Parenting-amazingly exhausting

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It’s like everything worthwhile in life. Beyond amazing, yet beyond exhausting. I wouldn’t trade it for the world, and yet I’d give anything for just one day to myself.

When I look back on my life so far I see this pattern. The things that are most worth it are the ones that stretch my every limit and leave me wondering, “can I do this?”. Author Shauna Niequist would call it the “bittersweet” of life. The real, raw, intense, excruciating is also the most beautiful, the most rewarding.

I love the bittersweet in life. I love the challenge and the uncertainty, the deep joy, and peace. But I also don’t. Because anyone who knows me knows that uncertainty when it comes to what’s next is NOT MY THING. I spend a lot of my time clinging to the illusion of control (working on it).

So God gave me Lilah Grace. The most beautiful little person I’ve ever set my eyes on. She is pure JOY. And yet she fights sleep like I’ve never seen. She won’t take a bottle. She knows exactly what she wants and my schedule is out the window. It makes me chuckle. There’s that bittersweet again. All the best things in life have it.

And if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m unbelievably exhausted both physically and emotionally. And I’m ridiculously happy. In the same day I’m texting Eric to “please for the love of god get home right away I’m going crazy” and sending him videos of our little lulu cooing away. I find it amazing that the two can go together even at all.

When I hit the bittersweets in life I always know I’m going to be learning and growing. Here’s to parenting, the most bittersweet thing I’ve ever done.

You’re a Good Mom If…

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For years I have heard mothers labeled as “good moms” and “bad moms”. As a middle class white Christian woman, most of the people I know are labeled by society as “good moms” (which is a whole other issue of discussion). However after working years in foster care, I have also gotten to know the ones that many call “bad moms”. And oh it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that there’s this division between who is a good mom and who is not. A “good mom” is really one step away from a “bad mom” if we take away her resources. Could any of us really do it if we had a colicky baby in a one room apartment with no partner or family to support us, barely any money for food, and an addiction that has gripped us for years? And yet some of us have all the resources and struggle still.

Motherhood is NOT easy.

I want to scratch “good mom” and “bad mom” from our vocabularies. Because it produces shame, plants guilt, fosters hopelessness. I think many of us wonder if we are truly a good mom, regardless of how the world labels us. We wonder if we’re giving our little one everything they need, supporting their development, creating a healthy bond. But there are so many colors and shades of those colors when it comes to motherhood. We all do it differently. And that is more than okay-it is a gift.

You’re a good mom if you breastfeed or bottle feed, or whether you get milk from a donor whose producing like a farm cow. You’re a good mom if you vaccinate or don’t vaccinate-because both can be scary and the choices can feel hard. You’re a good mom if your baby sleeps on you all day or if they have a beautifully designed sleep schedule. You’re a good mom if your hair looks nice every day or if it’s in a greasy messy bun. You’re a good mom if your house is a mess or if it’s clean and organized. You’re a good mom if you lost all that baby weight upfront or if it’s hanging on for dear life. You’re a good mom if you struggle with a mental illness or if your seratonin functions like a champ. You’re a good mom if your kids have never had a Dorito or if it’s Dino nuggets for dinner every night. You’re a good mom if your little people get baths every night or once a week (if you’re lucky). You’re a good mom if your kids go to private school, public school, or are homeschooled. You’re a good mom if you’ve lived in the same house they’re whole lives or moved around a bunch. You’re a good mom if you back delicious treats for your kids or if you use your oven as storage. You’re a good mom if you’re up in the morning with a pep in you’re step or if you need 75 cups of coffee not to yell everything that comes out if your mouth. You’re a good mom on the days you have patience and the days you do not. You’re a good mom if your kid ends up in rehab, or if they struggle through a mental illness, or if they defy everything you’ve ever taught them. You’re a good mom if you love your kids and are doing your best-whatever that looks like for you. And sometimes that means dumping the kids on someone else for a few hours and crying under the comforter. Sometimes it means taking 3 buses to get to a one hour visit with your kids, trying not to cry as you wonder how you lost them. Sometimes our best is barely breathing. And sometimes we’ve got to pull up our bootstraps and do the things anyway. But we’re all different. Motherhood looks different for all of us. And at the end of the day all of our kids will need therapy anyway.

Mom Expectations-No Thanks

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Yesterday I got out of the house AND took a shower! Double win!  I spent my time out getting myself a 2018 planner because I’ve been without one for over a week now and I’m barely surviving (type A personality problems). When I am out on my own, I feel like I can breathe again. Lilah needs so much from me that sometimes I don’t even realize that I’ve neglected myself until there’s someone else watching out for her and I can just take a minute to be fully in my body. I don’t know whether it’s my own personality, or the pressure of our culture, or just this overall sense of fear that these moments will disappear and I won’t be able to get them back, but I often feel mom expectations strangling me.

