I Always Feel Like I Am Compromising

If I focus on writing, working, I feel the lack (dreadfully) in what I am as a mother.
If I focus on being Mommy, making a home, I feel something in my soul begin to scream. Too long at that, it grows silent and still. Too still. In-the-throes-of-death silent (though, now that I think of it, “throes” don’t seem that silent).

Joe comes home and asks, “How was your day?” and I laugh a crazy little laugh of desperation and answer: “Oh, great, you know, changing diapers, doing laundry, the usual. Yours?”
And I have nothing else to say.

Average or Exceptional

I listened to a podcast yesterday and in it this is what caught me, this small instruction: get a sticky note and a pencil. On your note, write either “I am average” or “I am exceptional.” Put your note up, on your computer or wherever you work or sit or think. Now, if you wrote “I am average,” then you’re good. You’ve got nothing to worry about. Live your average life in peace. But if you wrote “I am exceptional,” then how dare you waste your life doing average work and average things when you know you are meant for more?

Guilty, Guilty, A Thousand Times Guilty!

There’s a tragedy in thinking we are all called into the same kind of life. We apply moral standards to matters of personality, preferences… then we judge accordingly.

The gavel comes down. Guilty. You have not met the current cultural standard for ________________. Fill in the blank. It could be anything. It applies to everything. The real guilt, though, is in denying the true self, the true calling.

What’s tricky is where the lines blur.

Wife, Mom, Homemaker: roles I have wanted, roles I now fill, which are fulfilling, genuine me.

Martha Stewart, endless crafty projects with the kids, decorating cookies: not me.

I can try. I can feel guilty. But if I start being that person and doing those things because I feel guilty, because I feel some kind of societal pressure, there’s no real gain. The motive matters.

It’s Just Your Ovaries Talking

The burden lies upon us to ask these real questions and find the real answers: Am I average or am I exceptional? What am I meant to be? What am I meant to do?

And before any one of you ladies answers, I strike an option from the list of possibilities: do not, repeat, do NOT answer with “I’m meant to be a Mommy.” Sure you are. You’ve got ovaries, don’t you? As the female member of the species, you can bet you’re meant to be a Mommy. It’s a drive, an instinct, a gift, a calling. Good.
It’s also a cop-out.

For some short period of your life, motherhood will require your attention on a pretty constant basis.
But for the rest of your life, it won’t, or at least it shouldn’t. You might let it, and if you do, it’s probably because you’re afraid of who you are without it. You’re afraid you’ve got nothing more.

“Fear has always seemed to me to be the worst stumbling block which anyone has to face. It is the great crippler” ( Eleanor Roosevelt, p. 25, You Learn by Living).

The Secret to Being Better at EVERYTHING! (insert gleam on tooth, twinkle in eye)

Listen up, sister. You’ve got more. And here’s a little secret I’ve learned from in the trenches: the more I engage that part of me that isn’t about being a Mommy, the better I am at the part that is a Mom. And the more I enjoy it.

Motherhood was never meant to diminish us into little cooking-cleaning automatons. Let motherhood be the catalyst for your creativity, and start pouring it out in every direction. Find yourself, and you’ll find that you’re a better Mom.

Image courtesy of x-ray delta one.

She gets her decaf, stirs the cream in,
Takes slow sips in the silence she craved at
7 o’clock when they woke up too early, at
10 o’clock when the baby wouldn’t nap, at
12 o’clock when there was no peanut butter, at
3 o’clock when the questions were endless, at
6 o’clock when he was home, dearly come home, and
They smiled at each other across the roar of life.
Now peace, the roar tucked into various beds with blankets, kisses, promises, and
She sits beside him.
It is too much, after all that, to watch the tragedy of a child
Lost, wounded, silenced.

She clicks the button, erases the concerned serious faces,
Pushes away the guilt of not hearing, the
Dread of her own possible losses, the
Fear of being too lucky, too long.

She puts away the words of the worst reality,
Picks up a book of poetry,
A magazine,
A notebook, a pencil,
The phone.
This small quiet space is what fuels her, fills her, defines her,
So she chooses.
Carefully she fills her cup with what is delicious and rich,
Refusing the bitter,
Ready, in the morning, to be again poured out.

Image courtesy of therapycatguardian on Flickr.

Listen to what Charlotte Mason says:

“When a mother allows a little trespass to go, unchecked and unmarked, the child has learned to believe that he has nothing to overcome but his mother’s disinclination; if she choose to let him do this and that, there is no reason why she should not; he can make her choose… and if his mother does what she chooses, of course he will do what he chooses, if he can; and henceforward the child’s life becomes an endless struggle to get his own way.

Let the child perceive that his parents are law-compelled as well as he, that they simply cannot allow him to do the things which have been forbidden, and he submits with the sweet meekness which belongs to his age.”

{Charlotte Mason, Home Education, pp. 14-15}

We all live under the law.

I’m not talking about the speed limit, though that kind of law matters, too. I’m talking about the big, divine, universal laws: the laws we know inherently, though some of us choose to ignore them and at times, we all fail to uphold them. Think in terms of the Ten Commandments, or, better yet, what Jesus said about the law:

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.

{Mark 12:30-31)

We parents are to live under the law, and we need to teach our children that the rules we have are not just random ideas we come up with and then impose upon them arbitrarily. Sure, some rules may be: “No shoes in the house” doesn’t have much of a moral implication. But the rules that really matter do have a moral implication.

Do a little digging and find the principles behind the rules, and teach them to your children. I’ve made a simple change when I discipline our children. Instead of saying, “No, Robbie, don’t hit your sister,” I say, “No, Robbie, I can’t let you hit your sister. It is not right.”

Does that matter? Maybe not all the time. But in the end, yes: because we want our children to grow up learning principles that give them wisdom for life, not legalistic rules, we need to help them to understand that law is universal and that we, their parents, answer to a higher authority. Everybody has to obey.

…it is upon the mothers of the present that the future depends… because it is the mothers who have the sole direction of the children’s early, most impressible years.

…And they [must] take it [motherhood] up as their profession – that is, with the same diligence, regularity, and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labours.

Nothing is trivial that concerns a child.

{Charlotte Mason, Home Education}

Image courtesy of adreson.