In case I forgot to tell you~

Just in case I forgot to mention, now that my own kids are grown and I see the whole child-bearing/rearing years through misty-rose-colored glasses and tell you how my children were always cute, so sweet, and just always behaved – yes, well, in case I forget to tell you, while you’re mopping up spilled milk and changing the 37th diaper of the day and refereeing sibling spats (which sometimes accounts for 87.682% of your waking hours) and experiencing the inevitable law of physics which proves that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich will always, will always fall onto the kitchen floor with both pb and j splatting directly onto said floor, *splat*, and oh-my-goodness, nooooo-as you’re grabbing the craft scissors from big sister who just lopped off a handful of baby sister’s hair while little brother is throwing his cars into the toilet ~ yes, in case I might have forgotten to mention…

Well, I just thought that maybe a 50-something who is {way} past where you are (pregnant or w/newborn, pregnant and w/newborn, toddlers, pre-schoolers, school-kids,  etc~ in the house // yes, YOU, 20 or 30-something mommy) ~  maybe I could give you a few random encouragements for today?  Pull up a chair and let me just tell you…wait – ok, keep running, I’ll talk while you manage everything in the known universe!

You will make it. 

You can do this!  Those kids are going to bring you joy you never thought possible, but the joy will be amazingly-over-the-top sweet because they will also have challenged you beyond your limits and you’ll have wept from deepest places in worry or anxiety and there will be things that happen that you cannot control or fix and somewhere along the line most certainly you will have believed you are the worst mother in the world.  Yes, there will be those days.  Days when you think you are the worst mother and days when you actually are – a momster.  Don’t ask me how I know.  Really, please don’t ask.

I promise you this:

Your kids are perfectly normal.  Or at least a reasonable variation of normal.

God chose you, yes YOU to mommy the one(s) in your nest.  It wasn’t a mistake, not for you or for the child(ren).  You are the best woman for the job!

Yes, any vital life lesson will have to be taught an average of 2387 times – in. a. row.  That is just the average.  There is nothing wrong with Junior.  He just needs the steady, disciplined, day-in and day-out guidance which will finally sink in.  And before you go thinking he must be defective to take so long in the learning,  just think about some of the things God has had to teach you – over and over and over again.  See?

One day they’ll dress themselves (ready or not).  Sooner than you think the schedule can have more flexibility to it.  There’ll come a time when all the consistency and effort and strength you have exerted today, this past week, the last few months  will just morph into an easy rhythm of life and living (at least briefly).

One day the word “no” will start to evaporate from the minute by minute – from the kiddos and you.  There’ll come a time of yes!, I promise!

Hey, remember the 80s?  Me, neither.  I look fairly sane, though, don’t I?

Listen, I always say, “I raised 5 kids and I lived to tell it.”  I mean, I had 5 babies in less than 7 years and can barely remember the early 80s {{don’t try this at home}} and I can remember being tired, just bone-tired and sometimes overwhelmed to the point of asking God what on earth He was thinking entrusting me with these little people.   I’d never have made it through without help and compassion from friends.  I am so thankful for the “cloud of witnesses” that waved me on and gave advice or didn’t dare, but were proof I could be the mommy God thought I could be.  My mom did it and supported me.  Miss Faye from church who just so happened to have 4 daughters and 1 son like me (except hers were teenagers by then) was such an example, teaching me how to just relax and trust God and LOVE them, which covers a multitude of sins.  So thankful for women who showed the way.

Don’t go it alone.  get in a group for encouragement.  Find an older mom at church who can cheer you to the finish line she just got to not too long ago.  Because btw, Titus 2 already set a good example for that, we “olders” are supposed to teach you “youngers.”   :)  It is a major honor for me to get to impart from the experiences I’ve lived through.  It isn’t always easy to ask for advice and lots of times, we think we are beyond the advice of a previous generation, having found a better way, but I think you’ll find, if you open your heart, that your experiences and challenges are not so different from what some one my age or even older went through with their kids.  Partake of the wisdom available!

By looking at [the older women], the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. Titus 2.4

ALL mommies have felt inadequate at times,  ~rushed, overwhelmed, overworked, unheard, unseen, unloving, raggedy.  All of us have felt like and probably been, at one point or another, the worst mom on the block.  It usually happens just before a glory moment when all the kids are clean at once and cuddling with you and you have that moment of Wow-I was born for this.  Those few seconds get us through, don’t they?

Remember:

The days are long, but the years are short.  It’s a marathon not a sprint.  Take a deep breath (especially if it seems like one of those really looooong days), and think about where you want to see each child in three or four years, what kind of human being you will have hoped you’ve raised.  And for that dream, which will quickly come to pass, keep at it!  Keep loving them and teaching them and raising them well and praying over them and saying the same things again and again if you must because it is the steady consistency of your message that will give them safety and disciplined hearts and minds and turn them into amazingly resourceful human beings who will change their world and bless nations!

And – in spite of us, sometimes, they just go right on ahead and turn out beautifully, as if deep inside, they knew what we were trying to do.  And they loved us for it and they became all God intended anyway.  I have proof of this {{aforementioned babies now 27-34 years old}}!

I am cheering you on!  If you’ve got ’em, raise ’em & love ’em – like nobody else can!

And in the cuteness category, Tara sent me this the other day and if you still need more hope for the journey, take it from Kid President: the secret to changing the world? – MOMS!!!

Have you checked out Stef’s blog yet?  She is a young mom who is writing amazing stuff {HERE}!  I wish I’d have been as smart when my kids were that little!