Chaotic Joy: Finding Abundance in the Messiness of Motherhood

Author

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

ERMA BOMBECK

I knew a lot more about parenting before I had children.

When I became pregnant with our first child, my husband and I decided that just before she was born, I would resign my career and begin a new one as a stay-at-home mom. I spent plenty of time dreaming about how my and my baby’s life together would go. I planned to spend my days cuddling her and interacting with her. We’d play traditional games such as How Big Is Baby? as well as newer, more educational games, with classical music playing in the background. I would dress her in cute, girlie clothing (which would always be clean), and I’d adorn her head with hair bows (which would always stay on). I’d take her on walks or to visit the park.

I definitely would never use television for a babysitter. I wouldn’t need to, because we’d be far too busy making arts and crafts or cooking. Discipline? Not a problem. If my child did A, I would do B, and I would get result C. For the more stubborn issues, I might have to repeat B once or twice. We would pray together every day, and we’d have regular family devotions.

Oh, and did I mention that I would be so well organized that I would have time not only to accomplish all this, but also to keep the house clean and prepare delicious, nutritious meals every day?

I had been a successful career woman prior to becoming pregnant. I knew how to work hard, how to organize, and how to prioritize. I could maintain control of chaotic situations with ease, and I could think quickly. Whatever I didn’t know about babies, I was sure I could glean from books, the Internet, or my more experienced friends.

I felt completely prepared for motherhood.

My precious baby girl arrived right on schedule, thanks to a planned C-section. I could hardly believe how small and perfect she was. She was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. Our time together in the hospital was idyllic. I had no idea that motherhood was going to be anything other than the joyous bliss I had envisioned until I realized something: I was going to have to leave the hospital and take my baby home.

When the doctor came to check on me on my last morning there, I told him I wished I didn’t have to leave. Naturally, this didn’t prevent him from declaring me healthy and ready to be discharged. So my husband and I loaded our bundle of joy into the car, took the obligatory photos, and drove home. We carried Ellie in her infant carrier into the house, and my husband set her down in our brown recliner.

I still remember vividly the question that flashed into my mind: Now what do we do with her?

Over the next few days, as complications developed from my surgery and my daughter suffered from feeding issues, any illusions I’d had that motherhood would be nothing but placid contentment were shattered. I realized that motherhood was going to be much more demanding than I had thought. It would be work. Hard work.

Even after this realization, I significantly underestimated the amount of work, energy and effort that would be required to do a good job of mothering. True, there are moments in mothering that so overwhelm us with joy that our hearts overflow. But there are also times when the exhaustion is so great that it leaves us feeling like zombies, or when we are so discouraged that we wonder if we’re really cut out for this job.

Most of the time, we live somewhere between these two extremes. We put one foot in front of the other, day after day, doing the best we can and hoping it’s good enough. The blissful times don’t seem to come very frequently, but at least the bad times don’t regularly devastate us. It’s not as joyous as we had hoped motherhood would be, but everyone we know seems to be in the same boat, so we settle for making it through.

That’s not abundant life.

Two years ago, I attended a major conference on motherhood along with hundreds of other mothers. Though no two of us had the same house or car or children, we all came for the same reason: to receive support and encouragement in our role as moms. I had been looking forward to the conference for months, eager to fellowship with other women and receive affirmation for my role in my children’s lives.

The speakers did affirm our value as mothers. They did support and encourage us. But most of them devoted their time to sympathizing with us in the difficulties of motherhood and trying to help us develop strategies to cope with it, rather than focusing on motherhood’s positive aspects.

It’s true that motherhood is hard. Sometimes, it’s very hard. It’s crazy, chaotic and confusing. But it’s also wonderful, joyous and fulfilling. I left the conference grateful that I had some promising new discipline ideas to try, but feeling empty in the part of my heart that longed for someone to say, Yes, being a mother is work, but it’s still the most amazing, breathtaking, fantastic journey we can ever take.

I’ll admit that sometimes it doesn’t feel fantastic. There are days when I feel more confused than amazed—more beaten down than lifted up. As you probably have as well, I’ve had days when it seemed that motherhood was more drudgery than delight. But if we buy into Satan’s lie that motherhood is nothing more than a calling to change thousands of diapers, do the same housework over and over, and referee countless squabbles about things that don’t really matter, we will miss out on the incredible joy that God has planned for us.

You see, a calling to motherhood is much more than a calling to the myriad tasks associated with it. A calling to motherhood is a calling to abundant life.

Can Motherhood Really Be Abundant?