It started when I was pregnant. The pressure to adorably capture every single week with a bump picture was suffocating. I never remembered, and part of me just didn’t care about doing it. But I would see other pregnant friend’s posts on social media and I would immediately panic because I wasn’t doing that. Was I missing something? Was I neglecting to capture these memories for my baby girl? And now she’s here, and the pull to capture every little moment, and document every smile, is even stronger. Sure I take a lot of pictures (have you seen that sweet little face?), and I journal most days and include Lilah milestones in that, but not a lot of planned memory capturing going on here. Of course I had high hopes going into this mama thing that I would create an organized online photo album and write all about Lilah’s day every single evening. But instead, our pictures of Lilah are hanging out somewhere in the cloud, and sleep is much more important to me at night than anything else.

Yesterday afternoon, after a particularly panicky moment in regards to my failure to organize my daughter’s memories, I found myself thinking about what is important to me from my childhood. My amazing mom kept journals and calendars for us and it really is fun to see what I was doing 2 weeks after birth, but honestly I can count on one hand the amount of times I have looked at those. But that picture of me running down the beach in my duck bathing suit? I look at that all the time. And that blanket I slept with until I was 10? It houses more memories than I can even explain. And above all else the most important things have been the things my parents taught me. The hours and hours a day my mom spent teaching me to read and write my name. The evenings when my dad would come home and wrestle with us until we could barely breathe we were laughing so hard. Those things above all else, I hold onto.  The other stuff, while sweet and fun to look at, isn’t a must. I don’t have to do it, and Lilah will be okay, I will be okay.

When wrestling against a certain expectation, I always ask myself if this would be important to the Ingalls family (you know, Little House on the Prairie). And what I mean by that is, was it something that they needed to survive or be happy? It’s my favorite way of bringing myself back to the basics. What do I need here? What does Lilah need here? Is this thing I am obsessing over really all that important? Did Ma and Pa keep endless memory boxes for Laura and her siblings? Nope. They didn’t even have photographs then and yet no one cared that they didn’t know what they looked like as a baby. And I bet that Ma spent way more time experiencing and way less time documenting. And hey, that’s not to say that I’m not going to bask in the beauty that is modern technology, but I’m sure I can learn a few things from the way that they lived their lives.

While I know I will forever battle these expectations of momhood- which bottles to use, or if co-sleeping is safe, or should you really give an infant Tylenol before shots-I am working every day to  create experiences whether I capture them forever or not. Documenting events will not be my obsession, but experiencing them. Lilah may not have a neat little picture album, and the journal of her first year of life may be filled with her mama’s own struggles and insecurities, but I will make sure that she has beautiful, challenging, comforting memories to hold onto for her entire life.

The Biggest Fear.

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Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be someone important. I even went through a period of time where I was convinced that I would be the next virgin Mary, destined to carry the Savior in my womb. I was 7, maybe 8 at the time, and to me, that seemed like the ultimate proof that my existence mattered.

I had lost touch with that fear until very recently. Somehow as adults we have a knack for forgetting how we actually feel, a gift for hiding pain. And so I had almost forgotten how desperately that little child had wanted to be seen.

I no longer go to a job every day. I am writing full time, in my dining room. It’s an odd transition for me. There are no coworkers, no set time I must be at the office. I am in control of it all, and yet so many things seem out of my hands.

Jobs are funny things because they are not who we are, and yet we attach ourselves to them as if they define us. Regardless of whether really like them, they offer us some sort of reassurance that we are needed, that we matter to the grand scheme of things.

Nowadays my biggest task is to remember to eat lunch amid my ceaseless typing, to meet my deadlines, and to let Max out so he doesn’t pee on the floor.  But if I forgot any of those things, only my husband, my editor, and Max would know. I can no longer tie my significance in this world, to what I am doing every day.

Many of us struggle with the fear that we are insignificant. That we will be forgotten, unnoticed, overlooked. That the world will never see us as an important piece to its puzzle. I think that we all share this fear on some level.

But there is this still small voice that reminds us of our purpose.

The still small voice is the one that brings peace, joy, and love of self and others.

Amidst all the “not enoughness”, and the moments of feeling insignificant, there is a truth I am right where I need to be.

Today I am reminded of the goodness of the creator. His steadfastness. The way he challenges me to be more like him, to find my worth in him alone. I am thankful for this journey that twists and turns, and sometimes makes no sense.

May our significance be found only in him. May our lives reflect his purpose and not our own.

 

 

 

 

Lies Anxiety Tells Us.

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Anxiety is ruthless.

And while this post last week was an encouragement to respect our fears and listen to where they come from, we do not have to listen to the lies they spin.

Anxiety is a nightmare.

Someone once told me that if I truly believe that God is bigger than anything and everything, then I wouldn’t have such crippling anxiety.

She obviously doesn’t struggle with anxiety.

It’s a war zone. a series of battles inside of myself that are sometimes won and sometimes lost.

Some days I wake up and I am ready to take on the world, and other days going outside seems like an outrageous task.

Anxiety spins lies in our brain like “You are not good enough”, “you can’t do this”, “you are a mess”.

