Motherhood Ain't for Sissies - The Glorious Table

Someday I’ll be a white-haired lady talking with friends or gazing out a window alone with my thoughts. My conversation and thoughts are sure to center around moments when my life was busy with little people who called me Mom. Among the everyday moments, other memories will float to the surface and demand my attention above the rest. The highlights will be the clutch moments, the pivotal points in my children’s lives when a decision was made or a new ounce of courage was found. The moments I got to watch them become.

Those clutch moments are the same desires I dreamt about when my babies were growing inside me. My prayers were full of desire to be there when my kids needed me most. I was desperate to offer support and put the wind in their sails. The same moments I longed for at the beginning will be the exact ones sustaining me at the end.

What I didn’t see coming were the tears. My early dreams and the memories real life has given me bear many similarities; what they don’t share are all those tears. My dreams didn’t consider the ripping required for the butterflies to emerge from their cocoons. They didn’t compute the necessary tearing of muscles to make them grow strong.

My firstborn was stung by a bee on his chubby fist. His eyes locked onto mine as all four filled with tears. There’s no escape route for this pain, only decisions about how to deal with it. “You will make it through,” was the only thing I could think of to say.

I learned, one moment at a time, how much power deep breathing and a decision to outlast the pain could wield. These ideas became the mantra I used to help my children. Together we stared down separation anxiety, hurts caused by friends, rejections, and failures. They also became the mantra that gave me courage to let them grow.

When the thing is right, we have an empowering confidence to give our children. They can move forward despite tears. The steel in our backbone will trickle down into theirs when we’re sure pain has a purpose with a high value.

Everything in me wanted to run to the rescue as my tearful seven-year-old walked into school. In the rearview mirror, my eyes glued to her little body, and I reminded myself of the character goals I have for her. I recounted all the ways she was safe and the many people inside the building who love her and will fight for her. I prayed desperately for God to make these tears count and to build confidence in her.

I’ve asked God to give my children the kind of faith I’ve read about in biographies and seen in my heroes. This faith is certain and strong—capable of taking risks because it knows what is supremely valuable. The problem with these biographies and my prayers is how easily I ignore the beginning chapters. These show that the reason a solid faith knows how to walk on uncertain ground is lots of uncomfortable practice. My job is to hold my children’s hands as they walk their first, faith-forming chapters, when I would rather give them a fairy tale.

Parenting ain’t for sissies. More than anything, I want to give my children the miraculous end of the story without the sting of the beginning. If I’m not careful to remember my goal, I’ll steal away their muscle-producing moments every chance I get.

We must be okay with terrible moments of uncertainty that feel long as we live them. Sitting quietly in the face of pain and fear, waiting while your child wrestles, is profoundly hard. Watching tears fall because you trust the power they hold takes monumental effort. Many tears we can’t stop. Some tears we shouldn’t stop because to stop them would short-circuit our child’s need to wrestle with God and grow.

This kind of action wrapped up in inaction requires a parent with an end in mind much grander than the happiness of the current moment. The moments of my child’s “becoming” are often also the moments of my “becoming.” Much of my spiritual growth has happened right alongside theirs.

We find sweet freedom in knowing tears and pain are not our enemies. Tears are precious tools God uses as he redeems us. He cherishes our tears and our children’s tears. He values them so much he keeps them as a collection. David applied this knowledge as a balm to his soul when he wrote, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book” (Psalm 56:8 NLT).

The tears I’ve collected in the course of a life thoroughly lived have become precious to me too. They will sit alongside the precious memories my mind recounts when white hairs come and my little people aren’t so little. This collection will serve as evidence that I linked arms with God in the deep work he wanted to do in my kids. Instead of shrinking from it in fear, I was able to become a warrior momma and watch them grow.

Lori Florida lives a life that is all about her people. She’s convinced that being Mrs. to one and Mommy to eight will be her most significant way to serve Jesus. She wants to use her life to cheer on and coach the women around her. She is on staff with Project Hopeful working to give a hand up to moms in poverty in Ethiopia. You can find her at loriflorida.com.