A Letter To Young Mothers

Dear Young Mothers Everywhere—

I was one of you once and I know how hard it is.

Motherhood has to be the hardest job on the planet but I think it is getting harder. Not harder in the it-hurts-to-push-this-baby-out sort of way. Not harder in the must-lug-gallons-of-water-to-the-stove sort of way. Not harder in the pray-my-children-survive-the-polio-epidemic sort of way. No. In many ways, motherhood has gotten considerably easier. Medical advances and indoor plumbing and labor saving devices have done wonders for the daily life of the average mother. These advances have made life easier and given us free time and kept us from looking like worn out pieces of beef jerky by the time we are 40. But they have come with a cost and that cost is driving us crazy.

I had my first child in 1990. Back then I was faced with a few choices: Natural childbirth vs. intervention, breast vs. bottle, stay-at-home vs. work, and cloth vs. disposable. That was it. For me, the choices were easy. There were not categories and subcategories and sub-subcategories. There was no internet to tell you the pros and cons of each decision you made. You just did life. You just lived.

Even then, in these most basic of decisions, people could get defensive. It wasn't all fun and games. There were awkward moments. I held to my mothering principles with much more vigor than I should have. I failed to be as gracious to those who chose a different path . . . or had the path chosen for them. But looking back that seems rather mild compared to the coming storm.

Fast forward a few years and the Great Parenting Debates took over. For the first time I started to see parents treating each other with absolute scorn. No longer were women just a little defensive over their choices. What came next was out and out war.

Parenting programs took over churches. Cultural cliques were formed overnight. Parenthood, and motherhood by extension, became a matter of "doing it right." Schedules and disciplines and programs ruled the day and your success was judged by the behavior of your children. Those who succeeded at the program gloated in their success and gave out exhausting and exalted advice, all with an air of superiority and self-righteousness. Those who just couldn't get with the program were left feeling like desperate failures as parents.

By 1996 I had 4 kids who were as poor at following programs as I was at implementing them. Our life was just . .  well . . . chaos. But it was fun chaos, most of the time. I do remember on more than one occasion being totally overwhelmed and wanting to run off to Montana . . . ALONE, and even once when I actually wished I were deaf, but looking back, I do not have one single regret that I failed to get with the program.

Fast forward to today. I have lots and lots of friends on Facebook who are young moms or young moms-to-be. The choices they have before them are astronomical. The websites, the mommy blogs, Pinterest (oh EVIL Pinterest). The stakes are high. The expectations are huge. The consequences of every little decision are supposedly so dire. At least that is what they say.

Somewhere along the way we began to believe a lie. And it is a LIE FROM THE PIT OF HELL. The lie that there is one right way to be a mother. The lie that we must make every RIGHT decision or the consequences will be catastrophic. The lie that we can control our children's lives. The lie that being a failure as a mother is a fate worse than death.

Run, I say, RUN to pick up your Bible. Turn to Micah 6:8 and read aloud what it says. "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does The Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

No mention of childbirth techniques or clever birth announcements. No mention of diapers, cloth or not. No mention of schedules. No mention of highchair manners. No mention of education. No mention of medical advances or food sources. No mention of anything specific at all.

God does not require of you to be a perfect mother. The minute you begin to gloat over your successes or wallow in your failures you are using the wrong measuring stick.

So if you want to put your baby in all organic diapers and grow and make your own baby food, go right ahead. If you just gave your toddler a can of cold Spaghetti-os for lunch, no problem, you are in good company (even if no one else admits it). If you can homeschool with delight and your kids thrive in the environment, good for you. If you feel that a professional teacher may be a better choice for your child, you may be right. If you are concerned about vaccines and decide to withhold them, fine. If you are concerned about communicable diseases and feel that having immunizations are in the best interest of your children, go for it.

We are limited and finite and can only do so much. God created us with different strengths and weaknesses, gives us different resources, places us in different circumstances. This one-size-fits-all-robot-Stepford-mom stuff is robbing us of our joy and pulling us away from what we were created to do: To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.

With sympathetic love-

A Worn Out Mom and Kindred Spirit

P.S. (added 3/14/13): Wow! This letter has been read by more people than all my other posts combined—and then some! Thank you to so many who have passed it along. (If you found this post encouraging, you might also read Broken Mother's Day. And my previously most-read post, No Words, Just Tears.)

P.P.S. (3/22/13): With the overwhelming response to this post (thank you all!) I've decided to add a Facebook page for my blog. If you'd like to see links to new posts in your Facebook news feed, you are cordially invited to 'Like' my "Cheetos for Breakfast" page, here. Or click on the link I've added in the right-hand column.