It takes a seemingly simple work party, or a trip to the park, or a grocery store run feel like climbing Everest in bare feet and a bathing suit.

It steals precious moments from our lives without us even knowing it.

Most nights when I come home, I sit on the couch and take a deep breath and realize my shoulders have been clenched up to my ears all day.

Anxiety. The silent dictator.

A wise person once told me to let fear ride in the passenger seat, but not to let it drive.

I love this imagery.

I imagine this faceless person next to me in a cute convertible, they reach to change the station and I say, “no way. you can ride along, but I’m in charge of the details”.

I know It may sound incredibly weird to actually give your anxiety permission to be a part of things, but really all anxiety is, is a part of ourselves that wants to be heard. That doesn’t mean that we have to live our whole lives enslaved by it and it is a frustratingly ongoing process. But by letting our anxiety sit in the passenger seat, we can keep an eye on it and allow it to feel heard, while still driving the car.

I know sometimes the burden of anxiety seems too great, and it feels like there’s nothing you can do to get off of the hamster wheel. Sometimes the last thing we feel we can do is muster up a corny pep talk.

So when that is the case, and you’re missing one more social event because you’re in panic mode, tell yourself that you’re doing the best that you can, snuggle up on the coach or draw yourself a nice bath, and give yourself a break.

Anxiety sucks you guys, and the least we can do is be on our own side.

 

It’s Okay To Be Afraid.

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I took Max to the vet yesterday. Poor guy was TERRIFIED. His whole body was literally shaking the entire time.

For those of you who don’t know Max, he’s the Thor of dogs; tough, muscular, incredibly handsome. He has it all. Usually he is the one protecting me. Yet there we were, sitting in the vet’s office and he is climbing up onto the chair and trying to get into my lap.

It was obvious that he was afraid. And so I kept talking to him in this obnoxious baby voice that he loves so much and I kept telling him “it’s okay buddy. you’re okay buddy”. But then I stopped and thought about it for a second. Every 6 months, we bring Max to this place and they give him a million shots, take a poop sample or two, and poke him all over. No wonder he is shaking like a leaf. He knows what’s going on. So then I took a different route with my obnoxious baby voice and said, “okay Max, this totally sucks, but it’s only for a little and then we’ll go home and we can snuggle on the couch, ok”

Not that I believe that my dog understands what I am saying at all. But it made a difference for me. Because I realized that I don’t much care for the way that I approach fear in general. My initial reaction is to tell myself or others that it’s going to be okay, but the reality is that usually we are afraid for a reason.

And it’s okay to be afraid.

Being the self proclaimed queen of anxiety, I basically have a PH.D in irrational fears. Put me in a crate with thousands of tiny spiders and I’ll be fine, but bring me to any public place and I’ll likely have a panic attack in the first five minutes we’re there.

But regardless of whether someone tells us our fears are rational or irrational, there is still a reason for them, and we owe it to ourselves to respect our fear.

Yes, sometimes fear gets out of control and we need therapy, or a hot bath, or some good strong meds (or a combination of all three). But all the while it is important to respect our fear, to listen to what it is trying to tell us, to thank it for warning us of something no matter how small that something may seem.

So whatever it is that you’re afraid of today, be kind to yourself. Because at the end of the day, life can be really scary sometimes, and other people can be scary, and our own minds can be scary. Acknowledge that. Give yourself a break. Rest in the truth that we don’t walk through fear alone, and give yourself a great big emotional hug. You’d be surprised how much listening to your fear and respecting its purpose changes the way you see yourself and the world around you.

What If We Don’t Succeed.

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As a little kid I dreamed of a hundred different things I would be when I grew up.

The options seemed endless, the sky was the limit.

I never really considered my life looking any differently than the movie playing in my 13 year old head.

But here I am, 12 years later, and I am doing none of the things I thought I would be doing.

And maybe it’s because of this that I’m starting to notice the people around me also struggling to be something greater than what they are. Wanting to “make it” in some area of their life. Following their dreams like a map.

We’re clinging to our passion as our purpose and that’s dangerous.

 

The cold, hard truth is that these dreams may never come true in the way we are hoping.

People don’t really say that anymore, especially Christians. When it comes to writing, I get a lot of “If you follow God you’ll make it” and “Ask and you shall receive (Matthew 7:7)”.

We may work harder than anyone, put ourselves out there in all of the right ways, and never get to where it is we’re trying to go. God is not in the business of paving a way for our dreams, but fulfilling His glory. So the cold hard truth is that our dreams, the ones that we think our hearts beat for, may never pan out in the way we expected them to.

What then?

Do we throw it all out the window and deem it a waste of time and passion?

Can we tear our eyes away from earthly success long enough to see what God is doing?

I pray we can.

When we’re doing what we love, hoping for a big break; let’s remember who is really in control, and whose hand is guiding everything we do.

 

Getting there is only good when God is leading, anything less is empty.

So if we never live up to our own expectations, never succeed in the way that we thought we would, we can hold on to the knowledge that we are right where we are supposed to be because He has led us there.