surrendering my right to mother

It has been alarmingly quiet on this blog. I admit it. I would like to say it's just because I'm too busy being super mom, or that we've been off having adventures far away from home, but that wouldn't be true.

The truth is that I am fully caught up in figuring out my role as a mother and a wife. Still. Always. Blogging makes me feel like I need to have a perfect life in order to blog about it. I need to have an immaculate home, I need to spend every moment of the day planning things to do with boys that they will remember for a lifetime. I need to have hot, delicious, nutritious meals ready as soon as my husband's foot passes the doorway. I need to be perfectly content with my life in order to pass on my wisdom to others. Whenever I sit down at the keyboard and try to start a post, all I can think of is how I lost my temper with Judah, how I was more lenient with one child over the other, how it's 5:59 PM and Joey will walk in to a disastrous house, crabby children, and a supper challenge like you would see on "Chopped". I feel so hypocritical when I try to twist the events of the day into something that is interesting and inspiring. That's what a blog is, isn't? If it isn't interesting OR inspiring, then what is the point of reading it?

I have been battling my own attitudes for a very long time. My fleshly self would love to have my boys play happily all day long while I do whatever passes my fancy. How dare they need ME to keep them occupied, to break up squabbles, to wipe their noses and wash their hands and change their bums! Some days I am so set on living for ME that I end up snapping at my children, shirking all of the duties I need to do to keep this house in order, despising my life, and neglecting my husband. It doesn't sound very pretty, and I hate that I'm writing it here for all to see, but it's the truth. It's something I need to change, and it's something I am unable to change.

Some days I wake up with a fresh feeling of love for my boys and my husband, and it's easier to love and serve them more and me less... for a time. Suddenly, the clock strikes noon, the boys are hungry, I'm overwhelmed, and those little warm fuzzies of love go POOF - gone! It's so easy to sink back into that mire of "woe is me! my life is not what I want it to be!" and forget that I still have a role to play in this little family.

What is the point of all of this noise? One simple thing: without relying on the love of Christ for the strength to serve my family each day, for the love to give when my own heart lacks, for the grace to pick up and try again when I fail, I am and will continue to be nothing more than a self-pitying, utterly-failing mess of a mom. Sure, I may still possess the innate ability to care for my offspring, but it will be nothing more than my own particular form of slavery. What I need is to stop believing that I can find the strength to be a  good, God-fearing mom somewhere within myself, and start believing that relying on Christ is not only what I'm commanded to do, but it is also the very life and breath and being of who I am as a Christian - and HE will give me the strength to rely on Him. By my own efforts I may be able to go through the motions of motherhood and deceive myself into thinking that I am accomplishing the very best for myself and my family, but my heart will never be in the right place. It can never be completely submitted to my loving God if I am convinced I do not need an intervention of theistic proportions. 

I love Jesus, my Saviour, and what I truly want is to live as if He is lord of my life. My role as a wife and a mother is one area that I have not been willing to surrender to Him. It may have hurt me and my family, but it is a far greater sin against the perfect, holy God whom I know to be THE ONLY God and the author of all life. This is something that I first need to deal with in my heart before the effects can trickle down to my family - in GOD's time as He teaches me and molds me into something beautiful.