P.P.P.S. (3/25/13): Two weeks ago, I had this little blog which was read mostly by a small group of friends and acquaintances. Then I posted the above "Letter to Young Mothers." A couple of those friends shared the link on Facebook, as did some of their friends, and so on... As of this morning, this post is closing in on 211,000 pageviews. My little blog has almost 256,000 pageviews overall, and the Cheetos for Breakfast Facebook page already has 837 'Likes'... To say this is humbling is an understatement. And all the kind comments! (Well, most of them anyway.) What more can I say but THANK YOU! And maybe... gulp! :)

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On Snowstorms and Sacrifice

Anybody whose has known me for more than five minutes knows that I love weather. Mainly exciting weather. Rumbly, bumbly, blowing, snowing, Weather Channel newsworthy sort of weather. I have been this way as long as I can remember.

The problem is that I live in a place that parcels out such weather as if it were the rarest and most precious of resources so that every few years we actually get what I consider an exciting weather event. Severe storms and snow are the nuggets most precious to me and I can find myself seething with frustration and even rage when everyone else is getting them but us. It sounds silly, but I do believe that it is a spiritual problem.

Last night I had a heart rending and quite unsettling dream. Like all my dreams, it was a jumble of familiar and unfamiliar people and places and circumstances and none of it made any sense (do dreams ever make sense?), but the crux of the matter was that someone I love dearly had accidentally run over and killed a man and might be sentenced to death for it. I knew that I needed to offer to die in her place but my emotions wouldn't get with the program.  It made all the sense in the world and it was the right thing to do, it was just the hard thing to do. I didn't want to die.

Then again, Jesus didn't want to die either. He fell to the ground and prayed and three times asked to have the cup pass from him. So even Jesus knows the anguish and raw emotion of sacrifice. 

Strangely enough, my passion for weather and my hesitance to give all for those I love have an awful lot in common. ME! It really is all about me. There is so much ME at the center of everything I do and everything I am. I want snow. I want people listening to me. I want a world according to my order. I want to control when I live and when I die. 

It is terrifying and wearying to be the god of your own universe, yet it is so hard to give it up. Everything in me claws for control. Everything in me pushes and shoves to get my needs met my way. Do I really not trust that there is a God out there who created me for so much more than this grabbing and striving and controlling and worrying and coveting and navel gazing? 

There is nothing left to do but to bring these shattered pieces of my self-centered life to Jesus. I plead for forgiveness and beg for faith to trust in the God who has my good and his glory so totally wrapped up. Dying to me and what I want is hard but so very good.

As I write this the northeast is set to get upwards of three feet of snow. Today it will be a foggy 55 degrees here. I can rest assured that God is ruling the weather pattern and I don't have to know why. In the mean time, I will wrestle with what it means to truly sacrifice for those I love without my self-centered agenda getting in the way.

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It Is Worse Than I Thought

This morning was not a good morning. I was on Day #5 of the Migraine From Hell and I was heading to the MD for my annual exam and labwork, which means that I had no breakfast and (cue Psycho theme) no coffee. To add to the the melee, I was battling a number of personal demons.

You know these critters. The beliefs and insecurities and obsessions and pathologies that rage within you year after stinking year and you cannot put those puppies to bed and move on with your life. Or you think you have done so only to find one rear its ugly head out of nowhere and you feel stripped of everything you are and all the ground you've covered and you wonder how somethimg so little can still be so big in your life after so long.

Anyway, I was facing down my demons in the car and getting really up close and personal with God and feeling like I was actually making some strides in the demon bashing department. I got kind of excited thinking how I was growing in grace and maturity and maybe people would one day look up to me and think I was wise and BAMMO! Like a 2X4 smaccked between my eyes. I was totally laid low by my self-centeredness.

I've never been good at anything but I seem to be good at this. Somehow I managed to turn a raw and real moment of struggle into race for self-improvement. I wasn't, deep down truly in my heart, interested in dying to my idols and resting in the arms of Jesus. I was interested in moving one more rung up the ladder of the Ginny Turns Into The Wise Woman That Everybody Admires Plan. It wasn't about my worsiping God. It was about wanting others to worship me. Plain and simple.

Tonight I found my problem while reading Tullian Tchividjian's "Glorious Ruin". It is called the theology of glory.

"In the theology of glory, life becomes a ladder. Each little victory or improvement brings us one rung closer to the top--which is always just out of sight........we communicate that God exists for our benefit, happiness, self-fulfillment, and personal transformation. These aren't necessarily bad things, and God isn't necessarily opposed to them, but God in Christ cannot be reduced to a means to our selfish ends. He is the end Himself!"

I may be the only person on the planet that can turn repentance into a self-improvement plan. I am so thankful that the gospel is big enough and deep enough and wide enough to cover this as well.

