About a year ago, in an attempt to win the Insane Mother of the Year award, I took my poor little family, struggling with sore throats, runny noses, and fevers, on a roughly fourteen hour each way trip to New York City for my college roommate’s wedding. If it had been for anything else (OK, except maybe my grandmother’s funeral), I would have canceled the trip. But my roommate was a bridesmaid in my wedding, making the expensive trip despite having just paid for a Stanford education. And this was it. This was her wedding day. It wasn’t like I could delay the trip for a month and then go see her walk down the aisle to join hands with the man of her dreams.
So we did it. We piled into the great big van with our vaporizer, our chewable vitamin C, and our generic infant ibuprofen. But there was one thing I brought along that should never have been allowed in my suitcase and that turned out to be badly damaged by this crazy mission to honor a dear old friend, and that was my Professional Mommy Pride.
You know how it goes. A writer wants to have good writing to show for her hours at the computer. A seamstress wants to have beautiful clothes. A chef, a fabulous dinner. A gardener, prizewinning tomatoes. And a mother wants to have darling, well-behaved children who smile at strangers, speak up when ordering at restaurants, and generally spread sweetness and joy to all who encounter them, or at the very least children who do not throw the biggest tantrums of their lives for like an hour in front of other people. Thankfully, the “other people” here were our tremendously gracious and understanding cousins. But still, if I were a professional gardener, I wouldn’t want to hand my cousins dry, pithy, tasteless tomatoes, no matter how gracious said cousins might be.
To make matters worse, the mega-fit in question was thrown while we were actually in the van driving into the city to drop me off at the wedding. There I was, on my way to the corner of 45th and Madison Avenue to schmooze with my old Stanford friends who had gone on to live in places like Seoul and Hong Kong (not to mention New York) and do stuff like be lawyers and work in business finance, and I was sitting in a twelve-passenger van listening to my child scream from two rows behind me. And then my screaming child unbuckled and climbed out of her car seat. Twice. And I hauled my seven-months-pregnant enormousness to the back of the van to rebuckle her. Twice.
But this was only the beginning because part way into the first bout of pint-sized hysteria, another child reached over and took our family’s favorite jack-in-the-box away from the poor innocent cousin who had dared to keep dear Jack for too long. I told my child (repeatedly) to give the toy back to the wounded cousin and was met with a blank stare, which resulted in the dreaded, “Well, now you can’t have your jack-in-the-box until we get home from our trip,” which in turn resulted in, you guessed it, another mega-fit.
Yes, after I graduated from Stanford, I did not head over to Harvard Law for the next step in my illustrious career. Au contraire. I immediately got married, and after a couple of misguided years of contraception, started having babies and became Professional Christian Mommy Extraordinaire. That’s right, folks, witness my brilliant and successful parenting. I’ve devoted my life to these children and just look at what a great job I’ve done. Look at the joyfulness, the obedience, the sweet, compliant natures of my little masterpieces.
To be fair, let’s not forget those sore throats, runny noses, and fevers I had dragged my children out with. Their reserves were low. Their ability to be stressed was nil. But in the midst of my children’s sickness, I felt like my credentials had a fever, too. I was off to see people I hadn’t seen in a decade, and this was how my life’s work was shaping up: mega-fits in the van while ginormous me crawls around unable to do anything to fix these out of control attitudes. I am a professional mother, and at that moment, mothering wasn’t going so great.
But what is the point of mothering anyway?
I had recoiled in horror at the idea of the tiger mother who believes her children owe it to her to make her look good by becoming violin virtuosos and staying at the top of their class. But had I succumbed to the Christian version, the “my kids owe it to me to make me look good by being exceptionally calm and compliant”?
Of course, being a violin virtuoso and getting good grades are good things, and of course our kids should honor and obey their parents, but we should be teaching them to do it for the Lord, not because it makes us look like successes. Mothering is not about glorifying ourselves with our wonderful children. It’s about glorifying the Lord by how we respond when our children aren’t so wonderful. Motherhood is about loving the weak, the out of control, the sinful, and bit by bit, day after day, seeking to change their hearts so they can learn to be strong, self-controlled, and righteous. It’s slow, and messy, and humbling. And the ultimate goal isn’t looking good, it’s being like Christ.
A few days after we got home from our trip, the child who had thrown the first mega-fit wanted me to tell her grammie on the phone that she had been really mad and really sad because she didn’t want me to go to the wedding.
“Is that why you were crying in the van?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “and unbuckling.”
Oh.
She was just a sick little girl who wanted her Mama. And yes, we need to work on her communication skills. But while it may be unimpressive, if I’m trying to be like Jesus, maybe having a child who loves me and wants to be with me isn’t so unsuccessful after all.
Thank you, fellow Andrea, for this post. God is teaching me bit by bit more and more about what being a Christian mother is all about. There is still a very long way to go for me, and I appreciate your insight. There is something about going out with our children that makes us want them to perform just perfectly and if they don’t, are we still successful mothers? After all, this is my full-time job. Was it still a successful outing even if they behaved horribly? Yes, I think it is if we are the loving, Christ-like Mothers God wants us to be in the rough situation and are teaching them bit by bit how to become Christ-like too. They need love and grace, just like we do as sinful mothers from our heavenly Father.
Thank you for this!! I am so thankful for the encouragenent and wisdom. I’m a young mother and recently found out “my sweet baby” most definitely has a will of his own!
Thank you so much for being so honest and genuine. As a mother of five, I find people seem to watch me when I am out with my children more than they do a smaller family, or at least it seems that they pay us more attention. Anyway, I’m often paranoid that if my children misbehave in public that others are quickly passing judgement and wondering why I had so many children if I can’t make them mind. Thanks so much for the wonderful encouragement and great reminder that it isn’t about how we look to others that matters and that EVERY family has it hard moments.
I really needed to hear this…
Thank you for your honesty and transparency in this post. It is so encouraging!