I was so unprepared for this part of mothering.

   I knew it would feel like you were trying to pull your bottom lip up over your head to give birth, and it did.  I knew I would get sappy and sentimental the first time I heard my baby laugh or say my name, and I did. I knew that discipline and consistency would be my greatest weaknesses in parenting, and they are.  I knew I would want a break from my children, and then miss them like crazy when I was gone, and I do.

But what I didn't know, was how utterly painful it would be for me, to fail.

   Whenever I lose my patience, raise my voice, and cause those little tears to fall, I crumple into a pile of self-loathing and feel like there is no way out.




The trouble with raising children is that they are not adults yet.

   They don't understand "I'm tired" or "I'm just really frustrated right now" or "Mama needs a break".  They only understand that you are Mama, and you are supposed to be cheerful and patient and loving.....always.

   You are the hands that hold them, comfort them, and soothe all their sorrows away, and so you aren't really allowed to have an "off day".  You are supposed to kiss away their tears, not cry ones of your own.  You are there to rock them when they are tired, sing them to sleep, and tuck them into bed.....not lie down yourself and shut out the world because you are just too exhausted to function.

And perhaps most difficult of all is coming to the realization that they have no concept of grace.

   They don't realize that mommies make mistakes, that mommies need second chances like anybody else, that mommies need forgiveness and time to grow and to learn and FOR GOODNESS SAKES A HEAPING, SKY-HIGH PILE OF GRACE.





   Children are too little to realize that as young and new as they are to this world.......that is how young and new their Mama is to mothering.  

   If we were all adults, it would be so easy to order pizza and pile on the couch and paint each other's toenails and laugh about how flawed their Mama is.  We would discuss my shortcomings and I would ask for forgiveness, and after agreeing that I certainly need a whole lot of grace, they would give it to me.

At least I hope that they would.

   But for now, here, in this moment and in this time of their lives, they don't realize any of that.  They just see me, their Mama, as Someone who lives somewhere above grace.  I don't need it because, well....I shouldn't need it.  I am perfect.  I make no mistakes.  I have all of the answers.  I am sweet and loving and kind and gentle because....well, I birthed them.  I nursed them.  I swaddled them.  What else could I possibly be?

   And the first time the curtain is pulled back and the real Wizard of Oz is revealed, I always want to shrivel up in a hole and hide away from the world until I am infallible in their eyes again.  It hurts when they realize that a mere human has been playing this Mighty Role all along.

Oh, it hurts.

   It hurts when I see it in their eyes.....the profound disappointment of the realization that I can be wrong.  I can make a mistake.  I can raise my voice when I should have just quietly instructed.  I can lunge and lurch when I should calmly direct.  I can glare and scowl when I should take a moment to just get off of the phone and address the issue quietly.

The list goes on and on and on.



 
   I feel like the day I gave birth back in 2010 I was officially the World's Greatest Mom.  And then each day since then, I've discovered a little more and more how I'm really just not.  I'm just a human. A flawed, fallen, pitiful, desperate, insecure, sinful human.  And all the while I'm wrestling this blasted humanity I am trying to be everything that they deserve.  And I fall short SO many times.

   And so it is that we Mamas of little ones, all the while fighting our own demons and needing grace more than ever before, have to somehow live in spite of it.  But without ANY grace. God gives us grace.  He lavishes it.  And our husbands give us grace, thank goodness.  But for now, our children aren't going to give us grace. And that's o.k.

   That's o.k. because it gives me a teeny, tiny sliver of a glimpse of what God goes through with us.  Giving and giving and feeling like it is mostly a one-way avenue of grace.  He gives us grace, and we soak it up and curse and complain and thrash around in our humanity.

   And so I will choose to be patient one more day.  And the day after that, and the day after that.  And it is hard.  It is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.   But if Jesus walked the road to that cross, than certainly I can learn a little patience.

At least I like to think that I can.