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Gotta Get a Meal Ticket

Yes! I do! The above title was the name of a song in Elton John's  "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album. I have not the foggiest what the it was actually about and I didn't listen to it much seeing how I didn't care for the tune (my only real criteria), but I find the title rather catchy and fitting for my predicament.

I was telling my husband just yesterday that if there was a responsibility, anything at all, that I could hand over forever to someone else, it would be meals and all that they entail: planning, shopping, prep, cleanup. Give me laundry. Give me yard work. Give me windows. Yes! Windows! Have me scrubbing toilets daily with a toothbrush or scooping poop in the yard. Reroofing? I don't care. Give me just about any domestic responsibility on the planet but just don't make me have to decide, day in and day out, what is for dinner.

It is all so wearying and I can't stand it. I cannot think of any other daily or weekly (or monthly even) activity that requires so much decision making, financial outlay, and energy output that produces such little reward. Think about it. On the most basic of scales you still have to do this. You have to decide WHAT you want to eat, the angst of which will be described in great detail below. You have to go to the store and purchase the necessary ingredients and, if you are anything like me, you will come home minus one key item, necessitating either another trip to store or a foray into your noncreative culinary skills. THEN you have to prep the stuff. Cutting and chopping and sizzling away, dirtying dish after dish. Next comes trying to get it on the table in a timely fashion at an appropriate tempererature for people who may or may not even be at home, much less have any desire to consume the fruit of your labor. A few blinks and a couple of mumbles later the food is gone (or the eaters have gone to Burger King in lieu of tonight's bizarre concoction) and you are left holding the bag......er .....dishes. Next comes putting the leftovers away, which means you have to venture into the bowels of the pantry for Little Plasic Containers That Have No Lids. Then it is dish after dish after dish, easier when the dishwasher is empty but, more often than not, it is full of clean dishes resulting in another wearying postprandial activity so that you can just tidy up and be done with the entire ordeal. It is completely unsatisfying.

Why...why....WHY is this so hard for me? I think part of it has to do with my history. I did not grow up with fond memories of Norman Rockwellesque family meals where we helped with the cooking and sat around the table, exchanging stories of our day, and gleaning wisdom from the pater familias. From the time I was 14 on I pretty much ate meals by myself, living on whatever was the diet food of choice until Lean Cuisines came along. Thank you, Stouffer's.

As a full fledged adult (at least they say I am), it is now my duty to feed my family, only any meal planning turns into a schizophrenic-like event. Holly Homemaker meets Frugal Franny meets Vegan Vanessa meets Paleo Paulette meets Organic Olivia. In the words of H.I. McDonough in "Raising Arizona", "Now there's what's right and there's what's right and never the twain shall meet." How on earth to even plan meals that appeal to my family and fit into our rather stringent budget, all the while satisfying the often conflicting opinions of the loud and incessant voices of the Virtuous Eaters, is totally beyond me. Even with my underutilized 4 year degree in nutrition from a large accredited state university, the buffet of sensibilities and options is disorienting and overwhelming.

The shopping may or not be an issue, given the day. Coupons are virtually impossible for me to track down, clip out, get in my pocket, and then actually remember to use. About halfway through any shopping trip I get tired and overwhelmed and hungry and have to pee and then feel guilty about all the money I am spending and bail on the entire excursion, arriving home with an odd assortment of things like bouillon cubes, kidney beans, cereal, and instant coffee.

Meal prep is an adventure. I have about 2 squre feet of counter space and no knife skills. Suffice it to say that it is a miracle that I still have ALL of all of my digits. The meal itself produces little stress for me, as long as it is just our family. It is when we add non-family guests that I really freak out. What if they don't like it? What if the food isn't "right"? Have I offended them by serving tub margarine rather than real butter or conventional veggies rather than organic? Is it bad that my spaghetti sauce isn't organic or my salsa comes from a jar? Are they disgusted that I didn't spread the hot dog buns in a decorative fashion on a nice pottery platter? Are paper napkins an affront to their aesthetic sensibilities? What if we don't have the right manners or pass food the wrong direction? And are we supposed to wait until somebody (I've never figured out who) takes the first bite?  Maybe I was raised after wolves after all.

Cleanup isn't so much of an issue. If I don't have to do all the former, the latter is a piece of cake. You really can't screw up cleanup, unless you break the dishes, but since they are my own dishes I really don't care.  But you can screw up food storage. And this is where I fail again. Leftovers get left over for weeks. Spilled jars leak sticky fluid in the fridge, gluing the gallon of milk to the shelf. The hot dogs get poorly wrapped and wind up resembling petrified sticks of dynamite. And let's not forget all that produce that grows into a fuzzy, liquified goo in the back of the produce bin.

I could go on and on. You get the picture and is precisely why I say I hate, HATE meal responsibilities. Either it is cereal and milk from now on or I just gotta, gotta get a meal ticket.

