The Lord’s Pattern For Families

There are many parents who care for children in traditional families. These families, made of a husband and a wife who nurture and protect children, are the ideal.

“Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. …

“Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. … Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another [and] observe the commandments of God.” 

(Source: Family Proclamation)

On Real Motherhood

In this post:  the dance of motherhood and being good enough 

“Being a mother is like trying to hold a wolf by the ears,” Gram said. “If you have three or four –or more – chickabiddies, you’re dancing on a hot griddle all the time.” (Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons)  I think that holding the wolf took all my attention at first.  I know I was directionless for the first years of motherhood.  Keeping the chickies fed, diapered and bathed was a colossal task.  

My first two kids were easy babies.  They didn’t throw tantrums, they slept at night, yet I struggled to keep up with them.  I did my best, but I was still stressed by the little things — toilet training, spilled milk, muddy shoes.  The first years were painful, because I was growing my mommy wings. 

And then after four kids, I started to relax.  The tasks shifted from exceptional to ordinary.  I began to hold the wolf and dance a little.  I stopped worrying so much.  I grew into, “a mother who doesn't worry so much about being bad or good but just recognizes that she's both, and neither. A mother who does her best, and for whom that is good enough, even if, in the end, her best turns out to be, simply, not bad.” (Ayelet Waldman)  I am certain that even what I do poorly is good enough.  I’ve seen my children be kind, thoughtful and polite.  I’ve seen them do better at things than I expected because I know what I didn’t teach them.  And each year I add a few steps to my dance.  I make a new goal, I add a new project, I reach a little higher.  And the more I reach, the less I do, which doesn’t make sense.  Here’s how Julie B Beck puts it.  

“Mothers who know do less. They permit less of what will not bear good fruit eternally. They allow less media in their homes, less distraction, less activity that draws their children away from their home. Mothers who know are willing to live on less and consume less of the world’s goods in order to spend more time with their children—more time eating together, more time working together, more time reading together, more time talking, laughing, singing, and exemplifying. These mothers choose carefully and do not try to choose it all.”  

Some people call me patient.  It’s not patience…it’s just that the little stuff doesn’t stress me out anymore.  Spilled milk?  wipe it.  Poopy underwear?  start a batch of laundry.  Muddy shoes?  mop.  I still get stressed but it is less frequently caused by kids.  Now I’m stressed because I spend so much time on others that there isn’t much “me" time.  I’m getting better at taking time for “me” and letting other stuff slide.

I get tired.  I often don’t have the emotional capital to keep investing in my children all the way to bedtime.  It's a tricky dance that changes as they get older.  I try to be a good dancer but it turns out more like ‘not bad.’ 

Being pregnant changes everything.  When I’m pregnant I slow way down, eat more, sleep more and waddle more.  I have learned to simplify down to the bare essentials.  Usually, by the end, every normal routine has come to a complete standstill.  I’ve learned to accept this as normal, allow it and resume life when I feel ready.  

The shortest perspective you can have is the close-up view of life as the minutes tick by.  The longest perspective you can have includes eternity.  It’s all about perspective.  The longer your perspective, the easier trials become.  As you look at your situation, think about creating the life you want.  Dream big.  What does it look like and feel like.  Break down your dreams into small incremental steps from 10 years to 5 years to 1 year to 6 months to this month.  This process helps make this month part of a bigger whole and this minute a vital part of your wildest dreams.

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Where I Come From

I'm a mother of eight in rural Texas.  I come from a family of six children and my husband comes from a family of eight children so we are in our element with eight of our own.  We started our family when we were just kids -- I was barely 22 when my oldest was born.  All aspects of adult life were new to me.  I had only started to explore myself as autonomous from my parents and the safe haven they created.  I look at my decision to marry and have a family as a leap of faith.  Sure I'd seen other people with successful families but I had no way to gauge my own ability to fly.  Now that I have been a mother for awhile, I can honestly say that at the time I had no idea what I was doing.  I wasn't prepared but I learned by doing.

My first child is a girl.  I came home from the hospital with her with some serious doubts about my ability to care for her.  This was no babysitting job.  My own mother was two hours away and unavailable to help me.  My husband knew no more than I did about taking care of babies.  God must have known something about me that I didn't know because he sent a precious little child into my life and said, "You go girl!"  Of course, at first, I was totally enamored with her perfect features in miniature.  Then she began to fuss and became seriously colicky.  She cried and threw up the milk in her tummy every day after 5 pm.  I didn't know anything about colic.  "Surely my baby was perfect!" I thought.  I waited to ask questions.  Eventually, another young mother suggested I try Mylicon drops which she had used with her baby.  These helped some.  Eventually my baby outgrew these symptoms and we kept going.  Life has a way of speeding up not slowing down.

Nine months later, I discovered I was expecting again.  This meant that my toddler who was barely ready to stand alone would soon be faced with a sibling to share me with.  It also meant that my identity as a woman was changing again.  As his birth approached I wrote, "I wish the best for you.  I will help you as much as I can.  You will be surprised at how different life on Earth is from the warm darkness of the womb."

Now I have eight children.  My youngest is less than a month old.  He is as precious and perfect as all the others were at birth.  In giving him life, I once again gave up my physical strength for a period of ten months.  I let my body do its thing while I ate and slept and put aside projects.  Every time I give a baby birth via my body, I give up my own will for a while.  It is my gift to God.

In losing myself, time after time in pregnancy, I have found a new self.  I have become a woman with more depth, more patience and more endurance.  I have lost some of my selfishness and a lot of my pride.  I have relinquished appearance, order and entertainment.  I have also given up things that matter -- together time with my children, marital harmony and opportunities to reconnect with my siblings.  These things I have to reassert as priorities in my life now that I'm past the pregnancy.

And the miracle is that I've reached this point in my life together with my husband and my children and I still have a sense of humor, a tender heart and a belief that God has a plan for me.