherhood is a journey. I haven’t arrived, and not every day is going to be the best day of my life. Last week, as my six year old showered, he lamented the low water pressure and cooler water. Everyone was showering at the same time, and the washing machine was running.
“Why is the water so soft?” he wailed. When I explained, he hung his head in utter disgust.
“This is da worst day of my whole life,” he mumbled.
I had to laugh, because what I wouldn’t give to have the problems of a six year old. It was a reminder to me, though, that bad days come no matter our age. Sometimes the days feel like they’re trickling out, weak and tepid. I stomp my foot and wonder why on EARTH my circumstances aren’t more comfortable.
Such is the journey of life. It moves in patches of comfort and frustration. Productivity and fatigue. Obedient children and defiant children. Some days are so good. Other days are really bad. Most days are a combination of both.
And thank goodness for the ebb and flow, because can you imagine how boring life would be if everything were sunny and easy? Without the rain, there is no color in this world, but thankfully, motherhood is full of color.
Sometimes I just have to look a little harder to find it.
Blessings to all you Mama’s out there who are working your way through the trenches of motherhood. Hold your head high and watch for rainbows, my friends! They always come after the rain.
We are in massive preparation mode around here, and I am on a mission of epic proportions to get my house under control. It is a bit of an exercise in futility given that school has been out, and I’ve had roughly 8 children on average inside my home all summer long, but it makes me feel like I’m moving forward.
The kids head back to school tomorrow. Big launch!
The baby is coming in one month. Huge launch!
My e-book releases next Monday. Big, huge, massive launch!
That’s right – my first e-book, 30 Days to Becoming a Writer, releases on Amazon next Monday and I am so excited to share this with everyone. I’m really proud of the way this book has come together, and I’ve worked hard at making it the best I could possibly offer to the world.
If you’re interested in being a part of my launch team, please leave me a comment with your email address, and I’ll send you more information. In the meantime, I will continue all the preparations for launch.
Look for more information in the coming days, and for me to return to blogging with more fervor now that I have a little time to stretch together a few thoughts.
Once upon a time, I made sure to blog every day. Even through the summer, I somehow managed to blog a minimum of 4 days/week.
I don’t know how I did this!
Maybe it’s because my kids were younger, and I could tie them up in their rooms for hours at a time without fear of them ratting me out.
I’m kidding!
They did take naps, though. Is that when I wrote? Or perhaps it’s because they were younger, so a strict bedtime was important, which gave me more evening hours, and made getting up early easier.
Or maybe I just neglected them altogether?
Whatever the case may be, for some reason this summer it has been nearly impossible for me to find time to write. I tried waking up early so I could savor the quiet hours of darkness, but I have a child who also likes the quiet hours of darkness. The only way to beat him up would be to get up in the middle of the night.
I like blogging, but I like sleeping more.
We’ve had late nights and busy days, and blogging has been firmly placed on the back burner until next week when school starts.
SCHOOL STARTS NEXT WEEK! You can’t see it, but I just started dancing – a comical sight when one is 15 months pregnant.
Anyway…
Since I haven’t had time to come up with decent bloggy words, I’m going to leave you with a few links of posts that have impacted me this week. These were all probably written by people who still lock their kids in their bedrooms all day long.
I’m kidding! Actually, one of these links was written by me, so…
Looking for adorable lunch boxes to send to school with your children this year? I would suggest these gems from Rockey Paper & Design. Not only are they fun to look at on this outside, but inside is equipped with a small chalkboard on which you can write notes to your cherubs each morning.
In short, these lunch boxes will set you well on the path to that Mother of the Year nomination you’ve been working toward.
If you, like me, have wondered why more Muslim leaders aren’t standing up against the atrocities happening in Iraq, then this is the post for you. I was relieved to see that Muslim leaders from around the world had taken a stand against the actions of ISIS, condemning it for the wickedness that it is.
I would also urge you to spend a little time on the Preemptive Love website to learn about the amazing work this organization is doing in Iraq. There is an opportunity to do more than watch in horror by giving to this organization as they work to aid the persecuted people of Iraq.
It’s been a hard week, hasn’t it? Worldwide news of destruction, the death of beloved celebrities, and the heaviness of this world were enough to darken the walls of our hearts. But take joy, my friends. There is still beauty in this world, and there’s hope for tomorrow.
I pray this weekend is restful, peaceful, and filled with enough laughter to chase away the pain.
I pulled out the manila folder, frayed around the edges. A 4th grade boy cannot be expected to use a paper folder for an entire year and keep it fresh, after all.
Stuffed full, I opened it up and picked up the first piece of paper lying on top. The title:
BLUE
The first three lines of his descriptive poem gave me chills. They were so simple, written from the perspective of a boy who’d been told to describe the color blue to someone who was blind.
Blue is the color of the water in the ocean.
Blue is the color of the sky high above your head.
Blue tastes like blueberries.
