Finding Yourself in Motherhood

If you're a mom, the title of this post isn't a foreign idea to you. It's no secret that mother's of young children have a difficult time not losing themselves in the daily grind of diaper changes, burp rags, toilet training and laundry loads.

But in the throes of motherhood, how do you keep from losing yourself? How do you remind yourself of the things that make you, YOU?

I remember a significant moment shortly after I had my second child. After Britany was born, I struggled in a way I hadn't yet as a mother. I was the new mother of 2 under 2. I was literally on survival mode. Rather than living to the fullest with my toddler and infant, I was simply doing just what I could to keep everyone alive. I hadn't really told anyone about my private struggle with the demands of my new life. Not even my husband knew how difficult of a time I was having. When I look back on that time, I can describe it as like being in the middle of the ocean treading water...barely able to keep my head above. I guess you could say I had a classic case of post partum depression, although at the time I wouldn't have so logically labeled it. I felt like I was drowning in my own life, and while I was just barely getting by as a mother, I certainly didn't have the time or energy to focus on being anything other than that. One particular day, when our new daughter was probably less than 2 months old, we had a big snowfall in Vermont. My husband went outside to shovel the back deck, and I stayed in with the girls. After about 15 minutes, my husband came in and asked if I'd like to finish the shoveling--if only to get out for a bit. I reluctantly agreed and grabbed my coat and gloves and started shoveling. After I finished the deck, it was almost dusk. There was a gray fog that had settled and snow started falling. Cold, blustery snow. The kind that sticks. The snow kept coming until it you could barely see for 100 feet in front of you. I walked off the deck and into the woods behind our house. And I stood there. In the quiet. With the quiet, calm, cold snow falling around me. All I could hear was the wind and all I could see was snow and trees. I stood there for minutes. Just letting time pass and just being silent. Just being me. Memories flashed of countless snow storms of my childhood. Playing outside in the snow, letting it's clean blanket restore the earth in newness. It was restoring me in those moments. I closed my eyes and let the cold flakes fall and the wind blow and silence sweep over me.

I don't remember the exact details, of course, but I'm sure that as I went back into that house, the crying started, the housework reappeared and the responsibilities of a mother of two small children resumed. But the work those moments had done in my heart remained. A moment to breathe. A chance to reflect. An opportunity to be myself for even a second--without demands, without servitude.

Mothers, I know it's not easy to get away. I know it's not easy to take that time for yourself without feeling guilty or frustrated with your own need for a minute alone. But make that time. Step outside away from the noise and the rush. Don't just sit on the couch for a few minutes and call it good. Actually get outside the four walls of your home. Clear your head. Don't fill it with more chaos and stress from facebook feeds or a dramatic TV show. Get outside. Feel the air. Breathe the air. Get alone, get silent and clear the clutter of your own mind and heart. Pray. Think. Just breathe. Whatever difficulty you are facing as a mom today, it will pass. But it may pass easier if you take a few minutes to let the wind blow your stresses away from you. Even just for a minute.

Finding the Myself I Lost

You could say I've always been a little wild. Passionate. Excitable. I have this image of myself in the truest form, and it involves a little girl with crazy blond hair riding her horse a little too fast. She cares nothing of dirty hands, a dirty face or mussed up hair. She cares only about that moment--that fleeting moment of freedom and unpredictability. 

As a young girl, I lived for the time of day when I could put away my schoolbooks, change in to my favorite torn pair of jeans and my worn green sweatshirt, jam my hair into a pony tail and fly out the back door. We lived in this little cape on the top of a hill, surrounded by miles of woods that begged for exploration. I would spend hours out there, completely released. Sometimes I would lose myself in make believe. Other times I would lay on the gnarled branches of the apple trees looking up at the sky and dreaming about my own life--who I would become. 

As time went on, I lost so much of that girl. I'd like to say she's still alive and well inside my being, and in some ways I suppose she is. But in so many ways, I've forgotten how to feel pure joy simply by letting the wind course through my hair. I've forgotten how to dance wildly and run freely. I've lost the art of day dreaming and wild flower picking. And even as I read back through this blog of mine, I realize that I've lost my love of writing, somewhere in the daily grind of it all. 

