motherhood/family/parenting

Sometimes I feel like a wimp as a mom. Especially a homeschooling mom. I go to bed at night thinking of all the things I should have done, and shouldn’t have done, and how the older I get, the less I feel like I know what I’m doing.

I get overwhelmed, thinking about the messes, the meals, the unanswered messages, the appointments, the discipline, that child’s struggle, and this one’s, taking care of details while never losing sight of the bigger, more important picture–we work overtime, in every way.

And from here I can go two ways:

I can cave in, have another pity party and give up on trying, saying something spiritual-sounding about how my children are better off with less of me, or I don’t have to try because Jesus loves me anyway and all is grace.

Or, I can do what I’ve been called to. I can mom-up, dig in, and strive to be a faithful mother, a hard-working and loving wife and a diligent homemaker. Sometimes I need to give myself a kick in the pants, stop letting my emotions lead me, and meditate on what I know is true and stay there until it becomes a reality.

And what is truth to me, to you, as we plod through the trenches of life? 

God is my Helper, my Strength, and He will sustain me. (Psalm 54:4)

I shall not be dismayed, for the Lord upholds me with His righteous hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

God is faithful and will not allow me to be tempted beyond my ability, but will provide a way of escape. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

This present suffering is nothing compared to the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18)

Jesus knows my weakness, and empathizes with me, for He has felt it all too. (Hebrews 4:15)

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13)

And I pull myself together, proclaiming these truths, spending more time in prayer and His Word, equipping myself to face the day’s battles, whatever it demands.

I fight for my children, their hearts, my marriage, our lives, because that’s what we’re here to do and it’s worth doing and the proverbial dying for.

Practical Action to Pull You Out of the Pit

Then I make a list of problem areas and I tackle them, one at a time. I organize what is chaos, and that brings more clarity and peace, and boosts my energy. I plan meals ahead of time so I’m not caught off guard with added stress. I address areas where I have been careless in my child-training and tackle those one at a time. I assess my health and make sure I’m functioning at optimal levels of energy.

I remember that living the Christian life has never been easy, but I have it far, far easier than those who are being persecuted around the world, who have been driven from their homes and are fighting to stay alive. Yes, that brings my “overwhelmed” into perspective quickly.

I get a handle on life because it’s mine, and I am responsible, and because I want to press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ, not for the praise of man, but to one day have my Savior look into my eyes and say, “well done, good and faithful servant.”

And then I reach out and grab a neighbor’s hand too, and cheer her on, or send a friend a “you can do it” note, because sometimes all we really need is to know we’re not alone and that somebody’s pulling for us.

Let’s Mom-up. Together.
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“Your book, When Motherhood Feels Too Hard, encouraged me more than anything I’ve ever read. I literally got up from reading it, feeling like a new person, with a new vision and strength for being a mom. Thank you so much.” -Erica B.

Was it the Internet that completely changed the way we parent? That ability to not only look into everyone else’s lives, but also to mask what everyone sees about your life–posting, pinning and publishing only the happy times, the highlights and beautiful moments, creating the facade that those define all our lives.

Add to that we now read every horror story, every bizarre accident that happens, we know about every strand of bacteria and how many things could possibly hurt our children. As if we didn’t already worry about that.

Our moms didn’t deal with this. And consequently, they parented differently. Much differently.

Relax and Find Your Joy.

What Would My Mom Do resonates SO MUCH with my childhood. Of course I don’t necessarily advocate every single word. I don’t think we can let our children rove around the neighborhood all day anymore (nor would I let them if it were safe.) But the gist is spot on. We need to take the parenting stress down about 10 notches.

You’ll be glad you read it.

“My mom says that she and her friends just raised us, while my friends and me “parent” (these are sarcastic finger quotes). And honestly? She’s right. They didn’t worry endlessly, interfere constantly, safeguard needlessly, or overprotect religiously. They just raised us. And we turned out fine….

Could it be that we are simply too precious about parenting? Have we forgotten the benefit of letting our kids fail? Figure it out? Work hard for it? Entertain themselves? We put so much undue pressure on ourselves to curate Magical Childhoods, when in fact, kids are quite capable of being happy kids without constant adult administration. I would argue that making them the center of the universe is actually terribly detrimental.”

What Would My Mom Do? (Drink Tab and Lock Us Outside)

I am the parent of a difficult child. If you are too, you know the exhaustion, the tears, the feelings of helplessness and the cycles of prayer/throwing hands up/let’s-try-again talks. You know the extra burden of feeling like you are often not emotionally (or physically) available to your other children because of the intensity of this one.

I have some good news. First, you aren’t the only parent who struggles. Who loses his temper, swears to never do it again, and breaks the oath before the day is out. Secondly, you have the strength to get up and keep fighting. You must. I must. And we have a promise that in our weakness, He becomes stronger. May I suggest pleading with the Father, even as Jesus Himself did, until He answers.

A friend loaned me a fantastic book, Age of Opportunity, that has encouraged me so much and I want to share some practical insight from it:

“What we need to understand here is that this is not just a “flesh and blood” struggle, with parents trying to open their teens’ eyes to what they are really like. This is spiritual warfare. There is an enemy who is a liar, a deceiver, and a trickster. Teenagers are particularly susceptible to his lies about the self. They will believe that the problem is not with them, that they have been singled out for unfair criticism and correction. We will need to stand strong and patient, not being drawn into those debilitating verbal battles that do not open the teenager’s eyes, but only make him more defensive and distant. With love and a humble dependency on Christ, we need to take every opportunity to expose critical issues of the heart, helping our teenagers look at themselves in the perfect mirror of Scripture.

