Motherhood is one of life’s greatest unsolved mysteries. There’s no singular right way to do it. There’s no magic formula, and certainly no one size fits all. What motivates one of my four girls doesn’t even get a sideways glance from the other. Instead motherhood is a process we have to grow (ugh) and change (yuck) with. It can be easy today and nearly impossible tomorrow. And the more you screw up, the better you get at it. (Sorry first child, we had to start somewhere.)
You can be cruising along on a high because you finally got the back-to-school colds out of your house, no one complained about emptying the dishwasher today, the laundry is not only done, but PUT AWAY with minimal meltdowns (it may all be stuffed in one drawer, but it’s no longer on my couch, so I call it a win). And then change smacks you upside the head with a daughter who suddenly has volatile emotions (like clockwork after 8:30p when mom is ready to clock out). Someone sniffled and blew their nose a little too long. The formerly sweet, youngest 2 1/2 year old just crossed her arms, stomped her foot, and furrowed her brow at you when asked to please brush her teeth. Oh no she didn’t!?
Life throws hard things at you like bugs on a windshield. Splat, splat, big fat juicy splat! It keeps you on your toes, forces you to change and evolve or break. Sometimes it’s a fourth kid, sometimes it’s a move to a different country, or maybe it’s an illness in the family that shatters the future you had envisioned. Change is hard. Growth from change is harder.
Adapting to a new role or adding one can result in days I just want to give up. I’m supposed to be encouraging moms through blogging, so I set a goal to post twice a month. I’m pretty sure it’s been two months instead. I want to be better equipped to really help the moms I talk to, write to, or hang back with after drop off so I started a Biblical Counseling Course. The suggested schedule was to complete it in a year and I smugly chuckled at how slow that was, I’d be done in 4 months tops. Reality? I’m already well behind the one-year schedule.
For the past eight years I was completely and totally fulfilled with my motherly duties and had zero desire to add to my plate. I didn’t see how it was humanly possible. I was maxed out with my mom, wife, and household duties. And then something itched. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I felt a shift. Suddenly I was looking for more, a calling outside the four walls of my house. I found a tiny piece of brain space that was playing with ideas and spending more time connecting with other moms on a deeper level through text or play dates. I was drawn to books and podcasts about intentionally encouraging other moms. I was compelled by what can only be the Holy Spirit to ask the hard questions and hold my friends as they cried through the hard answers. I had shifted from focusing on my own problems to a desire to comfort women trudging down the same problematic paths.
Over the last nine years of raising four daughters there was more than one occasion I thought I had been broken beyond repair. One of those times was in September of 2017. My husband was away for work in Japan, I had a 2-year-old and a 1-month-old with central apnea being treated with pure caffeine. We had to watch her sleep to make sure she didn’t stop breathing. So I never slept. I was sick with an awful cold along with my 2-year-old and was wearing a mask (before they were cool and socially acceptable) to not get my infant sick. My baby was scream crying, which was all she did most of the time since her system was wrecked with caffeine. I ran on adrenaline bred by terror after already almost losing her once. And then the world started to shake- literally. It was September 19, eerily the anniversary of Mexico’s largest earthquake in 1985, and no one was prepared. I grabbed my babies and ran out the front door. I didn’t trust the foundation of this old house on a day it wasn’t shaking! When the ground stopped rolling the aftermath was devastating. Our home was fine, but the city as a whole was in chaos.
My husband wouldn’t answer my calls, our time zones were reversed. I was barely standing on a crazy diet to not upset my infant’s delicate system with my breast milk and a sick 2-year-old was crying at my knees. I was scared to go in the house, but couldn’t stand in the street forever. My family was in California and phone lines and traffic kept me from getting to any local friends. Plus, everyone was busy taking care of their own. I froze. I broke down. I shut down.
I didn’t see it at the time, but God rescued me. I didn’t ask for help, I didn’t know how. So he sent it. My in laws lived about 3 hours drive from us, but not one I was comfortable attempting alone- this was before Waze got to Mexico and I couldn’t risk my baby, Elena, sleeping in the car unmonitored. My mother in law called to check on me, knowing I was alone. She insisted I come stay with them until Rodolfo came home. She sent their driver into the chaos of the city to rescue me and my two children. They located a night nurse in their small town, because I wouldn’t leave the city without one. Yes, I was barely functioning, but I still wouldn’t take care of myself unless I knew Elena was taken care of. The budding start of new, unhealthy control issues and idolizing my children.
Once there, I was able to relax, slightly. I have black spots in my memory from those early months with Elena. Yet I remember breaking down in front of my mom at Costco in Mexico City, because I was overwhelmed with the burden and stress of feeling responsible for keeping Elena alive. I was too scared to even wear her in a wrap or ergo for fear I might not notice she forgot to breathe.
Through an inexplicable miracle Elena did eventually start to improve at around 6 months. It’s another miracle that her growth and development were unaffected even after such long periods of low oxygen and…well I’d rather not relive the details. Just trust me when I say God rescued us, and she is my miracle child.
Prayer will do that. Strangers would come to me saying they had prayed for my family and for Elena’s healing. People around the world knew her name and were praying for her, and for me. I didn’t ask for any of this. My church, friends and family who love Jesus and love like Him, did this on my behalf. If you’re reading this and one of them, I am truly, eternally grateful.
We have all lived, and will continue to live, hard things and big changes. It’s the comeback that counts. God spoke to Jeremiah in Chapter 18 verses 1-6, and like me, he needed a visual to really get what God was teaching him,
1This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2“Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. 5Then the word of the LORD came to me. 6He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.
There are a lot of cracks in this pot. Pride when my home and family run smoothly and hogging all the credit. Crack. Doubting God will come through for me. Crack. Miscarriage. Crack. Thinking I have to control everything- even my infant’s breathing. Crack. Being angry with God, thinking he abandoned me and my child. Crack, crack. Refusing to leave Mexico because America wasn’t part of my plan and it scared me. Crack. Yelling at my kids, again. Crack. Having four girls in six years and the last one within less than a year of moving countries with all our family a plane ride away. Crack.
Some of my cracks are self-inflicted, and some of them are circumstantial, but all of them have been smoothed out by my Maker. Each trial and pitfall has contributed to the shape of who I am today. God doesn’t care how many times I crack. He cares that I come to him for repairs. What matters to him is whether I am willing to be reshaped. It’s the reshaping that makes us relatable, empathetic, resilient, grateful, and able to comfort others.
Bit by bit I have been reshaped. Seeing Jesus in a sweet church friend who brought me lasagna made specifically to my crazy breastfeeding diet for Elena smoothed over my fear with love. Meeting strangers who prayed for us reshaped my faith. Having a third, and fourth healthy child after miscarriage and Elena covered my doubts. Writing and studying to serve other moms has been especially healing. It has brought purpose to all I’ve lived as a mom.
God is my potter and I am the willing clay. I’m molded and shaped by the highs and the lows I encounter. If I stop allowing myself to be shaped, if I force the wheel to stop, I would dry up, crack, and break. But I’m never beyond repair for my Maker. I make a choice each time to allow God to mold my cracks back together into a new vessel, a powerful one. I may have cracked over the years, but I am not broken. Send me into the fire, it will only make me stronger.
Thank you, God is working through you.