The descriptions were rich, and I haven’t been able to eat a blueberry since I read his words without thinking that they taste like the color blue.
Like any mother, I am my children’s biggest cheerleader. I see their potential faster and more vibrantly than any other person. I know exactly how they’re bent, where they are strong, and where they are weak.
I can also be their biggest critic. I see wasted potential, and I feel as though I must draw it out of them or risk some sort of unspoken failure. I see their natural sin patterns, and I cringe when they rear their ugly heads in public.
Sometimes, though, these children of mine surprise me entirely. I knew my oldest to be creative and imaginative, but he tends to stifle it, especially as he gets older, and I forgot.
I forgot that he has a knack for words. I don’t know how I forgot, because he uses a lot of words day in and day out.
Some skills are so obvious. Athletic ability is a skill that doesn’t hide. An athletic child spends his days in pursuit of his passion. I have two athletic children. I know exactly where they stand in their abilities because one is constantly upside down, or flipping off of jungle gyms, while the other goes nowhere without a ball in his hand.
But the creative child? They can be harder to pin down. Some creative children are easy to spot. They spend their days in make believe, costumes the uniform that gets them from sun up to sun down. Other creative children, however, tend to let their creativity bubble beneath the surface. But it’s there. You just might have to prompt it out of them.
Describe the color blue to someone who has never seen it.
Blue tastes like blueberries.
The brilliance in that simple line is all one needs to draw a visual. Sweet, refreshing, blue.
Are you a writer looking for inspiration? Watch your children. Soak in their natural creativity. Ask them to describe the color blue and see what they come up with.
It just might inspire a little creativity of your own.
In any case, you may find yourself with a craving for blueberries and a new found admiration for your child’s imagination.
Yesterday I clicked on a link. I shouldn’t have done it. The warning at the top of the link told me exactly what I would find in the article.
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES.
It was an article on the current terror of evil sweeping across Iraq, where ISIS has issued an ultimatum to the Christians: “Convert to Islam or die.” In my safe, bubbled American mind, I didn’t really believe that the images would be that graphic. I’m used to having my news sugar-coated. It is a benefit of living in the land of the free, after all.
The images were the worst I’ve ever seen. In all my research on the holocaust, and the horrible images that I ingested as I researched World War II, I’ve never felt a reaction quite like this. I was sick, immediately. I shut my computer and walked through my house in absolute horror.
Friends, the atrocities being committed in the Middle East are the most base, wicked acts of evil imaginable. I will not even link to the articles posting graphic pictures here.
As I walked and prayed, I begged God to help me understand – to give me the right words to process such unthinkable crimes. I pleaded with Him to erase the images of beheaded children, but I know in my heart I will never forget that sight. And perhaps I shouldn’t.
Every day, I scroll through my Facebook feed and see opinion after opinion on the current situations plaguing this broken world. We fight behind our screens, from the comfort of our quiet homes, over whether Israel should continue to bomb Hamas, or whether two heroic doctors with Ebola should be brought back home. We argue immigration, and we stake our claim on the right response to any and every situation.
It’s so easy to take sides from the safety of our homes. It’s easy for Christians to be passive when our children aren’t the ones dying brutally for our faith. It’s easy to condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza when we aren’t the ones with rockets pointed at our heads. It’s so easy to tell one another to “turn the other cheek,” but what does that mean when you are being systematically targeted by terrorists?
I don’t have the answers to this, but I know I can’t pretend it’s not happening. I can’t erase those images from my mind, and I cannot escape my own human reaction to these images of children being beheaded by ISIS or chained to fences by Hamas.
There isn’t a hell hot enough for the monsters committing these crimes.
That is the very real, and very base reaction I feel every time one of those images flits across my mind’s eye. I will neither defend the condemning thought, nor will I try to justify it. I will simply feel it, ingest it, and move forward in prayer for these desperate people.
The desperate people of Israel defending their land.
The desperate innocent in Gaza trapped between Israel and Hamas.
The desperate Christians in Iraq enduring the worst form of persecution imaginable.
I will pray for them, and I won’t try to dissect what’s a right or wrong way to respond to such events. I will not condemn Israel for defending herself, though I do pray that the leaders of that land can find a way to fight without stepping into the trap that Hamas has set by using children as human shields.
I won’t look at the images coming from Iraq again. I simply can’t. But I won’t forget them, either. We can’t ignore this. We can’t pretend or deny it isn’t happening. We can’t be content to simply live ignorantly in our bubble. And we can’t deny that something needs to be done to stop this – something swift, immediate, and drastic.
Peace is such a lovely word. We cry out for it and we pray for it, but I don’t know that we will ever truly understand or see it this side of heaven. Let’s not pretend we have all the answers for these countries who are warring. These situations are so far beyond what we can even comprehend.
Join me in praying for this desperate world, my friends. And please, I urge you not to ignore what’s happening, but I also encourage you to heed the warnings on the articles you see online. Don’t deny the problems. Don’t ignore the evil.
