Soak It In

     A few months back, I was listening to a motherhood podcast where the woman being interviewed described child rearing as her, “refining fire”. Standing in my kitchen, scrubbing my counters, wearing my new little baby, I began to sob (not the cute hallmark movie actress sob either, more like the ugly cry you do when you’re watching said hallmark movies all alone). Her words just pierced the deepest places of my new mommy heart and the floodgates opened.

     At this time, I was about 3 months into my new gig as a stay at home mom, and I wasn’t entirely loving it in the ways it seemed I should be. I loved my son and was glad to be home to see him learn and grow, to nurture and care for him, but truth be told, I was feeling like my life had been derailed and I didn’t know how to find another track to catch the new train. But, when that woman on the podcast spoke truth into my kitchen, I felt like I was at least at the right station to find the railway God wants me to journey on.

     Let’s be real: motherhood is everything. It is every job. It is every day. It is every feeling and emotion. It is every moment. Motherhood is the highest high and the lowest low. It is the greatest joy of your heart and it’s deepest sorrow. It is exciting. It is exhausting. It is beautiful. It is messy. It is “I could do this any time, every day”. It is also “when does this end. I just can’t go on.” I am barely into one year of this miraculous assignment, but this much I have already figured out and experienced. There is a lot of pressure to be perfect in motherhood, to love every minute, to effortlessly float through the days and weeks and months. There is a lot of pressure to proclaim your martyrdom: “I give everything. I’m up all night. I haven’t slept in months. I haven’t showered in just as long. But it’s all worth it and here I am…” In those moments, sobbing in my kitchen, I was feeling all of this. I was feeling the everythings of motherhood, coupled with all of its pressures, and that’s when Jesus intervened.

     The most transparent I can be is to say this: I wasn’t “ready” to be a mom, but God made me one anyway. I didn’t want to quit the job I loved to stay home full time, but God asked to me anyway. I was praying for a reason to “have” to go back to work, but God didn’t provide one. Instead, He showed me the truth of the new state of my life: THIS is where He has brought me, THIS is the task He has assigned to me, THIS is the job He has given me to complete, and THIS is the fire He has chosen through which to refine me. Here, in motherhood, ME has to die. Not for the sake of being replaced by the life of my child, but rather for the sake of becoming the WHO that my Heavenly Father has carefully crafted for me to become. And, in all of my God’s goodness, grace, and mercy, He has chosen one of the most miraculous and precious ways in which to mold me to become more of that person: through this tiny boy I get to call “son”.

     I recently read a post on social media about why we need to stop telling moms to “cherish every minute”. The author of that post hit on a point that is so true: not every minute is something I really want to cherish. We are sinners, raising sinners, and sometimes each minute doesn’t hold all of God’s beauty and grace. Sometimes minutes hold the ugliness of our flesh and we would rather soon forget those minutes. While I agree with the heart of this woman’s message, to be real and genuine with one another, I also have to say that I don’t agree with her statements.

     I believe that motherhood is not just my refining fire, it is not just the refining fire of the woman on the podcast I mentioned at the beginning, but it is the refining fire of EVERY mother, everywhere. As such, God is using EVERY. SINGLE. moment of motherhood to mold us. The moments of peace and perfection, He’s using to make us more like him. The moments of repetition and the mundane, He’s using to make us more like him. The moments of fear and fatigue, He’s using to make us more like him. The moments of anger and lashing out, He’s using to make us more like him. The moments of humility and forgiveness, He’s using to make us more like him.

     My point is, sweet Mamma’s, let’s not look to compete, to be everything, to keep up, to die for the sake of our children, to sacrifice ourselves as martyrs for the attention and sympathy, to cherish every moment, to constantly think about how hard this job is, to try to forget the ugly times. Instead, let’s soak it all in. Let’s soak in the fact that the best, the good, the normal, and the worst parts of our time as mommies are all being used by the Lord Jesus to make us less of ourselves and more like him.

     I am not perfected in this state of soaking everything in. Like I said, I am still very very very fresh in my mommy-hood. But, I am actively working to practice soaking in the moments and hours and days and months of this job, because I do know that God is doing beautiful things in my heart each day through it all. And let me tell you, the blessings of life are that much richer, that much more meaningful, that much more joyful, and that much more MORE because of the little on God has given to my husband and I to raise up!