Many things in motherhood are abundant. Diapers that need changing? Check. Meals to prepare? Check. Housework to do—and do again? Check. Clothes to buy and forms to fill out and playdates to schedule? Check. But motherhood itself? Can motherhood itself be abundant?

Jesus gives us the answer to that question. After explaining to the Pharisees that He is the Good Shepherd—the One who tenderly loves and cares for His sheep—He tells them:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

Jesus’ intent was to explain how He related to His sheep—in other words, to those who follow Him. When He calls us, it is not to destruction. It is to abundant life.

If that’s true (and because Jesus said it, we know that it is), He came so that you and I could have abundant life—not a miserable, beaten-down existence, but glorious, magnificent life! Not just in heaven one day, but here, now, on earth. And if that’s true, then motherhood is abundant life. We don’t have to wait until our children are grown and we’re empty-nesters to discover abundant life. We don’t have to hope for a time when things settle down enough for us to experience abundant life—because we can experience it here and now, in the midst of the chaos. Motherhood is the abundant life God promised us.

So why doesn’t it feel abundant?

Roadblocks to Abundance

There are four major roadblocks to experiencing motherhood as rich and rewarding. You may have experienced one or all of these to some degree.

The first obstacle is thinking that we can only experience abundant life when all our circumstances are to our liking. In other words, if the house is tidy, the children are clean and well-behaved, and I can afford a babysitter frequently enough to go out and do things on my own, then I can be content. Otherwise, forget it.

Moms, if this is your attitude, you are doomed to disappointment. A lot of disappointment. Rarely will everything go perfectly at the same time. If you can only be satisfied when life is what you would consider perfect, well, you won’t be satisfied very often.

Fortunately, God has made it possible for us to enjoy abundant life even when circumstances are very different from what we would wish—when things are unpleasant, confusing, or just plain chaotic. That’s what this book is about. We can have abundant life in the midst of circumstances we would change if we could. But before we talk about how that happens, let’s look at three other potential roadblocks to experiencing abundant life right now.

The second roadblock is longing excessively for what we used to have. Before becoming a mother, I had a career I loved. I enjoyed the work. I liked and appreciated the people with whom I worked. My job was fun. It was exciting. It was never the same two days in a row.

When my baby girl was born, I went from being a high-energy person in a fast-paced career to a perpetually tired person in a career that was so slow-paced that it seemed like my grass grew at breakneck speed in comparison. It felt like going from 60 to 0 instantly. I was bored, lonely and grieving.

I loved my daughter with all my heart, but I missed my job, my coworkers, and my being a part of the workplace. Skills I had worked so hard to attain no longer mattered, because they weren’t relevant to my new position. Worst of all, I felt isolated. My husband was wonderful to be with when he was home, but he had a full-time job. Many of my friends were at work—some at the very workplace I had left. My other friends all had families of their own and wanted to spend time with them in the evenings, which was when my husband was gone. Even the adrenaline rushes of my work were gone. In their place were hormones and the baby blues.

I finally had what I had always wanted—a precious child—but I grieved for what I could no longer have.

The ancient Israelites would have empathized with me. They were oppressed by the Egyptians for 400 years. As if that weren’t enough, God allowed their suffering to increased temporarily before He finally delivered them from slavery. Then He showed Himself mighty, performing plague after plague, until at last Pharaoh begged the Israelites to leave. Great! they must have thought. We’re out of here! But not so fast. Pharaoh changed his mind, and he and his army caught up to the fleeing slaves. Fortunately, that was no problem for God. He parted the Red Sea, allowed the Israelites to cross through, and then caused the waters to flow back into place and drown the Egyptians.

When the Israelites became thirsty on their journey and complained about it, God provided water from a rock. When they got hungry, they once again began to complain:

If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death (Exod. 16:3, NIV).

Incredibly, despite their former suffering, they were longing for what they’d had before!

For me, even though I had loved my job, being home with my precious daughter was infinitely preferable to being at work. But despite knowing I’d made the right choice for our family, the longing I felt for what had gone before still interfered with my ability to delight in my current circumstances.

What do you long for that you used to have, but no longer do? Free time? The carefree days of singleness or childlessness? Spending money? It’s not wrong to miss those things. We should enjoy the blessings God gives us, and the natural counterpart to that is missing them when they’re gone. But we must learn to wholeheartedly embrace our present (and future) that doesn’t include those things, knowing that God has planned something even better for us.

The third roadblock to experiencing motherhood as abundant is being unable to see past the unpleasant details of our calling. If we raise our gazes no higher than the mound of dishes in the sink or the piles of laundry on the floor, we won’t be looking nearly high enough. Putting too much emphasis on the details usually causes us to narrow our focus to ourselves. Many times, the thought process goes something like this: Just look at all these things I have to take care of. I’ll never get caught up. Seems like I’m the only one who cares about getting things done around here.