Issues of wisdom and foolishness, legalism and true godliness, friendship, sexuality, eternity, and a personal awareness of the heart all are on the table during the teen years, providing wide open doors of opportunity. God uses discussions like these to help your teenagers come to know him, and love him, and to internalize his truth in a way that gives practical direction to their lives.

These are also the things that make this a scary time of parenting. These are issues that can cause parental panic and dread and become the occasion of parental anger. These are the issues around which parents say things they live to regret. These issues can be used of God to form a deeper bond between parent and teen, or be the thing the Enemy uses to drive a deeper wedge in the relationship.

If you respond out of anxiety, irritation, and fear, you will try to control your child all the more. Instead of seeing this as a time of preparation, you will take on a survival mentality. You will tend to see life as a minefield, and you will hope for little more than getting your teenager across it with all his limbs intact.

In your desperation, you give in to raging emotions and you do foolish, unproductive things that you will later view with embarrassment and regret….In your self-pity over the toughness of your job as a parent and the peace your child has taken away, you will resort to beating him with words and seeking to motivate him with threats. You will try to control and manipulate him into obedience, and you will initiate unproductive power struggles. All the while your relationship will disintegrate while your teenager’s rebellion increases. At last you will admit you are powerless and, as a final act of anger, you will quit parenting altogether, telling yourself that you did everything you could do.

But if instead you move toward your teenager with a confident faith in the Redeemer, whose Word is true and whose sovereign persence empowers your weak and feeble parental efforts, God will use you to communicate love, understanding, grace, hope, and life. You will ask calm but probing questions that cause your teenager to examine things that he would never examine alone. You will engage your teenager in thought-provoking debate without it ever becoming hurtfully personal and condemning. You will correct in a spirit of acceptance, forgiveness, and hope. You will smile when your child comes into the house, and she will not tense up when you enter her room. You will find her pursuing you to talk about things that many teens hide or ignore. And as your relationship deepens, you will watch her progressively taking on the character of Christ.”

Carry on and fight for your children. Kneel with them and beg God’s mercy for you both. Show them your love just as God articulates his by saying, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” That’s what they need to know. That we will stand and fight and never give up.

Get the book, Age of Opportunity (Tripp).

When I hear someone talking about “kids these days” or lamenting social problems brought on by adults who make foolish decisions, I want to ask this: “But how do you feel about a child’s earliest training? How important is it for parents to be there carefully guiding their young children as the foundations of all they think and believe are being formed? Are you encouraging parents to pour their lives into their children, your future?” Raising wise adults starts when they’re young.

Because see, too many of us wave off the importance of a parent’s influence in their children’s early lives. We forget how every minute of every day for the first few years, their consciences are being formed, their paradigm for making choices being set, and their habits and wills are being shaped by what they see and hear, and sadly, by what they don’t.

God gave children to parents because parents are responsible for taking that tiny baby to adulthood with all the effort and determination they can muster, guiding, directing, coaching, teaching, loving, and training that baby to grow up to be a competent adult, full of compassion and conviction. It is our job to direct them to wisdom, give them tools for self-control and model humility.

We live in a society that has reduced proper child-care to a clean environment where a baby is well-fed and kept safe. That is only the beginning of what our children need. And we are collectively paying for the mammoth oversight.

Let’s lead them in the way they should go so that when they are old, they will not depart from it. And let’s encourage parents to invest in the full time job of raising children into adults.

Doesn’t the feminist speak for the formerly “oppressed woman”, claiming that she only wants to free her from the sad, miserable life society once forced her to live? Does feminism not want us to believe that the “woman of old” was repressed, uninfluential, powerless?

I submit to you that mostly women were viewed quite the opposite. Many understand exactly how a woman’s role affects society. Modern feminism is tainted with a dishonest agenda that, underneath it all, actually seeks to make women less powerful, less influential than they have ever been.

Consider this excerpt, taken from a well-known ladies magazine, written by a man, printed in 1852:

WOMAN.
BY EDWARD D. MANSFIELD

“THERE is a beautiful parallelism between the condition of woman in her domestic life, and the character of a nation. She is the mother of men, and the former of their minds, at that early age when every word distils upon the heart, like the dew-drop upon the tender grass. There is to that young mind no truth or falsehood in the world but that whose words flow from the mother’s lips. There is no beauty in character, nor glory in action, which has not been concentrated by her praise. There is to that climbing child no path where the mother’s feet has not trod. Her mind is to his the supernatural pillar of fire which illumines his mid-night ignorance, and the silvery cloud which at mid-day precedes him in every highway to the world. And, even when science has conducted her pupil through the highest walls of knowledge; or when art has polished him into the accomplished citizen; or when power has dignified him with the memorials of office, she still lives in his soul, which she has imbued from her heart’s “pictured urn, With thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.”

It is thus that society is formed in its social and moral ideas, and thus that its condition must ever present, on a large scale, a parallelism in its moral life, to the condition of woman. It is not matter of fancy, but a great social fact.”

Blessed is the nation who reveres its women, understanding the powerful role they have in society.