I guess you could say that mothering is a full-time
job. I guess you could, but it would be
totally misleading. Mothering is not
even close to a full-time job. It’s like
two full-time jobs where you live at work, and eat at work, and never get to
walk away from work like that woman I see walking home from Eden every
night. She jaunts out the door, swings
her purse over her shoulder and lets her skirt sashay across the parking lot,
across the street, down the sidewalk.
Sometimes she’s on the phone, making plans for the evening. Sometimes she’s reading a book. Sometimes she’s just walking, breathing in
the outdoor seasons, filled with the knowledge that work is behind her and need
not be acknowledged until tomorrow morning.
Sometimes I am positively green, watching her saunter along…how I wish I
could saunter!
I am a mother of two boys, a dog, and wife to one
husband. That’s a lot of needs waiting
to be filled. And they expect me to fill
them. Most days I am honored to be that
servant. I love the old hymn that asks, “Will
you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you? Pray that I may have
the grace to let you be my servant too.”
Then there are those other days; those days when that special moment I
had carved out of the day just for me gets snatched out from under me and I
fall into the my-life-stinks sinkhole of self pity. My shower is interrupted by a boy emptying
out the cabinets looking for band-aids and muttering, “I’m bleeding I think, so
I need a band-aid but I don’t see them, and they’re usually here but where are
they!? MOM! Where’d you put the
band-aids!?” My reading time is interrupted by a teething baby who won’t sleep,
or a four-year old insisting there are crocodiles under the bed chewing on his
books. My phone call with my best friend
is hijacked with, “MO-oom!! I need sumpin’!”
That precious mocha I saved my pennies for gets spilled when somebody
climbs over the backseat of the car in the grocery store parking lot. I am interrupted from an exciting editing job
by a little one wandering into the room covered in a mysterious viscous substance. I come upstairs with a sigh after putting the
boys to bed to find the dog on the dining room table chowing down on the
leftovers I had planned on feeding the family for lunch tomorrow, and yet
again, there’s a need. I am the only one
to fill it. Clean up the mess, bandage
the hurt, reassure the fearful, discipline the naughty, find the lost, and so on
and on and on.
I had it. Tonight at
the dinner table my husband noted my unhappiness (it would take a seriously
self-interested introvert to not notice my dramatic sighs and slouching
shoulders). He asked if I was going to
be okay. With a pout to prove I am my
son’s mother I responded, “I just want to take my journal, and a pen, and hike
out into the wilderness and stay there forever!” Luke promptly responded, “Oh no, Mom. You’d get eaten by a bear or sumping.” And I laughed, and the laughter turned into
crying, and the sinkhole turned out to be a pothole. I knew he was right. I would get eaten by a bear! I would miss little boys who in all
seriousness suggest with concern that I would get eaten by a bear. I would miss
their incessant yammering and the inappropriate shouting. I would miss my husband’s distracted
fathering, and even his inability to put his pants away properly. I would miss letting the dog out the back
door and shushing him while he tears around barking at birds on the fence. I would miss filling a need for someone else;
for three someone elses, and a dog.
