I don’t have much time for social media but when I do, I follow a few people whose words leave me inspired and uplifted.
Author Katie Davis Majors is one such person.
Penning a few words on Mother’s Day, she wrote: “I wish I could tell my young, striving mother heart a thing or two. If I could, I would bring her weary frame a cup of coffee and reach out across the years to hold her hand as I whispered to her all the things I did not know.”
There are so many things I did not know seven years ago when my first child was born and countless more that I am still learning.
Sometimes that striving mother is only one day in the past, her weariness and mom-guilt unpleasantly fresh in memory.
Looking back to the beginning, when I was battling loneliness with only two small babes under three years of age for company, I did not know how much I would later crave time alone with my children.
Now that I have finally, between the demands of a business and a prem baby who didn’t sleep, managed to make some treasured friends to journey with, I must now choose to turn down invitations for coffee in favour of lego and fort building.
That former me had no idea how happy this would make me. So often I don’t get that balance quite right. It is so much easier to enjoy adult companionship while the children play with other children.
This is good and normal and to be enjoyed. Actually its a requirement for sanity. But it isn’t everything.
Being down with flu (or was it?) as a family twice this last month, made it impossible to socialise and instead we spent whole mornings just making puzzles and building intricate lego gizmos (with imaginary lasers).
There was no pull to invite guests over or to head out to ‘do something’. I was reminded how much my children need my husband and I without distraction, without their friends or ours, without screens and without busyness of any kind.
Carving out this kind of single minded time just for them demands some sacrifice, but the reward is greater then expected.
Friendship is one of life’s chief joys, but motherhood is a calling that is like an ache inside. The ache never leaves but only grows and matures, and like a compass helps you to recalibrate when you go off course.
Right now I am relearning that a simple walk to the park, blowing dandelions and climbing trees is better then all the fancy things (and toys!) money can buy.
The thoughts and ideas of my young boys are more captivating than the most interesting influencer the world (and any TED Talk) can offer me.
Even when we are butting heads and I want to scream with frustration at their iron wills, the weightiness of the responsibility to steward their hearts has brought me to my knees, over and over again.
Leaning into Jesus for His guidance, I have discovered the mother heart of God in a way I never expected. This alone makes it all worth it.
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