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Tweaking and the Pursuit of Perfection

Earlier today a friend mentioned that quite often his clients ask him to "tweak" a project, but in reality want to make a major change. Most often they ask for a tweak because it would presumably cost less than a change. Funny how semantics work that way. I found it amusing that this topic would even come up because tweaking has been on my mind a lot recently. I think our culture has a huge problem with tweaking. It is like we're a nation of Tweakaholics.

What is tweaking, really? According to the Oxford Dictionary Online (it sounds credible, doesn't it?), to tweak something is to make fine adjustments to it. I think of tweaking is making it "just right". The problem is that "just right" is so elusive. Perfection really will never be found this side of heaven.

Tweaking is a luxury, really. It is what you do when you no longer have to get your most basic needs met and can move on to some level of fulfillment. The only problem is, that the tweaking is almost always done in an area that never will truly fulfill.

What if we collected the time we spend tweaking our lives and used it for some nobler purpose? What if we were less obsessed about what we look like or what we wear or what we eat or what we live in or what we drive and turned that time, energy, and resources in a more worthy direction? What if we spent the bulk of who we are in pursuit of things that do not fade away, wither, and die? Almost nothing we tweak can be taken with us. Not waistlines or kitchen counters or paint colors or hair or engines or term papers.

There is no perfection this side of heaven. We are told that "godliness with contentment is great gain" (I Timothy 6:6). We are to hold on to things very loosely. We are to hold on to life itself very loosely. Maybe we should try doing less tweaking and more loving. I wonder what that would look like.

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No Shame

I have pretty much been a wimp my entire life. All spineless 49 years of it. But every so often something happens that lights a fire under me and as my husband well knows, watch out. Sometimes it is seeing somebody else speak out with boldness that gives me courage. Sometimes it is getting so frustrated that I, as my grandmother would say, "bust a gusset". Sometimes it is just becoming so confident and at peace with my convictions that I cannot help but speak out. Today there was a harmonic convergence of all three.

The issue at hand is the Christian's use of antidepressants. (Note that when I am regarding antidepressants in their use to treat not only depression but also anxiety spectrum disorders and OCD) Now I have had a more intimate relationship with this class of drug than many people out there. Starting at age 12 when I could no longer function and had developed bizarre rituals to keep myself safe to age 17 while I tried to starve myself out of existence to age 24 when I reacted poorly to oral contraceptive use in early marriage and finally to age 33 when I could not longer live with a constant state of doom looming over my head and got on them for good. Antidepressants have been a part of my life for a long, long time. Every doctor I have seen in the past two decades has told me that my body obviously does not make enough serotonin. No doctor has ever seen a problem with their use.

Apparently a lot of Christians do. The concerns seem to go something like this: If you take meds you will feel better and therefore not address the sin causing your depression. Painful emotions are what drive you to Jesus and if you take meds you won't hurt and will not experience the depth of God's mercy. If you take meds you will become addicted to false something or nother. Meds are overused and it is unspiritual to be jumping on the bandwagon? I'm not sure really what all the hooplah is about, now that I think about it. I just know that taking meds, this class of meds, is a shameful thing for many Christians. 

Well, this is what I have to say. We seek medical treatment for all sorts of conditions but feel it is somehow unbiblical to pursue so for ongoing depression? What are we? Christian Scientists? No. We live in a fallen world in fallen bodies. Sometimes those fallen bodies can create debilitating emotions.What if the depression isn't a spiritual problem? Or what if it even only partially a spiritual problem? What if a medication can enable you to better see the truth of the gospel and the wondrous works of God? What if the medication clears the cobwebs from your brain so that you are better able to see your sin and repent with joy? What if the medication actually helps you to sin less and embrace God more? This has been so true in my life and in the lives of so many people I know. Taking antidepressants is not a sin. But I would dare to say that making somebody feel inferior or ungodly because they do take medication IS.

I know that that sounds very harsh. But to treat somebody who is pursuing healing in their life as somehow unspiritual because they may need medication is downright cruel. We aren't all alike. Life is not a level playing field. Some of us are stronger than others in some areas and weaker in others. We are not the same. And sometimes we need some help. 

Please know that I am not saying that drugs are the answer. Drugs alone are never the answer.  Only full dependence on the grace of God is the answer. But if taking meds enables me to see God more clearly and trust him more fully and be the wife and mother and friend that I need to be and live the life he called me to live, then I am going to take them. Without shame.

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Name the Cheeto Muncher

Thanks to my wonderful husband, Matt, my blog now looks like a blog instead of a test tube. I have totally fallen in love with this little fellow in the photo, munching away on the Cheeto (for breakfast, of course), but he needs a name. Give me suggestions. If I pick yours then I will write a blog post in your honor on the topic of your choice.

Let the game begin!

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