My life is truly blessed. Most of the time it's really hard, stressful, and chaotic but above all very blessed.
Sometimes I look back at myself before I had children. I think about all of my ideas about motherhood.
How I would keep my house clean with chore charts and rotating cleaning schedules.
How I would successfully discipline my children.
How I would meal plan and cook for my family.
How I would fit in exercise and date nights with Bryce.
How easy and fun breastfeeding would be.
On and on and on my ideas and dreams went. I think about what I thought I knew back then and... I laugh at my oh so innocent and naive self.
Now I realize that the pregnant girl who thought she knew something has become the mother who knows nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
And it feels like I've been freed. I used to think that I had spent my life up until having children learning what I needed to know to be a good mother. Now I know the truth. Motherhood IS the ultimate teacher of how to be a good mother. I feel like a ball of mushy clay, without true form or beauty, and my kids are literally smacking and pounding me into the mother I need to be.
Bryce's grandpa, one of the wisest men I have ever known, used to tell me that I was the perfect wife for Bryce and that I was the perfect mother for my children. I didn't feel like i was perfect, far from it. Yet he would repeat this "you are the perfect for yours" saying to everyone.
Now I get it.
I am the perfect mother for my children, not anyone else's children, but perfect for mine.
Maybe it's social networking that gave me this false idea of what a mother looks like. Of what I should look like. But I'm not "that" mother. I am myself, and I'm finally discovering what that looks like and being completely ok with it. No guilt trips. No regrets. I am just who I am. Not only that, but other mothers are who they are and I want to applaud them.
Mothering is not longer a competition. We do things differently. There isn't one mold for us. If God intended us to all be the same, he wouldn't have made us so different, given us different strengths and different interests. We are who we are.
I know I've heard all this before. I may have even believed it. But it's different now that I KNOW it. I know it deep in my heart. I feel it so strongly that I can't help but be in awe of the complete truth in it. I am me, a mother unique and imperfect, who knows nothing about mothering.
I absolutely cannot do this alone. I need help all the time. Physical and emotional help from love ones. But mostly help from God.
I pray different when I know nothing. I pray because I HAVE to pray, not because I have to. If I don't pray my twins might light my house on fire while I'm feeding the baby or I may lose my temper and throw them through a window. I pray because I desperately need all my children to be asleep at the same time so I can take a power nap. I pray for sanity, patience, and to get through each day, one at a time. I pray that God will keep my mothering lessons simple and not give me too many at one time. I pray for my sweet husband so he can put up with my eye-twitching-crazy-sauce self at the end of the day and to have patience with me as he tries, often without success, to arouse me from my cave woman slumber at night to feed the baby.
I think these are the reasons God sent me 3 children in two years. I am an independent, stubborn, "smart" woman and things have always come easily to me. He knew that in order to teach me about true motherhood he had to break me. I feel that broken heart and contrite spirit in a way I never have before.
And it is wonderful. I love knowing nothing. I love discovering and accepting myself. I love my life. I love being a mother.
