“Hey, sooo…. whatareya doin’ over here Lin? I see you’re writin’ some stuff (Lots of stuff) and it looks like you’ve written some kids books. I mean… you’re JUST a mom and wife, right? You take care of kids all day, right?”
*insert smarmy chuckle*
And you wouldn’t be wrong. About anything except the “just” part.
Try applying that same word to the scary parts of motherhood.
“Oh, you know… I JUST stayed up all night for 8+ weeks while nursing my brains out and taking care of a few other kids and functioning on the tiniest bit of sleep after squeezing a watermelon out of my nether regions and tearing my body apart.”
“Oh, you know… I JUST handle multiple conversations a million times a day while making food for nine meals and trying to instill values and stuff at the same time.”
I never “just…” anything. My parents can tell you that.
Back when I had a gym membership (because I thought TJ was going to be our “last one”), I marched into the gym intent on reassembling my body. Three babies that close together in my late thirties had taken a toll. To the naked eye (pun intended) I looked like I had weathered it pretty well. And I was grateful I had. But I knew I had lost all sorts of muscle I needed to rebuild.
So into the gym I went and threw “TJ the tiny boss” into the gym kids program. I walked over to the trainer’s station, intent on hiring a personal trainer to keep me motivated and hold me accountable. The lead trainer looked me up and down with a smirk on his face.
Ignoring said smirk I said, “Hi, I’m here to work. Let’s get started.” He put his head down to take notes and asked me a series of questions, continuing to write and look down at his paper without a glance up.
He got to the “Occupation” question.
I replied proudly, “I’m a mother of three beautiful boys.”
Another smirk from Mr. Muscle man.
He finally lifted his eyes from his notes and looked at my face.
“Oh, a mother, eh,” the comment full of a combination of humor, pity, contempt…. anything else he could muster with one look.
I leaned in really close to this gentleman so no one else could hear and I looked him right in they eye.
“I am in the BUSINESS of raising future leaders of America, the most important JOB on the planet. I need all the strength in my body I can muster from now until Jesus calls me home. Your job is not to judge my job. Your job is to help me be BETTER at my job.”
I could see his jaw slack a little bit and he stepped back. He cleared his throat.
“Well, ah… in that case, we’d better get started, right?”
I got put with another trainer but every time I walked into the gym, that head trainer tipped his hat to me.
I upped his expectations simply by being direct and giving him the chance to examine his own attitude.
I could have run out and cried in my car. I could have punched him in the face (pretty sure he would have won that fight). But because I KNEW WHO I WAS AND WHAT MY MISSION IS, his opinions and lack of experience stayed firmly rooted in his own head. His opinions were a reflection on him and not me.
So often, I see my fellow moms sad and hurt because they’ve allowed someone else to speak death over them. And that’s partly because they are complicit in agreeing with said speaker.
They don’t understand their worth and power handed to them.
By a God who loves them. Who is for them. Who is cheering them on to succeed in the tiny things.
Who counts each kiss, each “sorry kids, I screwed that up,” each step in this life as a victory worthy of a party to end all parties.
We moms have an immense amount of power. We are leaders shepherding our little sheep away from the wolves and toward a life of making their own decisions and acquiring the skills to defeat the wolves themselves.
Resting in the significance of being loved by an Almighty God and being given the responsibility to raise future leaders… you might as well have a impenetrable suit of armor on under your days-old T-shirt and cutoffs.
That being said, God does not send us out to do it alone. Far from it. We have a million tools at our disposal.
- Our village of people
- The moms who have gone before us
- Spouses, partners and others who can parent alongside us
I want to see other moms succeed. Real bad.
Success looks like: minute-by-minute resting comfortably in the decisions about who you are. And also decisions about who you are not. No guilt or shame.
I want to see moms reclaim some peace, reclaim some time and even some rest in those early years.
We CAN have it all (of God’s gifting), but we certainly CAN’T do it all.
The other day, my boys ran to the neighbors’ house. Thirty minutes later they came home with the most adorable crafts EVER. I am not great at being crafty. Whenever I attempt it, it entirely stresses me out. I called Elizabeth (the neighbor) up and thanked her for doing craft time with my kids. Mental note… “Elizabeth is the ‘craft-fix’ part of my village.”
One mom cannot do it all.
The biggest untapped resource for moms by far: THEIR OWN CHILDREN.
The second those kids are born, we are working ourselves out of job. We are downloading information to them left and right, both consciously and subconsciously. And they’re absorbing it.
But how do we know if it really has “stuck?” How do we know if they can reproduce it? You know… the undesirable life skills like “brushing their own teeth” and “folding their own laundry” and “plunging their own toilets,” etc.
We ask them to. We tell them to. We hold them accountable.
We build in a family culture where everyone pulls their weight.
And this is where “Mom’s Not” books come in.
At some point, with everything, we make a conscious (or subconscious) decision that we are NOT going to do something for our kids. Instead, we will teach them how to do it or… we simply watch them figure it out on their own. Kids/people are INCREDIBLY resourceful when it’s something they really want to do… or have.
Ties his own shoes– BOOM! We just regained 20 seconds of mom’s time and eased a little pain in her back.
Of course, we temper our expectations with age-appropriate tasks… but we hold them to it, over and over and over. And over. And one day, we’ll turn around and they’ve done it on their own. And we praise the heck out of them.
We watch them take pride in owning the “thing” they worked hard for. And now it’s theirs. And no one can take it away from them. And they can use that thing to build the stamina to do the next thing. The process builds on itself. And the the structure of those building blocks is called “character.” The blocks are strong and heavy and made of dense stuff created through blood, sweat and tears. And it won’t blow over in a hurricane.
And now we are full circle. Mom is *starting* to be able to reclaim a little bit of time and sanity. I promise the extreme amount of work you put into those early years will not go without dividends. It seems like it will never end. That they’ll never “get it.”
But they will. With time, patience and a whole lot of humor, those little people will get on board the mom train and ride it straight through teenagehood. Maybe. Good thing trains have emergency brakes because we’re going to need them.
Keep up the good work, mom. Keep doing you– and don’t worry about the stuff that isn’t you. You hold your head up high and walk into that gym.
Because today, right this minute… MOM’S NOT taking any crap from anyone.
#momsnot #levelupyourlife #momwinslife #getonboard #independentkids #dontmesswithmom #boystomen #momofthreeboys #amwriting #writersofig #authorsofig #boymom #writinglife #latenightwriting #humorwriting #helpingmoms #laughterishealing #laughterisgood #laughterislife #laughterisbest
An American humorist, writer and author. When boiling down the chicken soup of life, she finds those golden, fried nuggets of truth & writes them long after the kids go to bed.