That little girl grew up so quickly. At eighteen I became a wife and responsibility took over carefree spontaneity. Becoming pregnant at nineteen meant that the maturity of motherhood must take the helm rather than the reckless desire to chase the sunset. 

I suppose the last traces of that little girl longed to be revived when we found ourselves bound for South Africa. One of my day dreams in that orchard not so many years before had been going to distant lands, carrying the wild hope of the Gospel with radical love and barefoot obedience. But when reality fizzled even that final dream, I found myself floundering. Who was I, if not that fancy free little blond girl? Who was I if not the wild, unpredictable free spirit than everyone knew me to be? I now found myself, a tired and weary brunette mother of two. Hardly an evidence of what was, remained.

I used to feel so deeply. I used to love so passionately. I used to dream so limitlessly. 

I want to find myself again. 

It sounds so cliche to say that as mothers we often lose ourselves, but this morning as I sit here thinking over days gone by, I realize that it's begun. 

But I am resolved. It is not without reversal. 

I see so much of that wild little girl every time I look at Peyton. She is vivacious, passionate, joyful, energetic, strong...she is everything I was. Even down to the wild blond hair and light filled blue eyes. Little Britany is sweetness, pure sensitivity and love. She is gentleness, but she is also strength. My daughters each reflect what I hope to be. Peyton reminds me to let loose, to dance, to run. Britany makes me long for the gentle and quiet spirit that is so precious to God. (I Pet. 3:4)

Through my children, God will restore to me what has been lost. What life has threatened to strip from me--my very being--God will restore and reshape. He will return unto me the joy of my salvation. He will renew a right spirit within me. 

I have to find that little girl again. I need her to help me teach my daughters to day dream. I need her to remind me how to run barefoot and dig in the dirt. I need her to help me teach my children to climb trees and go fishing. I need her to help me show them how to wade in the water, how to catch fireflies, and how to run with the wind in your hair. I need her to help me dream again. To lose resignation and rekindle passion. I'm ready to live fully again. To chase life with fervor. To forget about the things which really never mattered all that much, and remember what it is to breathe life in my lungs. I will remember.

Taming Technology

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the power that technology has over our society. I suppose this thought process began with the Harper’s Bazaar article written by Ashton Kutcher that I linked up to a couple months ago. And since then, I guess that my mind has been more clicked into this phenomenon.

Last Friday night, Bryan and I were driving home and I found myself looking into the open windows of houses along our street (creepy, right?) as we passed house after house, I noticed a common theme. In almost every single home, there was a person or persons glued to some from of electronic device. Be it smart phone, television or computer. Remember, it was a Friday night. There were no parties that I could see. No gatherings of friends, neighbors and family. No kids having slumber parties and pillow fights. Just a whole lot of screens. Now it could be that I just happen to live on a boring street, but in all honesty, I think society has been overtaken by our own advances. 

Have you seen this commercial for the Windows Phone?

How sad but true is that?

Now I have to admit, I can't get too high and mighty in pointing my finger. I have a smart phone... and don't get me wrong, I love it. But how do we maintain our connection with real life in a world of virtual realities? How do we shut off the social networking sites and do some honest-to-goodness SOCIAL NETWORKING... as in... going out for coffee or popping into a friends house to chat? Honestly, if you haven't read the article by Ashton Kutcher that I linked to, I really would encourage you to head over there and give it a good read. Because the words that are on the tip of my tongue have already been said by him.

I realize that going backwards simply isn't going to happen. Technology has become an integral part of everyone's every day, and that's just the way it is. BUT... can we make an effort to stay connected while disconnecting periodically? Does that make sense? I guess what I'm saying is, lets just make an effort not to be surfing the web on our smart phone while in the checkout line at the grocery store. Lets get back to basic human kindness... to small talk about the weather and good old eye contact.

Are you with me?

Accepting Hometown

Church St: Burlington, Vermont

I have a bit of a confession to make. I think that for the past 4 months since we left Cape Town, I've been viewing Burlington, VT as "God's dumping ground." In all honesty. I think I've been guilty of having a mindset that this is just where He dropped us. It couldn't be anything more... I've felt as though since we are nothing more than failed missionaries, God just decided to stash us here where we can sit in a waiting room of sorts until we either find something better to do, or we die. Sounds pretty horrible, doesn't it?! But yeah, that's been my mindset. 