That kind of self-centered focus rarely leads to inner peace and an appreciation of our status as mothers. Instead, it causes us to resent those who are most dear to us and to spend our time bogged down in self-pity instead of lifted up in joy.

It was never God’s intention for our primary focus to be on the nuts and bolts of our day-to-day existence. Granted, as mothers, there are many things we have to take care of. We are responsible for the care and nurturing of our children and the orderly management of our homes. But when these things become our primary focus, that’s sin.

Pursuing the calling God has given us should never detract from our relationship with Him. Yet too often, we set our sights on the earthly details of life and forget to gaze adoringly at the Author of Life. We spend more time bemoaning the fact that the living room is a mess again than we do contemplating God’s majesty.

I know it’s easy to get bogged down in the logistics of living. I have five young children. Believe me, I understand. But if you or I allow anything, even our children, to make us forget to focus on God, that’s idolatry. And idolatry will never lead to spiritually abundant living.

Making a Godward focus our first priority, however, and relegating the details of our lives to secondary status renders unto God His due and puts other things in their proper places. When we have our lives ordered according to God’s design, we will begin to experience abundant motherhood.

The fourth roadblock applies not just to mothers, but to every person God has ever created. It is failing to realize that abundant life is to be experienced not through circumstances that make us happy, but through a relationship with God.

Too often, we look to motherhood (or some other aspect of our lives) to meet needs that can only be fulfilled by God Himself. Motherhood will not provide enough of a sense of significance to fill the empty place in our heart that longs to know we are worthwhile. Being a mother might introduce us to fascinating people, but it won’t ultimately be the companion to our souls that we long for. In the end, motherhood is a marvelous blessing, but it was never meant to carry the burden of having to meet needs that only God can truly fulfill—a burden we too often assign to it.

When we look to the role or circumstances of motherhood to provide for all of our emotional needs, we are guaranteed to be disappointed. God has given us certain needs, and He has ordained that in this world, some of those needs will never be completely fulfilled apart from Him. Instead of trying to manufacture fulfillment and contentment for ourselves through our circumstances, we must look to God Himself for our deepest satisfaction.

In calling us to be mothers, God grants us two priceless gifts. The first is the privilege of being a mom and of knowing and loving our precious children. The second is the privilege of coming to know Him more intimately. The first gift can never fulfill our deepest longings; the second gift is the only thing that can.

You see, our spirits were made to desire God and to need Him completely and desperately. Through motherhood, God calls us to a lifestyle that can result in knowing Him in ways in which we would never have come to know Him otherwise. That, my friend, is abundant life!

Getting Started

So yes, motherhood can be abundant, because it provides abundant opportunities to know God. That’s what this book is about: ways that each mom, no matter her circumstances, can experience more abundant life. We’ll start with one specific way God has chosen for us to get to know Him that we wouldn’t have been able to experience if we weren’t mothers.

Abundant Living Action Steps

1.     List the things about motherhood that came as a surprise to you. Were any of these upsetting to you?

2.     Which roadblock to abundance are you most prone to experience? Are you experiencing it now? What can you do about this issue so that it no longer blocks you from experiencing the abundant life that God promises? How would you like God to help? Ask Him to help you in that way.

3.     What would abundant motherhood look like to you? Do you think this is a realistic picture of motherhood? Discuss this with God, and ask Him whether or not you’re being realistic.

For a more in-depth study of the topics of each chapter, see the Bible study at the end of this book.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family.

MICHELLE OBAMA

Have you ever thought of changing your name to something other than Mommy?

I have. I remember one day in particular; it had been one of those days. I was tired of hearing my name over and over, usually followed by some request I considered either annoying or unimportant (or both). So when my daughter called for me for the umpteenth time, I didn’t answer right away.

Mommy? she called out.

I didn’t say anything. I wanted at least to finish putting the last few folded clothes back in dresser drawers before I had to turn my attention to something else.

Mommy? Mommy??

I heard little footsteps coming closer, and then Lindsey appeared in the bedroom doorway. Oh, there you are, Mommy, she said.

My name’s not Mommy, I responded.

Lindsey looked understandably confused. Then, Yes it is, she said. Mommy?

I couldn’t fool Lindsey. Confuse her for a moment, yes, but not fool her. She knew good and well that I was her mother and she was my daughter. She understood the parent-child relationship.

You and I once understood the parent-child relationship from the perspective of a child too. But when we