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Mothering was zapping all my resources. Uncertainty seemed to wrap around every decision I made. Confidence was a thing of the distant past that seemed to only mock me now as a mother to three little boys all under 2.
I wanted to go back to simpler times---being newly married to my best friend, working in a career that was full of reward, hanging out with friends whoopin’ it up till the wee hours of the night, shopping sprees, going out to eat, Saturday mornings spent sleeping in then playing tennis, apartment living with no maintenance….quite simply, back to the life that was all about me and Chris.
I wanted be able to watch Johnson and Johnson baby commercials without feeli
ng like I’d been duped. I wanted the squeaky clean dream without the reality. I was bitter at the miring disillusionment which was showing no signs of releasing its strangle hold.
My home was not the place of peace I’d known the previous 7 years of marriage before children.
The home Chris and I had worked so hard to create, the kind I thought couldn’t really exist in real life, was slipping away into chaos, diapers, exhaustion and sick babies. Doing the work of maintaining our marriage was taking a back seat to the pressing demands of our babies. Fear set in because the place of hope I had known the last 7 years, a home that I longed to return to at the end of the day, now seemed to be morphing into a giant ball of stress and fatigue.
The question that haunted my mind while sitting up with sick babies in the middle of the night was, ‘how far of a slip was it from where I was to the home life I had known growing up?’
Growing up, home was a place where hiding was the safest, thus most appealing option. There were far too many visits from Social Services, police and other well intended, but somber faced, bad news bearing officials.
College was my break free and fly time. I was the first person in my whole family to attend college---so the waters were unchartered, but full of promise and I hoped my ticket out. And that’s exactly what college was for me—an escape and a soft place to land. It was there, in that soft spot, that I also realized it was not a college degree I needed to rescue me, but a Savior.
Chris and I married ¾ of the way through my college years, after a complete renovation of our relationship, but that’s another story, for another day! We created a sweet little home for ourselves in a one bedroom/bath apartment full of GoodWill furniture and a lot of joy. I was so excited to know that life could be full of promise and home could be a place you anticipated returning to with joy instead of fear and anxiety.
Looking back, I think God gave me those pain free years, college through the first 7 years of marriage, as a soul strengthening time. A time to plant my feet solidly in His kingdom before He would begin to turn my world upside down as the mother to three little boys in a year and a half time frame. Life would never be so neat and manageable again. Predictability was out
the window!
I look back now on those years of transition and know God was doing a great work in my life. Not one I signed up for, but a great work none the less. Growing more into who God desires me to be is not a pain free process. Before those years of life with babies, I knew how to live in pain apart from God (growing up), and I knew how to live a life of peace with God (college-marriage before kids) and now I had to learn how to live ALL of life with God.
Now I see how God was gracious to bring me through each of these stages like a loving Father does, knowing when His children need a little extra push to keep growing. Walking with God did not mean I would be spared the turmoils of life; it meant He longed to develop his fruit of the spirit, which needs as its fertile growing soil some pretty sordid times. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this---God’s finest creation in Genesis begins with dirt.
Rick Warren suggests God would rather His children have a perpetual limp from a thorn He’s given, to a perpetual strut of independence. God knew my dependence had grown on my own ability to rise up and meet each challenge square in the face and He needed to teach me that it was not by my strength that I had been set free.
There would be challenges that, regardless of my ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ mentality, I would not be able to meet on my own. God was teaching me to hold onto Him, which meant letting go of the fairy tale that two people who loved each other and God would avoid miserable times in life.
Contemporary worship music has been a consistent component in my journey to know God more. It has fed the life of His Spirit inside me and brought me to my knees countless times. It has helped me to quit clinging to the fleeting so I could hold onto Jesus.
Sara Groves ranks up there as one of my favorites primarily because of her honesty. Her music has an incredible truth telling quality about it that cattle prods my selfish heart straight to His refining hand more times than I’d like to admit. She reveals God in our lives right in the midst of when we’d chose our own comfort over His character development. She exposes. Man I love her music! I saw her live last winter---she is the real deal!
If you are looking for a CD that's gonna stick with you and draw you closer to Him---check her out! “Painting Pictures in Egypt” still brings tears to my eyes, 8 years later from the time when I jotted down the notes that I would one day write up into this devotion. Sarah recounts how the Israelites pined for the very slavery they had begged for release from while they journeyed in the desert. That passage of Scripture has always struck me as ironic, the Israelites begged Moses ‘take us back.’
Yet, here I was, pining for simpler times that didn’t require so much of me. God was teaching me during these broken years (see “Poop Stained Lessons” devotional) to know Him more in the path I’d chosen. I’d sing/shout these lyrics in the car as an offering and acceptance of where I was as a mother. The song didn't take away the struggle, just validated it and helped expose my desire for comfort over character building.
(My boys have patiently endured hearing this song probably 100's of times over their lives now at 8,8 and 9! Often times the twins join in singing it with me from the backseat!)
"I don't want to leave here, I don't want to stay. Feels like pinching to me either way. And the places I long for most are the places where I've been, they are calling out to me like a long lost friend. It's not about losing faith, it's not about trust. It's all about comfortable, when you move so much. And the place I was in wasn't perfect, but I had found a way to live. It wasn't milk or honey, but then neither is this. I've been painting pictures of Egypt. Leaving out what it lacks. The future feels so hard and I wanna go back. But the places that used to fit me cannot hold the things I've learned. Those roads are closed off to me while my back was turned."
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