Here's the thing. Burlington is great, okay? But honestly, it's my hometown. It's where I grew up, so I'm entitled to think of it as loser-ville. That's my right. It was the place I couldn't wait to leave... the place from which I dreamed of adventures in the great unknown...adventures away from here. It was part of the reason I chose to go to Minneapolis for college. I wanted a taste of something bigger than population 40,000 being the definition of a big city. I wanted to be able to say "downtown" without referring to merely a stretch of concrete 5 blocks long. And of course, its low lying status was only exaggerated when I told people at college that I was from Vermont and they proceeded to ask me what state that was in.

So when this was the place we came back to after our adventuring (Minneapolis... Phoenix.... Cape Town, South Africa...) of course, I felt like I had wasted my chances on the best and was now being served a piled high plate of second best. 

I realize that I'm probably offending some of my local Vermont readers, and for that, I'm very sorry. I just want to provide the back story so you can understand the change that is beginning to take place in me. Please keep reading as I now will attempt to "un-offend" you...

I trudged into church this morning (literally, trudged. yes, I do miss the sunny beaches of Cape Town right now more than you know...) with this attitude still festering in the deep places of my heart. This deep down, depressed feeling that we gave our best life a shot and missed, so now we're left with this.... As I stepped into the sanctuary, my heart began to be challenged even in worship. (side note: we literally started going to this church last week, and I'm already so blessed. the people are SO friendly and the community feel there is so what we've been needing & wanting) God spoke to me this morning that I am to pursue contentment. To ACTIVELY, PASSIONATELY, LONGINGLY pursue the secret of the kind of contentment that Paul talks about...

Well, then the pastor introduced a guest speaker. A young couple who have recently moved here to plant. a. church. in. Burlington. My neck tweaked. Look, I've been to missions college. I took the church planting course. I've been a missionary in Africa. I know what church planting is. But Burlington? Why? Why Burlington? You're signing up for a congregation of 5. (yes, I know I am a skeptic. Go ahead, judge me. I won't deny it even if you do). Well, the guy started talking. He began to share the vision that he and his wife have for this area... specifically the University of Vermont college students. As he began to talk it was literally as if he took a pick axe to my cold, hard, skeptical heart. He shared some startling statistics about my home state. I can't honestly remember them, and I was holding Britany so I couldn't write them down, but lets just say they were troubling. Basically, this guy was quoting the same kind of statistics I used to look up on the joshuaproject.net... the kind of statistics that would make me want to buy a plane ticket and head overseas to some tiny, least reached nation. But he wasn't talking about some tiny nation somewhere. He was talking about right here. Right where I am. Right where perhaps God has not dumped me... but perhaps where God has placed me.

Jesus said that no prophet is accepted in his hometown. Do you also think that perhaps a hometown can not be accepted by a prophet? Does that make sense? I think that because this is my hometown, I am being blind to its needs. I am so focused on what I left behind and the things I COULD have done, that I am closing my eyes to what I CAN DO.


"Don't close your eyes, this is your life, are you who you want to be?" (-Switchfoot) I constantly ask myself that question. Am I today, who I want to be? Am I living to my full potential? Am I useful? Am I being used? Am I opening my eyes, my heart, my hands, to all that God has for me?

Hearing that guy talk this morning caused me to re-think my attitude. To re-check my spirit. To give myself a swift kick in the butt and think about what I'm living for. My days are not complete, and neither is my mission.

I'm not going to close this post with a fire-breathed mission statement for myself to Burlington. Because I don't have one. But what I am going to close with is a promise to myself to keep my eyes open. To look around for the opportunity that lies just outside my doorstep. I didn't leave my usefulness in South Africa when I boarded that plane. I am not dejected, thrown out, or used up. I still have the same two hands I used in Africa. The same two feet that took me there. I still have the same dreams and desires to change the world that I did when I boarded a plane... and I still have the same God through whom all things are possible.

I may not be called to build a church here, but I called to bloom where I am planted... and I now intend to learn the full meaning of that for me.